claytoncast

So this has been the first week of what I have designated as my Easter Holidays. Actually that designation has worked rather well for me. I haven’t missed work at all. Normally if I have a week with no work I feel guilty and start to worry, but this week has been remarkably care free. A trip up to Yorkshire to check on Mum. She needed to go to the opticians and as might be expected at her age that wasn’t the end of it. She now has to go to the hospital as the optician suspected that she might have the beginnings of glaucoma so she needs to get checked out and treated. The guilt comes from the fact that having spent forty-eight hours with her, she will be on her own again with me at the end of the phone. Actually the guilt only seems to be on my side. For most of the time I was up there with her she was out. Wednesday I spent in her house watching daytime television and catching up on some work while she went off to attend some function at Sheffield Cathedral. She popped back for a fe...

And so our flat has gone on the market!   We made the very difficult choice of estate agents and put it on the market. This morning, the first full day on the market the estate   agent has been on the phone twice to arrange two viewings.   So it’s probably a good job that I’m regarding today as the first day of my two-week Easter holiday. A decision I made last week when I looked in the diary and saw that I had no more work until Tuesday, May 3. Like the rest of the country my time over the next 14 days has been torn apart by the glut of bank holidays. I suppose a lot of people are rejoicing in the four-day three-day four-day week thing that is upon us. For those people who have to reach their work targets whatever, no matter how many days in the week, the next three weeks will   be the cause of a lot of extra work. I can’t see why the mandarins of Whitehall who arrange Howd the date for Kate, oops sorry, Princess Catherine as we should refer to her now , and Will...

Most people in their working lives will go for between six and ten job interviews. My partner Richard has been for about that. I’ve been for four in the last eight days alone. It is the lot of the actor that until you get to the very very top of the tree, you have to interview for virtually every job you get. It never gets easier. You may not be so nervous about each one, but you are nervous. You want to do well. You want to be offered the job at least even if you don’t eventually do it and turn it down because the fee is appalling. It’s a matter of pride. As an experienced interviewee there are many things you can judge from the interview. How it is run can often tell you a lot about the company or the production you going to work for. I recently did an interview for a new Channel 4 comedy series, which was held in some deserted rooms over a shop in East London. I only hoped that the location of the casting didn’t reflect the budget of the programme. Similarly one of my intervi...

It’s been the busiest week of the year so far. Four days working and an audition and casting on the fifth so at this point I feel for the first time for ages I have earned my weekend. Monday was a further day of rehearsal for the Ronald McDonald House Charity dinner and we were joined by the deliciously gorgeous Miss Julie Peasgood. Miss P, the voice of Glade air fresheners to the world, and I go back a long way. We shared the stage of The Other Place in Stratford in 1983 in “A New Way To Pay Old Debts” and we have bumped into each other over the years and always giggled. It was so good to have her as narrator of this piece and she did a fabulous job. As did all the actors concerned. A joy to work with and the Thursday evening performance at a dinner that raised over 400K for the charity was a triumph for all of us and the audience too. I speak in terms of 400K as Richard and I have been foraging into the world of house hunting this week. We’ve been here in Sydenham since Jan 205 and t...