ACT 1:
GREAT EXPECTATIONS OF NAME-DROPPING
GREAT EXPECTATIONS
Yes, certain others’ and my own of myself (because of theirs, to begin with).
And, well, because of Pip.
NAME-DROPPING
Expect to find much of that in this first act. Although, not just names of famous people. There are more people in this world who are more important to humanity than those who become famous for one thing or another. Celebrity used to be different.
Fame, for the soul, is an empty purse, if fame is a goal in itself. In fact, fame is an unfortunate side-effect of being noticed for what you do at a time and in a place when those around you are less noticed (especially if you commit a major crime). Fame can, however, sometimes open doors (unless you’re locked behind one for committing a major crime).
Anyway, in the main, the mentions of estimable folk in this first act are a limited number of individuals with whom I’ve had the privilege of associating during my professional acting career, at various times since I was a wee lad.
So, let’s get name-dropping. Alphabetical order. And, as you will see, one usually leads to another...
Kitty was a terrific actress to work with. I confess, I was a little disappointed not to have met her husband before I left Budapest briefly, where the series of CADFAEL was filmed.
DEREK JACOBI was a consummate professional, and I fear I made him work harder than he should have needed to. Nerves in the face of greatness. Thank you, Sir Derek, for your grace in the face of a naive young man.
RICK STROUD directed me, including the shape of my severe tonsure.
Many other fabulous people in company.
Harry was Matey in a Screen 2 film called LENT, written by MICHAEL WILCOX and directed by PETER BARBER-FLEMING. Harry was a gentle giant of a man, in stature and in nature.
Along with FABIA DRAKE, CONSTANCE CHAPMAN and DAVID LANGTON, this charming film for TV ended up winning a TRIC award.
LENT was filmed in four weeks (during Lent) at one of Sir Edwin Lutyens’ buildings, MARSH COURT, in Stockbridge, Hampshire. At the time, it was operating as a private boarding school, although has since returned to private ownership.
Jane was Peter Pan and I was Michael Darling at the SHAFTESBURY THEATRE,
where “I flewed!”
NIGEL PATRICK played my father and Captain Hook.
Incidentally, I played Peter Pan, on BBC RADIO 4, some years later.
Jane became another mother of mine a couple of decades after our original Neverland adventures, when we were part of a new CROSSROADS family. That particular enterprise resulted a sketchy situation for me in real life, although there were a number of highlights during my time working with Jane again, such as meeting her sketch-master husband, GERALD SCARFE.
Annette is a remarkable actress with an incredible career. Annette played Jenny and I played Tom in LAST DAY OF SUMMER, a film adapted for screen from a short story by SIR IAN McEWAN in his first published collection, FIRST LOVE, LAST RITES.
Tim played Edmund Junot in SINS, a big-scale mini-series — I was his younger self.
JOAN COLLINS and GENE KELLY starred in this production, too.
STEVEN BERKOFF played a convincing Nazi who interrogated me in a bunker, which was a real place hidden in the grounds of a French Chateau.
DOREEN ENGLISH
Doreen was my first agent, and the best I ever had. She scared the life out of my tiny little mind at times. She is on my list of desert island dinner guests.
Carrie was beautiful and, sitting on set with her, became innocently intoxicated by her personality and the scent of perfume. She played Elizabeth and I played William Frankenstein.
ROBERT POWELL played Victor Frankenstein in this TV film of Mary Shelley’s classic.
DAVID WARNER crushed me to death in the end.
Another mother of mine, in CHANDLER & CO. I’d met Susan some years before in Italy, filming SUMMER'S LEASE. A pleasure to have had her acquaintance, and sad under the final circumstances.
Rutger played Albert Speer, in a big-scale production about Hitler’s architect, INSIDE THE THIRD REICH. I was Albert Speer, too — Rutger’s younger self.
MARVIN J. CHOMSKY directed me, and cast me again in another historical epic a few years later.
JOHN GIELGUD was my father, and a very kind man. We both worked on FRANKENSTEIN in 1984 and, some years after that, I met Sir John again in Tuscany while shooting SUMMER'S LEASE.
DEREK JACOBI played Hitler in INSIDE THE THIRD REICH and, although I didn’t meet Sir Derek this time around, we did work together in 1995, on CADFAEL.
Joan was my Miss Havisham. STRATFORD JOHNS my Magwitch. PATSY KENSIT my Estella. GREAT EXPECTATIONS, indeed.
TERRY PLUMMER was the stuntman who doubled for Stratford Johns. You might not have heard of Terry, although you will have seen him countless times on screen over the decades.
Around the time of my 21st birthday, I worked with Stratford again on THE LIFE AND TIMES OF HENRY PRATT. He wanted to tip me upside down again, as he had done with Pip. He probably should have done; it might have helped.
Anna was another mother of mine in a BBC Radio 4 play called SOMETHING TO SCARE OFF THE BIRDS, by MICHAEL ARDITTI, directed by RICHARD WORTLEY.
On TV some years later, Anna was another kind of mother — a Prioress — in SEA DRAGON, in which I played Jestyn.
PAT ROACH coached me with some some stunt work.
HOLLY AIRD, as Ffion, helped my character’s feud with some holy advice.
I watched Liam him die in front of me (I didn’t find him, and I didn’t kill him). And I rode a Firemare with him, too (before his character died, of course, although not necessarily in the that order). This was KRULL, after all.
FREDDIE JONES was doing some crazy stuff in a big spider-web on my first day at PINEWOOD STUDIOS.
DEREK MEDDINGS showed me the miniature giant spider-web that Freddie’s character was navigating, and generously tolerated my inquisitiveness by showing me how he was creating all sorts of other special effects he produced for the film.
