When I first moved down to the coast, I used to drive into Deal every Saturday morning to look around the antiques in the market. Over the years I've acquired quite a lot of interesting bits and pieces, including things like old books and LPs that I often took to The Ship first, to browse over with a few pints of beer.
The pub was like a still-life painting at that time of the morning, just a handful of regulars standing apart at the bar, silently recollecting memories of things once said and done.
On my first visit, the only voice I heard was from a grizzled old soak bent forward on a stool, talking aloud to himself about what he was going to have for his tea.
"Pork chops tonight. Yes, pork chops, pork chops for tea. Two pork chops."
He never strayed too far from the subject in the few times I saw the actor Hywel Bennett drinking in The Ship on his own. Long retired, it seemed, he was not acting for anyone, just acting-up as usual by the reaction of the barmaid's poker-face.
"It's going to be pork chops for tea tonight. Yes, pork chops, two chops on a plate for my tea."
Listening to his tired, rambling voice, it was a quite a challenge to recall his electrifying performance as Ricki Tarr, three or more decades earlier in the original BBC adaption of Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy. When a young and charismatic Hywel Bennett sparkled next to Alec Guinness in the scenes they shared on the screen.
"Yes, it'll be pork chops for tea tonight, the same as last night. Pork chops for tea."
He'd trained at RADA and by the late-Sixties, critics hailed him one the best young British actors. For his peers like David Hemmings and Terence Stamp, those words were like a poisoned chalice, but Bennett's career in both film and television flourished long after theirs. Hemmings, the golden boy in Antonioni's Blow Up, quickly began to resemble the portrait of Dorian Gray, while Stamp was tiring of being overlooked and overshadowed by his old flatmate, Michael Caine.
Bennett's ITV sitcom, Shelley, seem to run through my entire childhood, and its reoccurring comic plot about a freelance layabout, dodging proper work, must have gone on to inspire thousands of people beyond me. Played against the Thatcher-era, Hywel's Bennett's anti-hero, Shelley, began the same year she came power and incredibly, somehow managed to outlast her, until the series was finally axed in 1992.
Of his other credits and private-life that I read in his obituary some years later, it is his unforgettable role as the dangerous, yet charming outsider, Ricki Tarr that I will remember him most for. As well as the amusing anecdote, told to me by another actor, about how Hywel was often barred from The Ship and other Deal watering-holes, mainly, but not always, for the terrible foul smell of his farts.
'Gordon Bennett! We used to say to him, when he blew one off in the bar.'
The pub was like a still-life painting at that time of the morning, just a handful of regulars standing apart at the bar, silently recollecting memories of things once said and done.
On my first visit, the only voice I heard was from a grizzled old soak bent forward on a stool, talking aloud to himself about what he was going to have for his tea.
"Pork chops tonight. Yes, pork chops, pork chops for tea. Two pork chops."
He never strayed too far from the subject in the few times I saw the actor Hywel Bennett drinking in The Ship on his own. Long retired, it seemed, he was not acting for anyone, just acting-up as usual by the reaction of the barmaid's poker-face.
"It's going to be pork chops for tea tonight. Yes, pork chops, two chops on a plate for my tea."
Listening to his tired, rambling voice, it was a quite a challenge to recall his electrifying performance as Ricki Tarr, three or more decades earlier in the original BBC adaption of Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy. When a young and charismatic Hywel Bennett sparkled next to Alec Guinness in the scenes they shared on the screen.
"Yes, it'll be pork chops for tea tonight, the same as last night. Pork chops for tea."
He'd trained at RADA and by the late-Sixties, critics hailed him one the best young British actors. For his peers like David Hemmings and Terence Stamp, those words were like a poisoned chalice, but Bennett's career in both film and television flourished long after theirs. Hemmings, the golden boy in Antonioni's Blow Up, quickly began to resemble the portrait of Dorian Gray, while Stamp was tiring of being overlooked and overshadowed by his old flatmate, Michael Caine.
Bennett's ITV sitcom, Shelley, seem to run through my entire childhood, and its reoccurring comic plot about a freelance layabout, dodging proper work, must have gone on to inspire thousands of people beyond me. Played against the Thatcher-era, Hywel's Bennett's anti-hero, Shelley, began the same year she came power and incredibly, somehow managed to outlast her, until the series was finally axed in 1992.
Of his other credits and private-life that I read in his obituary some years later, it is his unforgettable role as the dangerous, yet charming outsider, Ricki Tarr that I will remember him most for. As well as the amusing anecdote, told to me by another actor, about how Hywel was often barred from The Ship and other Deal watering-holes, mainly, but not always, for the terrible foul smell of his farts.
'Gordon Bennett! We used to say to him, when he blew one off in the bar.'
Tim Synge is the writer of Seafront Pages, Original Tales from the darkest depths of the Kent Riviera, and beyond.. www.seafrontpages.blogspot.com
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