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So as I'm sitting here typing this, Mum is sat on the sofa asking endless East Enders questions to Richard who is maintaining a stilled sense of calm as they watch it together, and it's wall to wall soap operas on the tv. yes...it's Christmas Eve. Time to be surrounded by ones loved ones and maintain that fine balance between a family gathering and a hostage situation! We're lucky. Tomorrow we get to go and be part of someone else's family for the big day. After opening presents we set off for lunch,this year courtesy of the beauteous Miss Ellis - Bextor and then by the time we arrive back, stuffed and fulfilled in the evening, the day is almost over and a New Year looms. We've had the festive theatre visit - to the Old Vic to see "A Flea in Her ear" - fun but not fabulous. We have the ice skating with the god daughter booked for next week and in between we hopefully have rest and calm. Four days away by the sea for New Year and hopefully we'll be

And so the leviathan that was the X factor trundled onto its conclusion and last Saturday the best act was finally named. I was quite pleased that Matt was the winner. Rebecca was a little too like a sort of downmarket mix of Alexandra Burke and Leona Lewis, and heaven knows what it would have said about the country if the charisma bypass that was “One Direction" had actually made it to the finishing line. Of course in these instances there is actually no such thing as “best". It's a matter of taste. It's like acting. You can't ever say that one person is “the best". Mercifully for those of us who do it it's not something that can be measured. It's not quantitative. You and I can sit side-by-side in the same theatre on the same night and watch the same performance and look at the same actor-and I can think they're absolutely appalling, and you can think they're brilliant. We are both right. It's a matter of taste. It's nice to be l

And so I think I have just managed to get to the end of my Christmas Shopping. As many who know me will be only too aware, shopping is something I can do for England. Corporate jobs with several actors onboard that I have run have often been known to have "retail calls" where actors are required to disperse into the town or city we are visiting for an hour or so and shop. Purchases and most of all bargains are compared back at the hotel. Fond memories of this linger on. Miss Ryan's fur coat in Munich, Mr Puddephat and Miss Kanter's cameras in Bath, and my own list of bargains too many to mention. At Christmas then you woudl think I would be in my element. Licensed retail opportunities to do good for others. And yet Christmas shopping bores me! I love shopping for Richard. Every time I come up with an idea of a gift, and I buy it, I imagine the surprise or joy on his face as he unwraps the parcel on Christmas morning, and the delight in getting it right. Sometimes it&#

So this week as I sit down to write my blog, I don't have a problem as to subject matter. You'll soon see why. The week had promised to be a little boring. My job for Wednesday and Thursday of this week had been cancelled at the end of last week and Sunday afternoon saw me driving down to Gatwick to jet off to Amsterdam two days to work as a speaker coach on a conference for Astra Zeneca, courtesy of my lovely honorary goddaughter Maddy Williams. To be perfectly honest there wasn't really a job there. Many senior people often don't want to be told anything about presenting and certainly not in front of their colleagues. I can understand this, so apart from providing a little useful advice as to how to deal with the stage that was laid out as a catwalk, I divided the time between wandering round a very cold Amsterdam–so cold I ended up buying a coat in H&M as in a moment of rashness I'd thought that a suit, two T-shirts a shirt, cardigan and a large pashmina

So it's Sunday, it's very cold and I'm waiting for the shuttle bus in the car park at Gatwick North. I'm heading over to Amsterdam to work as speaker coach on a conference for two days. It shouldn't be too arduous. It's reasonably well paid and Amsterdam is a great city..... And yet I seem to have gone into that winter hibernation mode this week where all I want to do is be curled up in the flat with the heating on and watching tv. The best reason I had for braving the cold this week was to venture up to Yorkshire to surprise my mum on her 89th birthday. Having already bought her a new chair( see previous entry) and arranged for a card with flowers to be delivered she wasn't expecting a visit. So a call to her at 2 pm to ask her to check the doorstep for a parcel worked a treat. No matter what I had bought her it wouldn't have received quite the same reaction as the sight of me standing on the garden path did. She was overjoyed. That and the combination

