Britains got Talent?

Watching Britains got talent and seeing 10 year old Holly crack up transported me back to when I was around 8 years old. Between 1967 and 1970, I was a successful child actor/model, appearing in numerous adverts. One of these, for Heinz beans won an award and others such as for Cadburys chocolate, Galaxy Chocolate, Tizer etc saw my face on ITV every night. I stopped acting in 1970, when my mum was diagnosed with stomach cancer and she had bigger fish to fry than my acting career.

Watching Holly crack up, vividly reminded me of the scenes we'd see during casting auditions. I'd turn up to be greeted by a room full of children with parents/chaperones. Generally the best parts for the biggest products, such as Heinz and Cadbury's were competetive. I'd walk in and eye up the competition. There were regulars, familiar faces. Rather like Alex Ferguson awaiting the draw for the Champions League, I'd know who the real competition were and what my chances were. About 50% were products of stage schools. Then there were a few first time hopefuls and the non stage school regulars such as me. As with Alex Ferguson, there were faces that, should they show up, you knew you were in for a proper game. Of all of these, the only one I really worried about was a boy called Darren Scott. Of all of the auditions I went to, either myself or Darren got picked on all but one occasion. That particular time, one of the last auditions, as my mum was ill, my brother Frank took me to. Upon seeing Darren Scott, I decided to take a novel approach to winning the part. I thumped him and gave him a black eye. Unfortunately the plan backfired and we were both ejected.

The thing that brought this back to me was the way Holly cracked up. One sight that probably happened at every audition was a pushy mum with a boy who clearly wasn't up to the job. To sit in front of a group of adults, be told what to do, get it right first time and look happy and at ease whilst doing it, well enough to impress a panel of hardened professionals is difficult at any time. When you are 8 and you don't want to do it is even harder. Often mums had spent large sums of money having a professional photo portfolio put together. The pressure was intense. Being dyslexic and useless at school, for me it was a welcome relief to be good at something. I've always been gifted with boundless self confidence. Unfortunately many of the kids were nervous wrecks by the time they went in. Many of the boys, especially the younger ones would crack. You'd see them being dragged out by the arm, pushy mum berating them. Hardened old timers such as myself and Darren Scott would smirk. The best time to go for your audition was straight after one of these breakdowns. In we'd bowl, smiling, confident, happy. After the audition, you'd look over to those you perceived as the real competition & smile confidently.

Sometimes we'd hear the mums pleading with the casting team for another chance. Sometimes the mums would have to be almost dragged out pleading. The point is that all of this went on behind closed doors. Apart from a few kids and a few mums, once poor little Johnny was home it could all be forgotten. The parental pleading was part of the job for the team. Once you'd worked with a director a couple of times, they'd sometimes just ask for you straight away. Those that cracked were generally not seen again.

The things that struck me about Holly's outburst were firstly how unfair it was on all of those kids who hadn't cracked. She'd failed, yet she got a huge sympathy vote. In any other casting, that wouldn't happen. In a private audition, Simon Cowell would have shown Holly the dorr straight away.

Secondly I thought how unfair it was to expose a child to such pressure. It was bad enough doing it in front of a few adults. On live national TV, it is immeasurably more stressful. At some point in the future, Holly will have to deal with teasing of her classmates. How will she cope? Maybe she'll do well. I just think of former child star, Lena Zavaroni. She died at 35, unable to cope. When I was 8, the actor I most wanted to emulate was Jack Wild. He was the star of Oliver! He died in 2006 of alcohol related problems. The stresses of early fame are not always easy to deal with. I adopted a very simple approach with my classmates at St Vincents. I never discussed it. The school forbade me from appearing in school plays etc, as they felt other kids should get an opportunity. I felt this was highly unfair at the time, but probably helped keep me grounded. It certainly meant that there was no resentment that I was aware of.

The entertainment industry is a brutal machine. The very last consideration made when providing 3 minutes of entertainment on a Friday night is the wellbeing of the child. For me the experience was a great one. I wouldn't deny any child that, but I had a caring family, 5 elder sibling and a great home life. I wasn't allowed to get big headed or arrogant, as I'd get slapped back down immediately.

I'd suggest that in fairness to the kids involved, that anyone under 16 should be filmed beforehand. If a child cracks up, then don't show the footage. A simple statement that "***** had to withdraw" would suffice. I'd also use child protection laws to prevent papers exposing what happened. There is no public benefit to seeing or knowing that a 10 year old child has cracked up.

Disturbing Childhood memories

Occasionally the most innocent of questions can dredge up the most disturbing of memories. When we are children, we don't really understand the world, so we make up a scenario to fit the events that we see that offers some sort of rational explanation. In hindsight, when we become adults, we reassemble the jigsaw and realise that a series of coincidental occurrances lead us to concoct a completely ridiculous fantasy and in basic terms, we got it wrong. I guess that those of us who never get over building these fantastical fantasies end up invading Iraq because God told them to, but generally most of us take a more rational approach.

