My theatre acting has been occasionally sparse. Especially recently whilst I’ve been voicing and writing and doing films etc. Though I do lots of singing and sketches in my bands. Some good bits though. I don’t count singing in Aida at Fulham Town Hall when I was eight, as I lost my voice and mimed whilst carrying a papier mache wood finish torch that reeked of size (theatre glue) and stuck to your hand leaving a rather nasty brown residue. You could hide behind it though, which when you’re miming and not really wanting to be there, is a good thing. I was also quite small at the time so no one missed me. There was just this torch magically moving on its own with a pair of little legs below it.
3 Musketeers
As a child I also played Athos in a version of The Three Musketeers at the director Michael Powell’s house in Melbury Road Kensington. (He was a top film director of the 50s. Red Shoes, Colonel Blimp and Peeping Tom were three of his creations) He lived up the road (my mother and father lived at Flat 2 Number One) and I used to play soldiers with his son Columba. Columba had a spookily real looking replica sub-machine gun borrowed from a film set whereas we all had plastic ‘FN’ rifles or cowboy pistols. One boy whose heart wasn’t really in it had a water pistol. Columba was always a Captain whereas I was always a lance corporal on guard duty. But I was allowed to stand on a chair as if I was up a tower. I remember being quite pleased when I was promoted to corporal. Even then I was getting into character.
Big laugh
I remember in the mists of time that in the play I had a line ‘my friend you are very indiscreet’ that got a big laugh, I think because it was a small nine year old boy delivering it in a fruity French accent. That’s me third from the left. My hat is an old cowboy hat converted into a sort of French musketeer’s hat. Columba to the left in the cloak appears to have a real musketeer’s hat. But then he would. The boy next to me is wearing wellies. We were asked to pay for the tabards with crosses on them if we wanted them afterwards. Tchah.
I like pills
I reprised my French acting in a school French play where a doctor was handing out pills, and I uttered the immortal line ‘Puis j’en avoir deux monsieur, j’aime beaucoup les pillules?’ (may I have two please sir? I like pills very much’.) It worries me that I can remember these lines and nothing else about the play. Though I do remember a boy called David Bean was in it brilliantly playing a girl. He’s now a very eminent QC. Perhaps his wig wearing then stirred up a desire for wig wearing as a career?
The Daniel Jazz
I also did the first version of the pop opera Daniel Jazz at school where I was in the choir. And various concerts when I was a first treble then a second, then an alto. School was quite an interesting theatrical start. The innovative though apparently tortured (I liked him) English master in charge of drama Harry Quinn had good ideas of what to put on. Consequently I was in The Fire Raisers, the Marowitz Hamlet, Orpheus in the Underworld, and Sergeant Musgrave’s Dance. I was then in the National Youth Theatre in a show called ‘The Children’s Crusade’ by Peter Terson which had Dan Day Lewis in it, but was offered the opportunity mid rehearsal to work for director Paul Marcus in Wedekind’s ‘Spring’s Awakening’, the first English production of the show which had a ‘masturbation’ scene, so left Ron Daniel’s production (I only had one line anyway despite being offered a lead by Bob Thomson and Alan Swift who were running the rehearsals till the director got there). I got a bit of press for being in the Wedekind play due to its ‘salacious’ nature but have no memory of who else was in it other than a friend called Jonathan Ferris who has since become a Judge! And the wank scene was done behind a gauze so nobody could see anything! Several mac wearing audience members went away bitterly disappointed. I also did ‘Enter a FreeMan‘ by Tom Stoppard at Godolphin and Latymer Girls’ school. I remember the bloke playing the lead never actually learnt his lines and kept wandering over to the proscenium arch where a young lady was sitting with the book. ‘Yes?’ Seemed to punctuate everything he said and after a bit he didn’t bother to move from the prompter and we just addressed all our lines to him there. By the last night he knew it and lo and behold it was a completely new show as the dynamics changed completely. To be fair to him we hadn’t had a huge amount of time to rehearse.
