Tuning in…
Tuning in…
Castaway
1 appearance
Actor best known for playing Sergeant Lewis in 'Morse' and Doctor Jack Carrouche in 'Peak Practice'.
On the island
Eight records
I've loved MacTell's stuff for years. I think he's he's our best singer-songwriter. For twenty-five years I've listened to his stuff and it I I find his songs always have something relevant to say and this is about uh letting your children make their own mistakes.
I love Prague as a city. I think it's it's beautiful and uh it it's just a a stunning piece of music. It was around when I was a kid.
This was at a record that my dad gave me. I guess when I was about ten or eleven, by Owen Brannigan, who was a a wonderful opera singer, but he recorded a lot of North Country folk songs.
this is a a record that we were listening to a lot, Madeleine and I, when our first child was born, Kitty, and it means a lot to us for that reason.
I've always loved um Elien Pipe music. It makes my hair stand on end and and this particular one, Midnight Walker, for some reason which I I've never known why always makes me think of my dad.
I could quite happily take eight of his records to the island. Uh it's it's Tikaray. He's got a fantastic band of of Africans from all over the continent.
This is another great singer-songwriter, Alan Hull, who unfortunately died last year, who who I knew on the folk circuit in the sixties around Newcastle and he formed Linda Sfarn and this is called Run for Home.
Symphony No. 1 in E minorFavourite
Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra
I remembered John Thorne Kenny McBain talking about him in it when we were having supper somewhere in in Oxford very early on in Morse and and raving about him... and he's become my favourite composer.
In conversation
Presenter asks
0:29Do you hide behind the characters you inhabit?
I think I do. I I do it less now than I used to. When I was younger I didn't have any time for my own character at all and the acting was a sort of release for me.
Presenter asks
2:11What were your points of contact in Trip Trap when you played a Wife Beater?
I decided I I that I didn't understand any of the physical side of actually brutalizing somebody physically, but The more I thought about the character I thought well I can be quite rough in an argument, verbally quite violent, and uh I just took that and and amplified it as much as I could.
Presenter asks
4:58Did you seriously consider making a living out of singing [when you were busking]?
I think at the time. You know, there was nothing else. I didn't want to go to university and and I wasn't sure where I was going.
Presenter asks
9:52The keepsakes
The book
Salman Rushdie
my my actual favourite writer is Salman Rushdie and and the alternative if I wasn't allowed the the the anthology would be the Moa's Last Sigh, which has been sitting by my bed for a year waiting for me to get round to reading it.
The luxury
I'm terribly torn between a large supply of my mother's marmalade. I suppose I wouldn't have any toast on a desert island, so I think I'd better take some Northumbrian pipes probably and wrestle with those without annoying the neighbours. I'd I've always wanted to learn to play the pipes and this could be the opportunity.
Did it come as a great blow when [your father] died?
Huge blow, obviously huge. Yeah, I th I thought the world of him. He's a a lovely man and uh Yeah, I'm not sure I've ever got over it.
Presenter asks
10:39Why do you want to perform if you're shy?
I suppose nobody likes being shy, not being able to cope in social situations.
Presenter asks
21:22Why did you object to [running Peak Practice twice a week] so much?
I thought where the Bill had done, I'd gone into twice weekly that they they're set in London, they've got seven million potential uh protagonists to take from we were in a tiny village and I I just thought they might exhaust the stories pretty fast.
“I'm a fairly laid back, easy person and and I like playing more dynamic characters.”
“I don't think, particularly on screen, that you can play a character unless you find the points of contact and and pull the character towards you rather than the other way.”
“I realized I was living for the evenings and and that uh the work in the day didn't mean anything to me at all.”
“If you're private like me, it's it's very difficult to come to terms with with everybody knowing you or thinking they know you and and uh Obviously you're part of their everyday life, so it's very difficult, but it's a side of it that I don't enjoy very much.”