A recent blog I did answered the 2o questions as posed on Top Tory blogger Iain Dale's blog.
One of the questions was "First Girlfriend/Boyfriend". I must confess, I wasn't completely honest in my answer. For some quite unfathomable reason, I deliberately gave the wrong answer. The reason? Total embarrassment. Even worse, there really wasn't anything to be embarrassed about. The truth is that although the answer is true in as much as I detailed a first stolen kiss, it wasn't true in relation to my first girlfriend. In the late 1960's I was a very successful child actor/model. I starred in many TV adverts, the most notable being a Heinz Baked Beans advert which won an award at the Cannes International festival for best directed Advert. I suspect it may have been the first Heinz Beanz Ad. if you are interested it was the "We can't go on holiday without the beans mum" ad. I was the kid with the holdall.

I got the job because at the screen test I was the only six year old who would eat a plate of cold baked beans. I can vividly recall hearing all of the other kids screaming as their parents tried to force them to eat. I knew what had to be done, so I did it with a smile. The director was rather surprised at my reaction. He asked "You enjoyed that, do you like cold beans". I shot back "No, I like proper food, I was acting". Job done.

In the course of shooting an advert you are at the location for two or three days. If you were good, like me, you got 3 guinnieas an hour, which in 1967 was a small fortune. My acting career payed for my first guitar, so it served me well. Anyway I digress, as I was saying, the shoots were very long and very boring. On one shoot, there was a very pretty girl around my age called Emily. I'd not been interested in girls till I met Emily. Generally the kids were left to their own devices, the crews did their stuff, the mums/ chaperones chatted and in the course of the three days you were busy for possibly 2 or three hours. Emily was my co-star, my little sister in the script. She was at acting school and had dreams of a career as an actress. I was at the local Primary. We hit it off straight away. By the time we'd finished the shoot, we'd mapped the whole of our life together. We'd come up with a winning concept for a blockbuster film, in which we'd star. The idea was simple. There were films for girls, with romance & ponies, there will films for boys with cars and guns and baddies. We'd make films with all of it, so both girls & boys would like them. We sort of used the idea of Thunderbirds where you had Lady Penelopie for the girls & The Tracy's for the boys, but with real actors. She'd run a pony camp and I'd drive an E-Type jag with machine guns & missiles on it. Sound's great?

Not only that, but we'd planned our entire life together. Now as we were only kids, a key part of this was waiting to grow up, but we'd decided that would not be a problem as we didn't want to go out with anyone else. Now my biggest problem was that I had 5 elder siblings who I knew would tease me mercilessly and ruin everything if they found out. As we'd agreed a "no secrets" policy, I let her know my fears. She understood and said "Thats Ok because when we are 16 we'll be famous and so we can get together". We agreed that until then we'd keep our friendship a secret and only discuss it on film shoots when we were in private. It made it even more exciting.

Anyway, when the shoot finished, off I went home. I felt truly happy and contented for the first time, as I knew my life was going to be great. How could it fail? Now this is where things got strange. When I got home, I was listening to the radio in my bedroom. I'd never really listened to songs, but this strange tune suddenly came on. This disturbed me greatly.

I wasn't really listening at first, but when I heard the chorus, I was deeply disturbed

There is no other day
Let's try it another way
You'll lose your mind and play
Free games for May
See Emily play

I realised that I had lost my mind. I had realised that all I could think about was Emily and all I wanted to do was play with her. I had to find out who the song was by. A week or so later, it came on & I asked my older sister Val. She said "That's Pink Floyd. They are into drugs, drug addicts like them". The thing was, I loved the song. It made me feel happy. The trouble was that as soon as it finished, I became racked with guilt. I worried that I was a drug addict (rather strange really as was about 7 and didn't know what drugs were). I asked my eldest brother Laurie, about Pink Floyd. He started to tell me about psychedelia & UFO's.

All of a sudden, I realised the awful truth. Emily was an Alien! That was why she was so different to all the other girls, that was why she was so pretty. That was why I'd lost my mind. Her strange power had transformed me into an Alien controlled Zombie! The worst thing was that all I wanted to be was a zombie, listening to Pink Floyd, playing with Emily. Worse still, I couldn't validate my theory with my siblings as I knew they'd start the "Roger's got a Girlfriend" wind up and humiliate me. I developed a mad interest in astronomy. I bought a telescope. This was a cover to look for Emily's UFO. I was obsessed with this whole scenario for about four or five years, but never told anyone. WhenI was 14 I discovered punk rock and was finally completely cured.

There are a few hangovers. Apart from "See Emily Play" I loathe and detest Pink Floyd. I had this strange belief that Syd Barrett had been knobbled to stop him telling me the truth. I also found their later albums strangely bland and lacking in references to interesting things.

Another rather strange thing is I have an extreme dislike of zombie films. I have this urge to yell at the telly "That's not how it really is"

I also think that combined with my dyslexia, this had a massively detrimental effect on my education as I was far more interested in my fantasy world than anything else.

I never saw Emily again. My mum developed cancer in 1970 and that was the end of my acting career. I'd completely put all of this into a little compartment in my mind labelled childhood fantasy until I did Iain Dale's question, shut the door and locked it. It has made me ask myself one question. I wonder if my children have any such bizarre ideas?