Hits 21 - 2003 (Bonus): Brian Capron Interview

Episode Date: April 16, 2023

Hello again, everyone, and welcome back to Hits 21, the show that's taking a look back at every UK #1 hit single of the 21st century - from January 2000, right through to the present day. Twitter: @Hits21UK Email: [e-mail]

Hello everyone and welcome to this very special episode of Hits 21 where me, Rob, me, Andy and me, Lizzie all look back at every single UK number one of the 21st century from January 2000 right through to the present day. If you want to get in touch with us, you can find us on Twitter. We are at hits 21 uk that is at hits 21 uk and you can email us too as you all know just send it on over to hits 21 podcast at gmail.com thank you ever so much for joining us again normally at this point we'd be

running through our usual spiel telling you that this week we're going to be looking back at a bunch of singles from the year 2003 yada yada yada but instead i'm going to welcome you to our first ever bonus episode featuring our first ever guest um now of course everyone listening to this has already seen our very special guest name in the title of the episode but just stay with me for a second humor me I'm going to do a little introduction and I promise it'll be totally worth it and you'll all love it. In the 1970s, our guest appeared on Zedcar's, The Sweeney and Beryl's Lot. He first became properly known to British audiences for his work as Mr. Hopwood in Grange Hill in the early 1980s. He was subsequently featured on Bergerac, Full House, EastEnders, Casualty and The Bill, among many other TV shows and films including the Glenn Close

100 and Dalmatians, before landing a role on Coronation Street that would result in one of the most popular and acclaimed storylines in the soap's whole history attracting audiences as high as 19.4 million people introduced to the show in 2001 our guest character was the owner of the definitely legitimate property company kellett holdings and quickly entered a romantic relationship with gail platt until financial troubles and a homicidal streak brought it all crashing down into the Ashton Canal. He went on to feature in Midsomer Murders, Doctors and YouTube comedy series Staff Room. He's Gail Platt's third husband, the most notorious serial killer that Weatherfield has ever known. He's Norman Bates with a briefcase. You'll know him as Richard Hillman.

It's Brian Capron everybody! Brian how are you? I'm very well thank you thank you for that lovely introduction. Well it's a lovely introduction based on your wonderful career so you have yourself to thank for that I only write down what's fact so what have you been up to just recently just last week past three weeks? Well, as you probably know, because I played a particular not notorious villain in Coronation Street, I tend to play villains at Christmas in Pantos, which I absolutely love.

And this year was no exception. I was playing Hillman, the henchman, in Snow White and the Seven Dwar uh in bridlington which is a brilliant spa which i was quite amazed by because it's had a 20 million pound renovation it's got a beautiful concert hall and uh and edwardian theater so i had an absolutely wonderful time there um and um you know, I just love it. I just love, love Pantone. It was such a lovely show. It was very moving with Snow White's death

and had a beautiful song called I'll Fix You. I'll fix it or I'll fix you. And it was a lovely song. And it was very, very funny too. I had a marvellous dame and a wonderful comic. And I had a fabulous time there. And I feel very privileged, you know, to go at eight year and do these lovely Pos oh that's really beautiful I mean we've discussed this off air but

me Lizzie Andy we're all based in Stockport uh you were actually here at the plaza a couple of years ago am I right in saying that you were doing Dick Whittington last christmas last christmas excellent and you're coming back this winter 2023 but the thing about yes last last christmas was was a bit special because i played king rat which i've never played before and it's a very big theater as you know the other plazas the 1300 seater is a big show and i i had to sing ace of spades oh wow oh my god not easy no it's not easy absolutely but my god it was fun it was such fun to do it was fabulous so that i that i've had to sing some mad songs in pantos i mean i had to do uptown fun you know in another panto um yes stockport's lovely and you're right they they actually booked me two months before christmas i've never been booked so early in my life um simply because i

think richard and david who who are the producers of those um of those pantos there i think they they knew that i was working for someone this year who's got 10 other venues. And I think they thought, oh dear, they might ask him to do one somewhere else. They got in before anybody else did. So I'm thrilled because it's my favourite, favourite role, which is Captain Hook, who's this mad, stupid man. So wonderful to play. And I love it.

I actually did Captain Hook in Peter Pan, the Broadway musical version at the Lowry about five years, six years ago. Oh, wow. I love it. I also did a very rude panto at the same time with Paddy McGuinness and Jonathan Wilkes at the Opera House in Manchester. Funniest thing I've ever been in.

I've never laughed so much. I don't think you could do it. It was very rude. I've never laughed so much. I don't think you could do it because it was very rude. I loved it. I just used to stand beside the stage and laugh so much at Paddy McGuinness.