The Lord of Misrule
The next year at the Youth Theatre I was in ‘The Lord of Misrule’ which was directed by Bob and Allan from the year before (which also featured Kate Buffery and Simon Shepherd who both went on to star in TV series and Nigel Cole who directed Saving Grace and a fabulous actress called Tiggar Wild who we all fell in love with (well I did)). It was about Shakespearen theatre. I had a lead role! I got a really good review from the celebrated critic FR Leavis who rather nicely said I would make it as a professional actor. Though some other bloke who I’ve forgotten said I had a lisp.
The following year in the NYT I was in a show written by Barrie Keefe called
‘Here Comes the Sun’.
This is me and lovely actress Annie Miles (then Ann Miller) who married ace sound man Bobby Aitken. I had a nice part and sang a song, Donovan’s ‘Catch the Wind’ to Anne! Luckily it didn’t have too many chords.
I remember taking her out for a burger in Hampstead. We held hands. And then her mother picked her up. That’s my rather lovely guitar in the picture, destroyed accidentally by my 4 year old daughter who jumped on the neck. As you do. When you’re four.
University
Uni then took over and I was in a variety of shows at the Gulbenkian in Hull, like Durrenmatt’s ‘The Visit’, Pinter’s ‘the Collection’, Antony Minghella’s ‘Mobius the Stripper’, (Yes Anthony Minghella the film director. He was a student then lecturer at the University.) Joe Orton’s ‘Ruffian on the Stair’, playing the Ruffian.
And the wonderful Syd Cheatle’s ‘Straight Up’. I love that play. Don McBride as Father O’Hooligan was superbly funny.This is me above in ‘Straight Up‘ with Martin Bostock, and here I am below in the same play a dress and wig. Blonde isn’t quite me I think. This is me in ‘Ruffian on the Stair’. They were all my own clothes!
This below is a pic of Tony Minghella’s musical ‘Mobius the Stripper’ which starred the brilliantly funny Jimmy Swann. (that’s him at the back) I’m in the corner there looking er….just looking. I have a cassette of the songs somewhere. I’ll find em. They’re good! We did it at Spring Street Theatre in Hull. My only memory of the show is unfortunately that I was convinced when I was singing my song ‘It’s after four they’ve closed the door’ that my flies were undone as two girls in the audience below me started giggling and pointing at me. Carolyn Choa who Tony eventually married, is the girl on the right. Sue Lovett and Carole Braithwaite are the other two. I liked them. Ian MacNulty is the MC. He was also in Straight Up. He was a very good actor.
Here’s a picture of a masked play I did of WB Yeats’ ‘The Only Jealousy of Emer‘ which was all verse. I played the kneeling bloke in the red mask in the front, who was Cuchulain. There was another Cuchulain in it who was ‘The Ghost of Cuchulain’. But Cuchulain wasn’t dead. Yes. It was confusing. As we were all wearing masks I could have said I was any of them and you’d be none the wiser. In fact I needn’t be in this picture at all. And might not be. But I am. This is me in the front kneeling, as I said. I knelt for about thirty five minutes before saying my long speech and in fact shaking with the effort of maintaining this peculiar posture and on one occasion dying for the loo. I treated the performance as a huge task that would be character forming, whereas in reality it has put me off ever performing something vaguely uncomfortable (in a mask) again. The sweat was pouring down by face whilst I was doing this. The pins and needles were excrutiating. I can’t recall who was in the show with me but I suppose it was the usual suspects from my year. So possibly Vanda Horvarth is there. And Gary Yershon.(nominated for a musical Oscar for Mike Leigh’s ‘Turner’) And Carolyn Choa. Or not.
