The film part that made him friends with Count Dracula
DURING his days as a reporter on the Radio 4 Today show, Michael Gove was not averse to a bit of extracurricular activity. His first foray, bizarrely, involved an appearance for the big screen.
In 1994, two friends from his days at Oxford, Justin Hardy (whose father Robin directed cult horror film The Wicker Man) and Yoshi Nishio, began shooting a film at Hawtreys Preparatory School in Wiltshire.
A Feast At Midnight was a gentle tale of schoolboys rebelling against a healthy food regime by forming a late-night eating society. Gove played the chaplain.
‘Michael was always quite theatrical — arguably, he still is — so it was a natural fit. We wrote the part specifically for him,’ Nishio recalled in 2011.
So Gove lined up alongside acting greats such as Dracula star Christopher Lee and Edward Fox. Also in the cast was another Oxford friend of Gove, Samuel West, and Lisa Faulkner, later of Holby City and Celebrity MasterChef.
Alas for Gove, his performance boiled down to three blink-and-you’ll-miss-it moments. One involved making a highpitched noise to express shock that Lee’s character, Victor, is referred to by his nickname of Raptor; another was Gove looking concerned after Lee is hit in the testicles by a cricket ball; and finally he was filmed conducting the school choir.
His single line in the film is ‘Amen’. Despite Gove’s small role, Justin Hardy, the director, would later heap praise on his acting abilities: ‘The man is, I would
say, comedy gold!’ For Gove, the film did at least mark the beginning of an unlikely friendship. Writing in June 2015, he recalled: ‘The real joy of the whole enterprise for me was getting to know Christopher [Lee].
‘Over cast and crew lunches, during breaks in filming, over drinks in the evening, I and others listened spellbound to his stories. The secrets of Roger Moore’s safari suit, the dry wit of Peter Cushing, the casting-couch antics of Hollywood moguls, and the seduction tips offered by JFK — his anecdotes were brilliant and compelling, and always delivered with a special, generous wit.’
WHEN Gove became Education Secretary, the actor invited him for tea in his Cadogan Square flat.
‘I hadn’t imagined he would remember me, or my name, from among the scores of people who had populated the set of Feast. But I remembered just how scintillating his conversation was, so I had no hesitation in accepting,’ recalls Gove.
In Sir Christopher’s drawing room, the two former castmates discussed ‘history and politics, art and music, high and low culture, friendships and faith’.
Aside from Lee’s anecdotes, A Feast At Midnight left Gove with little to suggest that a career on the silver screen was beckoning. He therefore returned to his preoccupation with politics.