More Questions Answered.

When it comes to films and TV productions in which I have appeared, is much more difficult to select my most enjoyable.

According to information gleaned from the WWW and IMB I have been credited in more than one hundred and fifty TV shows and film productions so, as you can imagine it would be almost impossible to select one to put at the top of my favourites list.

Do I select from my most bizarre locations like the jungles of Malaysia when I filmed Who am I? with Jackie Chan?

Or do I go back to my first TV job when I appeared in Dixon of Dock Green way back in the early seventies? 

The central character was a mature and sympathetic police constable, George Dixon, played by Jack Warner in all the 432 episodes, from 1955 to 1976.

This famous police drama, voted second most popular programme on British TV in 1961, was filmed at the BBC White City studios and as an actor almost straight out of drama school it was certainly eventful and terrifying. Just to be working alongside Jack Warner who played the title role was a huge honour. The character Dixon was the embodiment of a typical "bobby" who would be familiar with the area and its residents in which he patrolled and often lived there himself.

In Warner’s auto-biography he tells of a visit by the Queen to the studios, where she commented "that she thought Dixon of Dock Green had become part of the British way of life".

Warner's success as Dixon was also popular amongst various police forces. He was made an honorary member of both the Margate and Ramsgate Police Forces in the 1950s. Warner said of Dixon of Dock Green: "It has been a very good meal ticket for twenty-one years—although the taxman has never been far behind."

Or, do I select the mountains of land-locked Lesotho, where I played a fanatical Arab, Sheik Maksood, one of the first of many Muslim militants who was planning to use a suitcase-nuke to erase New York from the face of the earth. This was in the filming of American Ninja 5 with David Bradley and Michael Dudikoff?

I do have some very pleasant memories of shooting Shaka Zulu and later in the eighties the story of John Ross. Both these were shot with the base camp in Eshowe, declared the capital of Zululand in 1887, and was visited by the British Royal family in 1947. It is in central Zululnd near the Dlinza Forest, in central Qua-Zulu-Natal.

Shakaland, now a major international tourist hotel was originally built for the filming of Shaka Zulu. It is now a living monument to Zulu culture.  It is from here that people from all over the world come to experience the lifestyles, social systems and rich culture of the Zulu nation.  It is said that a visit to South Africa is not complete without a visit to Shakaland.  It is a traditional Zulu “Umuzi” or homestead, dividing the homes of the local Zulu people and the hotel rooms.

Most of our filming for both these shoots was about 70 kilometres away in a pace called Disappointment Bay just south of the Tugela river mouth and I had a glorious time there eating freshly caught mussels and crayfish.

And, I must admit that Munich holds a desire to be revisited just for the German beer and multitude of sausages I consumed while filming a movie that I can’t remember the name of, probably because I never got paid for it, but I do remember sipping ice cold beers in the English Gardens.

I also remember being trapped in a Range Rover when an unexpected tropical storm hit the location, we were filming near the Olympic stadium when the heavens opened and half of Munich was suddenly under three feet of water, The whole crew and cast that was on call that day were stranded until the flash flood had subsided. Luckily, I had a book of Suduko puzzles with me and Toddie was full.

Another project on which I and another ten actors were stranded was a French movie called, as the working-title Crime in the Gabon, it was shown as “Le Crime de monsieur Stil”, directed by Ms Claire Devers. We were left marooned in the one-horse town of Poffadder which is near the Namibian border after the final day of the shoot.

The crew and the transport manager had all scarpered forgetting to collect us, we made ourselves at home in the Poffadder Hotel, until the owner decided we were going to drink his establishment dry, He loaded us into his Kombi van and drove us like a demented-Schumacher to Upington airport where we flew back to Johannesburg,

This was an eventful shoot as all us local English-speaking actors had to speak French. I was an arduous affair and even with the help of a dialogue coach in French we once took over 70 takes to shoot a night scene. It would have been hard enough in English as the French director wanted the whole scene in one hand help tracking shot, the poor cameraman darted between nine actors trying to pick up each conversation in the bar. It was a memorable occasion and the film won an award in France!