Westcliff
During my time in the NYT I was snapped up by agents Freddie Vale and Howard Pays at CCA with the help of Casting Director Maggie Cartier (her daughter Corinne lived round the corner and was a friend) and they got me work at Westcliff Theatre run by the talented Chris Dunham. We did The Merchant of Venice – I played Tubal (‘I often came where I did hear of her but cannot find her’ being my favourite (and only) line) with a very crap crepe beard, and also Moore in David Storey’s play about a rugby league team ‘The Changing Room’. Vince Marzello was a lovely American actor in the show with a complicated American Yorkshire accent. I think a lot of his lines were cut. But we were over-runninhg. Another of the actors was the very funny Ken Oxtoby who would revel in the shower scene making sure everyone in the audience got a significant view of his huge er nakedness after he’d worked on it for a few minutes in the wings. ‘The ladies are going to love this!’ he’d say. He would ‘enter’ (ooh missus) to shrieks. Personally I was happy with my lack of girth on stage. Robert Fyffe, who made his name in ‘Last of the Summer Wine’ was another sweet man who on one occasion had to cope with the lead actor arriving on stage pissed out of his head and determined to finish the show asap, constantly delivering lines from the last scene at Robert who was playing the caretaker. Robert managed to steer him and the show in the right direction. Afterwards a friend who had been watching the show said ‘bloody hell that bloke playing the caretaker was all over the place with his lines wasn’t he!’ having no idea Robert had saved the day. Clive Carter was another nice bloke in the cast who has since been in several West End shows. He was in Into the Woods and Away From Home and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory in the West End. And then of course there was the Irish bloke with the English accent Pierce Brosnan. I wonder what happened to him?
Almost Free
In the meantime I did a play by Frank Marcus at the Almost Free Theatre called the Ballad of Wilfred 2nd. The cast’s names escape me. And everything else about it really. Other than the fact I got all my kit off once again as I had done in ‘the Changing Room’. Typecast? I do recall having a pair of bright gold baseball boots though. Nude in a pair of gold baseball boots. Hmmm.
Finborough Arms
In 1979 I went to live in Earl’s Court in Redcliffe Street just round the corner from the now celebrated home of new writing, the Finborough Arms pub which had just been set up as a pub theatre by actor David Purcell who I played cricket with (well they did some stuff in the wine bar and then gravitated to the room upstairs. It was very spartan stuff) It was very handy as I could turn up just minutes before I was on in one play as long as I’d turned up earlier to say that I was at home having a cuppa across the road. I then did Jeremy Kingston’s comedy ‘Oedipus at the Crossroads‘ playing Oedipus. This was quite a well publicized production as Jeremy was the Theatre Critic of the Times at the time. Consequently there were seven members of the broadsheets there on the opening night. Unfortunately only 4 members of the public turned up so we played to 11, seven of whom were critics! It was well reviewed! A highlight for me was simulating sexual intercourse with the Sphynx on top of a built in cupboard in the corner. It was a well written and funny show. Once again, other than June Abbot who played the Sphynx I have forgotten everyone else. Sorry.
Here’s a review:
Bentley
I did a play called ‘Bentley’ at Croydon warehouse in 1980 directed by the powerhouse that was Richard Ireson who had founded the theatre who eventually set up the actors’ agency Narrow Road with Tim Brown. Gary Oldham who tragically died too young of cancer played ‘Bentley’ and I was ‘Craig’ amongst other characters. A hugely enjoyable experience. Here’s a pic. I was wearing my father’s suit and trilby!
Jack and the Beanstalk
The director Bob Carlton had been at Uni with me and he was running Bubble Theatre at the time and he asked me to be in ‘Jack and the Beanstalk’ at Watford Palace playing Simple Simon. I accepted! A terrific bunch of multi talented actor/musicians most of whom went on to be in Bob’s West End hit ‘Forbidden Planet’ were in the show including Michael Mears, Matt Devitt, Nicky Furre, Colin Wakefield and Annie Miles! (from the NYT!)
