Visiting the Doctors

So the first part of last week was spent in Birmingham completing filming on my stint in "Doctors"

Great to be part of it for a short while but also great to leave. At any one time there are three units or blocks filming. Each block is 3 episodes so that in an eight day periods nine episodes are shot. This means that some of the regulars can have nine episodes in their head at the same time if things are really against them. The filming is slick but incredibly fast. Two cameras and no time for things like forgetting lines. How the regular cast do it day in day out I don;t know. Certainly I was thrilled that my memory still let me learn over fifty scenes very fast, but I can;t day it is something I would like to have to do every evening.

It airs at the end of May and all comments welcome.

We spent the weekend in darkest Sussex in a place called Blackboys(sic) at a beautiful house called Duckings. Jamie Bannon was in my production of "Privates on Parade" fifteen years ago and his lovely wife Gina Cameron did a lot of corporate work with me in the late nineties and early this century. Then as often happens, she had children and put the raising of them first. they have two gorgeous girls called Lily and Gracie so they evidently did a good job. Alongside that, Jamie has built a house on some land they have- I say some land - their estate is 38 acres so it wasn't hard to find the space. The house he has built looks like something out of "Grand Designs" and obviously hits all the spots because while we were there some people looked round it and bought it for just under 1 million.

Jamie started as a policeman, went under cover in the Millwall football supporter scene, got pensioned out of the police force, wrote the film ID, spent several years as an actor, bought properties, renovated them, has run an airline, and an office furniture business and builds houses in his garden. An argument for more policeman on the beat if ever I heard one!!!