Playing Churchill

Where would gentleman actors be without Churchill? No prime minister has given as much work to the profession as Winston (though Blair comes a close second), patron saint of jowly thespians of a certain age. Churchill now features in a new stage play called Three Days in May, about the British war cabinet in May 1940. The great man is played by Warren Clarke, whose fleshy fizzog is well known to fans of the 12 series of the BBC’s Dalziel and Pascoe — he plays Detective Superintendent Dalziel. A splendidly robust actor, he has roughly the same baby-fed-on-whisky looks as Churchill. In this he doesn’t wear rompers, instead you get the Churchill outdoors look — spotty bowtie, homburg and cigar.

‘He was balder than I am,’ Clarke says over coffee and a shared bag of Galaxy Minstrels after a matinee performance in Milton Keynes. ‘I am about the same age he was in 1940 when the play is set — in my mid-sixties. His face was like a football. Mine’s big but it’s not so round. His hair was thinner. I have had mine cut, but I am buggered if I am going bald for my country.’

He’s got the gravel in the voice, the vocal slur which the ‘Narzees’, as Churchill called them, put down to the drink. Clarke is unusually experienced as Winston. As a young actor he played him in the 1974 mini-series Jennie: Lady Randolph Churchill, starring Lee Remick. ‘I had a great time doing that. I liked the man. Churchill didn’t hold any terrors for me. Then when I agreed to do this, I looked at the footage again and I thought “Shit, I’m going to have work harder than I thought.” But it’s the voice that grabs the audience. If you don’t attempt it and get it right, they’ll say “Where the hell’s Winston?” I am a smoker, which helps.’