Born in Huddersfield to a mining family of humble stock, Spencer Thames gained a scholarship to RADA in the late fifties. For nearly fifty years Thames blazed a path through the entertainment world for other actors to follow.
During his career he has worked with every major talent of stage and screen, but, it has to be said, Thames’s life has had it’s fair share of heartbreak; drink, drugs, nervous breakdowns and, perhaps most notoriously, his tempestuous on-off affair and two marriages to that wild firebrand of the West End stage and prime time seventies television icon, Kate O’Mara. The end of their second marriage was so vitriolic that Thames became a virtual recluse for fifteen years, only to return recently in his magnificently received one man show “Kitty and I”.
Today Thames remains controversial figure: one noted observer dubbed him "A figure of no noteworthy achievement in his field save for an ability to pen almost indigestibly vituperative attacks on other more talented individuals - A Queen of Poison, if you will". And it is true, Thames has alienated many with his forthright views, particularly those expressed in his regular column for the Spectator – “The Shiterati”.
As he himself has confessed, he hasn't done Hamlet, Lear or indeed any classical theatre to speak of for over thirty years; however, he has "done loads of bloody marvelous telly".
Rory Galbraith. Jan 2008.
