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Dear Maly Q. Please can you enlighten me as to the difference between an actor's agent, an actor's manager and an actor manager? I recently met a famous actor at a party and was soon out of my depth.
Name and address withheld A. An actor manager is now rather a thing of the past. Most actor managers tended to cast themselves in roles for which they were usually 20 or 30 years too old. One played Hamlet well into his sixties. An actor's agent handles all the actor's contracts and in the US a lot of actors have managers to look after their day-to-day living and talk to the agent if he is ignoring the actor: Agents usually have a long list of clients; managers tend to handle only a few people. In his deeply enjoyable memoir Shark Infested Waters, just published by Timewell Press, Michael Whitehall recalls being told by the actor Kenneth More that his agent always asked him to refer to him as his manager: 'Agent always sounds so common,' he told Kenneth, 'particularly on the Continent.'
Q. Some of my favourite men friends have beards. They always greet me with a kiss, and much as I am glad to see them, I cannot abide their bristles. I automatically recoil, thus giving a false impression that leaves them looking hurt. I can't tell them I dislike their beards — they are very proud of them because they compensate for their balding pates. What can I do, Mary, to prevent any hint of frisson?
S.J., Bondi Beach, Sydney, Australia A. Since you say you are fond of these bearded men you can greet them with a warmer gesture. By throwing your arms out as they advance, and wrapping them in a careful bear hug which offers only the back of your head for their kisses, you will duck the discomfort.
Q. We recently hosted a small dinner party to celebrate the birthdays of my wife and a close unmarried male friend of ours. We provided the red wine (a rather good 1982 claret) and the champagne, and our friend brought the white wine (a rather modest 2005 Chardonnay). He also brought and cooked the main course and we laid on everything else. The morning after the party (he had stayed the night with us) I discovered that he had put the third unopened bottle of wine into his suitcase. Should I have said something?
Name and address withheld A. No. It was small time of your friend to remove the wine but it would have been even smaller time for you to have queried it. With larger scale loss you might have taken a tip from a teenaged Spectator reader who, when saying goodbye to two fringe friends who were leaving her party early, heard the sound of clanking coming from a bag they were carrying. Within it were three unopened bottles of the wine that was being served at the party. 'We're taking these away because we could easily have drunk three bottles over the course of the party,' the couple explained. 'But we are too hungover to drink tonight.' Our reader was quick-witted in response. 'I insist you come again and drink them when you are feeling better,' she gushed warmly. With that she gently but firmly prised the bag from their hands.
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