Theatrical Digs
In 1980 I was playing cricket with actor Chris Douglas (he was in the Onedin Line) and he said he’d written a review called ‘Theatrical Digs‘ and would I like to be involved. Cricket was a good casting tool for me at the time! Something to do with my wicket keeping I suppose. It was fabulously funny and led to my ultimately being cast for the Hull Truck improvised show ‘Still Crazy After all these Years.‘ Theatrical Digs played at the ‘Boys’ Brigade Hall’ in Edinburgh after a try out at the Finborough. It was so successful (and funny) that it was Perrier runner -up. The winners that year were the Cambridge Footlights review team. Emma Thompson, Stephen Fry, Hugh Laurie, Tony Slattery and Paul Shearer. It featured, amongst many iconic characters, comedian ‘Bobby Bollox’, and the the great music hall artiste ‘Harry Jarvis, the Yodelling Dog Boiler.‘ I still have his cart
Here’s a clip:
And another:
And another:
Here are a few reviews:
During the success of Theatrical Digs which we transferred to London at the New End 
Theatre, on after Stephen Berkoff’s ‘Decadence’, I was spotted by Simon Stokes of the Bush Theatre – he’d been at the ‘Boys’ Brigade Hall’ to watch the show – and asked to audition for a new devised Hull Truck Mike Bradwell show, ultimately to be called ‘Still Crazy After All These Years’. I think initially Simon was confused by my silly CV in the Theatrical Digs programme which listed all my father’s films, but he still liked the array of characters I was performing created by Chris Douglas and Chrissie Roberts sufficiently to get me in. Mike had been making great creative waves with his form of improvised show. You spend ages researching a character guided by him and then he inserts you into a scenario with all the other actors and tapes it and that’s the show! I clearly impressed Mike – I remember performing one of the songs from T Digs, The Yodelling Dog Boiler (it’s above) for him at the audition and from then on I would be asked to sing it at the drop of a hat – and was offered the part! We decided to chose a ‘New Wave’ synsethizer pop artiste to research. Meanwhile Mike was utilising his ample grey cells and getting the other actors to fit in with this ‘pop’ scenario. Or perhaps he persuaded me to fit in with already decided scenario? He told me afterwards that he was toying with suggesting I try a character interested in alternative comedy but my enthusiasm for a character in the music world made him push me in this direction.
Taming of the Shrew
But first of all the week before I’d started rehearsals for the Bush show, I was asked to fill in as Tranio for The Court Theatre’s Taming of the Shrew at the Intimate Theatre Palmer’s Green. Someone had dropped out! Usually this was a venue for amateur productions, but my old cricketing pal David Purcell from the Finborough realised that he’d make some dosh by doing this show that was on the ‘O’ Level GCSE syllabus that year and we were all paid! Equity minimum! Which was about £50 per week! Needless to say 
there were large numbers of schoolkids shrieking with delight at the underwear scenes (well some of the cast just wore their underwear in the love, or ‘mousing’ scenes). I learnt the show in seven days. I don’t quite know how I did it as I’d started rehearsals for ‘Still Crazy’ and was doing ‘Theatrical Digs’ and the Shrew and driving from Palmers Green to Hampstead as T Digs was on at ten thirty! It’s scary doing a largeish Shakespearian part in only seven days and the whole thing was a massive journey of brown trousered adventure. I managed but had the lines in my pocket just in case!
Still Crazy After all These Years
This was a huge success. Universal raves in the papers. Other than the Telegraph. Who still liked me! Total sell out! Even the tour. A mega hit. ‘It’s worth seeing for Jonathan Kydd’s performance alone’ said the Listener. ‘You’ve got nothing to be ashamed about there’ said my then agent at CCA rather confusingly. He’d also brought his wife to see it rather than a casting director! I decided after this comment that perhaps a parting of the ways was a good idea and joined the wacky world of the charming Todd Joseph. Changing deckchairs on the Titanic is the usual dictum associated with getting new representation. I was amazed by Still Crazy’s success. Well not amazed. Pleased for the show. But bewildered by the response to my character. He had the audience weeping in the aisles. Which annoyed me as I was taking the character immensely seriously. That’s what happens when you improvise a show. You actually haven’t seen what’s happening before, ever. So I had no idea my character was such a figure of fun. But he’d been set up you see. I remember being deeply upset that my entrance as Alex Tyle swishing my bernouse around my neck was so hilarious.
