Brian Blessed - The Bearded Foghorn!

I’ve never actually been in the presence of Brian Blessed. I write that with a high degree of certainty because I imagine that, like a gathering thunderstorm or an approaching steam locomotive at full speed, I’d hear him long before he hove into view. Surely I’m not alone in automatically associating the actor not with a specific role but his extraordinary booming baritone.

And his beard runs the voice a close second. That forest of facial fur has been part of his persona since the days when I thought beards were the sole preserve of pirates and possibly seventeenth-century French swordsmen. I’m too young to have witnessed Blessed’s big break in Z Cars back in 1962 but am pretty sure my six year-old self re-enacted with sticks or knitting needles scenes from the BBC’s adaptation of The Three Musketeers. I’m not convinced however, that Porthos’ neatly sculpted goatee was natural. 

By the late Sixties, Mum and Dad were in the habit of watching The Avengers and on a Saturday evening (I think) I was sometimes allowed to join them. I don’t suppose I could follow the plots; not sure anybody could, but for me it was all about dapper Steed’s lethal furled umbrella. I may have seen the episode in 1969 featuring a pencil-moustachioed army sergeant who loved to shout. Yes, Brian Blessed was perfectly cast! 

I can’t recall whether or not he was shaven for appearances in gentle Welsh medical soap Owen MD but, in accordance with Imperial Rome’s disdain for facial hair, his generous jawline was clean for one of his most celebrated dramatic parts as the Emperor Augustus in I Claudius. This was more Dad’s cup of tea than mine but, as a teenager with some interest in history, I did my best to follow the rather heavy, studio-bound action.  The series also introduced me to young actors of the calibre of John Hurt and Derek Jacobi but I do recall Blessed dominating the stage in several episodes, either raging or, in an extraordinary death scene, being completely silent for several minutes, acting only with fading eyes. 

By the mid-Seventies, Augustus apart, the dye was cast with our Brian portraying all manner of bearded baddies. In The Sweeney he came to a sticky end while in the gripping BBC series Survivors he was a brutal bully who runs his post-apocalyptic community his way or no way. In Blake’s 7, his megalomania extended to designs on the entire galaxy then in the convoluted Cyprus thriller The Aphrodite Inheritance he made an excellent armed brigand.  

Blessed’s physical qualities also makes for an imposing king in the traditional style. For example, he was a romping Richard IV in the original Black Adder series and the fearsome warlord Yrcanos in a 1986 Doctor Who serial, not to mention assorted Barons, Squires and Shakespearean dukes but even when he appears as himself he’s always formidable and a tad unpredictable. With an infamous potty mouth the bleeping machine and editors have doubtless worked overtime after recordings of Room 101, A Question of Sport and his ‘Gotcha!’ sequence whilst being ‘pranked’ on Noel’s House Party. He certainly made an idiosyncratic presenter of Have I Got News For You?! 

Brian is also famed as a real-life adventurer. Who else would climb some of the world’s highest peaks, undergo full astronaut training in Russia and become the oldest man ever to reach the North Pole on foot. His expeditions have provided fertile ground for anecdotes on programmes including QI and The Kumars. Legend has it he even punched a polar bear on the nose. From anyone else you’d write it off as fanciful fiction but with Mr B, anything is possible.

Yet the actor can be a sensitive soul. I loved his journey back in time to discover the highs and lows experienced by his bookbinder ancestor on Who Do You Think You Are, revealing both his bombastic Yorkshire bluster and a more reflective side. Nevertheless it’s that deafening delivery which is Brian Blessed’s USP. It continues to bolster his bank balance through numerous, audioplays, computer game voicing. His Grampy Rabbit on Peppa Pig episodes is always a delight (wasted on young children!) but it’s his TV ads which always stand out. Only a few minutes ago he was urging me to buy Terry’s Chocolate Orange and his larger-than-life persona was exploited in a recent Ladbroke’s campaign. Ah, Brian Blessed: never knowingly under-voiced!

Yeeeees, Jeremy Paxman.....