I mean, he was just so funny. But yes, I'm coming back next year to the wonderful Plaza, which is a beautiful 1920s Art Deco picture house variety theatre,

which has been refurbished, as you know, probably. Millions have been spent on it. It's absolutely lovely. And in fact, I did a charity show there before they did it and they had sticky carpets and it was all a bit tatty. With Liz Dawn, I did a charity show there where I played the spoons and did a copy.

But they've done it up now. I never thought I'd be coming back there doing some lovely pandas, but this will be my third time back, so I'm really looking forward to it oh amazing tickets on sale now well i mean as you might have already guessed we're a music podcast and we're curious like what have you been listening to recently and was there anything that you know during the pandemic was there something you turned to the most? Well, I'm quite sad.

I've had quite an eclectic, you know, over the years, you know, taste in music, you know, going, you know, starting off in the eight, in the sixties really. Okay. So, so, you know, the sixties were fantastic because you not only had the Beatles and the Stones and all that, you had the Detroit sound. You know, it was just an amazing explosion.

And recently I've been watching the Phil Spector documentaries, of course, and you had the Wallace sound. Oh, so far, yeah. It became a complete nutcase, sadly. Yeah. So I do go back in time, but on my playlist I've got lots of stuff like that, you know, from the Ronettes and the Stones and all that kind of stuff. But recently, I'm afraid I'm not a great rap person. Sometimes I'm watching, you know, something like Narcos in Mexico and I hear some music.

And I suppose and this isn't even recent, is it really? But I suddenly heard Dance Monkey for the first time, which I know everybody knows. Oh, yeah. But actually, it's an interesting song because you just think, oh, this is just a clever dance number, but actually have you ever listened to the lyrics? Because it's

quite a serious song, because it's about someone she's actually saying, I used to love doing what I do, you loved what I did, you picked me up and you've made me into a dance monkey and now I have to do everything you say and i'm not free anymore so i i quite like i quite like that um so yeah no i mean um my my wife uh was it was in a dance but was it was in a girl group in uh in in the 80s and she she actually went out with Martin Kemp for a time in Spandau Ballet. What?

Wow. Then she got really stuck and ended up with me. I got to know all the icons of that age, you know, like Midyear is a great friend, you know, of course, Vienna, that fabulous song, but all the 80s songs. She also knew George Michael very well. She used to go down the Blitz Club. Wow.

You know, Steve Strange, Fade to Grey, all these things. So the 80s is a big, big part of my playlist. But I also, I love chill out music. I go to, I go to New York a lot. So, you know, it's all that kind of a beat, the chill, chill music. And I also used to go to the Big Chill. I don't know if any of you remember. Yeah, vaguely. But that was a fabulous festival.

So the last time I went there, Kanye West was there. And, you know, at that time, I loved She's a Gold Digger. That's the last one I liked. After that, he's become an idiot. You know, he's become this nutcase. I don't know. But anyway, so I saw in those days. And then I used to go to Latitude. And so, but that was when that was when like last time I went it was LaRue and Bulletproof which I love

um and of course Fatboy Slim is in Brighton where I live and I love his sets and he he's he's often at Latitude and I I just the way he puts together a whole music kind of you know an hour or hour and a half of he builds it up from nothing and that's the kind of thing I love and I also like serious music I like Handel you know I like the Messiah I go back to serious stuff a friend of mine was in a marvelous film called Barry Lyndon many years ago. Of course, yeah. And a wonderful handle piece in that called Sarabande, which is a beautiful piece of handle. And my mate was the juvenile lead in that.

And sadly, he died this year. And so I listened to that. So it's all that kind of thing. But one of my favourite numbers of all time, and I've finished now, is A Girl Like You, which I, which I,

I think is, is just a, a fan type by Edwin Collins and that, I love that. I love that. I've never, never, I've never,

never, never, never, never, never, never, never, never,

never, never, never, never, never, never, never, never,

never, never, never, never, never, never, never, never,

never, never, never, never, never, never, never, never,

never, never, never, never, never, never, never, never,

never, never, never, never, never, never, never, never,

never, never, never, never, never, never, never, never,

never, never, never, never, never, never, never, never,

never, never, never, never, never, never, never, never,

never, never, never, never, never, never, never, never, never I haven't got anything. No, thank you. I tell you, you know what? I'll let you in on a little secret, Brian. So before you came on, obviously, because we've never interviewed you before, we have no idea how this interview was going to go or what kind of guests you were going to be, how much you were going to talk. And what did I say to you two just before this? The best guests are the ones who know how to talk.

And Jesus, Brian, this is a dream. This is a dream so far. This is an absolute dream. Yeah. Yeah. Considering we're a music podcast, we genuinely didn't know about that with Martin Kemp and all the 80s stars.

That's just amazing. That's incredible. Yeah, well, that's my wife. You know, Heaven 17, you know, all this. So I used to mix with all those people. We still see Midge. He's such a lovely guy. He lives in Bath now, but he's doing a world tour at the moment.

