Martin Shaw - The Biography. Stafford Hildred
around saying, “Go on then, do it.” He started to back away and said, “No.” That changed my attitude a bit. I was never bullied again. And I knew then that you don’t have to be timid.’
Martin was always very keen to get behind the wheel of a car and learn to drive. ‘My dad used to let me drive whenever we were off public roads so I knew the basics from about the age of 12 onwards,’ he said. ‘When I had lessons to take my test, years later, I found I only needed six and passed first time, but I was very nervous. At one point the examiner asked me what the speed limit was. I said, “30” and he said, “Yes, that means you can actually reach that speed.” I had been driving at about 18 mph.’
Martin’s mental strength is one of his most remarkable facets and perhaps the root of that extraordinary stillness and self-confidence goes back to his formative years. ‘I had unusual parents in that they were spiritually agnostic,’ he says. ‘They were also extremely open-minded. If a Jehovah’s Witness came to the door he would not be turned away. The man’s opinions might not get across but he would always be invited to state his case. I grew up in awe of my father’s quest for truth. We were always having intense discussions of all faiths; he would never accept any kind of dogma. The house was always filled with brilliant, but sometimes heated discussions. Ministers and vicars loved him but there was a time when they would shake their heads and, “Oh, but Frank, you really must conform to the scriptures you know.” … My father followed no religion at all but he believed in God. He was a Christian in the broadest sense, that he always espoused the Christian ideals of love and kindness. Where he would sometimes become unpopular is that he would say a flower had as much soul as you or I.’ But the heated discussions were simply an integral part of family life to Shaw and nothing was out of bounds.
Sometimes the family even took part in a kind of séance. Martin explained: ‘We would put our fingers on the glass and it would go shooting round the table. The greatest thing is doing it with your own family because you know no one is cheating. You put letters of the alphabet round the table and the touch on the glass is so light.’
He found these experiences deeply life-enhancing and he tried to always keep an open mind, particularly when others are jumping to more obvious conclusions. ‘What I have learned,’ he said, ‘is that mind is not limited to the head or to people who are alive. At the moment it is not possible to see or photograph a thought. A hundred years ago we had not learned how to use electricity which has always been there.’
One experience of moving the glass around the letters left a deep impression on him. ‘My grandfather was a very dry person,’ he recalled. ‘He would not say much for a whole afternoon and then only a few words. A few years after his death we had a whole conversation lasting over an hour – so much his character, even the energy in which he talked. At one point he said, “Suck the broth.” My father, Jem and myself thought, “What’s this?” But my mother said it was something he said if you fell over or something. Just an expression, “Oh, never mind, suck the broth.”’
Not that all conversations were mystical, highbrow or pretentious in the Shaw household by any means. Martin also recalls that for long periods he nursed rather more mundane fantasies about the future involving him working as a vet and later as a train driver. He also developed an early interest in music. Elvis Presley was one of his early heroes. At one point he was quite fanatical in his enthusiasm at and was determined to copy the highly distinctive Presley hairstyle. ‘I used to envy Elvis because he could grease his hair back,’ says Martin. ‘But I’ve got a double crown and my hair grows in opposite directions. I used to dip my comb in Brylcreem and run it through my hair trying to make it look like Elvis’s and it never seemed to look right. My mother even permed it for me when I was 14 and desperate.’
There is an intense and stubborn side to his character that can upset people. ‘I suppose it started at school,’ he said. ‘I refused to conform and believe that exams were an important part of evaluating someone’s intelligence. It may sound big-headed but I thought I was too bright to pass exams. I was even beaten because I wouldn’t learn everything parrot fashion.’
In many lessons Martin floundered and he had no real clue what sort of a career he might choose. ‘I don’t think acting was ever thought about,’ he said. ‘The only thing I was any good at was English Language and I certainly enjoyed poetry. Everything else I was equally bad at and when the careers officer came along the only thing they could come up with was librarian and I thought, “Oh God!” The prospect of living your life in hushed tones clearly did not appeal.
The most significant moment of Shaw’s schooldays was the first time his class were asked to read Shakespeare. ‘For the very first time I got to feel like other people felt in maths classes,’ he smiled many years later. Even then he admitted that the mention of ‘double maths’ was enough to send a shiver down his spine. ‘In maths it seemed as if everyone knew what was going on while I hadn’t got a clue. Suddenly the situation was reversed. Nobody knew what the play was about except me. And I couldn’t understand why nobody understood it; it was just so clear to me. The first thing we read out loud was Julius Caesar and I found that in playing Brutus and Cassius – the teacher would change the parts around – I really got into it and could understand what was going on. The next play we read was Macbeth and it was on the GCE syllabus that year and they did it as a school play, and I played Macduff and I realised acting was something I could do.’
An inspirational drama teacher called Tom Knowles suggested an alternative to the proposed career as a librarian by getting Martin into the school drama club. His first reaction was not promising. ‘“No! That’s cissy,” I thought,’ says Martin. But the dedicated Mr Knowles was a fierce defender of drama and would always leap to the attack if anyone wrote off his subject as a ‘pansy’ option (in the phrase of the day). ‘But then it occurred to me that here was a chance to be good at something, instead of being the person who was always spoken of in terms of “Guess who came bottom again?”’
Drama was the only thing that fired him at school. ‘Tom Knowles was an incredible teacher who would get us into the school hall, play some Bach and tell us to dance. We would say, “Don’t be so stupid.” He’d clip someone round the ear and we would start to dance. It was amazing, all these rough, football-playing Birmingham kids flitting round in a free-expression ballet. But it gave me my first interest in acting.’
He was delighted that at last he had found something he was good at. In 1961, aged 16, as he left school he was offered a scholarship to drama school but his parents felt that he was too young. Instead he went to work in the sales office of a company that manufactured a metal-finishing machine called the Lachromatic Vibrator. Martin was not impressed by the company’s standard sales letter and, with the sublime confidence of youth, he wrote a new one of his own! It could of course have landed him the sack but in fact his boss was quick to note the improvement and immediately promoted him to a more senior position in the Direct Sales department, complete with his own secretary, no less. But by then he was beginning to realise that acting was more than just something he was good at; it was becoming something he simply had to do. And his sales success had brought out a side of him that he did not like. ‘I was arrogant,’ he admits. ‘I pushed people about so much I couldn’t keep a secretary for more than a few weeks.’ Martin’s growing self-awareness told him that he was approaching a major turning point in his life.
But he did not put quite all of his energies into the day job. The influential Tom Knowles had by then formed a semi-professional drama group called The Pied Piper Players and Martin was swiftly recruited. The Pied Pipers were a commedia dell’arte group who got together twice a week to decide what show to put on, rehearse and practise on their instruments for the musical side of the show. Then they went out and put on a show every Sunday. They would use all sorts of venues from the streets to any one of the many Birmingham bomb sites. He explained: ‘Sometimes we would hire the school hall and decide on a scenario, either using traditional stories like The Sleeping Beauty or making up a play of our own. We never learned our words or anything, and the spectators sometimes determined which way the action would go. They would get so carried away with it that we would occasionally have to restrain them. “Right kids,” we said once, “we need six hefty policemen to