Hello dear. This time I thought it might be rather nice if I dealt with rehearsals – and how you actors should conduct yourselves. Unfortunately sometimes I get reports of actors spending all their time munching on my chocolate hob-nobs, and after 4 weeks of this it adds an unnecessary expense...
Hello dears. This is my first blog. Until recently I thought that the term ‘blog’ referred to blockage problems in the toilet area. Luckily my PA filled me in so I cancelled the plumber.
Being a producer I frequently get asked to give advice to actors about auditions. So that&rs...
Over the years I have had the misfortune of reading many a show report stating how badly an actor has behaved. I understand that, like anyone, actors can get annoyed and frustrated - but hijacking props, and using the wig room as a toilet is not very considerate. If you have a problem in a com...
My dears -
Recently many actors have complained to me about a particularly horrific time they have spent in a theatre. It is a time when the director ignores them, the musical director is more concerned about the band and his baton, and the lighting and sound designers get all the praise. I...
The Voice is back!
I wanted to write this blog in letters so small they’d fit on an electron so they would convey not only the scale of my enthusiasm for this show after the first episode but also my total negativity.
Now, I realize that opening with particle physics isn’t your...
In the last number of weeks I have been on the receiving end of a phenomenon that afflicts many an actor in this modern age and has done (I would imagine) for many generations of actors before us and will do for many generations to come. This affliction is always present but seams to flare up at dif...
First I was afraid, I was petrified, then I left drama school and realised things don’t get much easier!
The entertainment business is a difficult one. It has its ups, casually interspersed amongst a myriad of downs on an ever threatening bed of rock bottom. Most of you reading th...
Money makes the world go round. This is not just a popular line inscribed on one of the many pillars of the musical theatre temple, it is a familiar adage known by all, recited by many. I, one of the many, have for years championed this as a fact of my existence and I know I’m not alone as a r...
The Voice is back!
I wanted to write this blog in letters so small they’d fit on an electron so they would convey not only the scale of my enthusiasm for this show after the first episode but also my total negativity.
Now, I realize that opening with particle physics isn’t your...
It’s been a week, and what a week it’s been.
I went to the live recording with my wife Caroline; the very talented photographer Adam Mills of Mug Photography; and Jon Hawkins, the creator of Stage Status.
I expected to be sent to the back, somewhere in the darkness of the...
“Georgie Best. Superstar, Wears frilly knickers and a Playtex bra!” I was amongst thousands of kids in the 70s who sang that, oblivious as to the original, and I still sing it whenever the credits come on to Superstar.
We’re right in the thick of it now. You can smell the ...
Everybody just calm down!
For anybody out there who thinks a theatre is where gall bladders are removed, I should inform you that the Da Vinci-like ‘Westendproducer’ managed to make his twitter based ‘Search for a Twitter Star’ into a raging success, in spite of a la...
Dying for our sins can’t have been easy and rising from the dead must have been even harder, but there are those who say that teaching the world forgiveness was the hardest thing he ever had to do.
On September the 21st he’s going to have to keep a straight face, and remember which eye ...
“And now, the end is near… in fact its gone…. So this is the wrong song.”
Leanne won. The stars lined back up and the rain poured again in the happy knowledge that the world is a real place after all and not the nightmarish creation of whoever lives just beyond the...
Right! Step away from the phone! I don't care if your colon has prolapsed and you're trying to book the last ambulance in town that offers a 'face down' service, or you've figured out the answer to the ad break question on
Loose women- do not touch that phone until I've had every single one dusted...
‘When the winds of change blow, some build walls, others build windmills” or so the saying goes. Personally I tend to get indoors when the winds of change blow because a twenty pence piece in the eye hurts like space-hopper hemorrhoids trapped in a revolving door, but this does not mean ...
Help! I'm trapped in Preston with nothing more than an ipad for company so I shall try and keep this fairly brief.
How are we all feeling about The Voice at this stage in proceedings?
I'm guessing there aren't paramedics on standby at every street corner to deal with the millions of over excit...
LIVE, LIVE, LIVE! The BBC love a bit of LIVE don’t they? They spend so much money sending people out to report LIVE for no reason whatsoever because they just can’t get enough of it. Some poor, soaked and miserable journo has to stand outside the houses of parliament to talk about ...
