A very special agent, with a licence to drop names of leading luvvies

Critic's Choice Shark Infested Waters Tales of an Actor's Agent - Peter McKay

As Wedding guests were being presented to actor's agent Michael Whitehall and his bride, he recalls how James Fox 'beckoned me over to the side of the marquee', wanting to know if he'd got the part in a Spanish film.

Then Anton Rogers told him 'Great wedding', mentioning that he wouldn't bother him on honeymoon 'unless it is something urgent . . . to be honest I need a job'. As the bride and groom were changing, best man Nigel Havers, who'd arrived late - blaming his wife's map reading - knocked on the door to say : 'Give me a call next week . . . you never know, we might have heard back from ITV.'

Whitehall's mother, Nora, a well-built woman and devout Roman Catholic who wore full-length nightgowns - she told him pregnancy happened naturally 'when your father and I are asleep' - said: 'Mucking about with actors won't get you anywhere, dear. Get yourself a proper job.'

Nora wanted him to be a lawyer, but he found that too boring. His job teaching at a prep school almost came to grief when he had to drive a shuddering, backfiring, three-wheeler van down a steep hill in Surrey to pick up boys' luggage at the railway station after being too timid to say he didn't have a driving licence. (Asked by a policeman 'Are you in full control of this vehicle Sir?', he replied: 'Absolutely!')

Ostensibly about actors and acting - with lots of good stories - Whitehall's name dropping book, adorned by his son Jack's drawings, is stingingly sharp on the postwar English social classes. Mother Nora constantly threatens to knock the family off the middle-class ramparts to which they cling. She was not above using the term 'toilet' and would refer to classy behaviour, habits and possessions as 'very a la carte'.

Father Jack Whitehall, a travelling salesman, had the use of his firm's van, but Nora made him park it several streets away for appearances' sake. His father Ernest, one of eight children, lost all his siblings, as well as his mother and father, by the age of seven and was adopted by rich Birmingham industrialist Charles Worsley - the 'W' engraved on the fine silver exhibited on special occasions by the Whitehalls.

Ernest was left a fortune and it was his money which paid for Michael Whitehall and his elder brother, Barry to attend the respected Roman Catholic public school Ampleforth, where Michael once left a 'Dirty Fido' hoax dog turd near the desk of his French master, Basil Hume, later Cardinal Archbishop of Westminster. (Hume returned it, saying 'Yours, I think Whitehall', explaining that 'A heavenly shaft of light' identified him as the culprit.)

Grandpa Ernest had an ear trumpet - 'Barry and I had great fun mouthing sentences to each other across the room, to his increasing annoyance', says Whitehall - and loved to knit, sitting in a deep leather armchair with a cigarette always on the go. Elevated by Ernest's wealth, but anchored always by mother Nora's aspirational cautions, Whitehall teamed up with dandified agent Julian Belfrage to form Leading Artists. Together they represented, among others, Kenneth More, Tom Courtenay, Donald Sinden, Maria Aitken, Edward Fox, David Hemmings, John Le Mesurier, Colin Blakely, Ian Holm, Daniel Massey, Judi Dench and Virginia McKenna.

He isn't libellously indiscreet about any of them.

After spending the night at the country home of actor Harry Andrews, who often played tough army types, he describes how his host managed to fall into bed with him while delivering breakfast, cooing 'Good morning, manager. A little surprise for you'.

Indiscreet enough to be a fun read - it would be going too far to call it a Dirt Fido on the doorsteps of former clients - Whitehall's memoir is shrewd almost to the point of being cynical.

He's the shark infesting the waters and I hope he writes more.