'The Nick Young Interview'

19th April 2001

JC is Jackie Clark; RL is Richard Landsburg and NY is (of course) Nicholas Young. I would like to extend my sincere thanks to Nick and the staff at his office for accomodating us on such a cold, wet day. And a big thank you to Richard for taking me there and lending a very nervous interviewer some moral support. I couldn't have done it without you... J

Questions 1-9 ' InThe Beginning…'

JC: These questions originally came on individual e-mails so I put them together. I know that there looks like a lot of questions. You don't have to answer them all.

RL: The interesting thing is that this CD is going to be the big interest… It's the first time that anything has been available.

NY: Yeah. It needs to be promoted because when Thames did the video, again it was in the early days of video and people weren't in the mood for going out and spending three or four quid to rent a video or ten quid to buy one, they didn't do any promotion at all on it! Again I don't think there was even a complete story in it. Was there? Have you got a copy of that?

RL: No but Peter has. It's on two tapes but he's only got one.

NY: Well there… that's what I mean it wasn't very well handled. Anyway...

1. JC: Question number one; what do you do now?

NY: Hmmm. It's a three-part question. Principally I run a theatrical agency, it's a three-part agency. The core agency specialises in representing people for television commercials. The core agency owns a modelling agency and a couple of acting agencies. So we try and cover all sides of the business really from photographic and television commercials to The Royal Shakespeare Company on the acting side.

JC: Do you still act?

NY (Laughs) Didn't I just do something for the Tomorrow People? Hmmm no the last time I acted professionally was about eight years ago probably on a programme called Polaski. And I did that as a favour to the casting director as the actor who was booked dropped out at the last minute so I was required to dust off my equity card and rush off down to the docks to film that.

The whole idea of starting my company with which I have a partner and representing people, initially, just for television commercials was that it wouldn't interfere with my acting career. And I did indeed carry on acting but one of the last major things I did for the BBC was 'Cymberline' and it took eight weeks. I simply could not afford to take eight weeks out of my business to do that. Once we'd bought a couple of acting agencies it became impossible to represent other actors and carry on acting yourself. They expect you to be pushing their career not your own. When asked to do something specific like the Tomorrow People which is not putting anybody else out of work then that's absolutely fine I don't have any problem with it.

JC: Do you do anything else?

NY: Not professionally no. This is a full time job, a proper job. (Laughs)

2. JC: Were you in 'The Girl with Something Extra?'

NY: No. Unless it's something they re-titled. It may have been called something else in different countries.

3. JC: Do you remember the picture of you and Adam West as Batman? Why was the photograph taken?

NY: I don't remember the photograph being taken. The history behind it is that Adam West was Batman in the original TV series in the 1960's. He came over to England specifically to record a song which I believe Tony Mc Calley had written, about Batman. By the time he came over to make it the original Robin had moved on to real-estate in America and wasn't acting any more, so they needed somebody who, behind a mask, would look Robin-esque, and who could also do the accent and so on… That's why they chose me to do it. It was quite fun to do and when I met Adam West, in the studio, and he heard me speaking in my frightfully British dulcet tones, he said "Oh, an English Robin Huh! Well that's a new way of doing it!" (Said with terrible American accent) He wasn't very happy and didn't realise that the idea was for me to have a go at imitating Robin.

We went over every line very carefully and Adam coached me in the syntax, rather than the accent, they had a very strange way of speaking. It wasn't standard at all… It was mostly a spoken record we burst into song for the chorus. But the actual dialogue in it was… The only line I can remember is

"What are those people with pink faces Batman! Have they been drinking too much carrot juice huh!"

I thought the record was great fun actually, but it was ridiculed after it flopped in the charts. We did a video which was directed my Mike Mansfield, these were all big names in the pop business in those days. It was done in semi-cartoon style. I saw it a couple of times on Top of the Pops, I don't know if its still around it might be.

4. JC: Do you read any fan fiction?

NY: I've read people's efforts at writing Tomorrow People stories yes. I'm not about to produce another series of the TP so I'm not the person to approach. I'm happy to take a look at it. Some of it's quite good. Some of it's very good. Some people are highly technical and they understand the parameters of science fiction. It has to be science fact to be believable. A fictional story set within genuine scientific parameters. There are some people who understand that very well, and others who just write, maybe a very good story, but technically it's not too hot.

5: Did you always want to act? How much of John's character came from you rather than Roger Price?

NY: My father used to work at Ealing Studios, and my grandfather was an actor. So there's over a hundred years of tradition. But my parents weren't keen on me being an actor. I don't think many parents are. I decided by the time I was about thirteen that I'd enjoy being an actor. I did the usual school plays. I'd even been auditioned for a film when I was 8 or 9, which I didn't actually get.

By the time I was 13 I hadn't got any other ideas but to be an actor and saw a couple of Disney films which inspired me. I saw young children acting in them and thought, well I can do as least as well as that.

I shouldn't be too proud of this but I was a bit of an intellectual moron. I did fail the common entrance exam to go to a proper school, so the choices were pretty limited. I persuaded my parents that if they would pay the first terms fees at this junior drama school called Corona then I would be so successful that I'd be able to pay the rest of the fees myself. Which quite appealed to them (laughs) that is exactly what happened.

