The Elephant to Hollywood - Michael Caine [118]
Christmas Eve dinner for us is always roast goose and the evening always finishes watching a midnight mass on TV. On Christmas morning I am up early to cook the turkey – a Kelly Bronze, so yes, I finally have my Norfolk turkey! It takes over four hours and the recipe I use and which has never failed is Delia Smith’s. I go for a traditional sage and onion stuffing and gravy, which I prepare in advance, and we always have chipolata sausages and roast potatoes. Shakira, who is a vegetarian, looks at this meat feast with great amusement and is in charge of all the vegetables: traditional Brussels sprouts, sweet potatoes, aubergines and stir-fried vegetables as well as her own vegetarian stuffed roast.
We used to start the meal with eggnog, until I saw my cholesterol figures, and now we drink champagne until the lunch is ready. After lunch we pull crackers and wear funny hats and listen to the Queen’s speech and then we go and open the presents. The whole place is ablaze with light and colour and family and food and friends and the best wine I can lay my hands on. Finally, I have made up for those lost Christmases past . . .
When we have eaten and drunk and laughed and unwrapped until we can manage no more, we go and watch the ‘screener’ that we reckon will be the potential Oscar winner for Best Picture, which we always save for this moment. Dinner on Christmas Night is what is known as ‘pick and save’ in our house: you pick anything out of the fridge that has been saved. I always like to pick and save a tin of caviar . . . Eventually we retire exhausted, full and happy, knowing that the Boxing Day lunch is still to come. To me Christmas symbolises the value of the family and close friends who have always been the mainstay of my life – and on Christmas Day I sometimes think I am the happiest man on earth. Last year, drinking a great claret with trusted friends and family and with my new grandchildren safely asleep upstairs, I thought – life doesn’t get any better than this. I love Christmas!
18
The Mayfair Orphans
One of the joys of being based back in England is being close to my friends. They mean a lot to me. And while I’ve lost some good ones along the way – it’s inevitable as you get older – it’s made me value the rest of them even more. I am often asked if I have any friends from my early days back in the Elephant and the answer is no. The unspoken but immediate assumption is that I dumped all my old friends when I became a movie star, but in fact the exact opposite is true. My old friends all dumped me when I was an out-of-work actor who couldn’t afford a round of drinks in the pub.
The one exception to this was Paul Challen, my trusty companion in the London party years and the guy who witnessed my first sight of Shakira, when we stayed in for that life-changing quiet night. I met him when we were both fifteen and I went to the orphanage where he lived (his entire family had been killed in the Blitz) with my drama group from Clubland. It was a terrible, depressing place and I couldn’t wait to get outside – where I found Paul waiting for me. He introduced himself and asked if I knew how to get into acting. I didn’t, of course, but it was the first time I’d had a conversation with anyone about wanting to do it myself and it was the beginning of a friendship that would last forty years,