Moving On

Moving on.

It's been a busy week. A trip to Paris, two days in Amsterdam and a trip down to my favourite village in Oxfordshire - Blewbury.

Paris was a quick overnight trip to perform a forum theatre at a partner conference for a large international law firm on Monday morning. Brilliant working with my colleagues Marianne O'Connor and Jack Downton (He of the Abbey fame!). A trip to Amsterdam to work with 13 young lawyers on their presentation techniques and follow-up from the day's tuition I did two weeks ago, and a trip down to the village of the Blewbury to say goodbye to an old friend.

Tony Loy was one of the guiding lights in the amateur dramatic scene in Blewbury. I first was invited down to Blewbury in 1989 to direct "The Comedy of Errors" in their garden theatre. A production which led to my first as a professional director. It was a magical summer; long hot weekends, a great and enthusiastic cast and very many happy memories. Tony was my Dromio of Ephesus. He was a rotund jolly Scouser, whose inner core seemed to be made of laughter, and he proved a great Dromio.  He and his wife Sheila became good friends in the village, and even though when I returned four years later to direct "The Country Wife" I gave him a really crap part, he still managed to be funny and heartwarming.

Sadly last summer he sat down one evening and died. However people like Tony are too big to lose instantly, and the village, under the guidance of his fabulous daughters Francesca, and Maria,  have established The Tony Loy Trust  to provide support for young people in West Oxfordshire to pursue their dreams in either of Tony's two passions - sport and theatre.

"Ready for The Tonys"

This week the whole village came together for a three night celebration entitled "The Tony Awards". A massive romp of a sketch show to raise money and celebrate his life. My work in Amsterdam prevented me from being there on Thursday and Friday evenings. It's very difficult to get someone to sit in your window!. However Saturday allowed Richard and I to head off down to Oxfordshire and for me to take part in the proceedings. It was a great way of saying goodbye, and being part of what will be his legacy.

It's good to be able to let go. I've been excessively busy with work lately and that's always good. I'm looking forward immensely to our first holiday of the year on June 1 -10 days on Fuerteventura. After that I'm becoming back to shoot four episodes of a sit com ( I'm not sure I'm allowed to say which one as yet!) So it was with a mixture of excitement and disappointment that I received a telephone call from my agent telling me that there been an enquiry for me to play the butler in the last ever episode of "Poirot". 

I'm a massive Agatha Christie fan and have never yet managed to appear in one of her plays or anything based on her work. It looked as though it would be impossible for me to do this job as I'm away for the  first 12 days of June, which is basically half of the shoot. The director and producer decided to see me anyway, but all I could think of was how disappointed I would be if they decided to offer me the role and I was unable to do it because of our holiday.

We have a rule regarding our holidays. They come first. Before I met Richard I rarely took holidays, always worried about the fact that a job may come up that I wouldn't be available for. Having met him of course my priorities changed, and the time we get away together is incredibly precious to me. I've missed other jobs before -The Dammed United being just one -but I've always enjoyed the holiday nevertheless.

Once, just once, we broke the rule and I flew back from a week's break in Tunisia to do a day's shoot an ITV drama. Not a good idea. It diminished the holiday enormously, and all I could think about on the day's shooting was that I should really have been in Tunis on a sunbed.

It looks unlikely that I'm going to be offered the part of the Butler, but it all became rather  irrelevant on Thursday afternoon when Elliott Barnes Worrall, last year's winner of the Alan Bates bursary award at The Actors Centre, and the young actor I have been mentoring for the past 12 months, rang to tell me that he had got a role in the same episode. I couldn't have been more delighted. Elliott played the lead in a fabulous production of "The loneliness of the long-distance runner" which toured for four months towards the end of last year, but since then he's gone through his first spell of being a proper actor by going up for lots of auditions and getting down to the final two or three and yet not getting the job. This is his first big television and it's brilliant. He's a fine actor and it's been a pleasure to work with him for the past year. He's become a good friend.

There's a quote somewhere, and I can't even be bothered to google it to find out its source, that every time a friend has good luck, a little bit of you dies. I can identify with that, and certainly will own up to having felt like that in the past. But not on this occasion. In fact, more than that, his inclusion in the programme means that I have absolutely no desire or sense of disappointment regarding it any more. I'm genuinely happy that he is doing the job, and am looking forward to my holiday. It's not a question of competition. Elliott's 21, mixed race, and around 5 foot eight (or short, as we say in the business!) I'm six-foot two, Yorkshire born, and  slightly to the right of Attila the Hun.

So in celebrating the life of a friend I've lost, and in the success of a friend I've made, it's not been a bad week all in all.