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Holiday

From The Sunday Times 23 Jun 2002

June 16, 2002

My hols: Paul Nicholas

Dust-ups with Dad, sulks with son: holiday drama follows Paul Nicholas

Paul Nicholas, 56, became a household name as Vince in the Bafta award-winning TV series Just Good Friends. He has had four Top 10 hits and appeared in many West End musicals, including Cats, Doctor Dolittle and Barnum. His production of Grease is now touring the UK and he is starring in a new play, Snakes and Ladders, also on national tour. He lives in London with his wife, Linzi, and has six grown-up children

IF I know I've got a long run coming up, I'll take a big holiday, so there's always a certain amount of planning involved. Two years ago, before The Pirates of Penzance, I hired a villa in the south of France and I took my entire family along. I've got six children from different marriages and various liaisons. I was an only child and I always wanted a big family -- I just didn't organise it very well. Carl and Jason are from relationships when I was very young; Oscar and Natasha are from my first marriage; Alexander and Carmen from my marriage to Linzi.

So this was a very modern holiday. There were four of my kids, plus Natasha's boyfriend, Bobby, my wife, my mother and my grandchildren, Ruby, Amber and Joseph, who are all under six. I booked a very big villa, Villa Kumquat at Napoule on the Côte d'Azur, which was big enough to sleep all of us, and, God help me, I paid for everybody. Well, it was a once in a lifetime thing and it was worth it. We were there for three weeks in all. We had wonderful views across the bay, a big swimming pool and it was absolutely gorgeous. Oscar is a good cook and everyone mucked in, so we had those big family meals that go on and on. I loved it.

I think the secret is not to go away with friends. We paired up with other families when the children were younger and I didn't enjoy that at all. A bit too warts- and-all for me. You don't want to listen to other people's children and observe other people's strange eating habits when you're on holiday. Just give me my family, good food, good weather and I'm happy.

I wasn't always so mellow. Years ago I went on a similar family holiday to Portugal and I was so bored I ended up buying some land. Six years later, I built the smallest villa known to man and over the years we've added to it. It's called Casa Carmen and it's on the Algarve. It's built in a village near the sea; I love it there, but my wife is always at me to sell it because there is nothing to do. She likes shops and restaurants, she's not mad for the countryside. I'm the opposite. I like simplicity. Just vegetating by a pool suits me fine.

The only problem is that I've become terrified of flying. If I can avoid it altogether, I will. The last time we went to Portugal, everyone else got on the plane while I drove with Alex. I thought it would be a chance to really see the country and bond with my son, but after staying in hideous hotels up and down Spain, he never wants to bond with me again.

We went to Grasse one year with my father. That wasn't such a good idea. I remember throwing him out of the car in Monte Carlo because he was driving me insane. He was just one of those guys. His name was Oscar Beuselinck and he was a very big entertainment lawyer. He thrived on adversity and he always had to throw a bit of drama into the proceedings. It was hopeless taking him on holiday because he couldn't relax. I remember having a similar bust-up on the way to Seville, so it wasn't the first time he'd been thrown out of a car.

I went through a phase of travelling to America by Concorde to get the flying over quickly. It's fantastically expensive, but takes only three hours, as opposed to six hours of fear and bad food and boredom. I remember once sitting next to Martin Scorsese. Being an actor, I planned to strike up a conversation with him, but he looked so terrified on takeoff, I didn't bother.

I'm not mad on New York. I just don't like being surrounded by all those tall buildings. I find it very claustrophobic and slightly surreal -- you're so dwarfed by the city that you begin to feel insignificant. Then you get on the Big Apple tour bus and you go to Chinatown and Harlem, but, for me, none of it is attractive. It's slummy, like a decaying old town. The kids like it because they see so much American culture on television and they think it's glamorous. But I just don't feel comfortable there, I find myself longing to see the sky.

I love Los Angeles, though. I love the climate and the people -- particularly the women, who are very ballsy and funny. The problem with LA is that it's impossible to really be on holiday there because work is what it's all about; you're in a kind of vacuum where Europe and the rest of the world don't appear to exist. There's only so much sitting by the pool you can do before it becomes boring and you start thinking: "Surely I should be seeing someone ?"

Carnival time in Rio is my idea of a fantastic holiday. I took a house there with some friends a few years ago and it was mad and crazy, with all these different samba schools going down the street.

I've been on a few holidays on floating gin palaces, which were also a bit regimented for me. Robert Stigwood, one of the original producers of Saturday Night Fever, had a very big boat and I went on a couple of cruises with him and some mutual friends. We went round the Greek islands, mooring at seven for drinks and dinner. It was lovely and I did appreciate it, but you're still ever so slightly trapped. Because you're living in such a confined space, everyone is terribly polite to each other and it can all be a bit of an effort. At the end of the day, I'd much rather be sitting with the family by a pool, having long lunches and playing with the grandchildren, just doing what I want to do.

Paul Nicholas talked to Caroline Scott