Video
My character came on and showed a video of his act. I shot that at the Royal College of Art (well Marek Budzinski shot it) and created an uber-robot man as well as the song ‘Get Down’ that Alex could dribble on about. I drew from Russian Constructivism and Biomechanics to explain the imagery. A Drama degree can come in handy! I’ve still got the video!
(this is a remix of the vocal with my friend Jennie Jacobs from the Rudy Vees on it.)
The process of research for the play was fabulous and ultimately terrifically rewarding. I met a variety of music managers and artists including Don Letts and Thomas Dolby and indie record label managers and fixers and record pluggers and was intrigued as to how many of them were ex public schoolboys who felt the need to put on sort of mockney pseudy accents to fit in. Needless to say my character Alex had one of those. The cast were great. Thirzie Robinson, Roger Davidson and Helen Cooper. I loved it.
I visited my father when we were playing Hull Gulbenkian in hospital in Manchester when he’d been taken ill whilst filming Coronation Street.
My father died on the saturday whilst I was on the Bristol Old Vic leg of the tour. A wood pigeon appeared on the window sill soon after. I hear their hoots with a special kind of love. The cast were wonderfully supportive. On the Sunday back in Barnes, I scored a goal for Castelnau Rovers (a volley on the edge of the box) to clinch the Chiswick and District Sunday league Division one title. I dedicated it to my dad.Naturally after such a great show where I’d received terrific reviews I didn’t work for 6 months.Some newspapers!
Space Invaders
I was cast for this show about alien sightings at the Old Traverse in Edinburgh because, once you put a pair of specs on me, I looked a bit like the author Alan Spence, (if you squinted and had a good imagination) who had actually had the experience of seeing an alien (at least that was what I was led to believe) and I was playing him! The bloke who looks for aliens! But the whole show was riven with doubt from the off and the director, Peter Lichtenfels left the production and it was taken over by the charming but confused Jenny Killick who’d come too late in the day really. I have to say I never quite grasped why, but no one in the cast ever seemed particularly happy with the whole thing. I think we didn’t rehearse it enough or something and Peter appeared somewhat distracted by outside events. I think. his wife had just given birth I remember. He brought the new born in and we billed and cooed. I don’t think I ever understood what was going on! I remember there not being any music for a scene and I attempted to write some. I do recall not learning a chunk and reading it out behind the portable seats! I had a few scenes with Andy Gray who was good fun, and Joyce Deans who was a woman blessed with an ability to play ten years younger and very amusing, but it’s all a bit of a blur. Maggie Macarthy, an English actress playing a very convincing Scot was lovely and I saw her at a few castings in London after that, but never since. And Ken Drury, who’s a lovely actor, I’ve seen a few times hither and thither! Here are a couple of reviews. The Glasgow Herald liked me!
