Indiscretions from two veteran producers

Stars, playwrights and even set designers are constantly being lionised in the papers. But why not producers? They, after all, are the ones who choose the plays, the stars, and then make it all happen. Duncan Weldon and Paul Elliott are two veteran cigar chompers who’ve been in the business for 45 years. They’ve made and lost a packet, over and over again. They never seem to learn. Like all producers, they love their wives almost as much as they love a hit.

Over lunch in the West End, I discussed the knack of being and staying a producer. Great exponents such as Cameron Mackintosh and Bill Kenwright have always had loyal teams. But Elliott and Weldon are in a way the true odd couple. They shared an office on the Aldwych (Ivor Novello’s old suite of rooms) for 37 years. Despite squabbles and fall-outs, they are a double act whose mood is currently rather good. They are producing David Suchet, who is going round the world in a very effective Vatican thriller, The Last Confession. Thanks to Suchet’s international stardom through his heavily exported TV Poirot, the show’s a gold mine. They have Rupert Everett coming up in Amadeus — another potential big banker.

Elliott is affable, rumbustious and totally a creature of the business called show. Weldon is quieter, more watchful, and has heart trouble. Weldon admits to liking actors; Elliott’s not so keen. ‘That’s because you got poor billing when you were one,’ snipes Weldon over his salmon. Elliott’s first stage performance was in 1958 in his home town of Bournemouth, in Agatha Christie’s Murder at the Vicarage. He also appeared in 39 episodes of Dixon of Dock Green: ‘And they’ve all been wiped so no one can blackmail me.’