Reach for the stars

Dec 10 2008 By Mark Goode, Surrey Herald

When Pip Donaghy brought his seven-year-old son Jim to a Charles Dickens play last year, it reminded him of his childhood.

Pip, who has starred in countless TV and theatre roles, was playing Wackford Squeers in Nicholas Nickleby last Christmas when Jim was brought along to watch for the first time.

His father's evil persona upset Jim, which led to Pip applying, and getting, the cheerier Christmas role of Fezzwig for A Christmas Carol, which is being staged at the Rose Theatre, Kingston, until Saturday, January 3.

Pip says: "My parents were steel workers in Teeside and I went to school in Middlesborough. When I was seven my dad took me down to his plant and showed me the blast furnace. It has stuck with me for my whole life and I like to show my children what my job is like.

"My two teenage daughters have been here and everywhere watching me in plays, and I thought it would be nice to bring Jim down.

"When he first came last year it was his first time, and he was very upset because my character was always thrashing about and being evil. He said he didn't like that and asked why I don't play something nice."

The play is about a bitter miser called Ebenezer Scrooge who has devoted his life to money, but undergoes a change during one night with the visitation of three ghosts envisaging his life.

Pip says he has been acting for 40 years and got into it by chance when he was studying maths at a polytechnic in Wiltshire in his early 20s. He joined an acting group and decided he liked it so much he pursued it as a career.

He adds: "I finished in 1965 when I was 25 and I got employed stocking freight trains for a year before working in a few plays. It is very hard to make a living from acting, especially from Theatre

which I prefer, and I consider myself lucky I've been able to bring up three children and pay a mortgage. It has got easier since I have got older because a lot of actors drop out after a while."

Pip has had rolls in Midsomer Murders, Holby City, The Bill and Coronation Street, along with George Orwell's 1984, H G Wells Invisible Man, and many plays.

He says he prefers theatre work to TV 'because there is an audience, and when you are acting no one stops you and tells you what to do like in a film'.

"I love my job and I hope I keep acting until I die, because somebody's got to play the old git," he adds.