In the States it seemed to be out where more adults wat- ched it. In this country the first time it went out was 5 or 6 O'Clock on Thursday evening and not too long after- wards it was switched to Saturday morning - in London any- way. I can only presume that the thinking behind that, and this is pure guesswork, that the series was made primarily for America 'cause that's where the money is so, therefore there's no need to spend money publicising it in Britain, it'll find its natural level one way or the other. WOULD YOU HAVE BEEN PREPARED TO GO INTO A THIRD SEASON, YOUR SECOND, OF "SPACE; 1999" ? I would have had qualms about it, not because I thought the show or the people were not good enough. It wouldn't necessarily meet with my own particular aspirations as an actor and, having felt that "The Protectors" did me more damage, personally, than it helped, I would probably have had the same fears about "Space". People in this country would again not regard me as 'an actor', but more a 'scr- een face', which is find if it gets on to several rungs higher and you become an international 'movie face'. Then you're in a position where stuff is offered you, but until you get to that level it seems to have done me more damage than good, I'd have probably fallen into the trap which actors tend to fall into; if there didn't seem to be any- thing better, if the money and the security was good, and the fact that a third series probably means it's getting more successful, I might well have said yes. WOULD YOU HAVE DONE ANYTHING TO CHANGE YOU CHARACTER ? I tried doing it on "The Protectors" when I had less 'sta- nding'. It was Gerry who approached me on "The Protectors" and said, "If you've got any ideas about how you think your character could go or could develop, then make sugg- estions," but then Gerry found himself caught in the same trap that the format impose on you. Basically, if Freddie Freiberger had invited me to make comments I would will- ingly have given them. I might have given them anyway ! It would be him, or Gerry, or both, or even somebody higher than them to say 'yay' or 'nay'. SO "SPACE" CAME TO AN END AT THE END OF 1976. . .AND WHAT ? There followed 6 months out of work, that inevitably foll- ows when you've been in work for quite a while. I had got rid of my agent because I discovered he had no idea "Space" was being transmitted after 7 episodes had gone out and his interest in me seemed to be waning. I got an- other Agent and said, "I want to get back to the theatre," because my own feelings are that in this country the cast- ing people, directors, if they still know I exist had for- gotten I'm capable of doing a bit more than pointing a laser gun at some monster on a cloud. I went down to Windsor in August-time of '77 to do "Sleuth" with Patrick Cargill, just for three weeks. We broke the box office record, it was primarily Patrick's name which attracted the audience in, but the production was good and we did work well together and it became a very popular show. We were then invited back the following February/March time for a further three weeks and there was then a sort of interest about the West End and we went to The Savoy for eight weeks and we wound up at The Amba- ssador for a further six or seven months. So having gone to Windsor for three weeks we wound up in a West End show for the bulk of the following year, which was great of course ! There were odd bits of tele around as well, I think I did a "Sweeney" and a "Crown Court", also a thing for the BBC called "The Copyist", a strange piece about Beet- hoven with Dinsdale Landen and Peter Egan playing the copyist who wrote out all Beethoven's manuscripts. Then I got an offer to go to South Africa in 1979 to do Tom Stoppard's play "Night and Dat". "The Protectors" was running in Johannesburg and I think that was the appeal to get me out there, and that was a super experience. I enjoyed the play enormously. THERE WAS NO PROBLEM WITH THE APARTHEID THING ? No, we were worried about that but, in fact, they don't have segregated theatres. They do have segregated cinema curiously enough. I think the thought behind that is that the cinema's more of a mass medium and they should not allow the coloured population access to it in the same way as the theatre. I had comments thrown at me by some members of Equity, but in fact the play itself had two black South African actors in it, so as far as I was concerned we had a mixed cast in theatres which were not segregated. YOU WENT INTO "TRIANGLE" ! Yes, indeed I did. That was last year (1981). Kate O'Mara

had done a year and she had not liked the show and it was clearly there for her to do a second series, but she didn't. I was put in the position of saying, "Well, I've been offered this - what else is there ?" You've got to pay the mortgage, buy the food - you say, "Yes." It's a soap opera - it's a cheap soap opera and I hated it. WHY - ALL THAT HEAVING UP AND DOWN ? No, I didn't mind being on the beat at all, though it was a bit claustrophobic. The series, as its name implies, is about a passenter ferry service operating between three ports, Harwich, Esberg and Gothenburg, and they formed a sort of triangle. The main character was the man who actually owned the line, who's an actor whose name I can't remember. What happened they got eight episodes shot of the first series and the actor, driving home to London, had a heart attack at the wheel of his car, crashed, and was killed. So the producers were then left with a bunch of scripts with this character and no actor to play it. Diana Coupland (was brought in) as the mis- tress of this shipping tycoon and she was left the ship- ping line in his will and has to take over. So there was a confrontation between Diana and Kate O'Mara's charac- ters, in the middle of which Michael Craig, who's the Captain of the ship, finds himself wondering what's hap- pening with policy changes which affect him and his job. Kate left and they had to find another strong lady to fill her shoes, so they brought in Penelope Horner to take a strong female role. I was brought in, though act- ually I had done a day in the first series playing a sol- icitor who was supposed to be Diane Coupland's younger brother. By the time it came to the second series they decided they wanted me back as the company lawyer, the personal lawyer of Diana Coupland's character. There wasn't a lot of scope for the function of my character and it was more concerned with the day-to-day running of the ship. YOU'VE BEEN SEEN POPPING UP IN "KELLY MONTEITE" . . . Yes, indeed. They're good fillers, they're quite well paid and they're fun to do and Kelly's a nice man. The show is nice to work on, very friendly, there's a live audience. You spend four days in rehearsal and two days in the studio, one for rehearsal. COULD I HAVE SEEN YOU AS A WAITER INSISTING THAT HE WEARS THIS EXTREMELY STRANGE GARB ? That's right. Well, they look at my face and they say, "Well, French or Italian," and you go along and do this sort of 'cod' accent and the audience laughs a bit. THE FUTURE. . .YOU'RE OBVIOUSLY ENGAGED IN "DIAL M FOR MURDER". IS THERE ANYTHING LINED UP ? There are a couple of rumours and it's sort of an actor's paranoia that you don't really talk about possibilities for fear of tempting providence. One of two could be in- teresting.

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