I have already written about my shoot with Jackie Chan in a couple of previous posts. I spent over six weeks in Rotterdam while Jackie kept postponing the scenes I had with him as they were full of dialogue, he preferred the action scenes where he cold display his magnificent ability by sliding down glass-built skyscrapers and defeating his opponents with Dutch wooden clogs on.

I spent most of my time befriending the local Dutch production drivers who were send weekly to numerous other towns with a briefcase full of cash to pay the local companies who were hired on the production. I accompanied them to Amsterdam, Utrecht, Eindhoven, and even crossed the border once to the Hague in Belgium. Otherwise I toured Rotterdam on their excellent tramway system with my “Plonkie”, a ticket one could buy weekly which allowed you to hop trams to various destinations in the far reaches of the city.

The trams were a cheap delight for my wanderings, far more enjoyable than riding a motor bike with a side car attached. I had to learn to do this when I filmed in the late seventies on a TV drama called my friend Angelo,

I was taught by the great stuntman the late Janie Wienand who had me careering down open tarmacked roads and across the open veld steering past rocks, boulders and up and down dongas in no time. I became so versatile that the director David Lister, with whom I shoot my movies, let me do my own stunts apart from the dangerous ones.

At times I had a young actor who played my second in command as the passenger in the sidecar. He too had to have lessons as the swinging from right to left in a sidecar is crucial when taking corners.

So, as you can see from the over 150 productions I have been in it is very difficult for me to choose the most enjoyable, but I can say that as regarding erring an income I still receive a repeat fee from airings of a job I did way back in 1972. The piece, Pendas Fen still gets shown across the world today and because of the stringent British equity laws a few pounds finds its way into my bank account.

So, I’ll pick that one. I think its available on U-tube so have a look and help keeping those payments into my account. Thank you.

Please comment.

The Cheque is in the Post/Ether!

I cannot believe that today I am screaming and shouting about an injustice that I was screaming and shouting about fifty-five years ago!!

The injustice to which I refer is the late payment to jobbing actors who do Voice Overs for Advertising agencies and their respective clients, which include, banks, cell phone companies, white-goods manufactures, automobile manufacturers and distributors, retail companies, insurance companies, confectionary & sweets, chocolate bars, computer makers, airlines, beer, wine and sprit manufactures.

I have during my illustrious career voice over-ed for all the above products, 15 years for a beer company, twelve years for a household goods manufacturer, two years for an airline, three years for an insurance company, a chewy chocolate bar for three years, and several wine producers. All this during fifty-five years as a jobbing actor and voice-over artist and I’m still waiting for a payment for a job I recorded in early April of this year. Two radio spots for a leading local Cell phone company and an up-market Cell phone manufacturer.

These spots have been broadcast nationally over the airwaves since the first week of May! There is nothing more galling for an artist to hear his dulcet voice airing the magnificence of a product while he or she has not been paid.

The payment is divided in two parts, one for his/her performance in the studio and another for its usage. The latter is dependant on the period which the advertisement is broadcast, either three or six months or a year. There is also a clause which entitles the artist’s agent to renegotiate the usage fee should the advertising agent and product manufacturer wish to use the advert for another year.

The advertising agencies claim that the product manufacturer does not pay them for at least sixty days after the advert is aired. I ask the question, when is the broadcasting company paid? Does the SABC, M-Net or E-TV, have to wait for their money too? I find this hard to believe! I suspect that the broadcasting company will not air the advert till it has been paid in advance!!

And I think that the artist should also not allow the spot to be broadcast or the advert aired, till he or she has been paid!