ROBBIE COLTRANE told me a joke about his name when we were filming in Italy, although I didn’t get it at the time. Sorry, Robbie.
BERNARD BRESSLAW tripped up in the swamp on the 007 STAGE at Pinewood and threw me off his shoulders (I think it was unintentional).
KEN TUOHY, part of DEREK CRACKNELL’s crew, tagged me the “Scallywag” and used to drive me from dressing room to stages along Goldfinger Avenue and Broccoli Road as if we were in a car chase.
TODD CARTY was a lovely, young man — and still just as genuine when we met again on the set of EASTENDERS in 1999.
VIC ARMSTRONG taught me how to tumble fall from height onto a crash-mat.
GREG POWELL dropped me into face of a tiger. And still called me Titch when we met again years later on the set of Harry Potter at Leavesden Studios (I wasn’t in HP, btw; my magical stunt friend MATT STIRLING was working for Greg when I visited him at work one day).
GERARD NAPROUS cracked his whip as part of the stunt team of bandits assisting our quest to save the captive princess from the Beast. Later, Gerard drove me through a thunderstorm as I rode a Palomino through a forest at night, in THE CHILDREN OF GREEN KNOWE.
PETER YATES directed KRULL. He scared the marbles out of me by firing a gun off-camera to generate a reaction. An "interesting" director’s technique.
LYSETTE ANTHONY was a delightful 17-year-old at the time of shooting. Very cool that she went on to appear in four BRYAN ADAMS music videos.
RON SILVERMAN, KRULL's producer, and his wife, Moira, were such nice people. They made KRULL a family adventure when it came to the Italian location filming near L’Aquila.
Working on KRULL is when I met the genius JEAN WILLIAMS, a tutor, who subsequently became my chaperone, too. We had many adventures, thanks to her intrepid and inspiring nature.
Sir Anthony narrated HANSEL AND GRETEL, made for the BBC OPEN UNIVERSITY, in which I played a tong-curled Hansel.
SHEILA HANCOCK was the witch who tried to eat me. Dame Sheila, in reality, was the antithesis of her character.
Omar was an incredibly charming man, who regaled fellow cast-members with the most engaging and entertaining anecdotes; usually while we all sat standing-by on a stationary bus, parked somewhere in the remote countryside of the USSR, where massive sets of old Tsarist palaces had been reconstructed for PETER THE GREAT.
Thanks to LILLI PALMER for arriving into the bleakness with Swiss chocolate, a huge bar of which she presented to me when we first met. That was a welcome luxury in a country with scarce food. Meanwhile, the locals were queuing outside the empty village bakery in metre-deep snow, hoping for some bread to arrive.
MARVIN J. CHOMSKY was my director again on this epic-scale production. From production meetings in Vienna, to costume fittings in Rome, to multiple winter trips behind the IRON CURTAIN, my formative experience of the world expanded further during the making of this production.
I played the young Tsar Peter, with JAN NIKLAS and MAXIMILIAN SCHELL as older versions of the character; I’d been listening to their voices on cassette tapes for weeks beforehand to emulate their accents.
Paul was a charming, generous man with great humility. He was Fred Simcox and I was Fred as a boy, in PARADISE POSTPONED. We worked together again on CROSSROADS years later.
ALVIN RAKOFF directed. He was the first director I ever worked with in television, in an ITV PLAYHOUSE episode years before.
ANNETTE CROSBIE and MICAHEL HORDERN were my Simcox parents.
PETER EGAN also starred in this production — he later played my father in
John Le Carré’s A PERFECT SPY a few years on.
Sir Antony was Richard III, and I was Prince Edward of Wales. Sir Antony’s voice was tremendous, echoing down the back-stage stairwell as he warmed up his voice each night pre-show.
BILL ALEXANDER directed.
It was my first of two seasons at the BARBICAN with the (London) RSC, returning a year later to play William Page in THE MERRY WIVES OF WINDSOR.
Dame Dorothy was one of my early mothers, in UNDISCOVERED COUNTRY, written by Arthur Schnitzel in a version by Tom Stoppard, at SIR PETER HALL’s NATIONAL THEATRE (Olivier).
I worked with Dame Dorothy’s daughter, AMANDA WARING, some years later, in a sitcom called NO STRINGS for Yorkshire TV. EDWARD PETHERBRIDGE was our father, starring with JEAN MARSH.
As a young production assistant for TURTLE KEY ARTS (a charitable arts company I’m now privileged to serve as a Trustee), I met Amanda again, along with her then-husband, ROBERT DAWS. Then again, during the filming of Dame Dorothy’s
THIS IS YOUR LIFE, with MICHAEL ASPEL. (I particularly enjoyed meeting RON MOODY at the after-show soirée.)
Finty and I were close friends for many years since we met filming THE TORCH.
Finty’s mother and father (JUDI DENCH and MICHAEL WILLIAMS) also played parts in the children’s TV series we were all part of, which was filmed in Greece (where we first met), Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia, and Tenerife. We had some great times together, then and later.
Dame Judi invited me as a guest of hers to the gala premiere of CASINO ROYALE (an extraordinary event of glitterati), for which I’ll be eternally grateful to her.
(I recall being worried about HM The Queen during the film, though, because it was spectacularly loud at times.)
It was a surprising privilege to meet PATRICK SWAYZE and his wife, Lisa, at the after-premiere party. Finty and I had memories of watching DIRTY DANCING in a remote park of Greece during filming of THE TORCH, so it was poignant to meet the star of that movie so many years later. I was too nervous to say hello to too many others with supreme kudos who were there that night. Probably just as well I didn’t make a fool of myself in doing so.
Well, that’s probably enough for now.
You can ask me questions if you feel curious enough.
