This Is Local London

Anti-gay marriage arguments are not convincing

4:47pm Friday 24th May 2013

I wish I could understand the people who are so adamant that gay men or women should not be allowed to formalise and celebrate their commitment and love for each other by getting married. The bill being considered at the moment specifically protects those religions that have objections to the notion of same sex marriage so that they cannot be compelled to act contrary to their agreed beliefs. Only religions that are willing to marry same sex couples will be doing so.

When cash was the coolest way to buy

12:58pm Tuesday 21st May 2013

Do those of you over a certain age ever hanker for the days before plastic debit, credit, reward and store cards dominated all our retail and financial activities?

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Get strict with the abuse of our health system

12:48pm Monday 13th May 2013

It was initially encouraging to hear in the Queen’s Speech that the government are planning to do something about ‘Health Tourism’. I say ‘initially’ because a little research revealed that successive governments have made similar promises dating back to the days of Brown and Blair.

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A black shoe on one foot – blue on the other

2:08pm Friday 3rd May 2013

I wore a pair of odd shoes to a concert this week. I discovered when I returned home that I had spent an entire evening with friends and colleagues wearing one blue and one black shoe. None of them had commented. Too polite, perhaps? Probably not. At least one of them would have derived enormous pleasure in drawing attention to my fatal foot folly, had he noticed. It is more likely that, just as I had no idea what footwear they were sporting, they had similarly failed to deem it necessary to check mine out.

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The stresses of today’s air travel

2:02pm Friday 19th April 2013

Having returned from another trip to Australia and New Zealand with my fellow Doctor Who actors, I have had time to reflect on the business of world travel in the 21st century. I don’t suppose there are many people who relish the process of ‘getting there’, even when the journey is short. I dare say that those who travel to holiday destinations with the prospect of relaxed days by aquamarine seas, sipping cocktails and dining in a warm breeze under the stars are more disposed to endure with equanimity the stresses of air travel than those of us who travel at the behest of our employers and have to sing for our less exotic suppers in places of employment rather than leisure.

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Actual – and imagined felony

6:30pm Monday 15th April 2013

I am currently in Australia with other former Doctors Who celebrating the programme’s 50th anniversary with the time lord’s many fans down under.

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Call time on the whiplash claims

11:08am Monday 8th April 2013

I was involved this week in a legal case three years after a minor collision when a car rolled into the back of another at a roundabout when the driver’s foot slipped off the brake of an automatic car.

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Yes. Things were better in my day

12:00am Monday 25th March 2013

This week marks the demise of the iconic building, the BBC Television Centre. I have been asked to appear on the One Show on Friday evening to help celebrate the glory years of BBC Television. Whilst I am delighted to be able to share some happy memories of the wonderful programmes made by the Beeb over half a century, it is a bit like being invited to visit the home one lived in as a child to reminisce just before the demolition men move in to reduce your memories to rubble. I was lucky enough to spend a large part of the 70s and 80s at TV Centre, when the classic serial (which is now a landmark event in the television schedules) was staple fare on our screens. In quick succession, I appeared in ‘Roads to Freedom’ an adaptation of the Jean Paul Sartre trilogy), ‘War and Peace’ and ‘Cousin Bette’ by Balzac. It was perhaps naïve of me to think that this pattern would be continued in perpetuity. Looking back now, I realise just how lucky we all were to be working as actors and performers at a time when the BBC was at its most productive, a time when programmes were made by creative and innovative individuals and not by committees of administrators and accountants.

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Enough fame without these smug awards

12:00am Sunday 17th March 2013

During the BAFTA and Oscar season my wife, who was an actress until we had children and she decided to concentrate on being a mother and send me out to work, commented that she had always felt uncomfortable about the smug, self congratulatory nature of those events. Her point was that film stars and successful theatre actors have more than enough already in terms of job satisfaction, fame and income without the additional business of statuettes and ballyhoo at the celebrity junkets that surround those events.

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Let’s all help keep Wanderers afloat

11:30am Saturday 9th March 2013

WYCOMBE Wanderers are beginning to succeed more regularly on the pitch under Gareth Ainsworth, who has inspired the team to battle hard and climb steadily away from the perilous waters at the bottom of the Second Division, in which we were languishing only a few months ago.

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Why did they want my date of birth?

12:00am Sunday 3rd March 2013

MY wife was flicking through the pages of one of those unasked for catalogues that arrive in the post (and which are usually instantly recycled), when she spotted a garment she liked.

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I resent that all men have been tainted

12:00am Sunday 24th February 2013

Thirty-two years ago when I was playing King Rat in Dick Whittington in Lincoln, I befriended a seven year old girl who was one of the young local dancers that traditionally play village children in panto. She was shy and seemed somewhat lonely and apart from her more confident contemporaries. I used to chat to her in the wings and make her laugh. She became quite attached to me and I was even invited round to her home for tea by her parents, who appreciated my avuncular attitude to their daughter. She, now a 40-year-old mother of three, came last week with her parents and her husband to see the play I am currently doing in Lincoln and we met up and reminisced afterwards.

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It would be potty not to use my fame here

12:00am Monday 18th February 2013

LAST week, my daughter miraculously walked away from an accident that destroyed her car and could easily have injured or killed her. The fact that she survived with only bruises and a few aches and pains meant that it was a good day.

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