I don't know that Roger Price (and you'd need to ask him this one) had any specific ideas about the personalities of the TP. He only wrote that John was a policeman's son. I don't think that I was his idea of a policeman's son or how John should be. You'd have to ask him why they chose me… I don't know. Unless they felt that they needed a bit of a father figure but still young, which is quite a difficult combination to achieve, and that may be what they saw in me at the audition.

I was working in my agent's office at the time and the request came in. I wish I still had the original brief but I don't know that there was anything more than 'John is a fairly serious 18 yr old… what ever'.

After Roger did the TP he went to Canada and worked over there in television. He was seen back in England briefly about 10 yrs after the series. But I've not had any contact with him. I think the TP was an idea he had… he was always keen on science fiction. I think it was a one off series as far as he was concerned. Like so many of these things he didn't expect it to be the success that it was. I don't think he mapped it out at all and towards the end he ran out of ideas. Which is why he let someone else write 4 episodes.

JC: That brings on to one of the later questions… Are you aware that the scientific community suspect that the next stage of human evolution is beginning to evolve and manifests itself as heightened intelligence? Do you feel that Roger Price's ideas for the show were predictive in nature or just a lucky guess? Was he a man of vision or just another TV producer?

RL: Who asked that?

NY: Mrs Delores Price… (Laughs) I think that Roger got some indications from other sources. I simply cannot get into his mind as to whether he felt that it was predictive. I suspect no. It was just an idea. Whether it was an original idea or not? It would be very nice to think that we did have those powers. If you're talking about tens of thousands of years away you may be right but it's not gonna happen this century.

Roger was… he was a child in a man's body. He also had very left wing ideas. When I first met him he enjoyed promoting a style of television which, in its day, was innovative, but which is now totally predictable. He was, and I don't mean this in any sexual way what so ever, more comfortable in the company of young people. He identified with them. He never really grew up and had a very childlike quality.

JC: Were the cast aware, at the time, of all the issues written into the show (anti war etc).

NY: Yes I was aware. And again I think this was very much Roger's politics. Some of it was very avant-garde. The reason, I have always theorised, for the Tomorrow People's success was the fact that he had an ever changing group of children; that came form every social background, race and everything else, so that everybody could identify with someone in it. It was always anti-establishment and all that, anti-authority. Which again children would enjoy. So it had all these elements which now are the norm but were not in the early 1970's. It was quite daring stuff for children in those days.

If you analyse the programme, every character in authority be it headmaster, traffic warden policeman what ever is ridiculed. That is Roger's own little quirk. Roger had, in fact, been in the army and had a short service commission. But when I met him he was living in a squat! He went from one extreme to the other. As the programme got more successful. He ended up getting a racy sports car of some sort, but he changed.

6. JC: I was wondering if Nick had ever read Olaf Stapledon's novella 'Odd John'? Written in 1935, the book had many elements (such as an evolutionary mutation which lead to telepathy, and the inability to kill.) similar to TP.

NY: No. But I wouldn't be at all surprised if Roger Price had.

7. JC: If you could pick just one of the TP's powers--jaunting, telepathy, or telekinesis which would you pick and why?

NY: Working in central London I think jaunting. You should know the answer to that… those who chose number two… Telepathy might be a nightmare. A poisoned chalice. You're sitting there with someone who's totally charming and smiling at you and probably thinking 'what a pratt this bloke is' and if you knew that it would make life very difficult. I suspect that telepathy; enjoy it as I would, might be a curse. I suspect that jaunting would be the most useful and enjoyable.

But you haven't mentioned time travel… That's something I would love. You could go backwards or forwards…

8. JC: What did you think when you first heard about the premise for the show?

NY: I think the ideas evolved. The very first story was pretty straightforward; we hadn't established any parameters at that point. All these other ideas that you mention… I don't think they were there in the first story or two. To start off of it was simply a children's drama series.

I wasn't a great fan of science fiction at the time. I looked on it as a job. And to be quite honest, it went against the sort of work I had been doing previously, which was much more mainstream, adult serious acting. In many respects from an actor's point of view, that was the wrong direction to take. But you never know when you go into a series. That you'd end up doing 70 episodes. Which in those days was colossal.

JC: is it true that you sent only photographs of yourself. I've seen it in magazine articles…

NY: I was working in the office when the details came in and I sent who ever I thought was appropriate. Yes I made sure mine was on the top of the pile, but I can't pretend that I sent ten photos of myself and none of anybody else. Which was the story I gave out at the time. I got it "Fair and 'onest guv'" (said with cockney accent).

9. JC: Did you ever imagine that all these years later people would still be interested in the show?

NY: No. None of us did. I think when it finished in 1980 we thought we might get a repeat out of it. I think if you had told me then that people would still be devoted to it 30 years later… no. I'm very surprised. But nostalgia's a funny thing...

When you have 70 episodes of something, from 1972-1980 that's people's entire childhood. I've made this point before. The TP technically… one can make excuses for it now, you can say 'well, it was in the 70's. They couldn't do things that well in those days.' Well, yes they could! But they were made for about £12000 an episode. Which was very low budget indeed. They just didn't try. It used to frustrate me very much. I like things to be perfect. It wouldn't have taken much more time or effort to make the special effects better. It's the old phrase. 'Do you want it good or do you want it by Friday?' The answer was always… we want it by Friday!

End of part one….

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