Now...be honest. Does anyone remember Back Up? The police serial based in Birmingham? No?
I know I find it hard, and I was in it!
I own one VHS copy of the episode in which I told someone off in my office and asked for a cup of tea in a pub, but the rest is a bit of a blur.
There's nothing about it on the internet. No stills. No information. There are no videos of it for sale in even the biggest flagship of an HMV you could find. Not even the BBC shop sells anything to do with it. It's as though this whole white elephant of a programme has been buried deep in the vaults only to be released on the death of the last living cast member to protect the families of all concerned...
When the green light was finally given for the second series - for indeed, yes, I reckon the second outing of this masterpiece was, in fact, a series and not a 'serial', in that each episode existed in its own right with its own plot - there was a huge collective sigh of relief from all the various members of the cast. Well, not all. I remember Oliver Milburn declined, having far bigger fish to fry apparently. The rest of us were pretty chuffed. Personally, I was bloody ecstatic. I needed the money. I needed a fresh contract to prove I was a man with enough of a financial future to pay back the thousands of pounds that the Nationwide Building Society were considering lending me to 1) buy the home I already owned off she who must be appeased, 2) provide afore-mentioned object of appeasement enough money to put a sizable deposit down on a larger property, and 3) re-fill own home with furniture!
Number 3 was a not inconsiderable amount of money. On the day of exchange, I walked through the front door of my old/new home and thought the place had been looted. There was absolutely nothing there. No fridge; no washing machine; nothing to sit on, not even so much as a box. Even the electricity had been cut off! All I could find in the place was one 'Macdonalds' plastic cup and plate, and one knife - baby's 'first' knife... plastic and four inches long.
It was a good job the knife was plastic as anything sharper would have been too tempting, the way I was feeling. (Suicidal, that is... not murderous.)
Luckily, the bed I had ordered a few days before arrived that afternoon, so I had something to sleep on after my evening meal - fish and chips eaten off the plastic plate and a tin of Guinness drunk out of the plastic mug.
The thinking behind moving back into the place I'd lived in with my kids, and, for the previous eighteen months while I'd been sleeping on the friend's metaphorical 'sofa', I'd used as a base to look after them while their mother worked, was to create some sort of continuity for both them and myself. That first night, I realised that I may have got it wrong. The place was empty: empty of things and empty of life. The walls were grubby with the dusty stencils left by the frames of the many pictures and photographs of the family that no longer lived there - my family. I could have been anywhere, any place.
I lay on my new bed, shielding my eyes from the glare of the bare bulb above me (I had discovered that the electricity hadn't in fact been cut off as a last act of Saddam-esque defiance. A fuse had blown at some point during the move). I'd got what I'd wanted and it wasn't all that it was cracked up to be.
So I covered it all in bright, orange paint...
Of course, I didn't, but you get the idea...
To add to my catalogue of joys, my career was also lurching into a new phase. The previous three or four years, I had slipped into a very nice routine: "Maid Marian" in the summer, pantomime over Christmas and New Year, commercials in between, and a play. Not only did it seem that I wasn't going to be in a pantomime that coming Christmas - celebs are cast by March at the latest... and here I was in August with no booking! (Maid Marian hadn't been on TV for two years and pantomime producers, rather like ex-wives, are vicious, unforgiving and mercenary) - but, two-thirds of the way through the filming of Back Up that summer, I got a call from the producer telling me that they'd decided to end my association with the programme by killing off Inspector Harlow in the last episode!
I stood there with my mobile on my ear and tried to sound as equable as possible, but inside, I was devastated. The problem it seemed - to me, anyway - was that I was being paid far more than my contribution merited. Viewing figures had fallen by the end of the first series, budgets were being revised during this one, and Harlow was getting the chop!