He's coming to Brighton, and we saw him just about a month ago. So, yeah, so it's been so interesting for me to come from, like she's from that background. I'm from a kind of, you know, Mr. Theatre, you know. So it's been a great thing, you know. And I say she was in a girl band that did quite well in America at the time as well. Oh, what was their name?

I was going to say. There was, I think they were called Girls Can't Help It. So I think where most of our listeners will know you from is a little ITV show that I think a couple of people have heard, Coronation Street. I think we all watched the episodes at the time, but Andy, you have very,

very strong memories of 2002 and 2003, Ari, Corey, so take the lead, go in any order you like. I was brought up religiously on Corey Bryant. I was like, you know, from the age of about three or four, I, you know, watched every single episode, which I probably shouldn't have done.

I was a bit young. But anyway, one of the first things in TV history that really, truly scared me was yourself. Because of the antics that Richard got up to and it's still to this day you know is I think one of the great soap storylines and one of the great soap characters that we've ever seen really and I find it hard to imagine what it must be like to be in your shoes you know looking back on the legacy of Richard Hillman, you know, the impact that that role had. And so I guess to start at the start, you know, I would ask,

did you know when you joined Corrie, did you know the way that things were going to go? Did you know that you were playing this huge villain or did it all just unfold naturally? Not at all. Also, how did I get away with the dodgy Northern accent? That's very good. The thing is, is that when that when I first went in it, the character was a little bit cheesy, didn't think it was going to work. And then Coronation Street wasn't doing

very well in the ratings. EastEnders was winning everything. And so they sacked the producer and they brought in a new executive producer, Carolyn Reynolds, and Kieran Roberts, a new producer from Emmerdale, who had won a BAFTA with Emmerdale. And they both knew the show and they decided to go back to Longburn's storylines. And they saw something in my character, I think, and they decided to move my character centre stage i didn't know anything one day i went to a pub one night and the script editor was there girl is there and she said to me do you know what's going to happen to you and i said what do you mean she said there's nobody said anything to her i said no what she said you are going to be moved into the center of the show and you're going to

have a one-hour special and that that was when i let dougie die yeah that was when it started there was a party going on at the same time and i was skulking around weatherfield and going to dougie's and getting his money and so that was that was the episode she was talking about and she said then they're going to make your characters kind of and i had no idea nobody said anything to me about it at all so i i we had no idea it was going and then we we're very lucky in that a particular writer called John Fay, because what happened was when they came back, these producers, they then brought back writers who'd left Disenchanted with the programme and then brought in some new writers, one of whom was this guy, John Fay.

And it's very writer-driven, Coronation Street, and they get together and they say, oh, well, so where does Richard Hillman go? And they go, well, I think he does this. He says, yeah, but John Fay, he said, no, I think he does that. And they went, well so where does Richard Hillman go and they go well I think he does this this is the other John Fahey said no I think he does that and they went well go away and write it then and he went away and wrote it and I suddenly used to get scripts and I think oh my god you know the makeup girls get the scripts first they say hey have you seen what you're doing next week so it just got more it was a brilliant storyline that had so many twists and

turns and also I think the thing that um if I added anything to it was a brilliant storyline that had so many twists and turns and also i think the thing that um if i added anything to it was to think that everybody's think this guy's going to be a baddie and he's married to gail all this i concentrated very hard on making him very human and very loving towards the family and that really paid off because in his head he was doing everything for them and that made him a very complex character and i off because in his head, he was doing everything for them. And that made him a very complex character. And I also had in my head, when people talk about characters like Richard, they go, do you know, he always used to wash his car on a Sunday, always would say hello. And that was what I had in my mind.

And the other big thing before I finish is my wife was very responsible for a bit. She's very good with me because I'm a bit of a, I don't know, a bit of an over-the-top dramatic actor. And she goes, don't do it that shite, you know, calm it down, calm it down. And so when I had exclamation marks and I was threatening people, she used to say, just be quiet. Yeah. And gradually, at the end of one scene, when I was threatening Norris,

I remember the director saying, now do your look. And I went, what do you mean? He said, your look. I said, what look? I know the look. I know what you mean. I can see it. And that was something that just came.

So the thing just grew and grew, really. And it was very, very exciting for everybody because it brought the show back. And they had a route through then. They were ignoring all the soap awards before that saying they're above it all but then they thought no we've got to do it because EastEnders is winning everything and of course they aimed it at the soap awards and you know we cleaned up that year with that with that wonderful storyline and everything else that was going on in the show. yeah because

I noticed that in the week before the soap awards was when you killed Maxine. So that, that must've been intentional. And I remember I was sitting around a pool. I had a week off and I was in Italy and Tracy Shaw rang me up and she said, I've just been to see them cause I'm leaving. And Brian, this is great for you.