I attend a clinic at the local general hospital, I have done this for over sixty years. Every now and again the fee for this service has increased from ten Rand back in the nineteen seventies up to sixty-five Rand now. But I must pay this fee before I can even see a doctor, have the necessary tests and receive my medication. A very simple and easy procedure; why can’t the advertising industry have a similar one?

Imagine what would happen if you didn’t pay the mechanic for the repair to your car? You wouldn’t get your car! Imagine what would happen if you didn’t pay the plumber who changed or washer or if you hadn’t paid the electrician who’s replaced your earth-leakage unit? Both these artisans would remove what they had fixed!!

I understand that certain professions like lawyers, doctors, accountants all submit monthly invoices for the work they have done for various clients and allow some latitude if their payments are not forthcoming, but they then add interest to these late payments, just like late-paid municipal accounts. But Voice-over artist do not even get this!

Way back when I did a lot of voice-overs and I had a friendly bank manager, I could ride the late payments as I always knew that I could increase my overdraft and pay my monthly bills, but now in old age work is not so prolific and waiting for five or seven thousand Rand means the disconnection of my electricity!

God knows how younger artists are coping either. If any of you younger readers are venturing into the world of voice-overring, I strongly advise you either to have a good-standing overdraft facility with your bank or an exceptionally good agent whom can chase outstanding payments from advertising agencies!

My agent went through a very difficult negotiation with a local beer manufacturer in the nineteen eighties. Under the voice-over contract the Ad agency can broadcast the advert on either radio or on television, but nowhere in the contract is it said they can broadcast them at a live venue like a cricket match.

Back then, the beer company was the national sponsor of the South African cricket team, the Proteas. It so happened that I was given eight free tickets by the brewery to watch an ODI game at the Wanderers in Johannesburg against the mighty Australians. My children at the time were living in Phalaborwa with their mother, they were going to the same school as Dale Steyn, who even at the tender age of ten was keenly interested in cricket. I gave all the tickets to my children who came down to Johannesburg for the weekend accompanied by Dale Steyn and his father.

They had a fantastic time watching Alan Donald decimate the Australian batsmen with figures of five for sixty and the Proteas won the game, however over a few beers, when I met them afterwards, they could not stop talking about my voice-overs which they had the pleasure of hearing at almost every bowling change. Dale’s father brought up the question, “How much do they pay you?” I pleaded ignorance as I did not even know they were being aired at the match. Both the radio spots and the television Ads were shown on the big screen, urging the attending public to fill their plastic cups with “The taste that stood the test of time.”

It took my agent four months of negotiation with the advertising agency, SA Breweries and the Wanderer’s cricket ground officials. All three entities were involved because each of them blamed the other and were reluctant to pay. Finally, a deal was struck and for the next eight years I received a fee for their use at live matches.

Another tale from the same era, in the days before the new-fangled- technologies entered our lives, a fellow thespian and voice artist waited for five months for his payment. Deciding he could wait no longer he and a friend visited the advertising agency in Sandton, Approaching the enquiry desk he asked to speak to the senior accountant and said he would wait. He then lent over the counter and grabbed the small switchboard, disconnected it and sat down with his mate. Within five minutes the accountant arrived, and he informed him of his problem. The accountant departed and returned a few minutes later with a cheque made out to cash!

There are some happy endings!

DATA

I have recently, in a past blog, written about The New-Fangled -Technologies that confront us on an almost daily basis.

It’s time I attacked the cost and the use of that commodity which one must have to operate the New-Fangled-Technologies, i.e. DATA!

For almost ten years I made use of an internet company, which for the meagre sum of ninety Rand a month supplied me with 2 Gigs of internet usage. Unfortunately, they were forced to close.

They kindly offered me the chance to join another company that would give me a Wi-Fi service of 2 Gigs usage, but at over twice the cost, two hundred Rand. After quickly looking at all other offers, I realised that this was going to be the cheapest on the market, so I signed on the dotted line and accepted the offer.