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory
I played Mike TV in a 1986 touring production of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory produced by Armand Gerrard and directed by Mike Bradwell. It was 5 months work and it went everywhere..the Grand Blackpool, the Dominion Tottenham Court Road, Birmingham Hippodrome, Leeds Opera House, Southampton Mayflower, Sheffield Crucible, Liverpool Playhouse, Manchester Thingie, Bristol Wotsit etc etc all at the biggest venues. An actor called Jon Glentoran was in it as grandad who was a brilliant illustrator who I liked very much and have never seen since. Oliver Beamish was Charlie who is a fine chap. Caroline Swift as Veruca Salt. Iain Ratcliffe as Augustus Gloop. Dee Anderson as errr….My character developed as the piece went along from being a one gun toting American boy to being Murdoch from the A team. My one water pistol evolved into about 15. I had waterproof pockets and a large machine gun water pistol. Gussy Gloop and I soaked the teachers pre show and in the interval. The kids loved it. It had nothing to do with the show at all. But the kids absolutely revelled in it. Especially when I soaked a teacher. Malcolm Sinclair as Wonka though got fed up with having to work hard to get the kids’ attention after we’d been on and when we got to Sheffield with its hexagonal stage he thought I was deliberately upstaging him when in 
fact I was merely in front of a large bank of kids due to the shape of the stage who kept shouting out ‘squirt me Murdoch! Squirt me! he was not happy and we had words! Whilst doing a scene! HIM: ‘(Whisper) You little bastard….(Loud) Ah what have we here? A giant gobstopper!….(Whisper) I’ll teach you to upstage me..(Loud) Look children. Why not give it a lick?’ ME: (Whisper) ‘ ‘F*ck off! I wasn’t upstaging! It’s the shape of the stage…(loud) Wow! Would you look at that chocolate river!’…(Whisper) ‘if you had more charisma they wouldn’t be paying any attention to me anyway etc etc’ was how the dialogue went.
Cruel
I realised I was being cruel and apologized off stage saying it wasn’t my fault but the theatre designer’s. We remained friends. He was unfortunate at Bristol when he stood on the wrong mark centre stage at the end of the first half and the curtain landed on his head. I shared a dressing room with Augustus Gloop because nobody else would. He tended to threaten other members of the cast if he thought they weren’t trying hard enough. He and I got on because we’d muck about a bit away from the script! (You could when there were 2000 screaming kids) The stage manager said to me ‘he’s mad and if you like him enough to share with him, you must be mad too.’ When we were both called to the stage on the tannoy we’d shout out ‘we’re not coming. Get a couple of other luvvies to do it‘ or ‘hang on my girdle isn’t on properly’ or ‘oh my god my double hernia has become enflamed’. Or even just ‘no. fark off!’ I suppose we were quite trying but we did do 5 months of it and something had to snap occasionally!
I had a number called ‘TV Viewing’ and here it is. I actually have a vid of the whole show but think it may just stay unwatched! It’s all a bit distorted!
Here’s a review
And annuver
Duck Hunting
This play by Aleksandr Vampilov was at the newly created Latchmere theatre which is now the very successful 501. Boy wonder Lou Stein had just had a huge hit with ‘Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas’ and was a hot ticket. Consequently, for me to be asked to play a part in his next show, one that had socked it to em in Russia, was alluring to say the least. ‘Fear and Loathing’ had transferred to the West End and Lou foresaw a similar outcome for this one. We all started out with great enthusiasm despite the show being a dreaded ‘profit share’. However, for a variety of reasons, it never quite worked, and the enthusiasm waned somewhat, especially with the knowledge that were making not a sausage, as titchier audiences wandered in as the weeks went on. Was it just a bit dull? Or was it the translation? Lou even tried to get my then girlfriend Olivia to translate it it for him (she was a fluent Russian speaker and Fullbright scholar) even when we already had a version, which was however decidedly ‘clunky’. Alas he asked her to do it for nothing (well it would ‘do her CV some good’ to be associated with it) and she rightly preferred payment. So we stayed with the stiff English. The show was hampered by very long scene changes which involved moving large screens back and forth and we asked for a way to quicken everything up, but none was ever found. I incurred Lou’s wrath by refusing to do the show if there were only one or two people in the audience, especially when they were my friends who could always come back another day. We had words. ‘Jonathan, you never know who might come in late!’ was his argument. ‘Yes two more friends of the cast.’ was my response. I realised I would never work for Lou again. The positives to be had from the experience were the wit of Ros March, the fun of John Abbot, the sweetness and comedy timing of the actress playing my wife Irene Marot. The excellent late Annie Hayes was also in it with whom I struck up a nice friendship until her untimely death.