It's not so great for me. She said, you are going to murder me. It it's gonna be amazing so that that's when she told me about that and i mean that whole you know the whole thing of leading up to that you know me taking over aids jacket and you know putting him asleep all this i mean it was so clever and the whole bit coming in and with emily watching the television and of course the immortal liners should have stayed at the party maxine and uh and and eventually of course us getting awarded a two-hander which was like with me and gail when

i confess everything was so beautifully written yeah but at the same time yeah it's such a good theme and at the same time it was darkly humor You know, there was a lovely humor around the character. You know, there was a wonderful bit. One of my favorites was walking down the road when I was after Audrey and she goes, hello, Richard. And I go past her and go, goodbye, Audrey. There was lots of stuff. There was lots of stuff like that, you know,

where he was almost kind of winking at the audience. It was a very beautifully written and I have a lot to, it's the writers. The writers start with a blank page, you know where he was almost kind of winking at the audience it was a very beautifully written and i have a lot to it's the writers the right to start with a blank page you know and um luckily for some reason you know i happened to get that part and be there at the right time you say that though brian but it is you as well you know you said that what you added to it was that sort of human aspect and that really does come across you know i don't know if you're aware of this but all of your episodes are currently being repeated on itv3 so i've been re-watching quite a few of them and that does really come across that there's never a moment where richard is you know a mustache twirling kind of you know madman that's that that never happens it kind of builds

incrementally in small stages and i kind of got the feeling that it wasn't pre-planned that Richard would turn out that way. No, not at all. What happens in a soap is that it's like a tennis match, you know, that they toss you the lines, you toss it back to them, and suddenly if it begins to work, you could be a really, really good actor and come into Coronation and nothing happens, you know. It's just that serendipity,

that bit of luck that the chemistry is working between you and the writers. I mean, I'm not even Northern, I think, and what am I doing in this show, you know? I was actually in the show in 1982, I brought in Sharon Gatlin. Yeah, yeah. You know, so I was there when the Queen opened the then New Street, you know.

And I was in and out of the show where all the greats were on it. It was fascinating to me to go in there, you know and I was in and out of the show where all the greats were on it it was it was fascinating to me to go in there you know and meet them all and so I knew them all and so for me to think I would never thought I would have come back to play this character years later you know. Well here's a question on that then so given how you liked to try and humanise Richard and how you enjoyed it so much, was there ever a small part of you that was kind of rooting for him, you know, that wanted, that was on his side? Was there ever a small part of you that was enjoying that villainous aspect of the role?

Well, of course, the thing about actors is they hate being hated. So the thing about Richard is I think that people, he wasn't actually a hateful character. You could love to hate him. Yeah. Yeah. You kind of, there was something about him that you kind of liked in a way, I think.

So he wasn't lovable, of course, but he was a character that you, I don't know. As I say, there was another character in EastEnders at the time called Trevor, who was very hateful and horrible. Yes.

An old hearted, horrible person. Whereas person whereas Richard you know did have a heart, he was in the wrong place and he was completely mad but you could love to hate him and the twists and turns of the plot were fabulous and you know he was a very complex character which is wonderful to play as an actor. Yeah and the other week, i say this full kind of full disclosure we're actually recording this way before the episode actually goes out but the other week uh me and my mum were driving through um trafford park she has she has really firm memories of that storyline because she was probably amongst the group of people who in the sort of late 90s kind of phased away from cory

slightly you know picked it up dropped it off that kind of thing she she says she's always associated her years of cory with hilda ogden yes um and so but she said she came right back to the show with this and she said we used and it's just funny what you've said there because she said they used to sit in the office at work and talk about the storyline and my mum always used to say Richard might be the way that he is but he does it all for Gail he genuinely loves her he genuinely does love her and he loves the family and so she'll be very very I know for a fact that she'll be sat listening to this and she'll be going like see see and she'll be clicking to my dad going i told you she's not that bad of course we got we had the biggest marriage as well me and gail

because um there was a marriage in eastenders that was going and that was going to be an okay magazine we were getting married so they decided to do us so we had like 11 pages in okay magazine of our wedding wow the other thing i just wanted to, I have to discuss, given that we're a music podcast, is that song, the You and Me song. By the one, yeah. But that song is, you know,

whenever anyone of my generation, I think, hears that song, it's instantly, you're in the car, and we see your face, Brian, going, this is it, I love you, you know. So just that song, like, what does that mean to you? Are you kind of haunted by that song forever since that episode aired? Well of course I knew nothing at all about that song when we did it. Was it not played when you were filming? No

no no no not at all no wow no so I think I think they I think that was all put on afterwards. I didn't I didn't I didn't know. And gradually, of course, yes, it became synonymous with that scene. I mean, the thing about Corey, because of that storyline worked so well, suddenly it was getting up to nearly 20 million viewers. And that's when you get people who don't normally watch watching, which is, you you know why I've had 20 years of acting since them because these days if you go into a soap which is great for jobbing actors because if you're not in the creamy lot that do everything all the time it soap opera is a great chance for actors to get a leg up you know and sometimes they they get a big leg up, not often. Sue Ann Jones, Catherine Kelly, quite rare. But I had a leg up from that. And I nearly had some very big things happen to me.

