...in this series, Maid Marian was the driving force. She was the outlaw, and everyone else got involved by accident, Robin included, who was a slightly camp(!) clothes' designer who Marian had grabbed arbitrarily as a hostage while escaping the clutches of the Sheriff of Nottingham's guards. Robin wasn't necessarily camp in the script, but, casting me in the role, camp was what he became.
So, despite my tan and slightly toned stick-thin physique, Claire moved on. She moved on quite far actually: Los Angeles. She was away for three months, trying to make contacts over there and be in movies. It was hard for her. She would be seeing someone for a ten line part in some film or other and be in after Jenny Agutter. She came home having given it her best shot.
For the last week of the "Cabaret" tour, we were in Harlow and I moved back in to my Mum's house and spent most of my time there checking the answer machine to see if Claire had called.
One morning, David Bell, a friend of the family and next-road neighbour dropped a couple of scripts through the door for me to look at. It was a comedy series (serial? - sorry, I won't do that anymore...). A series for children's TV written by Tony Robinson. Now, scripts dropping through the door wasn't a regular thing for me. In fact, it had never happened before and has rarely happened since. I read them both and immediately felt under-qualified. This was funny stuff. This was going to be on TV. This was written by Tony Robinson.
I met with David B. at the BBC in Elstree and read for the part. That meeting went well, surprisingly. After reading the script at home, I really had no idea how to do it. The character was described as 'a medallion man and a complete prat'. With 'comedy' in my head and 'The Comic Strip presents' there too, I was completely unsure what this guy sounded like. I tried 'funny' Oo Arrgh. I tried 'funny' Brummy. I tried just being myself (not funny at all). I walked into the BBC therefore a blank page.
There was one indication of the type of character I was reading for. Quite often, at the end of each line, he would say, "you know?" as in "I'm a close friend of the King, you know?" or "I'm pretty stylish, you know?" not in an angry way, just as a tag. I began to read and, with David's help, got it. He was a complete Hooray, a chinless wonder. I was asked back later that week to read it again with Tony R. present. As my turn was announced, Kate Lonergan walked out of the casting room. I'd known Kate for years as the girlfriend of Steve Casey, who was in my year at drama school. She had just read for, and been offered, the lead part.
I had a splitting head-ache and felt pretty knackered, finishing off the tour and driving to Harlow every afternoon, but gave it my best shot. Tony's reaction was subtle to the point of disinterest. I drove home fearing the worst.
By the time I got there, David had already rung and offered me the part sensing that I was about to stick my head in the gas oven.
Judy Dench has famously said that the best part of any job is saying 'yes' to it on the phone, and that it sort of goes down-hill from that moment on. The sense of elation is certainly immense. Your life suddenly becomes transformed. The mind rushes on to all the possibilities the new job will bring: higher profile, fame, fortune, a new experience, travel - unless, of course, you've just said 'yes' to a job selling magazines dressed up as a chicken, in which case the scope for deep joy is strictly limited, almost turning to despair even before the 'yes' begrudgingly comes out of your mouth.
I mention magazines and chicken costumes because that was precisely what I met some people about a few months out of drama school. I met them in an underground car-park somewhere in the centre of London to try the costume on... it didn't fit, thank God, so I was spared the ignominy of having to take the job.
I've always believed, however, that every job has its good points - even the chicken one could have been a laugh - and have very rarely turned down any offer of work. I don't understand the thinking behind being over-selective, certainly at the beginning of a career. It's a job, for goodness sake! It's much better to be out there doing something - again, even the chicken - than sitting at home watching Countdown or writing endless drivel on the computer...
At a height of my 'success', I refused a play in Colchester. My reasons were that I'd just finished filming a series (...?) of Back Up, had a panto booked three months later and wanted to spend some time in London with a burgeoning relationship ( groan...). I remember at the time still feeling uneasy about my decision even with all the justifications I'd come up with, and my unease was well-founded. A year later, I went to Colchester (with a moustache) to play Jack in "The Importance of Being Earnest". I met and became great friends with Ben Nealon, who was camping around as Algernon - a welcome change from all the butch behaviour required in his capacity as Captain Jeremy Forsythe in "Soldier Soldier" on the TV. It turned out that I would have met Ben a year earlier as he had been in the show I'd turned down and, more annoyingly, told me what a ball he'd had in Colchester with its university and consequently high numbers of young things partying and generally behaving badly. Bugger!