Out of Order
In 1984 I decided to have a go at writing a revue, inspired by the success of Theatrical Digs and based the idea on a very self indulgent show I’d seen in Edinburgh whilst doing Space Invaders by a very trendy American theatre company. Thus was born ‘Out of Order’. Chris Middleton, a school chum and talented quirky writer wrote it with me. Chris was a journalist and full of ways to get publicity. We asked the then well known 
Katie Rabbett, who had been out with Prince Andrew, to audition and when she didn’t, Chris got an article in the papers about how she’d turned us down! We decided to name the company after a cricket team, the IZingari, hoping they might object. They didn’t. We made it the ‘Fulham’ branch. We had a lengthy casting process which we both found bewildering which took place at the Lillee Road Fitness Centre. The number of actresses who could sing and not act and vice versa who would openly flirt with us as a substitute for talent was alarming . We found 
Juliet Prague but failed miserably to get anyone else so offered it to performers we knew. So Phil Nice from The National Review Company with whom we’d finished equal second in the Perrier and who was working with Arthur Smith as Fiasco Job Job, agreed to do it. As did a friend of my then girl friend Olivia, Maria McErlane who was doing the comedy circuit as Maria Callous. I was in it as well. It was a big success. Carole Ruggier took over for the Edinburgh run from Juliet after we did a few shows at the New End and Finborough where it became Critics Choice in Time Out. It was a mixture of silly sketches and music built around the idea that an avant garde theatre company was exploring contemporary themes via supposedly real ancient theatre pieces. However all the material was invented and written by us though some reviewers naturally thought the plays we were doing extracts from were real! Argh! It didn’t prevent the audiences from coming though! It was a sell out! We performed at the Buster Brown’s disco! Here are a couple of songs from the show and some reviews.
Unsuitable For Adults
I managed to get into this fabulous play at Liverpool Playhouse Studio by Terry Johnson and directed by Sue Hogg which had been a big hit at the Bush where Tim McInnerney from Blackadder had played my part. It was a wonderful experience. The cast were great and the play was very very funny. Jenny Lecoat played the lead role that Felicity Devonshire had had huge success with and was terrific. Michael Garner, next in London’s Burning great too. Kate Lock marvellous. The late Geoffery Wilkinson superbly sympathetic . We all stayed very cheaply at the Adelphi Hotel or in digs belonging to the wife of the man who had turned down managing the Beatles. I met Mike Leigh as Alison Steadman was in a play in the main house. He loved the show. He asked me to audition for him for his next film. I was crap. But that was in the future. Meanwhile this was a complete sell out.
The Chichester Festival
I wasn’t having much luck getting work in 1986, other than the odd ad, and was despairing of being an actor. My mother was helping by lending me her car and feeding me I was working so little. I’d been augmenting my dole money by football refereeing which got me a tenner a time for 
expenses, but put a strain on my relationship as my then girlfriend wasn’t too keen on going out with a ref. So I was rather pleased to audition for director Matthew Frances for the role of Fashion in Vanbrugh’s Relapse at the Chichester Festival, run by the urbane and friendly John Gayle which if I got in, was 6 months work. I was offered a part in the 
Relapse but as Lory, Fashion’s servant. Fashion was John Sessions. I was also understudying Loveless and in the company till the end of the run, five more shows in all. I discovered later that the boss John Gayle had also included me because I played Surrey Championship cricket and he was fed up with being beaten by the RSC and others! I did the Chalk Garden with Googie Withers, Steve Brown’s The End of the World Show with a mass of actors from all the shows, Jane 
Eyre (with Jenny Seagrove and Keith Michell) as Mason , The Relapse with Richard Briers and John Sessions , K2 a two hander with the excellent John Peters who is a friend to this day, and the Tempest where I played Caliban with Tamsin Olivier 
and Gordon Gostellow as Miranda and Prospero. That’s me grimacing with the log on me back. I was chained to the log and one leg was hobbled so I looked a bit like an upright limping tortoise.