But I've had a really nice career since then, thank you very much. So I'm very grateful to that. And I'm really, really old now. I'm still working. So I'm very grateful to Richard Dillman from that point of view. But, yeah, as regards to the song I had no idea but of course ever since then it kind of feels like it's part of my life the amount of times that that clip has shown yeah going in the canal which was uh which we can talk about because that's a very it's a very clever stuff I can

talk about that yeah and I'm dead curious about because I re-watched that episode for the first time in a few years just this week just in preparation and the thing that kind of caught me was how long a stretch that is underwater once the car goes under

it's a full minute and a half, two minutes that's a really long stretch and watching it back it made me think like that's really ambitious stuff for like uh the budget of a soap i imagine especially 20 years ago and like i mean i imagine i think i've looked this up that all the surface level stuff was done at portland basin which is in ashton you can just go and look at the the sort of like the canal side if you want but what are your memories

of the underwater sequence where was that done? Well that was a massive it was a massive stunt I mean when I first when they first told me about it

they don't normally tell you much but they said you know I was waiting to hear what my demise was going to be and I was called in to see the producer you know

and I was hoping that I was imagining I was going to fall from a a high railway gantry in slow motion you know and i was hoping that i was imagining i was going to fall from a high railway gantry in slow motion you know death or something like that something really dramatic and he said you're going to drive your car into canal and i thought oh how boring you know and anyway they got in this this bond stunt team um and we use five cars for it. Wow. So you see the car going along, you know, on an A-frame trailer and it was shot so cleverly.

So inside the car, so when you see him going, I love you, and you think the car's going up, then you almost feel it was going up. It's not. It's just on this A-frame. And then there's another car that's had its gearbox and engine stripped out and there's a cannon underneath and it shoots it up in the air with with uh with dummies inside so you see that flying through the air and then when it landed

in the canal they didn't realize that it was um it was a bit shallow so they had to slice the roof off of another ford car and divers had to go underneath and pull it pull it under and the money shot as you say because i didn't you know i was so crazy at that point you know i did over 200 episodes in like less than two years my head was gone you know that my wife watched it and she went oh god you're really underwater. I went, yeah. And she was quite amazing. I went, yeah, yeah. That's the first time ever in a soap that there was the underwater shot. So we were taken, we shot that for about three or four days in Fleetwood. Okay.

Okay. There's a big practice underwater pool there for North Sea helicopters, for people to train if a North Sea helicopter goes down, how to get out of it and all of that. So that's what it's there for. So we had two cars at two different levels with all weed around them and God knows what. And then we learned to be underwater.

And basically you're all inside the car, and you have breathing apparatus, and you have your eyes closed, and then they count down on your fingers, five, four, three, two, one, action. And then you get rid of the breathing operation, and then you start acting underwater, open your eyes, and do all that.

So it was very, very exciting. And we couldn't believe it, and the way it all shot together. And particularly, they had enough cameras to cover it when you see the car, as you say, going down into the basin and then going up and in. But they only had one go at that. You know, anything could have gone wrong, really.

But it was just fabulous. They really know their stuff. And I felt so lucky to go out on, you know, such a great set piece scene. And you had, obviously, your whole screen family with you doing it as well. You tried to drown them all, and I didn't manage. I only managed to drown myself.

You didn't manage any of them, yeah. I was just, because you had, because Jack P. Shepard and Tina O'Brien, they were actual, they were children at the time you know how did they feel towards you with all of this? I think they loved all the storyline you know I think they loved it the biggest problem for us was Bethany because Bethany taking a young child like he they thought that was cruel Richard you know going beyond the pale here. So what they had to do was make her asleep. So they had a camera for hours trying to get a picture of her asleep

when she went to sleep. So it looked like she was fast asleep in the car. Otherwise, it was awful. And funnily enough, she wasn't in the car, obviously, when it was underwater, as they were. But the underwater shots were there escaping. But she actually did swim around with armbands on

and her head bobbed under the water and came up like that and they caught that so that was a bit of luck Oh wow, well done I always say, we're just watching the episodes this week, it's a little bit surreal watching Bethany, the character

because even weirder than that i actually have like a six degrees of separation to uh i want to say lucy fallon who ended up playing bethany years later um my partner used to work with like a cousin of hers or something like that and so there's like a weird six degrees of separation with that and so i was watching the episodes with i mean it's a different uh it's a different actress obviously when it's uh your time on the show but it's just kind of strange thinking like that character grows up to be played by somebody that kind of is connected to somebody i know it's a small world isn't it very small yeah so hill

mania brian is a phrase that i've come across about basically when when the the popularity of the character spiked or you know around the time that you drove into the canal um and i was looking at your you know your history your imdb page and things like that and the amount of work that you got offered around that time was amazing you got to work with so many people and just what are your memories of that time because i look and it's just everything you were doing something every week on tv so what was it like for you then well it was fantastic because um well i i mean anybody who's in coronation street anyway has a bit of a life of awards parties mad times going out in the town you know it it it's, I call it touching the wall.

