Phantom visit

Michael Crawford

Giles Hardie, The Sydney Morning Herald, reports

He's best known as Frank Spencer, the Phantom of the Opera and, to a certain breed of kooky film lovers, Condorman, but however you think of him, Michael Crawford is in town promoting his new album, The Story of My Life, and is happiest to be ''just Mike'' while he's here.

"In America they have no idea who I am because they've just seen me with the mask on", Mike says covering half his face with his hand. "So the name they know, and I can get a good table in a restaurant, but they have no idea if I've turned up or not."

The chance to visit his daughter and grandkids who live in Sydney was enough lure to bring Mike to town, though the proud grandfather who did all his own stunts as Frank Spencer in Some Mothers Do 'Ave Em once merrily fell down a set of stairs in a cupboard and roller-skated under a semi-trailer, struggles when he then tries to be a tough disciplinarian with grandkids who have seen those shows. They are even rougher on him though, he feels they are his toughest critics. One grandchild on seeing Michael perform recently summed up his performance as “Poppa was very loud”.

Crawford will be making a public appearance in Sydney - at the Queen Victoria Building's ABC Shop on Thursday - however he won't be bringing his Phantom to our Opera House, despite the fact he's never sung there. "Well, I have,'' he says, correcting himself, ''but I was in the roof cavity when I did it. As I was taken on a tour once by a friend who was the structural engineer and he took me up right on the top of the roof, so I have sung on the shell outside."

So why he won’t shift from singing on the Opera House to singing in it? “My voice is in a different place now,” he explains. “I’d have to be rehearsing about five hours a day for three or four months to say yes I could do it. You want them to leave that venue going ‘Oh my gosh!’ like I used to leave venues when I saw people like Danny Kaye and there weren’t words. That’s special. You’ve got to be worthy of that praise.”

Still, Crawford is used to performances from atop national icons. As Condorman a yellow-tights (two pairs he reveals, so his legs looked better) clad Mike leapt from the top of the Eiffel Tower in Paris in the 1981 film of the same name.

He admits that is one stunt however that he had some help with. “The double jumped off the Eiffel Tower,” he recalls. “Then I was dragged along the river Seine by the boat ahead of me, and it nearly drowned me. Being dragged underwater with thirty foot wings on, you could do nothing, because the wings were taking me down.

"I was really like a yellow legged submarine going to the bottom of the Seine, rapidly. So that was one occasion when I was so upset when I came up, because they didn’t stop! I must have upset the French. Though that doesn’t take a lot.”

Heading back to London for the Olympics seems a good opportunity for another lofty performance. We asked Mike if he’d been approached by the London Olympics organisers. “Not as yet, no,” he said, before with a glimmer of Frank Spencer pondering: “What event?”