A Pocketful of Happiness

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There is a too-muchness about him, a Tiggerish-ness born of his desire to please (a trait common in those whose parents divorced when they were children, as his did). A deeply personal memoir of love, loss and a life lived together told brilliantly with candour and humour.

And then there are a few more quotes from friends who tell him how gifted and wonderful he is, as he ultimately does not win the Academy Award. Darkness falls on us all eventually, even on those who know Elton John well enough to receive his condolences by phone. When Joan died in 2021, her final challenge to him was to ‘find a pocketful of happiness in every day’. But in the end, Washington allowed her family to break the news and the three of them found themselves in the embrace of a highly sustaining – and sustained – outpouring of love and affection. Grant emigrated from Swaziland to London in 1982, with dreams of making it as an actor, when he unexpectedly met and fell in love with renowned dialect coach Joan Washington.

When his beloved wife Joan died in 2021 after almost forty years together, she set him a challenge: to find a pocketful of happiness in every day. Sometimes, this took the form of cheering visits: our now King Charles, for instance, arrived at their cottage bearing a bag of mangoes and flowers from Highgrove.

Washington, as always, is avid for his news and they share their days, as they’ve done for 38 years. Funny, moving and perceptive, A Pocketful of Happiness is an insight into the life of a much loved British actor.I would have been happy to go on reading about their life and their marriage, and even their shared adoration of their “longed-for, miracle, baby,” Olivia, who seems to be an impressive woman, very supportive of them both, during the fears and misery of Washington’s Stage 4 lung cancer diagnosis and the “tsunami of grief” that Grant describes. Since then, he has gone on to star in a wide variety of films, including his Oscar nominated performance in Can You Ever Forgive Me? His new memoir, written in diary form, is about his terrific 35-year marriage-of-opposites to Joan Washington (he the eternal adolescent, star-struck optimist and gifted actor, she a sharp-tongued, no-nonsense and equally gifted dialect coach) and her painful death from cancer. Grant were writing a review of this moving memoir, there would be many, many fond and admiring adjectives used to describe almost everyone who appears in the pages: witty, forthright, feisty, silky-soft, button-bright, hilarious, loving, generous, heartbreaking, warmhearted, inclusive, brilliant, sparky, amazing, charming, gilded, entertaining.

But he is too thrilled with all this to hold any of it against him, even as the Hollywood sections take away from the intensity of the book. It is a certain pleasure when Grant makes a very rare negative remark, usually about someone he tactfully does not name. He is so… untrammelled, his feelings for everyone and everything so immediate, so absolute and always blasted out undiluted. When she felt utterly terrible, it was wonderfully distracting to have Vanessa Redgrave and Joely Richardson eating ice-cream on her bed; to listen to Rupert Everett talk of his latest starring role (“I’ve just finished playing a gay stroke victim so might as well go straight to the Oscars now, darling, as I’m a shoo-in”).The guy who goes to the Oscars is the same guy who sits alone in a chain restaurant in Salisbury waiting for his béarnaise sauce to arrive. In 1982, aspiring actor Richard E Grant met and fell in love with renowned dialect coach Joan Washington. I was not happy to read the details of Joan’s diagnosis and dying, but those sections of the book are genuine and compelling.

Sometimes, it took the form of practical help: on Sundays, Nigella Lawson would send supper over in a taxi. Told with candour in Richard’s utterly unique style, A Pocketful of Happiness is a powerful, funny and moving celebration of life’s unexpected joys.

I understand I can change my preference through my account settings or unsubscribe directly from any marketing communications at any time. It is she who, while dying, instructs him to seek a “pocketful of happiness” every day after she is gone. Convinced of his own persuasiveness, he once tried, he tells us, to get a part exchange, not on a car, but on a loo seat. One is Joan Washington, whom we get to know as passionate and commanding, a great teacher, a wonderful mother, a smartass and a woman who understood and loved her husband, deeply.