The BBC had a payment system they'd used for decades - and have only recently got rid of - where you could never work for them and be paid less than the last time. It involved the use of four "Categories". An actor would start off on "Cat One" and stay there for years until he landed a part that his agent convinced the accountants was a definite step-up, and he'd be granted a higher "Cat Two" fee. He could now never be paid less than this fee for the rest of his career with the BBC, even if he went back to playing a deaf mute, in a coma, for half a scene in Holby City, after a long period of unemployment - the actor's unemployment, that is, not the mute's - he'd still receive this higher rating. This also meant that they'd try to keep the fee as low as possible for as long as possible. And they'd pay you in wood shavings if it was your first time for the Corps. "Maid Marian" was my first job, and, despite being given a rating of "Category One - Special High", as I was playing a lead role, my expenses cheque for the shoot came to more than my fee. I was paid less, in fact, during the first two series, than the extras standing behind me. By series four of "Maid Marian", I had managed to negotiate myself up a couple of levels, so when offered "Back Up" two years later, the system came through for me and I found myself being paid more than the majority of the rest of the main cast, who were all either younger than me or hadn't done much TV before.
This financial advantage quickly became a bit of a liability. As I said, Inspector Harlow seemed to disappear after the third episode of the first serial and my work-load shrank considerably. Even off-set, things weren't looking good. One afternoon, we were all called in for the official cast publicity shoot and I had found myself stuck in at the very edge of the group, as an afterthought, having spent most of the session being ignored by all and sundry, standing behind the photographer on my own and feeling a bit spare.
I admit all this this was a little difficult for me and my ego to take, having been at the centre of lens-attention only two years before. Harlow had become a bit of a non-event, and an expensive one at that. Our contracts had options on us for three years, possibly stretching to five. I wanted to be in it for the long haul but I began to get the distinct impression I was just on a short stop-over and not worth the cost of the ticket so, when I got this call telling me the bad news, it didn't come as a complete bolt from the blue.
This didn't stop my feeling pretty bloody sorry for myself and, added to this, there was also an unexpected sensation of intense grief! Even though Harlow seemed to me to be a bit of a twit, a strange bond had actually grown between he and I, and I felt betrayed on his behalf. My next visit to the set, after the news was out, was very odd. Everyone knew I was on TV's death-row. It felt very lonely and, by the end of that day, I was exhausted with the effort of maintaining a facade of care-free acceptance.
As consolation, I was told that Harlow's death would be a high-light: dramatic and a bit of a show-stopper. There was talk of being shot, of being badly beaten up. I had visions of tearful scenes at hospital bedsides with all the other characters shocked into spending a lot of screen time talking about how wonderful I was.
In the end, after weeks of promises of explosions, stunt work and general butchery, true to form, the writers didn't bother doing anything at all and, in his last scene in the last episode, Harlow simply ran round a corner into an alley during a mini-riot at a factory and never reappeared. My intense disappointment was relieved slightly a few months later by the fact that it was to transpire that no-one would actually survive that last episode: Back Up was scrapped after this series aired. Harlow had gone, but he made damn sure he took everyone with him...
But, back in April, there was no way I could have foreseen any of this. The money was great, the workload light, and, not being particularly known for having an over-vaunting ambitious streak, these two factors seemed to me to add up to a personal recipe for total happiness.
This time round, I got to join the rest of the gang on the team-building week-end at Clumber Park before filming started. The atmosphere was a lot less hysterical this time round. (Interestingly, it was also decided that it was also unnecessary to dye my hair, assuming - rightly - that no-one would notice)
After reading the first three episodes that weekend in the Clumber Park Hotel, I quickly realised that things would be carrying on from where we had left off the year before and that my contribution would be patchy at best. There had been big talk of how Harlow's marriage and home-life would be examined during the series and, occasionally, vague references to all this had actually made it into the script during the first series, but nothing ever came of it, and a cursory flick through the new scripts convinced me that things weren't about to change.
My character continued to appear not very often but, this time, didn't even get out much! He seemed to spend most of his time in his office chastising the other characters for something or other that they'd done during the far more exciting scenes filmed outside the station that he hadn't been written into! Even when he was allowed out, he never had much to say. It was beginning to take its toll. Not only did I begin to lose a sense of being part of this project, more upsettingly, I began to lose my confidence. I began to hide behind vehicles on set to avoid being used in any of the shots. After all, it's not an impossible leap to begin to suspect that maybe everyone just thinks you're crap, and, after I was told that they wanted to kill me off, it felt like the Thespiaen rug had been well and truly pulled out from under me and the simplest of scenes became impossible to enjoy. Simply standing up with a camera pointing in my direction became an ordeal. I was a wreck...
