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Showing posts from 2018

Christmas comes but once this year

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One of the rather magical benefits of going away in late November and early December is that when you come back home, Christmas seems to have started in earnest. We've been back from our week in Dubai for seven days now, and all week I have felt the pressure of Christmas. Streetlights, busy shops, and a diary that just doesn't have enough empty days in it before the 25th. The Jo Malone Advent calendar has yielded yet more goodies - individual bottles of cologne, scented candles, moisturisers and the like. Richards gin advent calendar has yielded, yes, gin, lots of varieties, but gin. As a freelancer you don't get invited to many Christmas parties. No office party, unless you give yourself a glass of wine and a bag of salted cashews, but on Friday evening, I went over to a drinks party hosted by the editor of The Stage at his new house in Bermondsey. It was relaxed, low-key, and absolutely delightful. Richard, having arrived back from Birmingham late in the evening, joi

That December Feeling.

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Readers of this blog, my column in The Stage, or either of my books will know that I once played a bear. It was in a version of Kipling's "The Jungle book" at the Arts Theatre in London way back in 1990. I doubled the roles of Kipling and Baloo the bear. Sadly I didn't get to put my tonsils around the "Bare Necessities" as the music was provided by Indo Jazz Fusion. I can only hope they've gone on to have a long and successful career. I haven't actually heard what they're up to. I do hope however that the costume designer for that particular show has never been allowed near a theatre since. Having done a considerable amount of movement work in the rehearsal period to establish the weight and lumbering gait of a bear, at my costume fitting I was presented with a lycra one-piece jumpsuit and a poncho made out of fisherman's netting onto which two tone brown ribbons had been hastily tacked. My response - "It doesn't exactly scream bea

Being Ready

 Earlier this month I spent a very enjoyable five days filming on the first episode of a crime series of  for the BBC. I was taken by how the structure of a day's filming, is so like our working life as actors in general. Some days from the moment you arrive on set, you might be busy for the whole day, but  that is rare. You might have a scene off in the middle of the day which, if you're lucky, will necessitate returning to your trailer at location base and passing an hour or so catching up on emails or having a snooze. Being of a generation who remembers filming before we had smartphones, I remember how an essential part of one's location kit would include some cheap tacky paperback which you could immerse yourself in without any real commitment. Twice in my twenties, I asked my mother if she could teach me how to knit, as I saw lots of older actors sitting around in their trailers completing scarves and christening blankets and working through their Christmas list fo

Couriering Favour.

I love shopping. I fully understand it doesn't always have to involve a purchase, but an afternoon's pleasure can be gained from just wandering from shop to shop on the High Street. The advent of online shopping has brought me even greater satisfaction, curled up on the sofa with tablet or laptop, to browse and select what I desire. It's pure heaven.  However after one has clicked on the Pay Now button, it can be a descent into hell.  My partner and I have just been furnishing a flat in Birmingham How brilliant that we can sit and select items of furniture we want for our new abode while sitting on our sofa at home. Alas, the whole process has been a nightmare. Not because of the quality of the brands we have dealt with, or with the goods we have bought, but with the atrocious unpredictable passage of getting the goods from shop into our flat.  Most websites, whether it's monoliths like Amazon, or small boutique design firms, don't inform you who the cour

A Routine Reward

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I don't think I could ever cope with going into an office and doing the same job day after day. Getting the same train every morning, having the same start time, the same finish time, and working with the same people every day. I admire people who do that. I have to say that I am sometimes jealous of the security it brings. Just as when one is visiting a foreign clime on holiday, there is a certain comfortable familiarity about going somewhere you been before.  We've just come back from a beautiful week away in Turkey to a place we last visited ten years ago. We expected it to have changed and indeed it had. And yet there was enough familiarity for us to feel immediately welcomed. To surround us with a little bit of a comfort blanket from which to explore what was different for better or worse.  Sometimes our working lives change. Things that we rely on disappear and we’re forced to accept new circumstances. Just as in our work in the rehearsal room, change is nearly a

