Simon Callow interview: ‘As a young gay man, Tangier was astonishing’ – The Times

When I was nine, my parents and I went to live in Africa, which was overwhelming, frightening and unnerving for me. My parents, having broken up when I was 18 months old, decided they should try again, my mother being Catholic. The journey itself was an adventure, taking three days, stopping in Rome, before we drove from Nairobi to a tiny town called Fort Jameson, in what was then Northern Rhodesia (now Zambia). We stayed in little wayside hotels, taking in the Luangwa Valley, watching “logs” suddenly slither into the river and seeing lions padding around. It was a very intense experience because life until then was just exotic Streatham and Goring.

I was deeply uncomfortable because I was a small, fat child and the climate was oppressive. In central Africa the rain would come down in biblical quantities during the rainy season.

Unfortunately, the reconciliation only lasted six months, so Mum and I went to live in the capital, Lusaka. After two and a half years there, I was sent to school in Grahamstown in South Africa. It was a three-day train journey, entirely unsupervised by adults, although there were other children heading my way. I remember going across the Victoria Falls on a rather rickety bridge and us children hurling ourselves against the side of the train to try and knock it over. Madness!

I have quite international blood. My maternal grandmother was German, and my maternal grandfather was Danish, and on my dad’s side his mum was French (with an Inspector Clouseau accent) and my great grandmother was Swiss. The idea of living and travelling abroad was always very present, but we were always very hard up, so when we lived in England, we only had one holiday — to Guernsey.

The first time I travelled independently was in 1967, when I was 18. I went with my two best friends to Tangier in Morocco. It was legendary as a place for gay men to escape to. It was extraordinarily tolerant and people who wore drag felt unthreatened. As a young gay man, it was astonishing. We stayed in Morocco for three weeks until we ran out of cash, got dysentery, and had to borrow money from the British embassy to get back to the UK.

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One of the most divine things I’ve ever eaten abroad was in Calais. I was on the way to Bologna with some work friends and the car had broken down, so we went to this humble hut on the beach and ordered tournedos Rossini. I didn’t know what it was, but I loved Rossini’s music, so I gave it a go. It’s like pâté on toast with a chunk of steak covered in a black truffle madeira sauce. I’d never had anything like it, and it’s proved to be the undoing for the rest of my culinary life, trying to repeat the pleasure I got from that dish. But back on home turf, the best restaurant in the whole country, in my opinion, is the Michelin-starred Martin Wishart’s in Edinburgh, down on the Leith shore. They do sublime tournedos.

I’ve been lucky to travel the world for my acting, directing, and writing, such as when I directed an opera in Lucerne. When my first Orson Welles biography came out nearly 30 years ago, I criss-crossed America from Portland to Atlanta.

Oddly, I’ve often travelled at the invitation of embassies, such as Moscow. The first time I went, Putin had just become president, and everyone thought he was a liberal. Even though Moscow was still a bit dark and murky, it had wonderful bars, restaurants, and theatres. I’ve been back many times, the last three years ago. The transformation was noticeable; the city was much more flashy, having succumbed to western consumerism and oligarchs.

Simon Callow, 73, is an actor and writer best known for Four Weddings and a Funeral, A Room with a View and The Witcher. He will be giving a reading at the Royal Academy of Arts Friends Christmas carol concert on December 13; join the Royal Academy as a Friend for priority access to exhibitions (royalacademy.org.uk). He lives in Haringey with his husband, Sebastian

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