You know, I've touched the wall, realised that a lot of it is, you know, not what it's set up to be. You know, a lot of it's a bit shallow and everything, but it's such fun, you know, to go to these awards and all of those. And I knew I was only going to be there for two years because you don't have any power as an actor in that show.

But I said, I can't move up here if it's successful two years is my maximum you know and also I'd been an actor for 30 years I'm not like someone who's just starting in there then worrying about leaving what's going to happen to me when I leave blah blah blah because I thought I'd survive you know um so it was fantastic I mean I had so many wonderful things happen. I mean, one that comes to mind is I was on the Graham Norton show. And, you know, you'd never ever think you'd be on the Graham Norton show. And I was, I think, the main guest. And my wife was there and my daughter. And they didn't want to go in the audience.

So they're in the green room. And it went really well. It was great. And afterwards, you know, and I didn't know because my wife had joked with me that these two blokes lead you down the stairs in jockstraps and things. It was actually two girls. I'd never seen the show. I had no idea. Anyway, the show went really, really well. I went down and I went into the green room and I said, what did you think? My daughter and wife looked at each other

they hadn't watched it they'd just been chatting and drinking that's the life isn't it so that was funny but that was good so I did all all those kind of shows I think the most interesting the thing that happened to me after it um but well obviously there was you know I talk about strictly come dancing all those things but but um was um this morning i asked me if i would go because i did a bit of presenting for this morning and they said what would you go out to borneo and do um nine documentary reports for us on orangutans wow so i went with a camera team down there and spent two weeks in borneo in the jungle and it was just unbelievable i mean to this day what a privilege you know i tracked them in the jungle i stayed overnight in you know in people's huts and villages in the middle of nowhere

and had this most amazing time and there's nothing i don't know about orangutans the whole idea was to make make people aware that they were trying to build rainforest corridors you know for them to survive and um they're amazing creatures and um what what what a privilege you know all sorts of things happened i got flown out to new zealand they flew my whole family out because the show goes out there that's it would you come out here for for one a one night chat show and i said yes i don't want to fee but can my family yes we went out business class for two weeks and also I I have um I had a corporate entertainment company at that point um and a girl who's working for us had to go back to New Zealand um we never thought

we'd see her again and when the uh producer's assistant rang me up she said um do you know anyone in New Zealand when you come out here and I said well no the only person I know is a girl who used to work for us called Taryn so she's got a little boy called Albie and I said yes she lives next door to me and so in three months we went out we went out there and saw her again this lovely girl who worked for us and then they got in touch with the television that gave her a few openings for a business she was starting so we had a you know loads of fabulous things endless and the fact that you know as i say i had a career um i did strictly i was i was very ill and strictly unfortunately and i was out very early but it's still an experience so my wife made me do master chef after that which i didn't want to do and i did it in the end we worked very hard on it and I got I was a finest so I got my uh my reality television crown back well done well done yeah there's

there's one thing in particular that I remember from around this time because I was a huge fan of the band Busted I was a huge fan because I was like 11 years old and I remember that you did a Christmas special with them where you played an evil Santa who was basically Richard in a Santa costume and was sort of leading them to their doom do you remember that then? Yeah I do I remember it very vividly yeah it was it was just another mad job that I got offered and that they were very you know up and up I think is it Charlie their lead guy who left them, I think? Yeah, yeah.

He was always quite full of himself, I thought, and he was going to go off and be very famous on his own. I don't know how that went, but anyway. They did okay. Fight Star were moderately successful. Not as no any of as big as Busted, but they did okay. But it was just great for me to be with loads of young people and get a little bit of them rubbed, you know, get, you know,

get a little bit of them rubbed off on me and, Oh my God, you're working with busted. So, you know, for all young people who know me, it was good. Yeah.

