A Pocketful of Happiness

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Even as I admired Grant for his obvious devotion to, and care for, his wife at the end, I was uneasy: suspicious, you might say. This honest and frequently hilarious memoir is written in honor of that challenge—Richard has faithfully kept a diary since childhood, and in these entries he shares raw detail of everything he has experienced: both the pain of losing his beloved wife, and the excitement of their life together, from the role that transformed his life overnight in Withnail and I to his thrilling Oscar Award nomination thirty years later for Can You Ever Forgive Me?

He nods solemnly: “Yes, in terms of sex, Joan and I were both astonished by the number of married people we know who said that for the last 10 years they slept in separate beds or rooms. He smiles kindly at my armchair analysis: “It’s always a little odd to hear oneself defined by someone else, but that makes perfect sense. The last chapter of the book is a collection of testimonies from her famous students, describing her as “one of the great unsung heroines of the British entertainment business” (Richard Eyre) and “just the best, hands down” (Liv Tyler).

I was covering the Oscars that year and, after Grant lost the best supporting actor award to Mahershala Ali for Green Book, I spotted him, said I was from the Guardian and asked for a quote. This process was strengthened in July 2021 by a new Democratic Memory bill aimed at honouring the victims).

It is great to hear that they were so well-supported by the NHS and by their friends so that Joan could die at home. As readers of With Nails know, Grant is gloriously acidic about snubs within the celebrity world, and droplets of that acid speckle the pages of Pocketful. Theirs was a marriage whose love defied mortality, and it was she who urged Richard to "Find a Pocketful of Happiness in Each Day" after she was gone.It seemed to me to not so much a tribute to his wife but rather a resume of his own achievements and his connection to so many famous people, constant name dropping.

This pantomime lasted all of ten minutes, before I gingerly knocked on her door and said, “I’m really sorry, but it’s arctic in there. After dinner, we went into the living room, recorded the script, continued talking, and when I checked my watch it was gone midnight, so no chance of getting to the station in time. Whilst you feel for Grant as a human, the way in which the book darts between trivial celebrirty anecdote and personal moments is emotionally draining and confusing.Probably a very good thing that I didn’t know any of this when we first got together, otherwise she might have run for the Highlands at the prospect of having to accommodate three people in this relationship. I doubt Richard will ever read these reviews but if I met him, I'd thank him for his brutal honesty and reflections at what much be the most difficult time for him and his family. There are wonderful insights into life as an actor, hilarious behind the scenes tales and an insane amount of namedropping. The choices that I made in the first nine episodes, did they make sense, when you find out what the final thing is?