Michael Billington

I first met Harold Pinter in the early 1970s, when I sat on a sunlit lawn at Shepperton studios north of London interviewing him about Peter Hall’s film of The Homecoming. That went well enough. As I wince to recall, I wrote as a critic that Pinter “has betrayed his immense talent by serving up this kind of high-class soap opera”. A few months later the play won the top prize at the Society of London theatre awards. In his acceptance speech, Pinter unveiled his dentist’s smile and said: “I must be the most surprised person in the room, with the possible exception of ... [long pause] ... Michael Billington.” A thousand heads turned towards me as I slumped into my seat.

It took a while to get over that. I remember a ludicrous occasion when Pinter and I found ourselves standing in parallel entry queues one summer at JFK airport. As the lines gradually diminished, we ignored each other and maintained an immaculate, frosty silence.

The thaw only set in when I interviewed him for a book I was writing on Peggy Ashcroft. He was not only helpful, he gave me a copy of his play, One for the Road, inscribing it: “You didn’t like it much but what the hell?”

His friend Michael Colgan, who runs the Dublin Gate Theatre, tells a great story of recently going out for drinks with Pinter in a posh Dublin hotel. As they placed their drinks order with an over-enthusiastic waitress, she cooed at them, “No problem, no problem.” Pinter looked at her levelly and announced: “I wasn’t anticipating one.” A reminder that you don’t waste words in Pinter’s presence.

Two months ago when

I directed Pinter’s and staged version of his Nobel lecture with drama students Pinter had promised to show up. He duly turned up. Not only that. As the cast gestured towards him at curtain-call, he struggled to his feet with great difficulty and made an impromptu speech expressing his admiration for their performance. Only later, when we had supper, did I realise just how desperately ill he was and what it had cost him, physically, to attend the performance. It was the last time I saw him and it reinforced something I had long known: that Pinter wasn’t simply the finest dramatist of his generation, he was a man with a great heart.