Jonathan Croall - Gielgoodies!: The Wit and Wisdom (& Gaffes) of John Gielgud

I think an actor who is too solemn about his work is really rather a bore.

J ohn Gielgud was not just a great actor: he was also a formidable wit, a brilliant raconteur and a very naughty boy.

He was, in more senses than one, a man of many parts. In researching my two biographies of Gielgud, I gradually discovered a fascinating mixture of elements in his absorbingly complex personality. There was first and foremost the sensitive, intelligent and dedicated man of the theatre, determined to perfect his art and serve his public. There was also the mercurial director with the butterfly mind, prone to test his actors patience to the limit with his continual, often bizarre changes of mind.

But I also encountered a deliciously flippant and wicked side to his nature. It was to be found in his perennial love of scandal and gossip, his schoolboy delight in sexual and scatological jokes, his lightning wit and bawdy humour, his scurrilous portraits of his friends and colleagues, and his delight in language in general and puns in particular. Such qualities are to be greatly treasured. But he was also cherished for those gaffes, bricks and clangers affectionately known as Gielgoofs or, more commonly, Gielgoodies, which are here celebrated in all their glory.

The bricks that he dropped were legion, and a direct consequence of his quicksilver mind and wildly impulsive nature. Somehow he lacked that useful skill of self-censorship that most of us have, that crucial ability to think before we speak: no sooner had a thought entered his brain than it came tumbling out of his mouth. It was a lifelong habit that prompted Tennessee Williams to label him that famous London Brick Factory, while Kenneth Tynan suggested he had dropped bricks enough to re-build the Globe theatre. Gielgud had his own image, confessing to Emlyn Williams: I seem to have dropped enough bricks to build a new Wall of China. Well, so long as I don't offend, I don't mind making a fool of myself.

Amazingly, he didn't generally offend. His friends, family and colleagues so loved or admired him, they not only tolerated his appalling tactlessness, but actually relished it. Paul Scofield told me: If you don't know him his mots can sound cruel and empty, whereas in his mouth they are innocent and inconsequential and very funny. Most of those who worked with him at one time or another were his victims, though not, I think, his targets, and there can be few who had not forgiven, if not forgotten, by the end of the day. His view is supported by Judi Dench, who suggested to me that his bricks came out of an incredible shyness and were unintentional. Alec Guinness, who remembered him being hopelessly tactless and unintentionally cruel, said he believed the gaffes were entirely forgivable, because they sprang spontaneously from the heart without a glimmer of malice.