‘One of the best sitcoms ever’

10:30am Thursday 5th June 2008

North-East actors David Nellist and Scott Frazer have a script by world famous writers and the legacy of iconic TV characters Bob Ferris and Terry Collier working in their favour for Durham Gala's world premiere, they tell Viv Hardwick

BY pure coincidence, actors David Nellist and Scott Frazer met at Newcastle Central Station on their way to rehearsal, the same way that Bob and Terry are reunited in The Likely Lads, the play which is bringing world attention to Durham's Gala Theatre next week.

Frazer, who plays Terry, says: "In the play my next line is bloody hell' and I thought I'd say that just to impress David.

So hopefully the luck is already written into this."

There's already speculation about director Simon Stallworthy's inspired decision to turn the legendary sitcom into a two-act drama leading to a national tour at the very least.

The 1960s and 1970s Newcastle-inspired series made household names of Rodney Bewes and James Bolam - not forgetting Bridget Forsyth who played Bob's long-suffering girlfriend/wife Thelma Chambers - and all three actors, Nellist, Frazer and Susie Burton, are aware that this is a premiere like no other.

Nellist agrees that he's landed one of the roles of his acting career: "I worked with Simon on The Far Corner (the play based on Harry Pearson's book) two years ago and he approached me in February when I was in in Nicholas Nickleby in Canada. Simon obviously saw something aspirational in me and could see me as Bob.

"I'm intimidated only in the way that audiences will come with a preconception of the success of the television series.

We're not trying to be Rodney Bewes or Jim Bolam, we're playing Bob Ferris and Terry Collier as written by Dick Clement and Ian la Frenais. You can't deny that's what they're thinking when they walk through the door, but you're hoping that by creating a piece of theatre that within ten minutes they've forgotten that we don't look like Bewes and Bolam."

He agrees that it's so fondly remembered because The Likely Lads broke the mould in terms of placing working class characters into a sitcom. It also put the North-East on the map.

"It wasn't patronising at all about the region. These were real characters and other people were going through exactly the same dilemmas as Bob and Terry," adds Nellist.

The plot here centres on the Whatever Happened To The Likely Lads? series of 1973 which sees Terry returning from Army service just as his best friend is about to settle down to married life on the Elm Lodge Housing Estate (actually the Highfields Estate in Killingworth).

"Terry insults Bob by saying that he's living the same life as everybody else. Getting up in the morning listening to Jimmy Young and getting their leg over twice a week and I'm thinking twice a week?'," he says.

Nellist feels that the two Hollywood-based scriptwriters have still got a good ear for North-East issues to be able to create this latest script.

He didn't know Scott Frazer previously, so part of the challenge for both is making it look to an audience that the two men have been friends since being five-year-olds.

"I met James Bolam last year when I was doing Nicholas Nickleby and his wife had been in the original production. He seemed to be a really quiet and unassuming man," reveals Nellist when asked about the darker side of The Likely Lads, which saw Bolam and Bewes never speak again after completing a film in 1976.

Frazer opens a conversation about playing Terry Collier with an real-life "injustice of the world" rant after having to pay £100 for a replacement car key.

"It's only an Astra for God's sake," he says. "I probably lost it in the excitement of landing the role of Terry.

"I think it's safe to say that my Terry is going to be Dick and Ian's Terry. They've fashioned a bloody good stage play out of The Likely Lads and I certainly recognised the characters out of reading it, so it doesn't need any additional spin.

"I do feel safe that the words are very, very Terry Collier and they are very funny. So as long as I remember what to say and don't bump into the furniture I'm in good hands."

He feels it's wonderful to be back in the region with such a one-off opportunity.

"It's such a dream come true.

I know that's a tired cliché but it is true for me. It was one of the things that got me excited, particularly when I heard it was being written by Dick and Ian for the Gala. A friend of mine sent me a casting breakdown and I got onto my agent and said they're going to do The Likely Lads with the original writers, can you get me seen for this?' And I must have rung her about once a week saying is there a meeting yet?' Fortunately for me, one came through."

Frazer feels that The Likely Lads will adapt for the stage because of the funny but fromthe- heart' nature of the comedy.

"Over the two hours you get what happened in the TV series very cleverly put together. I don't look a great deal like James Bolam and I certainly wouldn't try to emulate him but the audience is still going to see similarities because the jokes, the rhythms and situations are all from the originals. I saw the set today and that looks really exciting too," adds Frazer, who managed to get hold of the original 1965 TV series to help with his portrayal.

"When you talk of the great British sitcoms, most of them, like Basil Fawlty, never move.

When you look at the two years of Whatever Happened, it's got to be one of the finest sitcoms this country has ever produced."

He and Nellist are both London-based actors. In Frazer's case he went to Lamda to train having felt that his experience in the first two Catherine Cookson films and a Newcastle College acting course might not be enough to land acting work.

"People wonder why we do acting and a lot of the time you put your hand in your pocket and feel a leg," says Frazer. "I guess the reason is when it's good it's so very, very good and right now it's very, very good."

* The Likely Lads runs from Wednesday until Saturday, June 21 at the Gala Theatre, Durham. Box Office: 0191-332- 4041 www.galadurham.co.uk

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