I have now been in the cloud, so to speak, with this company and the Windows Microsoft 10 operating system, for five months. Some things have been OK; I’ve managed to keep writing my blog; helped edit a couple of play-scripts for friends and continued to make posts on Facebook and send emails. All well and good, you might say. But!!!

I’ve continually been bombarded with annoying adverts and distractions asking me if I want to buy something or upgrade to some new-fangled-distraction!!

These adverts I’ve now realised are using up my paid for internet Data!!

Last month, for the first time ever!!! I found that I had used my 2 Gigs three days before the end of the month!

I do not download movies, I do not use U-tube! All I do is blog, Facebook and send emails!

Very annoying!!!!

Another complaint I have is that, in the past I’ve always enjoyed a game of “Free-Cell”. Now, with Windows ten, I must play this game in the cloud, so to speak, and this also means that almost every ten minutes or so, I’m hit with another wave of Ads offering me other games which I don’t want!

Microsoft does offer the ability to avoid these infuriating advertisements, but this means I must upgrade and pay an additional cost! Galling to say the least! It seems that every way there is to try and keeps costs down, the technology companies have a way to increase the cost!

At least when my late grandfather flew his racing pidgeons, way back in the nineteen-hundreds, the only cost he had was the feed, as he had me to clean their loft and from their effluent, he made the most efficient fertiliser! A pity there is no effluent from Data, or its usage!

Recently, The Independent Communications Authority of South Africa (Icasa) compared the cost of data within Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa – the BRICS nations, because of a request by the public.

Its findings are published in a report analysing the tariff plans offered by local operators.

Icasa looked at the price of 500MB, 1GB and 2GB packages. In South Africa, the body found that the difference between the cheapest ($7.15 aproximately 90 Rand) and most expensive 2GB package ($19.57 aproximately R230).

Do a google search, “Ways to reduce your Data cost!” and you’ll find numerous ways to reduce your DATA usage, particularly when on holiday and using your smart phone. Most of the advice is common sense, like switching of your “roaming facility”. But it seems, unless you’re a hacker or computer boffin, there is no way to stop the technology companies charging fucking exorbitant rates.

If any of you readers have simple method, I would be extremely grateful if you could pass on the information.

This morning I came across another “Rip-off”. My over twenty-year-old Hansa gate motor is malfunctioning. I took a quick look and realised that the latch mechanism, which is a slightly bent metal bar with a free-wheeling plastic nodule at its end, was not working. This mechanism stops the gate motor by hitting a rise on the horizontal bar and the plastic nodule at the end of the metal bar had completely worn away.

Considering that the Hansa motor is over twenty-four years old, not bad.

I tracked down a gate repair company who specialises in Hansa motors and took the metal bar to them to get a spare part. I was knocked sideways when I was told the replacement would cost two hundred and twenty Rand. The offered alternative was to bring the motor in to them, and they would replace the mechanism totally for one thousand and forty Rand!!

I am now at work with some 20mm electrical plastic conduit and my Pratley’s quick-set glue and putty “Magyer-ing” a solution and making a new plastic nodule to fit on the end of the 4cm long slightly bent metal bar.

I am totally confused by the ingenuity that technology companies have in created new products that work twice as badly as the old ones that they created. This money-grabbing formula seems to be entering our lives daily.

I have a little tool-box draw in which I store all the Cadac-gas-valves I have accumulated over the past fifty years. I do not think I’ve bought a new one for at least twenty-five years. Every time one of my gas filling valves gets blocked I unblock an old one, fit it on the appliance and hey-presto the light, cooker, blow torch is working again.

However, to unblock the valve a device is needed, a Cadac-valve-cleaning tool. A small device, a metal strip with a very thin, less than a millimetre in circumference. After a search of my tool shed, I couldn’t find mine.

So, I popped down to my local hardware store to be told that Cadac no longer make them and I would have to buy a new valve at forty-three Rand!!

