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The Questionnaire - Terry Molloy
26 January 2006
Terry Molloy (Mike Tucker) answers listeners' questions, in the latest of our occasional series:
Terry Molloy (Mike Tucker)
Now that you are without Pamela Craig's input are you finding that you feel different about coming in to work and acting without her? You've played a "double act" as Betty's other half for so long now - does that not affect you emotionally?
Ali Berkley
Hi Ali thanks for a very special question. Pam and I were "husband and wife" for some 33 years ... if only once a month in studio. You can't spend that amount of time with someone as wonderful to work with as Pam and not be affected by her "demise". It is odd to come into studio now and realise that she will never more be there to pop Mike's pomposity bubble ... or my own for that sake. I will miss her, as I know we all will.
Do you find it hard pretending to be Mike when you really aren't?
Torie
Er ... who's pretending, Torie? I have great warmth for Mike and his tendency for only opening his mouth to change feet, although he is far removed from my everyday self (except in the poverty stakes - big aah now!) I have grown up with, and aged alongside him and he is like a well worn and comfy pair of slippers I pop on when called to the studio to record.
Do you think Mike will ever find another love?
Ruan Milborrow and Helena
That's a hard one Ruan and Helena. Right now I would say an emphatic no. Mike was so deeply in love with Betty that the idea of ever finding another soulmate that could come close to the relationship he and Betty enjoyed is almost inconceivable ... but who knows what time might do or bring into his life. You'll just have to keep listening!
Congratulations on your heart-wrenching performance as you tried to decide what to wear for the funeral. It was so moving I ended up in tears too and that has never happened to me before either when listening to or watching a drama.
Jane
Your recent which-suit-to-wear? scene was very (!) moving. You seemed to reach down deep and pull out every last bit of pain and sorrow left in you. How difficult was it to perform such a vulnerable moment? I'm sure a lot of people identified with Mike, that such loss was suddenly felt over no longer being able to ask one's partner something simple and everyday as "How does this look?".
Charles Lauder, Jr
Can you please tell us something about the process of expressing such powerful emotion on the radio as we have heard on from you recently? It does seem to me that this must be doubly difficult when dressed in ordinary clothes, faced with a microphone and without the illusion of stage trappings (set/costume/lights etc) to add to believability.
Sue Gedge
I must say how much I appreciate what you have written Jane, Charles and Sue. That particular scene, deciding what to wear, was so superbly written - it jumped off the page as I read it - and placed at just the right moment in Mike's emotional transition from the cold after-shock of Betty's death to the closure of the funeral.
There are moments on radio when you are faced with a scene like this that requires a burst of raw emotion to come from within. It is hard to explain but, as an actor, I had to stand outside myself and allow "Mike" to express the deep pain that was triggered, as so often happens in bereavements, by the simplest of thoughts or actions; and yet at the same time, in standing outside as "Terry the actor", ensure that technically the delivery of the speech was controlled and audible - does that make sense to you? In playing the scene, I drew on a recent experience in my own life of the pain I experienced from the death of a close family member. This was combined and fuelled by the stunningly moving emotion that Amy brought to the scene as Brenda and her recent similar experience of losing her mother.
It was a very hard scene for us both to play and we just jumped in and recorded it without a rehearsal. One of the main arts of the actor on radio is, while in ordinary clothes and in the sterile setting of a recording studio, to paint pictures with the words he utters. These may be physical pictures or emotional pictures that inform the listener of the where and what and why of a story or journey the character may be travelling. All we can hope is that the pictures we paint ring true in the minds of you, the listeners.
Now that your beloved wife Betty has passed away, would you consider letting Roy and Hayley have your farmhouse as their home, or at least building a home for them on your land? Will you try and get Brenda to go back to university?
Ann Hallewell
Ann, I am sure there is nothing more Mike wants than for his children to get on with their lives and I'm sure he would be delighted to pass the farmhouse on to Roy and Hayley (he doesn't have enough land to build another one ... and given his experience with Neil's house, that might just be a bad idea!). He would not stand in their way either if they wanted to move on, though his loneliness and desire to have them around him would hurt. So also with Brenda. he fears her leaving him, as he needs her so much, yet is trying his hardest come to terms with the situation and to make the road clear for her to return to university when she is ready.
I missed about ten years of The Archers during the 1990s. When and how did you lose your eye?
Richard Tola
The injury to Mike's eye has been played down (forgotten?) in recent years. What is the official line with Mike - does he still wear an eyepatch?
