claytoncast

Most weeks I try to complete my blog on a Sunday morning. After a late start and browsing my way through the sections of the Sunday Times that I can be bothered to read (Culture, Style, Travel, and Technology - sums me up a little I feel!), I'll make a large exotic coffee liberally sweetened with vanilla to cope with my latent diabetes (!) …….and head into the study. One of the joys of buying the flat that we have had for the last eight years was that ostensibly it has three bedrooms. Two of these open directly into the lounge, and although that's going to be a problem when we eventually come to sell it, if we do, it's been a great advantage for us. It's the perfect flat for a couple who want that bit of extra space. One bedroom, laughingly referred to as the spare bedroom, is a great place for the laundry. It is where the cleaner ensconces herself for an hour on Friday morning to do the ironing, and where, during the rest of the week, washing hangs waitin...

Every time I get a new job, it's as a result of an audition. Even at the grand old age of 56, the number of times where the phone rings and my agent says that somebody has made a direct offer are few and far between. This is understandable. The casting decisions made are now in the hands of younger people. People who may have seen me on television, but don't know me, and knowing somebody, or rather getting to know them, is surely what an audition is all about. I auditioned hundreds of young people for the National Youth Theatre every year from 1984 until 2010. Sometimes in the late 80s, when work as an actor was thin on the ground, I would spend day after day during January and February working for the youth theatre seeing up to 45 aspiring young people every day. It was a tiresome process. The occasions on which the next Helen Mirren or the next Daniel Craig stepped into the room were very few and far between.  The irony of it is of course that I wasn't  doing auditi...

So recent work and holiday has taken me on two visits to the seaside. For the last weekend of march, delayed by the unseasonable snow, I was in Scarborough for the National Student Drama Festival.   Scarborough is home territory for me. Years of childhood holidays along the coast at Bridlington with day trips to the grander and slightly more brash Scarborough were peppered throughout the 1960's.  Last time I was there it was to film for the non too successful BBC series "Sugartown". That was in the depths of winter, but this visit in mid March was no different. Throughout the weekend we were  blasted by the coldest winds I have known and lashed with good solid Yorkshire rain. Emerging from the hell hole that is The Royal  Hotel, each journey outside required huge amounts of steel and determination just to get to the car.  For the participants, students from colleges and universities all over the country, it must be the most thrilling week. I never went...