Early to Rise

On mornings when I’m filming, early starts are almost de rigeur. You wait in the previous night to receive a text message from the second assistant director as to what time your car, or as is increasingly likely these days your shared transport, will be arriving. You take a moment or two to marvel at whose decision it is that it will take over 75 minutes to get from where you live in south-east London to Wimbledon at 6 AM and you set your alarm for an early start. On other days, I don’t see those hours in the morning. Yet often they are hours when I might have woken and be lying in bed trying to snatch an additional sixty minutes of shuteye. Given the change in my domestic arrangements of late, I have at least three mornings each week when I wake at home alone. There is no reason then for me to go back to bed should I stir during these early hours. In fact one morning a couple of weeks ago I did go straight into the kitchen and make myself a cup of tea at 6:30 AM and wit

A Name on the Box

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I remember with huge excitement first time I was going to be on the television.  My appearance on the box of dreams in the corner of the living room  as a 14 year old boy was when I won a competition on the children's television programme  Magpi e (the ITV version of Blue Peter ) to interview Diana Rigg. I had submitted three questions I would like to ask her, and so accompanied by my mother, a day out to the studio involved an early morning train from Rotherham, a chauffeur driven car from St Pancras to the Thames television  Studios in Teddington. a casual meeting with the renowned Edward Woodward (then very famous as Callan) in the canteen, a new purple shirt specially bought for the occasion from Sexy Rexy's in Rotherham, and an appearance on live television interviewing Diana Rigg. This was before the age of the video recorder so I've never really had the chance to see it. It made the headlines, well the third page of the Sheffield Star anyway, in that time ran out b

A Change is as good as a rest.

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I'm having a much busier year than I suspected as looking at the date of the last post in my blog, I find it's over a month ago. It's good to know. We are often busier than we feel and yet, in a week which has consisted of delicious catch up lunches, a boys evening out   and a trip to the theatre, leisure has held the upper hand for the last seven days. "A change is as good as a rest"- one of those phrases I can hear ringing out in the Yorkshire tones of my mother. Working as a shopkeeper in Thrybergh, Rotherham, in the two shops my parents had attached to our house, my mother had little chance for a rest. Yet she was rather good at making sure variety was the spice of her life. Different interests, and never one to settle into a routine. 2018 has brought changes to my life. Adding another notch to the birthday stick earlier this month, I well know one just shouldn't carry on doing what one does for the sake of it. My wonderful partner became a leading dir

Hope and Glory

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Sometimes Christmas comes early. It certainly did at the end of last year for me. I was asked to be Patron of the remarkable Hope Theatre in Islington. Evidently, according to the dictionary, patronage is a gift I give, but on this occasion, I feel I am definitely the lucky recipient. Sometimes one uses a word without a full understanding of its meaning. Obsequious is one that comes to mind. Checking the definition of patron, it’s not one who patronises. That means talk down to you, but I’ll assume you know that. Something I would hope I’m never guilty of in this column, but probably am in life. Evidently patronage is something one bestows. Sadly, the Claytons of South Yorkshire have no coat of arms, so the Hope won’t be getting a thespian rampant over its doors just yet. But what should it receive as a result of its generous offer for me to be its patron? Support, in all forms that I can manage. Patrons mercifully are not expected to write a blank cheque, but they

Small Steps

 So here it is once again - 1st January. You got through last night. You dealt with the feelings of regret and omission. You've replaced them with thoughts of hope and achievement. I can't remember a first day of January that actually did dawn bright and clear, so here in the grey overcast light of south-east London, it's not difficult to look at the enormity of what lies ahead, known to the world as 2018, and not feel a little daunted. Aficionados of Gilbert and Sullivan will know that Koko, the Lord High Executioner in "The Mikado" was well known for saying that he had a little list. His list consisted of people he rather thought should be approaching the executioner's block. Even I think that might be a little too radical for the morning of January 1st, so I'm sat here doing a little list of tasks I will achieve in this first week. Nothing too ambitious, nothing too adventurous, just a list of small jobs so that as from tomorrow, the first working day