So, unless it's going to be an all-male version of "Oh, Calcutta!" in Swindon, I'm your man.
Saying 'Yes' to David Bell was the best feeling in the world. I hadn't done much on the TV at that point - apart from my infamously tense "Inspector Morse" and even more infamously well-endowed appearance in the film, "Personal Services" - so I was tremendously excited by the whole idea.
Bouyed up with exuberance and confidence, I was chosen to be in the next Maxwell House commercial campaign. "A happy actor gathers more work", is a maxim I've not only just made up but also believe to be very true and live by. Happy actors don't give too much of a stuff whether they get the job or not, and so always get offered it. Happy actors exude confidence and joie de vivre which is very attractive for casting directors. After all, who needs a miserable, resentful, unfulfilled Equity member when you could have a laugh!? Happy actors aren't nervous.
And I was a very happy actor indeed. Forgetting the recent trials and tribulations, Spring was here and the jobs were coming in.
The commercial was based around a 'Flintstones' idea where the hero sits down on the ground, dressed in rags and a huge plastic head-dress with horns, and tries to come up with the 'wheel'. He produces a square bit of rock (foam) and a triangle bit of rock (foam) and scratches his head as only actors in commercials can. Cue the sound of an engine starting up and out of the next-door cave rides this guy with a rock crash-helmet (foam) on a Harley-Davidson motorcycle (not foam), wearing shades and looking very pleased with himself, pausing only to swiftly turn to the camera and sing 'Get the Max' with his glamourous girly on the back. People get paid shed-loads to write this stuff, you know!
Surprisingly, I was cast as the cool guy on the bike and not the cretin with the joke rocks. I had to go down to Dorking to a Harley dealer a week or so before the shoot and ride a few of the bikes to get the feel of them. Even though it was the first time I'd got onto a bike since the accident, my fears were quickly put to one side when the model playing the girly turned up. We spent the afternoon on a brand new Harley Soft-Tail swooping round the countryside of Dorking in the sun-shine. Surely, it doesn't get much better than that? God bless Maxwell House! I'll drink it always! - if ever the Nescafe Gold Blend runs out.
Commercials are great. I've travelled the world filming them. Without them, I'm sure I'd be doing something else other than acting. Year after year, they've given me enough money to pretend I have a proper job and this was no exception. They were paying me to be on a beautiful bike with a beautiful girl on a beautiful day. Grand.
Who cared if the commercial ended up being shown at agency Christmas parties as a joke, under the title, "The Worst Commercial made - EVER!" (Well, maybe the client cared a bit) We all had a ball making it and I got to meet Jo.
Jo was the girl on the back of the bike, and we got on like a house on fire. A real tonic for me she was, after the months of rejection and upset. We met up for a date a week or so after filming finished and started 'going out'. I say 'going out' because she, being only nineteen, lived with her parents, and I, being twenty-six, did too - live with my parents, that is, not hers. She had the most incredible hair. Strong, thick hair has always been attractive to me - maybe I should have married a docker called Steve - it seems to broadcast health and well-being. Jo's hair was a veritable beacon of strong genes. She could straighten it, curl it, tie it up, plat it, braid it. You name it, she could do it with this mass of follicles. I'd spend hours waiting for her to get ready. If she washed it, it would take a week to dry properly. She also had a great set of teeth, a lovely smile and was fifteen hands high...
Rehearsals at the BBC started in April. "Maid Marian and Her Merry Men" was the title and I was playing the part of Robin. The joke was that, in this series, Maid Marian was the driving force. She was the outlaw, and everyone else got involved by accident, Robin included, who was a slightly camp(!) clothes' designer who Marian had grabbed arbitrarily as a hostage while escaping the clutches of the Sheriff of Nottingham's guards. Robin wasn't necessarily camp in the script, but, casting me in the role, camp was what he became.
We had ten days to rehearse. We spent each day generally running through the scenes and working out who might stand where. All would change, of course, when we got to the location. They'd looked at various spots in the UK - I remember Yorkshire was a strong possibility - but they'd gone for an area around Minehead in Somerset that provided Cleve Abbey, which could be transformed into Nottingham Castle with wood and computer software; a valley that ran through the bottom of Porlock Hill that could be transformed into the village of Worksop with lots of wood and hard work; and Nettlecombe Woods that could be transformed into...a wood, with very little effort at all.