For someone whose main bodies of work I’ve tended to neglect, Jeremy Paxman must have summoned a Herculean effort to join my TV treasures. Alternatively it’s my realisation that the UK media world would be an infinitely poorer place without him. From his time as a nodding rectangular head to an independent silvery beard with licence to grill, Paxo has, considering his usual place on the outer reaches of the schedules, punched above his weight to occupy my affections. 

I probably first encountered his on-screen persona in the early 1980s when he was an occasional reporter on BBC1’s Panorama. The current affairs series was never a must-see but I have a feeling a certain anti-Thatcher peace-loving Exeter undergraduate may have watched this 1980 period piece presented by Paxman. 

Several years later I may occasionally have returned early enough from work to see him host the Six o’Clock News although in the mornings we as a family traditionally preferred to have breakfast and scurry around the house to Radio 4’s Today programme rather than tuning in to the Beeb’s Breakfast Time, where in 1988 Jeremy would be spotted in appropriately shiny light attire. 

A year later he moved to BBC2’s late-evening programme Newsnight, with which he would quickly become synonymous. I remember as a youngish number-cruncher/analyst at the Beeb’s Broadcasting Research Department being involved in a joint research project on the show, and the first presentation I ever gave was to the scarily earnest editor Tim Gardam in the Newsnight offices. Wow! There was the presenter himself looking busy striding between the desks. Thank God he wasn’t in my audience interrogating me on my summary of the programme’s audience figures. Mind you, he’s not always that hot on statistics!  Still that project turned out to be a good gig because my work with colleague Moira Bovill was selected for a European research conference in Madrid the following January. Such travel treats were rare! 

Later in 1990 he was on hand to host the edition following Thatcher’s sudden resignation which I may in part have watched, so tumultuous was the event. However, it was for his abrasive but incisive interviewing style that he became famous, not least for his persistent repeating the same question of the Home Secretary Michael Howard in 1997. Yet even Paxo failed to secure an honest answer from the ever-oily Tory minister. Most politicians dreaded facing him on Newsnight, knowing that being unceremoniously skewered, albeit in front of only a million viewers, could be curtains for a parliamentary career, as in this amusing 2009 episode of BBC comedy The Thick of It. A few, like Peter Mandelson, actually relished the challenge and Anne Widdecombe’s survival strategy was, as she put it, “I simply stared at his tie”. 

Amongst his many interviewees were UK and world leaders of all kinds. Inevitably Tony Blair was accorded longer-form sessions with Jeremy and, even though I may not have seen them on Newsnight they would usually make it to the main news headlines the following day, as in 2001 before the Blair bubble finally burst. Paxman was also the go-to interviewer on the live BBC Election Night coverage, filling in the gaps between incoming results. What I liked about him was his readiness to banter with guests and treat the more pompous oafs with the condescension they so richly deserved. That includes you, Mayor Boris Johnson! 

However, that doesn’t mean I approved of all his snide comments. During the 2005 General Election broadcast I remember watching in disgust as he was downright rude to a victorious George Galloway just because he had defeated the black woman Labour incumbent Oona King. For me, and many others, he crossed the line, and I was no fan of Galloway! He lived up to his old sneering Spitting Image puppet that night: “Yeee-eeeess” indeed. 

Fortunately there is more to Jeremy Paxman than poking politicians and would-be social commentators with a sharp stick. Channel-hopping has led me to dip into the world of college clever-clogs that is University Challenge. I find his exchanges with the students as equals quite endearing but recoil in horror when he comes over all superior. I can’t believe he’s been hosting the show since 1994! 

Away from the rarified world of current affairs, Paxman has proved an adept writer and presenter of history-themed documentaries such as Empire. In 2006, he also became the subject of a surprisingly moving Who Do You Think You Are?, showing a reassuringly emotional side when shedding a tear on learning of a Victorian ancestor’s struggle with poverty. The great Jeremy Paxman was human after all.

