Pull the other one

There are moments as an actor where some of the skills that you have managed to acquire in life can suddenly become useful in your job.

It's always fun to scan the bottom paragraph of the aspiring actors CV which is headlined with the word "Skills". I've seen all sorts of ubiquitous talents lurk there  - computer literacy, juggling, skydiving, driving, World Lego champion (sic)- a veritable cornucopia of abilities for the prospective employer to drool over.

Alas when you look at the bottom of my CV there are none. After a children's theatre show we created in drama school and three weeks experience with some metal rods, cotton lint, lighter fuel, and the soundtrack: Gerry Rafferty's "Baker Street", I toyed with putting fire eating into my personal skills. The six-year-olds we had performed in front of had been impressed with my ability to dowse a home-made sparkler in my mouth.

And yet I refrained. If it's on your CV people expect you to be able to do it well. As a director I certainly do. Many years ago in the final episode of my stint in the original run of "All Creatures Great and Small" an actor was hired to play my father. No lines, he had to have a minimal facial resemblance, but above all he had to be able to manage our plough horse and cart. The actor who played the role on his own admission to me on the train travelling north said that he'd never handled a horse and cart in his life, but didn't think it could be that difficult and he needed the job. Ten hours later his inability had thrown me from the cart and posed a great danger to the horse. Both of us survived, and the actor left with his tail between his legs as the animal handler got into his costume.

Last week I spent a day filming a new adaptation of a James Herbert novel which will spend three nights on our screens on the BBC at Halloween. It's a chilling ghost story and we were shooting in an absolutely superb location in the shadow of Pendle Hill in Lancashire. I was playing the landlord of the village farm whose main job is to tell customers scary stories, and to pull pints. Ah yes………… pull pints!

When I was four years of age my mum's parents ran the family shops. One of the shops was an off-licence and in those days it sold beer on draft. People would come across the village green clutching jugs and large bottles to savour a couple of pints of Bentley's finest bitter. As a four-year-old, if my granddad lifted me up onto the sill tray and I clasped one of the huge pumps with both hands, my full bodyweight leaning backwards would just about manage to pull a pint.

My body weight has increased significantly since the age of four, so that when the director asked me if I could pull a pint and serve it during my conversation with the lovely Tom Ellis, I didn't think I'd have a problem.

I was wrong.

Beer pumps have changed. They are small devices, which if not properly maintained produce lots of gas and foam. On my first take I was busy telling the story and increasingly aware that my glass under the counter was filling entirely with foam.

Evidently that wasn't my fault. The beer hadn't been properly run through -I'm assuming that's a technical term. So how do you solve this? Move on to a pump that is working properly? No of course you don't. What you do is get the props man to prepare a pint with a perfect head on it and kneel at your feet clutching that pint. You tell the ghost story and as before you pour a pint of foam. Then you put the foam pint down on the sill tray and without changing your weight from foot to foot, or looking down, you pick up the pint that the obliging props man is holding and you serve that with a flourish.

All of which, I can tell you from experience, is considerably more complicated than just pulling a pint.

So when you settle down this Halloween and cuddle up on the sofa with your loved one to watch "The Secret of Crickley Hall" you may notice the look of terror in the landlord's eyes.

Believe me, it's not because he seen a ghost!