Wudzi
Hi Richard, it was back in 1991 that Mike lost his eye in an industrial injury while working on a trailer for Cameron Fraser. The hydraulic pipe whipped back and hit him in the eye causing a detached retina and his subsequent blindness. It was as a result of that injury that Betty and he were able to buy Willow Farm from the compensation money.
Wudzi this is a question that often comes up. I never forget I have only one eye and there are the occasional cryptic lines thrown in from time to time, like "Mike's keeping an eye out ..." along with his not playing in the cricket team because of restricted vision. His injury is on record but he no longer wears an eye patch as his eye is intact but unseeing. I just hope and pray that the writers never decide he should lose his voice!
Do you have any funny memories of playing Davros?
Jill Warsop
Jill, most of my memories of playing Davros involve physical pain! The heat of wearing the mask, trying to propel the "chair" in a straight line with my toes when it wanted to act like a supermarket trolley and go its own way, having to wash my mouth out with food dye to blacken my tongue, sitting encased in plaster of Paris while a head mould was taken - the list is endless!
Having said that, playing Davros was great fun too. There was a camaraderie amongst the cast of Doctor Who as we created stories that (though we didn't know at the time) were to become classics over the years, and I still appear at conventions and on new audio adventures as the Creator of the Daleks. Who knows, maybe Davros will return in the new series to once more send children and adults scuttling behind the sofa? We can but dream!
How does it feel having your own son, Philip, playing Will Grundy, and a different actor playing your fictional son, Roy? Do the two of them get along?
Nick Bacon and Sally Franklin
Well Nick and Sally, my real son Philip has been playing "Willyum" since he was seven years old and accompanied me to the studio after school while I was recording. The producer at the time needed a little boy to shout out to Eddie: "Hey Dad, that man's got my ball!" and asked if Philip would like to have a go. The rest is, as they say, history. I am very proud of the way he has grown with the part over the years and made it very much his own. In reality, he and Barrie (Ed) get on really well, as do all the younger members of the cast (do I sound like an old fogey or what!).
Ian (Roy) and I get along really well too - more like mates than dad and son, though he does rib "the old man" occasionally. But it was very spooky when I attended the auditions for Roy a few years ago. As Ian spoke his first lines, the hairs on the back on my neck stood up; I was hearing myself as I was when I first entered the programme back in 1973! He is such a supremely talented actor and has been a joy to work with over the years.
Funnily enough, I think I have only ever had one scene with my real son "Willyum" in all the years we have both been in the programme.
Are you or are you not the voice of "Bottletop Bill" (my four-year-old's favourite programme on C5's Milkshake)? I'd swear it's you (or someone doing a very good imitation) but can't find it on your CV. ’Fess up now, if it is you, be proud of it! It's wonderful TV, truly creative kids-stuff! (Love from a mummy who's had too much of the flamin’ Fimbles).
Gill Cloke
Hi Gill, well the true ‘fessin up’ and simple answer is no, it is not me! It should be though, and playing a character called Bottletop Bill on Milkshake could be a future career for Mike! I have done a few voices on children's TV over the years, for instance as a series of talking works of art on Tony Hart's Hartbeat. A lot of my TV career though has been in ensuring children stayed cowering behind the sofa in terror as I led my Daleks against Doctor Who. So if you want the flamin’ Fimbles) exterminated, who you gonna call?
It must have been terribly difficult to act the extremely sad scenes you have been involved in recently and you've done a magnificent job. How do you hope your character will develop now that Mike is a widower? I hope the writers of The Archers have something happy in mind for you.
Marika Leonard
I think you have done a fab job as Mike since Betty died, so well done. What would you like to do next with Mike if you were a writer on The Archers?
Calvin Saxton
Thank you for your lovely comments Marika and Calvin. As everything I say is copyright, it is a bit hard to declare what Mike should do next because the writers would then not be able to use it! As if!
There was a time when whatever happened to Mike in the programme happened in a similar way to me in real life: birth of children, house moves etc (though thankfully not bankruptcy or loss of an eye) - so perhaps a large win on the lottery? Though as the only way to make Mike a millionaire would be to start him off as a billionaire, because he would lose most of it overnight without Betty's restraining hand on his hare-brained schemes!
Seriously, I think that the immediate future will be dealing with the grief of Betty's demise, re-establishing himself as an individual within Ambridge and, as the years pass, Mike may immerse himself a lot more in countryside pursuits, as he has already done with taking on the job of Tree Warden in Ambridge, slowly morphing into an amalgam of George Barford and Tom Forrest with more than a little pinch of Walter Gabriel along the way! Whatever comes, I hope it will bring some good big storylines.
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