Just Williams

Simon gets a VIP welcome on holiday

NOT GLOATING, READERS, but I am sitting by an infinity pool in Sri Lanka, watching the sun rise on the Indian Ocean. It’s a blissful country full of people with A*s in smiling. There was a welcoming committee at the Kahanda Kanda hotel who had been told that I was a VIP – an important western actor – so there was disappointment when I turned up without my Stetson. Our driver tells us that if we ‘Britishers’ hadn’t left in 1948 they’d now be as prosperous as Singapore – a backhanded compliment. Good to be reminded of our knack of ‘exiting’ smoothly. When I tell him we’ve been to India, he dismisses the subcontinent, ‘Very crowded.’

I am proud of our legacy here: driving on the left and 13amp sockets. There are even a few Morris Minors enjoying their twilight years among the tuk-tuks (which are no better than lawnmowers with a roof ). Traffic lights have yet to catch on in Kandy, so driving is a friendly, if hairy, free-for-all. We are told not to leave our clothes on the terrace as the monkeys like to steal them to play with – a sackable offence where I come from. We can hear them already, playing tag on the roof above our room.

The guide suggests, ‘We do quickly a temple, yes?’ I am the Mo Farah of sightseeing, so it gets my vote. I think the Buddha is a first-rate god, his followers seem happy and peaceful; I’m quite sorry I’m spoken for god-wise. The Temple of The Tooth in Kandy is solemn and yet kitsch, with a mighty golden statue of the Buddha, smiling benignly – not unlike the late Mel Smith.

As we drive through villages, all human life is on view at the roadside, where people in bright colours squat industriously mending something or taking it apart. Their houses have a temporary look, roofed with corrugated iron held down by bricks; all the dogs look like first cousins. Schoolchildren in white, wave and smile at us. The Sinhalese language sounds like Welsh, only without its knickers in a twist. Hearing it spoken, I am reminded of the joy of Blowers on Test Match Special just after lunch, trying to get through the names of the Sri Lankan batting line-up. Everywhere there are make-do cricket pitches, where boys shamelessly bowl no-balls at each other. I spot a sleepy buffalo on the long leg boundary.

At The Elephant Experience I am saddened, as always, by the dignity of these noble creatures as they bow to man’s ill-gotten superiority. A mahout on auto-repeat prods one to lie down in the river and let me scrub her back. She has the world-weary look of an actor after a matinee – I whisper in her ear, ‘Welcome to show business, darling.’ Simon plays Justin Elliott in The Archers