Peter Viney's Blog

Chris Owen

1946-2017

We attended Chris’s funeral yesterday, with an informative, entertaining and warm eulogy from David Brown.

I’ve been holding back on writing a tribute here, but it’s good to have something in print that people can look back at later. Chris had so many friends all over the world.

January 1977″ Classic mime, The Baker

We met him in 1975 at Anglo-Continental. He turned up after our weekly Drama Evening sketch show for foreign students, and lobbied for a part. He persuaded us on mime. We’d had a very popular mime segment a couple of years earlier when noted Turkish theatre director Taner Barlas was a student, and had offered to do mime in the shows. Chris knew those same classic mimes … the surgeon, the fisherman and so on, and that was his initial contribution.

1975: Chris Owen (Will Scarlet), Karen Viney (Robin Hood), Guy Wellman (Friar Tuck)

By the annual Anglo-Continental Christmas pantomime for host families, our most elaborate that far, Chris was a regular part of the team, and played Will Scarlet in Robin Hood. David Brown and Dave Cox, who were at the funeral, were in that same pantomime, 43 years ago.

We soon found out that Chris was a proper actor … he’d been to Weber-Douglas Drama School, and had been on Southern Television’s training programme for announcers. In between he’d worked in Sweden and Finland, and been an air steward for BOAC, which he described as theatre at 30,000 feet. Chris always said his problem was inability at remembering lines (and we can vouch for that!) but the thing is, his ability to improvise was so good that he always came up with better ones than the ones he’d forgotten.

1976: Student classroom sketch: Chris as Valerie Giscard De Gaulle from France, Karen Viney as Maria Consuela from Mexico, Pat O’Shea as Pedro Garcia, a Japanese from Venezuela (don’t ask!)

By 1976 he was a key member of the team, along with me, Karen, Guy Wellman and Alan Tankard. When we did our “Welcome to England” student sketches, Chris became the French student in striped shirt and beret, Valerie Giscard De Gaulle. In the 1977 pantomime, Frankenstein, he was the evil Burgomaster. After Alan left, he took over in our regular sketches as Ygor in Frankenstein and Count Dracula in Dracula.

1976: Frankenstein: Pat O’Shea as the Innkeeper, Chris Owen as the Burgomaster

In the 1978-1980 period, after Karen had left the shows to have our first child, Chris and I developed a double act that we did on student intake Mondays. Once a month, we entertained the new arrivals for 45 minutes with a two-man show while their test results and class allocation was prepared. It required the ability to improvise comedy at elementary / low intermediate level for 200 or more people. We could both do it. We never knew quite where we’d end up, though we had props and costumes on a table, and we worked to punch lines. We did a two man show on the last morning before Christmas too in the Anglo-Continental Restaurant.

A recent find: This must be the “last day before Christmas” double act. Probably December 1979. Peter & Chris.

That’s a place Chris loved. He spent more coffee breaks out there with his students than in the staff restaurant … well, the coffee was proper espresso out there. It was a love of a place we shared … Karen and first I met in the restaurant (which converted into our theatre for shows) for an acted play reading … Playboy of The Western World. In the 1975-78 period we usually saw Chris for breakfast. The restaurant opened at 8.30 and we always had coffee and an almond Danish before starting work at 8.50.

I have a long held theory about acting and Teaching English as a Foreign Language. Some of the very best teachers I ever worked with had either formal acting qualifications or outstanding acting ability… Robert O’Neill, Colin Granger, Guy Wellman, Nick Keeping, Alan McInnes, Alan Tankard, Karen Viney, Chris Owen, Terry & Anna Phillips in Bournemouth. John Curtin, another co-author, had worked as a professional puppeteer. Compare the English Teaching Theatre in London with Ken Wilson, Doug Case, Judy Garton-Sprenger. Then I saw excellent theatre groups in Thessaloniki, and in Japan. I had a long discussion once with Robert O’Neill (at Warsaw airport) on the qualification that would impress us most for a new trainee teacher … knowledge of linguistic theory, ability in multiple languages, or acting ability. I chose the last first. Robert, having all three abilities, chose all of them. Chris was a great actor … and a great communicator. He genuinely liked people.

October 1976: Chris, Peter Viney, Guy Wellman. A sketch about a British soldier, a Russian and an American. We often tried sketches once and never did them again. I suspect this was one of them.

We had three departments at Anglo-Continental (Elementary, Intermediate, Advanced) as well as specialist satellite schools. I think Chris had started at Anglo-International School (Business English). Everyone wanted Chris in their department. It wasn’t just teaching either: it was that while Chris was in your staff room, you had a happy ship. His good humour and sunny personality rubbed off on all the teachers. If someone came in grumpy after a lesson with a difficult class, Chris would soon have them laughing.  He was a catalyst.

I so wish I had the black & white video tapes we did in 1977 and 1978. We put several situations from what became Streamline English on video tape, and we could use video instead of audio for some key lessons. I Love You, Fiona was the best, played by Chris and Karen … way better than the professional audio. We’d then film pairs of students acting it out. I treasured one of a Japanese businessman in his 40s and an 18 year old Mexican girl. They did it superbly. Chris was on some of the pilot audio tapes for the pre-publication version of Streamline, along with Karen, Guy Wellman and Alan Tankard.