I can announce success! The contraption for the gate is repaired and installed and it work! The marvel of Pratley’s quick-set putty and glue.

Maybe, I am wrong to assume that today is a totally a throw-away society. Everyone follows the easiest solution, throw it away and get a new one. Perhaps I am fortunate as my grandfather was an electrician and a joiner and he took great pleasure in teaching me his invaluable knowledge, which I still use today.

It seems as if today’s youth have not the foggiest idea how to use a nut & bolt; they do not understand the function of a washer. When it comes to the theory and the practical use of electricity their minds are a complete blank. The changing of a plug, connecting a three-way switch, changing a light-fitting, making a Janus cable extension, are all problems they are not educated to solve.

And I need not even mention gas! No wonder there are so many fires and explosions in the world!

I even solved the problem of the missing Cadac vale-cleaner. I made one using a fine stand of electrical wire!

If it works, if it can be repaired, don’t throw it away! and whatever you do; don't buy a new one!!!!!

The Gambles in Life

Do you ever call it a day and say you’ve had enough, you’ve travelled and gone far enough? Taken as much as you stand?

Well, when it comes to TV programmes I’m definitely a yes-man to all the above questions!

When it comes to Quiz programmes, they are an immediate channel changer for me.

Not all of them however.

One of my favourites is the BBC’s programme with Stephen Fry and now Sandy Toksvig called “QI” and again the BBC with “Would I lie to you” hosted by Rob Brydon and with David Mitchel and Lee Mack captaining the opposing teams.

Both shows are examples of top-notch British comedy at its peak with fantastic guest artists, comprised of comedians, musicians, actors and even a priest or two.

However, down at the bottom and immediate channel-changers are “Deal or No Deal” with Noel Edmunds as the host, and “Tipping Point” presented by Ben Shephard. I have to admit that “Pointless” hosted by Alexander Armstrong and Richard Osman  has me in a quandary that falls into no-mans-land, sometimes I can watch and other times I switch channels.

It is, I believe, an aversion that stems from my youth, when I worked for some time as a small-change boy on Blackpool’s Golden Mile amusement arcade.

 It is an aversion to gambling,  caused by the number of fights, crying children in prams and battered mothers lying in the gutter, that I saw whilst I did the job.

It was a simple job, I would wander around the arcade carrying a leather shoulder bag with several compartments filled with small change. In the late fifties when I had the job, it was filled with pennies, threepences, sixpences, shillings, and half-a-crowns, the latter being worth two shillings and sixpence. I had special secret zipped compartment where I placed the paper notes that I had exchanged for small change.

Once I had more than ten pound in paper notes I had to return it to the office, as mugging of small-change-boys was a common occurrence.

Most of the visitors to Blackpool were at that time from the working class manual labouring towns of the industrial North of England, Scotland and Wales. Miners, cotton and wool factory workers, steel foundry workers, furnace feeders, bricklayers and construction labourers. It was their annual summer holiday and they came with hard earned wages stuffed in their back pockets and secretly hoped they would win a fortune at the slot machines on the Golden Mile.

Obviously, that was not what happened.

Gambling like another pet-hate, insurance companies; they both feed off hope, desperation and fear; these are basic human emotions. The faces I see today on the TV quiz shows remind me of those faces I saw as I exchanged a last Pound note to a losing holiday-maker.

Family violence has always been an enormous problem in communities throughout the world. In fact, a recent survey found that in Australia one in three Australian women have experienced physical violence from a current or former partner, and one in four have experienced emotional abuse by a current or former partner.

The survey also showed that there is a clear link between problem gambling and intimate partner violence, children, parents and grandparents are also the victims of violence perpetrated by those with significant gambling problems.

A memory that stays with me goes way back to nineteen fifty-five which resulted in the calling of the local constabulary, the ambulance service and the local social services, which at the time were almost non-existent.

