Welcome and bienvenue to my web site
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There is only one advantage to having lived a longish life – you cover a lot of ground; I can’t think of any other!
Acting has so many peripheral activities and I have been through a number of them, teaching, directing, writing, voice overs galore, cartoons, dubbing lip synch, in house AVs – Some activities out of necessity but usually because I love working and it’s always a challenge.
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I continue to enjoy writing but things have changed.
When I was on the BBC Radio Rep – great days they were – if you had any track record as a writer you could write an outline plot of a play on an A4 and hand it in to the Script department. You would know in less than two weeks if you had been commissioned. Now – with only a few in house Radio directors your play has to be sent to one of the dozens of companies who battle it out twice a year to submit plays, and maybe yours will be one of them. But nothing is sure. Furthermore, even if you are an established writer – you must submit the finished play. It’s all very convoluted, and frankly dispiriting.
That’s why I have more or less abandoned Radio plays and turned to books. Two Non Fiction books on France and my latest, a novel based on the Welsh Emigration to Patagonia in 1865, ‘Ticket to Paradise.’ I have written a six episode script based on my book.
A Welsh saga - see the Daily Mail review - it has a well researched storyline with tensions and murders enough to interest the deep south-of England!
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My Bulgarian story however is autobiographical. During the ugly Cold War, I was imprisoned for 6 weeks - in solitary in a filthy cell 6ftx6ft, accused of being a spy for the BBC and worse, an enemy of the Bulgarian state and people. Scary it certainly was. Anyway I was saved, by an extraordinary chain of events.
HTV commissioned me to write a play about it called ‘Remember that Day.’ We were set to go when the Berlin wall came down so the German co -production company were obliged to pull the plug .
I still have the full Television script and there is also a possibility of a documentary - which could be called 'Spot the Stasi.’
It's a sad fact being the last surviving member of the Captain Scarlet main characters’ team. We were such a happy group.
In the last few years I have enjoyed Journalism. Buoyed by two non fiction books on France, writing articles for UK magazines and for Anglophone newspapers based in France where I was living until Brexit
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It was obligatory to join the NUJ, in Paris because the editor of an Anglophone newspaper to which I contributed regularly, wanted me to cover the Cannes International Film Festival, where I would submit short reports as we went along, but write a longer article plus photographs when it finished, and we knew who had won the Palme d’Or, and all other categories
Joining any union is not easy and the NUJ is no exception. Fortunately, all my previous articles were available to be accepted into the fold .
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Once in the NUJ, I received my Press card, invaluable. By year four, covering Cannes, I was an old hand. Queuing up for the lanyard with a photo ID. with printed details of the represented newspaper. Any free time from breakfast, interviews were lined up or at least brief exchanges with glitterati. The moment a crowd of rubber-necks appeared around a hotel portico it was indeed a sign that a heavenly body would shortly arrive or leave. A packed programme of ten days left one with square eyes and feet ready for a transplant. It was always a panic to gather information select photographs write a coherent piece after the closing ceremonies and email all to the paper before they put it to bed.
Apart from interviewing the glitterati like Dame Vera Lynn, Roger Moore, plus, I once had a brief chat with George Clooney! An undoubted bonus! The Cannes Film Festival is a uniquely adrenalin-packed jungle of the unexpected.
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I am a Republican. One of the old fashioned British Republican kind, before we had knickerbocker glories prancing in splendid palaces, whom we as a nation support with lots of cake thrown in. So a recent stage play called ‘Fall and Rise’ performed successfully at Cardiff’s Chapter Theatre is currently being looked at by a company –unafraid to drive over an establishment bollard. A political fantasy, it is a comedy with some nuggets of truth about the first day of the British Republic. The one major problem facing deposed royals is how do they earn a living in the real world?
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In 2016 I directed an Old time Music Hall with English actors brought down specially to France, at the Antibes Theatre. You can find clips on www.rivieralife.tv and www.therivierawoman.com
Acting/Literary agent: Dragon Personal Management 0207 183 5362
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