December 1977: Outside Poole Registry Office: L to R Nick Keeping, Karen’s father & mother, Karen, her sister, my mother, Bernie Hartley & Chris Owen. I took the photo, I assume.

Karen and I were married in December 1977. It was at Poole Registry Office on a Friday morning. Most of our colleagues had to work. Bernie Hartley, my co-author on Streamline, and Nick Keeping (who had introduced Karen to me) were our witnesses. Apart from close family, the only friend able to attend … he must have had a holiday week … was Chris. It is with great sadness that we realize that Bernie, Chris and Nick have all died. In fact our only surviving wedding present is the comic salt and pepper pots that Chris gave us.

He went to Oman, where he produced our version of Frankenstein –The Pantomime backed by a full large RAF band. He sent us videos of his new role as a TV Newsreader on the English Language channel in Oman … he was a natural for it. He told the story of a flight to Beirut where they saw his passport … C.Owen and got over-excited: ‘Cohen! Cohen!’ The irony was that was his grandfather’s name and it was Anglicized to Owen … with the choice of first name with C. He enjoyed that irony reading the news.

Chris worked at many language schools in the 1980s. He also worked as a guide taking Americans around Europe, then as a guide taking French coach parties around America. The anecdotes were fabulous. He often had to say grace for the Americans too.

In recent years, Chris was a friend who would just arrive and ring the doorbell. We did recordings with him for our IN English series, where Chris and Karen did all the audio exercises. The producer was amazed that they could do them in half the time that professional actors could. You need to have taught to get it right first time … you need absolutely steady intonation through six or eight manipulations of a structural point. He also got Chris to spend the time we had saved doing “library instruction lines and numbers.” So recording in London was an annual event for us for three years, with a thoroughly enjoyable daily drive.

We would go to the theatre together. I recall Romeo & Juliet in Chichester around 2002, set in Constantinople with Turks and Greeks. We were both critical thinking it a weak Juliet. It was Emily Blunt, soon to become one of our very favourite film actresses.

Then there was the one we never stopped teasing him about. We got tickets to see Jeff Goldblum and Kevin Spacey in David Mahmet’s Speed The Plow at the Old Vic. We went with Chris, our old friend Richard Palmer and his son. Before the play we were in the pub, and Chris had a half of beer. Richard, who lives in Bavaria, noticed a particularly good German Oktoberfest beer on the menu, and they chatted about it. Chris said he’d like to try it and ordered one, only to find out it came in half litres only. Ten minutes to showtime. He drank it and we hurried over to the Old Vic. Central seats, right up near the front. As we walked in, they announced “There will be no interval …” Well, Chris lasted till about fifteen minutes before the end, when he had to stand and exit … trouble is, very narrow rows, so everyone had to stand to let him out. A few yards away you could see the sweat on the brows as Mr Goldblum and Mr Spacey managed to keep going through it. Though whenever we teased Chris about it, which was every time we saw him, we embellished the story to them stopping in horror and watching him.

2002: Picture posed  for IN English conversations. Karen and Chris in Arundel. (Asking for Directions)

Chris could improvise at the drop of a hat. Often our drives to London or theatre passed in a long improvisation. In Chichester, we were in a charity shop and a woman had a guide dog with the letters BLIND on its yellow jacket. She left the crowded shop. Chris went over to the window and came back shaking his head, ‘That dog’s not blind,’ he said, ‘I watched it just now. It walked to the pavement, sat down and looked both ways. Why would someone want to put BLIND on a dog like that? It can see perfectly well.’ Karen and I were in hysterics as the shop people tried to explain slowly and carefully to Chris that the owner was blind not the dog. Chris wouldn’t have it. It went on for five minutes.

The last time we acted with Chris was in the Terry Phillips’ plays performed for family and friends circa 2008-2009. We did another one, Robin of Verwood, in December 2017, and were bemoaning Chris’s absence … we knew he was too ill to invite along. The next day we heard he had just died.

April 2008. Rehearsal photo, Karen Viney and Chris Owen

It was so cruel that cancer attacked Chris’s wonderful asset … his mouth and speaking voice. He lived with that so courageously for many years. We would arrange to meet him at Salisbury Playhouse. He never wanted to have lunch with us because he was embarrassed about eating with his jaw problems … he would go to the Thai restaurant where the food was already in small pieces. But we’d then meet for coffee before the play, criticize it mightily afterwards as only ex-actors can, and drop him back at the Park And Ride outside Salisbury. One thing we all enjoyed about Salisbury Playhouse was the plaque on the City Hall, just next door. One of Chris’s many and varied jobs was road manager to this 60s band:

The last time we saw Chris was my 70^th Birthday in the summer. He was very weak, but had driven there from Lymington and brought me a present … a pair of carpet slippers and a bottle of Syrup of Figs.

So goodbye, Chris. A great friend, and as was played at your funeral, a true “Travelling Man.”

Comments are enabled if friends would like to add their thoughts. If you have photos send them to us.