CREDO Credo... Andy Gray
Fresh from starring in Peter Pan at Edinburgh’s King’s Theatre, the pantomime stalwart happily admits that his childhood ambition was always to be ‘the silly man on the stage’
I’ve only ever wanted to be an actor. I remember watching Ask Aspel on the telly when I was about eleven. The actor Simon Ward was being interviewed – Young Winston had just come out – and he was asked what advice he would give young actors. He replied: ‘Just don’t do it’. I bloody hated him.
My parents had a kilt shop in Perth, and I was a very good Saturday salesman. If I hadn’t been an actor I’d probably be selling kilts, which would have been okay.
My earliest memory is being at my Granny Robertson’s in Perth. She lived in Burghmuir Lodge at Burghmuir Hospital – my grandfather was the gardener there. There was no central heating, so my granny would get up fi rst and put the fi re on. You’d run through in your pyjamas and she’d have your vest and pants warming in front of the fi re, and a bowl of porridge waiting. I can still see it.
I loved school and was a bit of a show-off. I was lucky to have a teacher at primary school who got me interested in drama – she put me in The Three Little Pigs. At secondary school, my English teacher Alan Sturrock also got me into drama – he was my greatest inspiration. Then I joined Perth local drama club and it went from there.
My favourite place in Scotland is Perth. I grew up there and I moved back about six years ago. I’ve lived in Edinburgh and Glasgow and love them dearly but Perth is my home. I’m right on the Inch, beside the Tay, so I’m very lucky.
I get to do both straight and comedy acting, but chiefl y comedy – I’ve got that kind of face.
Comedy’s great because you get a reaction – you either get a laugh or you don’t get a laugh. It’s just as hard as straight acting, if not harder, but I think there are more rewards in comedy. There’s nothing better than doing a gag you’ve been working on in rehearsals and getting a belter of a laugh.
I love panto. Often it’s the fi rst time a person will ever go to the theatre. It was for me – I saw a panto at Perth Rep as a boy, which is when I fell in love with theatre. I can’t recall what the panto was – it was one of the traditional ones – but I do remember the comic, the silly man. I decided that that was what I wanted to be: the silly man on the stage.
Panto is hard work but it’s great. If you give a lot, you get a lot back. And you play off the mistakes, which are important – they keep things fresh, and the audience knows that it’s not rehearsed, and they love it.
Playing Bottom in A Midsummer Night’s Dream is any comedy actor’s dream. I was lucky enough to do it at the Lyceum in Edinburgh a few years ago. Rikki Fulton came to see it when we did it at the Theatre Royal in Glasgow, and he wrote me a letter afterwards saying how much he enjoyed my performance. That was a real lifetime tick for me.
Eric Morecambe is my comedy hero. I’m also a big fan of Laurel and Hardy, and I really like American comedy – Steve Martin, Gary Shandling and Larry David. But I hanker after the old days of Morecambe and Wise – you could see how much they loved what they were doing. But I know a good script can make anyone funny, so good comedy writers are important.
My greatest achievement has to be my daughter, Clare. She’s twenty-three, lives in Glasgow and is by far the best thing I’ve ever done.
I have no hidden talents whatsoever other than being quite a good cook; I do a very good steak, and a nice prawn and chorizo pasta. I enjoy reading comics and graphic novels, especially DC and Marvel. I’m a big Batman fan.
I’m happy doing what I do. My dream when I was young was to go back stage at the theatre, so to be doing what I’m doing after all these years is literally a dream come true. It’s pointless saying, ‘Hollywood now’, cos it ain’t going to happen. Hollywood producers will just ask, ‘Who’s Andy, and what’s panto?’
WWW.SCOTTISHFIELD.CO.UK 44
Latin. (n) ‘I believe’. A set of beliefs which infl uences the way you live.
PHOTO: ALI MCBRIDE
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