We're both very big Harry Potter fans in our house. My lovely friend Jane Millman introduced me to the books around 2000 and I quickly devoured them. They took me back to books I used to read in my childhood. The boarding school adventures of Jennings and Derbyshire, the Five Finder - outers etc. The first three books came out without much of a furore, and it was the fourth book “Harry Potter and the goblet of Fire" which really seem to catch people's attention. This was when Rich started reading the books. While I lay in bed at night trying to make my way through the 500 or so pages of the latest Harry Potter, Rich was beside me making his way through the first three books which were of course much slimmer volumes at the same time. This meant that by the time volume 5 “Harry Potter and the order of the Phoenix" came out our household had to order two copies. There was no debate as to who was going to read it first. So we have two copies of the last three books. As

Like banks, accountants are difficult to change. I've been with my bank now nearly 20 years. First Direct. The appeal when I first went to it was of course that it's a faceless bank. All business is conducted over the telephone or now on the Internet. Which is great in that you don't have to deal with people when you don't feel like it. Of course the downside is that when you'd like to actually talk to somebody with whom you have a relationship, it's potluck on who answers the phone. Whenever I've found them obstructive in any way I have thought about changing, and then 10 seconds later when I think of all the hassle of changing direct debits, bank details on invoices, and thinking of all the various things that could go wrong, I take a deep breath and carry on with them. I suppose it's what banks rely on. We all stay where we are because it's too much hassle to change. It's the same with my accountant. I'm sure he's not the cheapest, an

Well it’s been one of those weeks. Monday morning I went into town to meet the director of the BBC 4 project that I had been asked to audition for. A woman who quite clearly should have stood closer to her razor! I thought I read reasonably well, but as I said in last week’s blog I find it difficult to judge. They liked me a great deal I was told, so as you can guess, I didn’t get the job. The trip up to Yorkshire this week took me and Mum out to purchase a new fireside chair for her. Some of the things in mum’s house have been around longer than some people I know have been on this earth. The Parker Knoll chair that she sits in on a daily basis by the fire moved house with her in 1984 and had already been in situ at the old house behind the shop for four years at that time. It’s given good service, but as now she spends a large part of the day sitting in it, I was intent on getting her one that was orthopaedically correct, didn’t have a sagging bottom (the chair, not my mother!),

One of the illicit guilty pleasures of early winter night television is the glut of reality shows that seem to fill our screens. I know it is not everybody's cup of tea but I'm afraid that Rich and I do set the recorder for“Strictly come dancing" and “ X factor". There is a real pleasure when one of the contestants and their celebrity dancing partner, or budding recording artist, actually does well. What does annoy me greatly is that when they don't do so well, and people refuse to tell them. There were quite a few performances on last night's edition of the X factor that needed firm criticism. Quite simply the singers failed to deliver, and they needed to be told so. So they can start to deal with what will be a recurring feeling in their career, no matter how successful they become. Failure is one of the most important and yet difficult things to deal with as a performer.Believe me it never gets any easier. No matter what you've done before, you&

I think I have mentioned before in these pages how I love autumn as a season. As the air gets colder the days get shorter and the leaves turn to gold I start to feel cosy and warm. I think it might be part of the process of getting older, but as one does so I feel that one wants what is familiar around one. I spent Monday of this week up at my Mother’s. She is much better now and has regained much of her bloom and wit. Her house is now virtually a nest. Chairs filled with familiar objects, old pieces of paper that “she might need’ and a resistance to change that is almost palpable. It would be so much easier for her to have a microwave for her meal preparation, but this is something she has stoutly resisted for over twenty years, and now at the ripe old age of nearly 89 I stand very little chance of persuading her to have one. Anything new has to be introduced with the greatest of care. I managed to get her to use a new and more secure walking stick while she was ill, but I t

There are some place names that when you hear them don't come up a vision of quiet idyllic hideaways. Marbella has always been one of these for me. For the last four years I've had the pleasure of directing the McDonald's UK AGM each October. It's taken me to Warsaw, Prague, and last year to Malta–a delightful burst of late autumn sunshine. Even though the work is hard and the crew and I spent long hours locked up in dark conference halls, it's always nice to come outside into a beautiful environment under a sunny sky. It started raining in Marbella within 10 min of me leaving the airport. Driving out of Malaga along the motorway that connects that part of coastal Spain, the rain lashed down. Through the running streams of water on the window screen, or was it the tears in my eyes, I saw a road lined with supermarkets, hypermarkets, all types of bloody markets. I started to know then what I know now–Marbella is not for me. The conference was being held in a large l