Yeah. The whole, I was watching that before the whole plot, like it ends up that Pete Waterman is your boss and that he's, he's told you to send them on a wild goose chase. So that at the end of the day, they all realise that Christmas is about spending time with your friends and not working all the time I can just remember I think there were some dwarfs in it weren't there

yes yes there were yeah there's a lot in that yeah some band has abandoned them and they don't know how to play any instruments and they're like oh could you play a song and then Busted play like She Wants To Be Me which is one of the tracks off one of their albums. Oh that was just one of many as you say mad things that happened to me. Just as a kind of follow-up to that like do you have like a clear memory of all this work or was it a bit of a mad rush like everything sort of coming in at once after Corrie? Well yes I suppose there were so many things that happened it's like I'd forgotten all about the busted thing you know um there was literally um obviously if you like i've always been a serious actor you know and we haven't talked about theater for

instance because theater is a big part of my life since then um one of the one of the loveliest things that happened to me well i was actually doing something which you didn't mention which is where the heart is I did for three years. Oh, I remember that, yeah. That was another even worse Yorkshire accent that I did. Willie Arkwright been smashing up my looms again. So that was lovely. And it was, again, they were just going to move me centre stage there

we were very pleased with the series and suddenly my agent rang me up one day they offered me to do three weeks on the Rocky Horror Show as the narrator so I'd never done any musicals so I went I was doing it and I think and then I'll spawn back to my lovely series and my agent rang me up halfway

through this and said Brian you won't believe this I've just had the casting director she's in tears they've decided not to do anymore where the heart is and they couldn't believe it because it was very good in the ratings and it was because they were going to bring in downtown abbey and all that so so um i thought oh my god i can't swim back to my series what am i going to do and uh ambassador said to me we like you doing um rocky horror would you like to carry on doing it? Would you take it into the West End and then tour it afterwards? And I said, yes.

So that got me into musicals. And then they asked me to do Guys and Dolls, West End and then tour, playing Nathan Detroit, which is just a fabulous, fabulous musical. With Claire Sweeney. So I did that and I got, i had a whole kind of another string to my bow and ever since then i've done quite a few musicals and sung in panto which i'd never done before so um that that that was part of my career and also i you know i've done quite a lot of touring i started in theater in in 1970s when i started and i i start i did three years in in rep with people like robert lindsey who uh oh yeah

bob hoskins um another guy called uh bob peck who sadly died quite young but in those days i thought the reason i wasn't getting known was because my name wasn't bob you know but uh also john nettles was there i lived with john nettles for a year subsequently did with him and mididsomer Murders. And Dave Boucher, who played Poirot, of course. So I started off with all these people and theatre was my thing. And if I had any plan, it was to try and get known on television to get bums on seats in the theatre,

which has eventually worked out in a logical way, in a logical profession, because it's a very, very tough profession. Yeah, I guess you see that quite a lot actually um tv actors kind of after especially after like a big role where they've played the same character for maybe like yourself two years but i'm thinking like just from really really recent memory like i think basically 95 of the cast of game of thrones have all gone back onto the stage uh the main cast anyway because they've all been i think i don't is it because you want to get back in touch with acting away from the character you're known for or something like that is it to try and because i don't want to call it real acting or anything like that but you know like getting on

a stage where you started that sort of thing is that is that the appeal well if actors are like me you know that's where your heart lies really because something very special about theatre um i love i love all of it you know i love television as well i love i never you know if i walk into a television studio i feel at home i feel like you know it's just a it's just a lovely place to be i love film i love i love television but theatre you know is special as well uh it's it's just that live thing and you you the audience affect you um so you're being affected and also you know you can you can make different decisions in the theatre whereas in television particularly in a soap uh in a soap it's multi-camera so everything is cut to what you say and and you know the way it's pre-edited

if you like, so you have to fit in with what they're doing, which is quite difficult, particularly in Coronation Street, because they're very small sets because they're all little terraced houses. And as an actor, when you walk into those tiny little sets like the Platts, you've got to look like you're relaxed and used to it. You can feel like a real spare part. Do you know what I mean?

You either want to find a place to lean or look as though you're relaxed in a very small set so that that that takes some doing you know when you first go in as a new character uh into coronet street it's very difficult because you know that people are going oh it's a new character i like the old ones you know it's weird that you say that because i went on the Corrie tour about 10 years ago, back before they moved to Media City. Yeah. I went on the set at Granada Studios and that was what struck me. I saw Gail's house in the studio. It was actually Gail's house for me, the Platt house.

And I thought, this is so small. All these sets are so small. That struck me. And it's weird that you would say the same. It's not just me then. It's all very very closed um and of course in the old in the old set the exterior set was a third off the real size it's two-thirds of the real size so if you're standing outside your head is practically you know hitting hitting you know the door above your head you know people don't

realize that you know and you look at the court you look at the corner shop and there's there's a there's a real post box that's looking a bit bigger than they normally do because everything's but nowadays of course and then on the new set which i think is all very austere and it's all i love the old one and the old studios but were lovely and there was a green room that everybody had to go in and go through to get onto the studio floor. And it made for a lovely feeling, Coronation Street. Now, nobody goes there because it's up on the third floor or wherever it is. I was there just the other day because they asked me to go back and do a Coronation Street live appearance on Halloween night. Oh, wow. Coronation. That's great. Halloween night, you know.

