He managed to find his way to another school and I was on the football field feeling

“He managed to find his way to another school, and I was on the football field, feeling totally comfortable, when I saw him coming around the corner and froze Suddenly I felt I had to do well It became a performance. There is a suggestion of a smile on his face when he remembers the effort the elderly Olivier made to watch his sporting prowess at one of his schools, and his awkwardness in dealing with such gestures of paternal support. A photograph of Tamsin inscribed “To Darling Dada with all my love” sits on the piano in what is still thought of as Olivier’s study at the Malthouse.Richard’s feelings for his father seem doomed to remain more ambiguous, but even his sadder memories are now recalled with affection. Tamsin and Julie-Kate don’t seem to have found their father’s fame as terrible a burden to deal with as Richard has. Richard sums up the gulf between them succinctly: “He was Eton, Ox-ford, Coldstream Guards; I was Bedales, UCLA and the theatre.” He and his sisters are closer.

I’m sure that if more men went to these workshops, we’d get a better understanding between the sexes, and between parents and children.”Richard’s sister Tamsin agrees “Richard is a much more centred person now Before, he was flailing And I’ve been to some of his workshops It’s fascinating. One’s hackles rise at first, because you think, ‘Oh God, it’s going to be weird and wacky.’ But I didn’t find it like that.”Richard and his half-brother, Tarquin, are distant but cordial. Their terraced London house, filled with childish clutter and noise, seems worlds away from the “household of fame with nannies, housekeepers, the lot” in which Richard recalls being brought up. (They have no nanny; Richard has a lot to say about the “expensive deprivation” of well-off children through nannies and boarding-schools.)The atmosphere at the Malthouse seems happy, too.

One of Richard’s greatest joys is to watch his children, seven-year-old Troy and five-year-old Ali, playing in the lime tree “arches” – a bower his father planted for him and his sisters in the Malthouse gardens. “By the time it grew big enough to play in, we were too big to play, so it’s great to see Troy and Ali using it, and how much they love it here.”Joan Plowright is convinced that Richard’s involvement in the Men’s Movement has been “very helpful to him. My daughters and nieces, young women moving about with the young men of today, feel that a lot of them are lost, scared of commitment and in turmoil about their identity and role in life. Shelley’s sleek black-and-white dress looks like a Romeo Gigli number, but she swears it is only inexpensive Phase Eight. “Where would I get that kind of money?” she laughs, mentioning “pounds 300 a week” when the question of Richard’s earnings comes up.In any case, this is the sort of family that is keen to claim the primacy of the pursuit of happiness over the pursuit of wealth. Richard drives a modest-looking E-reg Volvo and explains that most of his father’s money was eaten up by medical bills towards the end of his life.

They’re touchy-feely and proud of it: there’s a large colour photograph, for instance, prominently displayed on the living-room wall of their London home, which shows Richard and Shelley sprawled sensuously together on a bed. Ask Shelley what women get for their patience while their men go whooping it up in the wild, and she replies: “A warrior, a protector. Someone who knows how to be there for them.” “A real man, I hope,” is Richard’s answer. “The idea,” he adds, “is to be able to come in the door as ‘the warrior’ and five minutes later be ‘the lover’, ‘the father’, ‘the husband’ – and not carry on heading for the phone, opening mail, etcetera.”How successful a warrior is Richard? They claim not to be wealthy, and do not appear to be particularly so, apart from their share of the Malthouse.