Sue Johnston - Acting Royle-ty

It might appear a tad perverse to select as a Treasure someone who has made her name in three major dramas I’ve never been inclined to watch, but Sue Johnston is so much more than the product of Corrie, Brookside or Downton Abbey. Like her Royle Family co-star Liz Smith, she was a late starter to television, not making her debut ‘til the age of 38. She appeared in the very first episode of Brookside on Channel 4’s opening night back in ’82 but it wasn’t until the next decade that I saw her on the box.

It was probably in Medics, an ITV series which ran for five years, but which didn’t keep me hooked for long. To be honest the most memorable character was played by Tom Baker who, like Brian Blessed, is never known for understated performances. Alternatively it could have been the same year as a casino owner in A Touch of Frost or in Inspector Morse, although this was only a minor part alongside the likes of Diana Quick and a very youthful Sean Bean.

Sue was on the right side of the law five years later, this time in the Beeb’s Crime Traveller. Like Medics, I don’t recall this being a long-standing regular of mine but I was prepared to give it a go. It was obviously a vehicle for Michel French, straight after his stint on Eastenders and based on the unlikely premise that he and co-star Chloe Annett could secretly use her late dad’s time machine for solving crimes. Hmm. Johnston played French’s boss who disliked his methods but presumably not his results. Despite being written by Anthony Horowitz (Poirot, Foyle’s War and novels featuring Sherlock Holmes and James Bond, though sadly not in the same story) it wasn’t recommissioned but they were fairly entertaining cop capers.

Waking The Dead lasted much longer; eleven years, in fact. Sue Johnston played Grace Foley, an experienced psychological profiler who was the calm, rational, ‘people person’ partner of more headstrong Trevor Eve’s DCI Boyd in his Cold Case team. Besides a healthy dollop of mutual respect, there was much witty banter between the two, a key factor in the show’s enduring popularity throughout the Noughties.

Whilst born in nearby Warrington, Sue Johnston was brought up on Merseyside. Her Liverpool credentials were advanced from her time on Brookside but apparently her allegiance to Liverpool FC is life-long. This informed football support earned her a few spots on Fantasy Football League in the Nineties. It may have been a comedy showpiece for Frank Skinner and David Baddiel but the guests also had the opportunity to demonstrate some genuine sporting knowledge. Back in ’94, Sue was by no means fazed by the lads or fellow guest Eddie Large, but I can’t recall, come the end of the season, how successful she was as a manager.

In 2004, I became riveted by the first series of the celebrity family history series, Who Do You Think You Are? To some extent, it has suffered through familiarity leading if not to contempt but at least to repetition. After a few years, I started to tire of the samey tales from the trenches or Caribbean slavery. Some of the best have been rooted in very ordinary social realism of nineteenth-century Britain, and Sue Johnston’s personal genealogical journey to life on the railways and slums of Carlisle was both gripping and emotional. Sadly I can’t find it on YouTube but the actress was mesmerising merely playing herself.

More recently Sue has been lured by some meaty dramatic roles. In 2018 she was in Kiri, playing star Sarah Lancashire’s elderly mum and last year was again in granny mode in Channel 4’s hard-hitting reminder of the Stafford Hospital scandal, The Cure. She portrayed Bella, whose unnecessary death sparked the campaign which resulted in the eventual expose of incompetence and shocking outcomes of spending cuts in the NHS. The mini-series also introduced me to the worrying notion of Sue Johnston as someone who was actually quite old in real life.

However, it is in comedy that she has become best known in recent decades. There was her role in Jennifer Saunders’ not terribly funny Jam and Jerusalem and with another excellent ensemble cast in the feelgood TV movie family holiday to Lapland. Co-star and fellow-Scouser Stephen Graham has said: “For me to work with Sue Johnston is like playing football with Steven Gerrard” although since then he himself  has become the Mo Salah of TV actors.

But of course I will never forget her as Barbara in The Royle Family. She didn’t always get the funniest lines but she’s utterly brilliant as the downtrodden mum being whisked along by the crazily commonplace conversations in the living room or even in the car. The scripts may have become increasingly formulaic but the characters remained true. From her spot at the end of the sofa, Sue Johnston showed time and again why she is one of the finest character actors of our time.