‘I couldn’t afford loo roll’: Bruce Robinson on being skint, Zeffirelli’s advances and Withnail’s return

Bruce Robinson is ramming a huge log into the grate of his ancient fireplace in mud-clogged Herefordshire. He’s 77 and the film for which he is famous, Withnail and I, is about to open as a play. Isn’t it curious it hasn’t happened before, given that the comedy is about two thirsty, unemployed actors and is a sort of love-hate letter to the theatre?

‘I wasn’t fond of the idea of staging it,’ says Robinson, who wrote and directed the 1987 film based on his own boozy life as an actor in the 1960s. ‘I’d done it, you know; it’s decades ago and it’s over. There was a time when Withnail was stuck to me like a colostomy bag. I just wanted to move on. But a while back, a lovely geezer called George Ward wanted to buy the stage rights. He is a very generous man and coughed up a good chunk of dough. So I’ve written the script but I am not the director. I’ve deliberately stayed away from rehearsals. I’d only bring a ball and chain as I would be looking to do what I did before.’

The show is being directed at the Birmingham Rep by Sean Foley, a seasoned comedy director who recently turned the Ealing classic The Man in the White Suit into a stage show. Two young actors play the leads. Robert Sheehan is Withnail, Adonis Siddique is ‘I’ (based on Robinson himself) with stage veteran Malcolm Sinclair playing Monty, Withnail’s fruity, lecherous, Old Harrovian uncle. It’s not a musical but there’s a live band to replicate the film’s soundtrack, which was notable for its doses of Jimi Hendrix. The film is set in 1969 and yet it remains oddly timeless.