A Name on the Box

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 Magpie (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 before I could ask my third question. It was related to how Miss Rigg felt about appearing nude in a recent West End production. A pushy little question from a 14 year old burgeoning homosexual with no interest in the female anatomy anyway. The whole experience was magical and one that rested in my mind for a long time afterwards. Yet it didn't change my career thoughts, and I had no desire to plunge myself into the heady world of independent children's television, or magazine shows. I still wanted to be an actor.

While at drama school, I was lucky enough to gain my Equity card during the first six months, and through contacts made at drama school and Granada television, which was our local studios just down the road, I began to get small parts in TV dramas. The first was as a choreographer in an episode of the thriller The XYY Man. The role consisted of some testing dialogue such as "He's gone upstairs. Now don't disturb us, we are very busy". Yes, it was dialogue, but it didn't worry me. After all I'd already done nearly 8 months training as a drama school. What was a demanding line like that to me?

Although it was a featured role, with dialogue, and I was paid accordingly, it didn't merit a credit in the TV Times. Those were the halcyon days where programmes on the BBC were limited to one magazine - Radio Times, and its commercial counterpart offered the much glossier and more light-hearted "TV Times".

 It was in the TV Times that I expected to feature some six years later prior to my appearance in the very popular ITV Saturday night series Tales of the Unexpected. I was playing "Young American Guest", a demanding role of some five or six lines which necessitated the use of what turned out to be a somewhat tortuous American accent. Although set in Jamaica, the episode had been mainly filmed during two rain soaked weeks at Saunton Sands near Barnstaple in Devon, with a couple of catch up days in the Mediterranean two months later.

 All that mattered nought to me. What was important was the fact that the TV Times credit list, and in those days they did actually bother to credit people who were in the programme, would read
Young American Guest - Paul Clayton. Names are important to all of us.  I had just escaped drama school, a time when all of us were being asked to assess our names and wondering whether Equity would allow us to be ourselves, or ask us to create some other schizophrenic identity for our work.

The TV Times was duly purchased. In fact I think I barely got it over the counter, and standing in the newsagents I opened the page. And there it was.  Young American guest - Paul CLAYDON. All that work, all those terribly delivered American vowel sounds reduced to a typing error. I have to admit that I was heartbroken. In this business what you're trying to make is your name, so when people don't get it right, it hurts.

I've got over it. Even today, when the Radio Times barely has room for any more than the five or six leading actors in a programme, and when the credits are so often pushed to the top left-hand corner of the screen in a font size so small you need a degree in microscopic biology to read them, it's still good to see your name on a TV programme.

This week, thanks to a brilliant piece of scheduling by the BBC,  Tuesday evening will be full Clayton evening. My name will be flying up the credits at the end of Holby City,  and then a mere 57 minutes later, it will be flying up the screen again in the credits for the drama series The Split.

 Fingers crossed they've got it right and fingers crossed that I have too


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