- The Elegant Hustler by Celia Imrie (Sphere £25, 288pp)
For medical reasons, the actress Celia Imrie has been advised not to fly.
Taking trains across the United States, or from north Norway (after failing to see the Northern Lights) to her flat in Nice at Christmas time, is, in theory, much more romantic than going by plane. But after reading Imrie’s vivid accounts of overland and sea travel, I’m sticking to aeroplanes.
Trains running 11 hours late, wooden seats, missed connections, having to run for replacement buses in the middle of the night . . . Imrie does not sugar-coat the reality of long-haul travel. A vegetarian, she sees out of the window in the US vast stockyards ‘crammed with desolate cattle about to be turned into fast food’. Amtrak’s strapline, she feels, should be: ‘Ride Amtrak and see America’s backside.’
Yet so fervent is her love of adventure that she can’t stop, and she still sets herself daunting itineraries. Her lifelong travel companion is her friend, the actress and writer Fidelis Morgan, whom she first met at the Royal Shakespeare Company in 1975. For 50 years, they have travelled the world having fun like a happy, non-criminal Thelma and Louise.
Sometimes the glamour notches up – for example, on the Queen Mary II, doing one-woman reviews on stage, there’s a lovely photo of her in chorus-line formation with the captain and his uniformed crew. She’s self-deprecating about her so-called fame. People recognise her but are a bit foggy about how. ‘I know you, don’t I!’ said one passenger during the lifeboat drill on the QMII. ‘That’s it! You work at the till in the Seattle QFC supermarket.’
Imrie’s zest for life is infectious. She enjoys the public’s dodgy general knowledge about Shakespeare. One Cockney entrepreneur told her he’d seen a Shakespeare play; he couldn’t remember which one, but it had a man’s name. Then he remembered. ‘It was called “A Fellah”.’