It was a Saturday lunch time when a Glaswegain labourer Ken, his young wife, Monica and six-month-old baby in his pram arrived at the arcade. The baby had a small teddy-bear with him and he squeezed it with delight while he sucked on a full bottle of milk.

“I’ll change my last Tenner,” said Ken, “Sixpences, threepences, and pennies” he said to me, while he looked at his wife as though asking for approval. Monica shrugged in a non-committed way.

“And that’s it?” she added.

“Aye, gotta be, I ain’t got more!” he said in a subdued semi-belligerent tone,

“But y’ still got the ‘oliday-flat money?”

“Aye, I left it there!” he added, “as y’ told mi to!”

“Good.”

I could already sense that the two of them had had a serious conversation on the money situation before they came down to the Golden Mile.

It was about two thirty in the afternoon when the rumpus started, the sound of screaming brought myself and Stan, the arcade manger, to the front of the arcade. A small area of pavement that allowed the passing pedestrians to walk by our arcade and allow them to move on to find another venue that conned them into thinking that they might find their fortune.

When we arrived, the pram was on its side with the baby crying, trying to reach his teddy bear and finished bottle lying in the gutter. Ken had his hands around Monica’s throat and was shaking her violently. Stan made his way to Ken screaming at me, “Call the fucking cops lad!”

I turned to go to the back office, seeing Stan receive a flying right arm jab to the face, sending him crashing to the ground.

I called the cops explaining what happened and told them to come quickly before darting back to the concussed Stan.

“We’ve gotta get ‘em apart!” said Stan as I helped him up.

Stan leapt on Ken’s back and I attempted my best rugby tackle on his thighs. Our joint assault on Ken gave Monica a chance to free herself and went straight to the upturned baby.

By the Grace of God and to our luck the Black-Mariah filled with six policemen pulled up and sprang into action pulling myself and Stan off a slightly subdued Ken.

By now a watching crowd had surrounded us, and while four of the coppers tried to hold them back, the other two dealt with Ken, who by now had found his second-wind and was struggling with them as they tried to get him handcuffed. A third copper finally came over and got the cuffs on him.

Meanwhile Monica was sobbing uncontrollably while clutching her baby. After a short collection of statements by the senior officer, Constable Hardgeaves, Stan escorted Monica back to his office and ordered me to get on with my job.

The fracas had brought in many more customers and the arcade was almost at bursting point. I had to squeeze myself through the throng and be constantly aware of that other villainy that had befallen me before; pick-pockets delving into my shoulder bag.

At about four o’clock in the afternoon we received another visit from the police, this time they were detectives and a single uniformed constable. Luckily Monica was still with Stan in his office. She had chosen to stay there as returning to their accommodation would have reminded her of her time in there with Ken.

She retold her story she had told Stan. She had said that everyday Ken had physically attacked her and forced her to hand over their holiday savings so that he could play the slot-machines. About an hour later the detective asked me to make a full statement. I had to recall every detail as to what I saw the couple doing, the time and their position in the arcade, what machine Ken was playing, and what time he was at each machine. All the time I was praying that they would not search me and find my hidden “Toddie” in my trousers’ back pocket.

I knew that a Yate’s Wine Lodge sipping minor would not be a good witness for the prosecution.

It felt worse than a school test and by six o’clock I was exhausted, they said I could go home after I’d signed the statement that had been written down by the constable. They also warned me that I must tell my mother about the whole incident and that I would be asked to attend the trial in court, probably in about two weeks’ time.

Just as I was about to board a tram to take me home another official vehicle arrived carrying a driver and two meticulously dressed middle-aged ladies.

The last sight I saw was of Monica screaming on the pavement as one of the ladies carried the baby to their car whist the other wheeled the pram and placed it in the boot of the car.

To this day, seventy odd years later, that vision of Monica resurfaces as I watch the faces of losing contestants on TV quiz-shows.

Yep, an aversion to TV quiz shows and a loathing even a hatred of gambling!