I deliberately sounded like Gordon and Tamsin on occasions as they had taught Caliban how to speak! I have a recording of the whole show somewhere!
Car park Attendant
After all this, and the brilliant time I was having, I was convinced that this impecunious but rewarding world of art and camaraderie was for me. I then discovered that the man operating the barrier on the car park was earning more money than I was. So inspired by Jan Ravens and her then husband Steve Brown who wrote ‘The End of the World Show’ that I performed in in the Tent theatre that year – Jan and Steve were in ‘Brunch’ on Capital radio and were very proactive in that they didn’t just wait for work to come in, they wrote their own – I made a voice reel and managed through subterfuge and pushiness to get into radio 4 comedy and the world of voice overs (stories to be told somewhere else on this site) and I’m afraid theatre began to take a back seat, replaced by various shows that I wrote or co-wrote, radio series, comedy bands, and ad hoc impro stuff.
Closer to Heaven
The next proper theatre I did was in 2001 when I did the workshop for the Pet Shop Boys’ musical ‘Closer to Heaven’ directed by the ultra energetic Gemma Bodinetz who next ran the Liverpool Playhouse. I thought the piece was well written and gripping stuff with some fabulous songs including one called ‘Little Black Dress’ that never made it to the final show at the Arts. I had a great number called ‘Call me Old fashioned’. I’ll find it. Frances Barber was marvellous in it as a sort of Marianne Faithful type artiste who took over the second half. I weirdly found myself working with Frances three times in about a month. We’d done a cartoon series together, were then in the Rory Bremner Show and then in this. Alas she was peculiarly unfriendly in this show having been my pal which was immensely confusing. The one problem with the whole show and something that is typical to workshops is that a lot of the focus goes into the piece rather than the performances as the script is obviously always being tweaked. It was ultra technologically heavy as well with a mass of video screens and effects that were all put into the National Youth Theatre rehearsal rooms in Holloway. A whole theatre was built in fact including temporary seating for the investors. I actually never rehearsed some of my scenes as time eventually became so tight which was very un-nerving, including the final scene where my character tied up a lot of the loose ends. It was flying enormously by the seat of one’s pants. What was massively alarming was that a largeish audience came to the first run through where we were all grasping for lines. The Pet Shop boy Chris Lowe after the two actual performances praised me on my characterization but advised me that I’d been very tentative at the first run through. ‘I’d never done a lot of the scenes! No wonder I was tentative!’ was my reply. I didn’t make it to the West End run and not much of my character did either. I was replaced by a very big actor who was good but hardly in it. The whole show had been re-written to favour Frances Barber’s character who was now the star. I have no reviews or pictures! Sorry!
Hey Get a Life
This was my musical I did in 2003 at Jermyn Street Theatre. I played Banks. It’s on the musicals part of the site. Beset with problems it got some great reviews despite missing out on most of the big papers as we had to cancel the opening night due to illness.
Zorro
I did another work shop cast by Anne Vosser for the Zorro musical which was eventually 
on at the Garrick. It was very early on it’s development and I played Pedro, Zorro’s manservant, who eventually disappeared from the final piece having been a mute in a later version at another workshop! It was rehearsed and performed in front of investors at the American School in the Tottenham Court Road. Tim Hower who was Zorro, was absolutely fabulous. A true talent. What a terrific voice. He tended to forget where he was supposed to stand though and I grabbed him and put him on his mark a few times. The director Chris Renshaw took me aside. ‘Do that more often! It’s funny!’ he said. So I pushed and pulled Tim who was very amenable to being told where to go. That’s a pic of him. And one of Frances Ruffelle. 
That’s the last proper theatre I’ve done! Other than other shows I’ve produced! Voicing took over!