Oh, wow. Coronation. That's great. A few years ago, which no one's mentioned, of course, there was a Coronation Street musical, which I was involved with. And if anybody wants to hear me sing with the Royal Philharmonic, Norman Bates with the briefcase, I think you'll find it on YouTube. Oh, I've seen this on YouTube.

I didn't know it was from that. That is incredible. I did. And I was wondering, I didn't want to embarrass you by asking about this. I thought, is that something you might not want to discuss? I'm very proud of it. I'm very proud of my singing on that. I must have had a lot of autotune on there, but it sounds all right. It was recorded in Abbey Road Studios.

That's another thing, isn't it? Right? In Abbey Road. They got a picture of me and kevin kennedy outside we we did the we did the zebra crossing and i went up behind him with the crowbar you know we've got that that's brilliant um so yeah well we recorded this album with fabulous songs i have to say and then they did the musical and it's such a long story about how it all fell but we did it at the men for two nights um and paulo grady uh was kind of uh involved in it all and the music was phenomenal i mean it was an amazing cost millions this thing i mean we had a 80 foot wide set above that a 20 piece auction above the 80 foot wide video screens um it was it was going to go all around the world

it was going to be amazing but it's a long long story why it didn't work but fascinating story about why that all fell apart if you want to investigate it that's um it's quite a story i will oh let's look into that yeah so of all the opportunities you've had that have arisen you know before or after cory but particularly afterwards you know, when you were such a household name? Do you have a particular kind of favourite memory, a particular favourite thing that you've done or thing that you've experienced in the last 20 years? Well, career-wise, I would say the height of...

For me personally, it was working at the National Theatre. I did a play, a brand-new play called Harper Reagan, where I played opposite Leslie Sharp. And for me, when I was at drama school, we were shown the plans for that theatre. And I never thought I'd ever work there, you know. So for me, the height of my theatrical career, in a way, would be working at the Royal National Theatre with esteemed people, working at the Royal National Theatre with esteemed people, with the best director in the world and one of the most fabulous actresses.

So to me, that's a very, very special memory. It wouldn't have happened without Richard Hillman because that just people just, it just gave, obviously, you know, it gave me a lot of limelight. So that was great. And then all the lovely things and, you know, Rocky gave me a lot of limelight. So that was great. And then all the lovely things, and, you know, Rocky Horror, particularly, that's one of my favourites. That is just, I love it.

Very jealous of that, yeah. Doing that every night and getting paid loads of money. I mean, that was just fabulous. So many wonderful things. And I've had so many wonderful things happen to me because of Richard. I'm eternally grateful. And even coming back to Stockport to do my, to do Captain Hook.

How wonderful, how lucky am I? I'm so, so lucky, you know. And I, every Panto season, I work with lots of fabulous people who haven't had that bit of luck, but, you know a talented more talented than me can sing and dance properly um it's a very tough business and it just helps to remind me of um you know the fact that I call it I touch the wall I've had a go I've had a bit of limelight I'm very lucky and I've been doing it now this is my 53rd year and I started in 1970 so how lucky am I

and Richard, I think getting Richard Hillman, I was 50 something when I got that and to get something like that, a break that late in your career to give me another 20 years, that's what's been so lovely That's wonderful to hear, that's brilliant

What a note, well just before we wrap up, we wanted to ask you something about um beautiful by christina aguilera the song um just for those who don't know um i mean obviously everybody who listens to us knows that we cover every uk number one of the 21st century and beautiful by christina aguilera was number one on the 14th of March 2003, which was the day that Richard Hillman was officially killed off on Coronation Street. Now, Brian, if you don't have any thoughts or memories about it, then that's fine. But we thought we'd ask anyway, or just let you know that that was what was number one when you were snuffed. Well, the only thing I have to say about that song, which is very, very, you know, it's a lovely song,

not my kind of music, but it feels like a self-help disc. That's what it feels like. Yeah, I can see that. Yeah. I think maybe we all needed an uplift after what Richard had done to us all. We needed that affirmation. Before we go, Andy, you've got a little request.

We don't have to do it. If you'll indulge me for one moment, Brian. Could you fulfil a 20-year ambition for me and possibly say that I should have stayed at the party, Andy? You should have stayed at the party, Andy. You should have stayed at the party, Andy. Oh my gosh. Fantastic. Absolutely amazing.

Well, I've got my new ringtone. Thank you for that. Thank you so much. Oh, thank you. I tell you what, as first guests go, who's going to follow you? I know. Brian, who are we going to get on that could top this?

This has been way, way better than I think we ever could have expected or like, because you always hope it's going to go well, but I don't think you ever hope that it's going to go this well because you think you're sort of, you know, you're hoping a bit for a bit too much there. But this has been awesome. Thank you so much. Thank you so much, so much it's been an absolute genuine pleasure and you have a good evening everyone