I needed to find something else to keep me sane while 'on duty'. Technically in possession of a girl-friend at the time, the option of general tartery to keep me amused was not an option, so I did what any obsessive would do in my situation: exercise to excess.
I've always used squash as a form of relaxation and displacement. I'd much rather obsess about hitting a little rubber ball accurately for an hour or two than the fact I'm heading inexorably towards a retirement home, and dribbling, thigh-scratching oblivion. "Illis directus et repetitio gaudium addere" as it says on the Morris' family crest (Midlands' branch)...
The previous year, during the filming of series one, I had gone to the wedding of Dave Clarke and Becky Poole and, it was at this wedding, I was introduced to the man who was to help me massively in my quest for rubber-balled, sweaty nirvana during this, my second stab at copper-acting in Birmingham.
Dave Clarke, the groom, was a professional squash coach at Lexden Squash Club, Colchester, and Becky was in the English top ten. I got to know them both through my habit of joining local squash clubs whenever I worked away from home. On this occasion, September 1994, I was working at the Colchester Mercury Theatre and, on my first night there, drove around and found Lexden. Usually, most of the players in these provincial clubs were so bad, I seemed to never be able to get a good game from any of them. It's amazing how many players suffer from self-delusion. The slightest imbalance between two players can open up a gap large enough to make the minutely better player believe he has the ability of a world champion. The next day, he can be made to look like a beginner by another opponent. So, I'd arrange matches with self-confessed 'excellent' players at these clubs and find myself hardly breaking sweat.
My first visit to Lexden, however, was a completely different kettle of fish. I went in one morning for a hit by myself. The club was down a long, long drive in the grounds of a school. This being around eleven o' clock, the place was empty but for the odd cleaning lady with a hoover. After half an hour or so of the usual over-hitting, snatching and missing entirely, I heard someone walk onto the court next door to me and begin to produce the unmistakeable sound of ball being flattened by string that only professional players can achieve. I left my court and peeked around the corner to see who it was who was leathering the ball with such metronomic ferocity at a time when everyone else was at work. It was Del Harris. I sat down open mouthed as I watched this famous "golden-boy" of English squash go through his routines. As if that wasn't enough, ten minutes later, Chris Walker and Tony Hands wandered in to join him and - who was this? - I'm sure I'd watched the guy who'd just sat next to me, play Jansher Khan in the last British Open final! But he was Australian! Rodney Eyles! What on earth was he doing here? More to the point, what the hell was I doing there?!
To illustrate the enormity of the situation, imagine playing cricket in the park and Ian Botham wanders up for a bowl - as in the red leather variety, not "Shredded Wheat"; imagine kicking a ball around with your mates and, I don't know, Roy Keane is playing on the next pitch; imagine stroking a few reds down the snooker club and Steven Hendry's arse is bending over the table next to yours... I could go on. It turned out that this was where Del Harris grew up and spent all those afternoons after school turning himself into the World Junior Champion. Chris and Tone came along a year or so later and rose to the Del Harris challenge and became top ten players too. It seemed I had stumbled into a hotbed of squash training nestled in Leafy Lexden! I watched the rest of their training session like some dumb-struck groupie. I was there for six weeks and it was during this time I got to become friends with Dave Clarke and his fiancee, and even managed to get onto nodding terms in the shower with a few of the big nobs... So it was, I met up with them all again, two years later, at the wedding.
The wedding took place very near Birmingham during the filming of the first serial, on a day off for the troops, so I was able to throw off the uniform and join them both. Most of their guests were professional, gifted squash players... and Essex girls. The girls were great value, but I still felt a little over-awed and out of place with the players. Luckily, at the reception, I was sat next to this man from Edgbaston Priory Squash Club in Birmingham who ran the team there and, as a consquence had a little influence over the membership. During the meal, he offered me temporary membership at this fabulous club the following year, if a second series was made and I found myself back in the Midlands in my capacity as mock-policeman. As soon as I arrived, I made the call and got down there as quickly as my little chicken-legs could carry me...
The club was a ten minute burble from the hotel. I had coaching, swam in the pool outside in the sunshine and generally had a great time. I ran the canals in the long evenings and used the hotel gym. I even used to run up the stairs at the back of the hotel from basement to roof to strengthen my legs... for fun!
By the time I returned to London, I was a man of iron..