claytoncast

This week has seen me have a little time free so a two day visit up to Yorkshire was on the cards. Mother who is 88 has recently entered the digital world. After strong denial that she would ever use one, I bought her a first video recorder in 1987 from the profits I made from my somewhat glittering appearance in Ken Russell's "Salome's Last Dance" - mercifully no longer available on DVD. After leaving her a set of instructions as to how to record and watch programmes on a set of cards, the video soon became a mainstay of her life and she loved it for watching her soaps etc on evenings when she had been out at bowls club meetings, or parish council shindigs. After many years of use, the video finally gave up its existence in late January of this year and evenings of missing Emmerdale started to become a problem. Now to everyone who has one, the digibox is the key to changing your whole lifestyle regarding watching tv. You store up programmes you want to watch and are ...

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 year...

Well what a week it has been. Starting with the most un-birthday like birthday last Monday. The day saw me working at McDonalds – Big Mac and Fries anyone? – last Monday morning. Monday afternoon was spent in the ophthalmology department at Kings waiting to find out about the cataracts in my eyes. I am going to have two ops to remove them! And then the evening took me to Birmingham where on Tuesday I spent my first day filming as “Rowly Calderone” my character for five episodes of “Doctors: Rowly is a larger than life figure who everyone thinks is gay, but who turns out to have a big crush on his old college friend ~Julia, played by Diane Keen. Good fun to play but there’s no time on “Doctors to sit back and enjoy things. Tuesday saw us film an outdoor picnic before lunch and then a further fifteen scenes in Julia’s house which took us up to wrap time at 7pm Wednesday morning dawned bright and clear in South London and Gatwick, but not so in Venice our holiday destination. We landed mi...

Probably one of the most wonderful things about being a freelancer and an actor is the element of surprise. Amidst the insecurity of unemployment, the constant jiggling of bank accounts while waiting for invoices to be paid and the never ending lack of confidence and absolute certainty that you will never work again, there are small diamonds of surprise that sparkle in the mire. Two this week for me as Jupiter moves into Pisces for the first time in ten years. I was offered a telly without auditioning for it. Out of the blue the phone rings with the rather wonderful Kevin from my agents office announcing that the BBC have just rung to ask if I would do five episodes of "Doctors", their flagship daytime soap. This is the first time that this has happened. I have auditioned for thousands of tellys but never before has one, and a meaty one at that, been offered without an interview - Word is getting out at last.. It's nice to think that even after 31 years of being an actor ...