For those of you who also follow Richards blog (www.richardhowle.co.uk) you'll know from his last blog as to why we like to get away on frequent holidays. this week saw our autumn break. Both of us worked on Monday morning, but were scheduled to met back at home ready to head for the airport and an early evening flight to Valencia in South Eastern Spain. The trouble began as I stepped out of my training session at McDonald's in East Finchley to head home for our rendezvous. I rang my Mum. Recently Mum as you probably know has suffered bouts of sciatica and she had now it seemed succumbed to the illness she had nearly three years ago, namely and overwhelming feeling of tiredness and fatigue. She is 89 in a months time and this might be understandable,but not if you've met my Mum. A little dynamo limited only by arthritis and a stick, she finds these attacks of tiredness very depressing. She sounded awful . I rang her again when I got home. She was no better. I be

It’s been a year of screen firsts for me. Kissing, scenes of high romance and now becoming a granddad. It’s been a hectic week. Mum had a bad weekend last weekend, which necessitated a Sunday afternoon drive up to Yorkshire and an overnight stay. Tuesday saw a long day trip to Jersey – weekend break potential I feel having now seen the island – and there has been sessions of corporate training. In the midst of all this, on Wednesday I spent a day on “Peep Show 7” Peep Show has been a glorious job for the last four years. The team on it are delightful. The scripts are fun and we have a laugh when we are making it. Wednesday saw me return to Netherwylde Farm in Herts. where we filmed most of the stuff for my first ever scenes back in 2007. Then it was covered in snow and we froze in our trailers and had lunches in barns around campfires. Wednesday saw the last burst of summer and as my driver turned into the paddock where the unit base was, there was an atmosphere of cou

It’s really hard loving someone at a distance. Rich flies off to New York tomorrow for a week and I will, as always really miss him. Not just the fact that there is space in the tooth mug in the bathroom, or no morning tea in my keep warm mug waiting for me on waking, but there will be a huge space in my life for five whole days. Sure we’ll Skype and email. I will forward him his regular doses of East Enders, though after all the screaming in The Vic last week I really can’t imagine anyone would want to watch it, but I will miss him enormously. After a busy Tuesday this week, with a couple of jobs dealt with despite the efforts of Bob Crowe and his cronies, I headed off to Yorkshire on Wednesday to spend a couple of days with my Mum. Mum is 88 and is fiercely independent. She’s incredibly active. Recently she’s been forced to become more housebound due to a bad attack of sciatica. “It’ll go” she says, “we just have to wait”, though her patience with her own company is we

There's been a nip in the air this week and Autumn seems to be working its way into our lives once more. Autumn is one of my favourite times of the year. The darkening nights, the crisp smoky smell in the air, the golden carpet of the falling leaves and the childhood sense of anticipations as fist Bonfire Night and then Christmas approach. I also loved it because of the curtains. As a child my room at the back of the house attached to my parents shop had thin unlined curtains. Fantastic in winter as lights twinkled mysteriously through the thin patterned cotton, but as soon as Spring and summer approached, the daylight still outside as I tried to settle down to sleep spoke of missed opportunities and a day not yet finished. Then Autumn, when each night the glow through the curtain became less each night and bedtime seemed to have arrived at the right point in the day. Autumn always marks a change in my work calendar. After the summer break of July and August when corporate works is

Even before we start this week, we have dated ourselves with the titular reference to the Buggles 1979 hit. It's all part of the feeling old process. Having had an injection of youth for the last few weeks at the NYT, I headed off to Devon this week for a media date with the thrusting world of internet broadcasting. Richard's nephew Marcus, whom regular readers will remember visited us in London a few weeks ago, is co-presenter of the youth programme on Bay FM, the internet radio station that serves Exmouth, but indeed can be heard all over the country if you care to log on. While he was with us he asked me if I would be their guest on the Saturday morning programme when I was down in Devon. To help him out I agreed and so on Thursday Richard and I headed down to the West Country to visit his parents, see his family, and take part in the interview. Bay FM is based in a compact little studio above a builders merchants on the Salterton Rd just out of Exmouth. The Youth programme