For me, though, another Haig sex scene lodges in the mind. In 1994 he starred in Dead Funny, Terry Johnson’s meditation on love and death, opposite Zoe Wanamaker. The play included a memorable moment with Wanamaker in a basque and Haig in nothing at all. At the time I interviewed Johnson and asked him a troubling question. How come David Haig didn’t get an erection? Johnson told me to ask Haig himself. Fourteen years later I had my chance.
“I think it’s impossible to get an erection on stage – though you’ll now get e-mails from all the actors who have got erections on stage – but as far as I’m concerned you just feel cold sexually. Don’t misunderstand me Zoe, I never felt cold to you, but for me there was never any danger of that happening.” In the nicest possible sense it became workmanlike. “I was doing it every night in the same old faithful position. There was not even any variety.”
There is certainly variety in Haig’s output. He could stake a convincing claim to being England’s hardest working stage actor, in the past five years having juggled different but equally scintillating permutations of comic, tweedy, straight and manic in The Sea, The Country Wife, Donkey’s Years, Journey’s End, Mary Poppins andHitchcock Blonde. And somehow he also finds time for television. He is in a Jacqueline Wilson drama, Dustbin Kid, and a remake of The 39 Steps this Christmas. He also wrote and starred in the First World War drama, My Boy Jack, on stage and on television. For Haig it is not a question of how does he do it, but why: “Five kids, that’s why.”
This strong work ethic was not always there. Hard to imagine now, but Haig was your archetypal drop-out. He was expelled from Rugby School for minor misdemeanours and in 1973, aged 18, all hippy hair and wispy moustache, ended up on a kibbutz. “I met a Danish girl and lived in Denmark for two years, making fibreglass toilets, shovelling grain into sacks. I was a hospital porter and did a drainage course. On one occasion we had a lecture from a man from K Drains in Canterbury who said, ‘You are really studying in the wrong country, come and work for me’, not realising my motives.”
Haig returned to the UK, not to work for K Drains but to study at Lamda and his career slowly but surely took off. He singles out his performance in Tom and Viv in 1985 as the turning point. He certainly seems to be going through a golden period now, but then he’s been going through a golden period for more than 20 years. Like all actors, he oozes insecurity. “It’s certainly been good but I’m still broke. Every time I think I’m established I think my comeuppance is round the corner.” Looking on the bright side, he’d be happy to be less busy. “I’m hoping I might work less in 2009.” Some hope.
