'The Nick Young Interview'

19th April 2001

JC is Jackie Clark; RL is Richard Landsburg and NY is (of course) Nicholas Young.

Questions 17-26 ' Memories are made of this…'

17. JC: Quite often character-driven parts of the story were provided by interaction between your character and one of the other TP's - John and Elizabeth, John and Stephen, and finally John and Mike. Which pair dynamic did you think provided the most interesting moments?

NY: I enjoyed working the most with Peter Vaughan-Clarke as Stephen. We always had a laugh. That was the one I was most comfortable with. Now you analyse it… It is interesting to hear these comments from people outside the program… They are quite right. People were given chunks to do in certain stories. There was one story in a Scottish school where I was hardly in it at all for some reason. As long as I got paid I didn't really care.

I enjoyed the scenes with PVC although I always used to feel a little short on close ups! He was somewhat favoured by the director. I'd find myself doing reams of dialogue while PVC stood and nodded (Acts out scene and we laugh at his impersonation of Peter).

I suppose Peter will admit, I don't want to say anything bad, but the casting was somewhat haphazard… It was not done on ability alone. Therefore he perhaps didn't get the finest actors. And I say that loosely because you're talking about very young teenagers and children. Whilst it is acceptable in a twelve year old, it's not so acceptable as he gets older. When you're young and pretty you can get away with a lot too.

I think they were a bit unkind to him. They weren't terribly straight with him when the elbow came. But that is often the case.

JC: I find it interesting to watch the height difference between the two of you. Peter starts down here (gestures) and shoots up to be taller…

NY: the same thing happened to my sideburns because of the strikes. We'd do a scene in early January, with the follow up in September and the continuity girl would have been changed three times and so my whiskers went up and down from one scene to another.

RL: It doesn't help much if the continuity person keeps getting changed...

18. JC: Who was your favourite character (besides his)

NY: Who presumes that I was my favourite character? Hmmm. I thought Jedikiah was a very good character.

JC: What was his favourite episode?

NY: My favorite episodes were the most believable. The Living Skins, and Hearts of Soguth. I had difficulty with the last series where I just found those mincing puppets a joke. Very difficult to act with.

RL: It was the voices as well which were bad.

NY: Some of the creatures on the Galactic Trig were quite imaginative. But as soon as I saw those creatures I thought (shakes head). I didn't like the stories where they made no effort to make them believable. The Blue and the Green was also a very good one.

19. JC: If you had to do it all again, would you?

NY: Do you mean in the context of the 1970's? or now? I think from an actors point of view it was a mistake. I already had an established career as an actor before the TP. I'd done some very good quality work with some very famous actors. I did not realise that the TP was going to take up eight years of my life and when I came out of it I was an unknown quantity again. Everybody else had moved on. I was in my early 30's and should have been getting leading roles by then.

RL: Did you film Slaves of Jedikiah first?

NY: We were filming down in Clacton for a while.

RL: That one was the last in the series. Slaves was the first… It had Kenny sitting on a still of Tower Bridge as the opening scene.

NY: I was filled with horror the first time I saw it. I could see on the monitor all this chromity yellow spillage everywhere and thought to myself; 'This is really badly done.' It wasn't even as good as Thunderbirds…

20. JC: What was it like being on the show for that long? Was it strange being the only cast member to be in every season? Of course this is not strictly true if you count Philip Gilbert.

NY: Yes he was…

RL: He was the only one you saw in every episode.

NY: Timus, and you'll have to tell me about this, didn't appear until about episode 35 did he? I think in a way it was predictable. Where as the other Tomorrow People would come and go it would be difficult for John to go. I felt reasonably secure in that. This was the problem. You create a program intending it to be thirteen episodes and it's all about the next development of mankind and we are told that every child is going to become a Tomorrow Person. By the time you get to episode 70 and you've only had 13 or 14 TP's that was one of the flaws in it… that's what made it clear that they weren't planning to make seventy. Otherwise they could have gone in a different direction.

So I don't think it was strange being the only cast member to stay. It's like everything else people come and go. So one character might leave and you get used to the new one then another might leave and you get used to it again. So it wasn't like a sudden change where an atomic bomb drops on White City and nine out of ten of the Tomorrow People are destroyed in one fell swoop!

Yes. It did become a way of life. And that was bad as far as being an actor was concerned. I did do other things in between but they got fewer and further apart. So as an actor you tend to think in terms of one character and indeed when Richard wanted to do some scenes for his video some 35 years after the event. We just slipped into it as if we'd only done it last week. That's how ingrained it is… It's a shame we couldn't have used that mix of old and new footage of us running across the bridge.

21. JC: Was there any aspect of the show that he didn't like, be it an episode, a cast member, or something else?

NY: The one we found most tedious was going into the black whole… It wasn't written by Roger and we all (yawns…) There was reams and reams of dialogue and very little action, and not a lot going on… There wasn't a cast member I didn't like…

22. JC: Did Nick and the other cast members become involved in the underlying concept and ideas of the TP or was it "just another job?"

NY: No I don't think we got involved. We did some personal appearances as the TP! But I don't think we got personally involved. It was Roger's baby which he projected through the scripts. I knew what he was up to… There was a bit of a (and I use this term very loosely) a bit of a love-hate relationship between Roger and myself. We used to enjoy bating each other to a certain extent. I had very right wing views and he had very left wing views…(laughs)

JC: It does sound as if you had a lot of fun.

NY: Oh yes we did. I didn't much like the way Thames Television treated us. They didn't seem to know how to treat actors in those days. The guys on the gate used to regularly turn away some of their biggest stars like Sid James and Benny Hill. He got so fed up with it he had a caravan of his own on site in the car park.

23. JC: How does Nick feel about the way that Roger Price's "humour" crept in to the latter part of the run? What, especially, does he feel about "A Man for Emily"?

NY: I think we all hated Man for Emily didn't we? It was a nice idea that aliens would get the wrong idea about the world from watching television. In fact now you say to me 'was there a character I hated?' Yes. Momma! I hated her, a ludicrously over the top character. I think if that whole thing had been brought back a bit it would have worked. But it was way over the top.

But it was Peter Davidson's debut, and he's still acting 'an I ain't'. (Done with cowboy accent) so what can I say. I think that one was taking the piss. So people didn't like it. I love humour, don't get me wrong, I would have liked to have filmed things with more humour but not of the ridiculing kind which that episode demonstrated.

But remember that Roger didn't direct it. It was directed by Stanley someone. That's the one with the car chase where we run over the bridge… The director says to me. 'You didn't indicate.' I said ' Don't be stupid who indicates when you're in a car chase?' They had some very funny ideas. I found the character of Momma irritating. The essence of good humour is that it is believable. It is the surprise when something happens that is unexpected which is found funny. Did any of the fans enjoy that one?

24. JC: Did he ever see the TP and himself as John dubbed into other languages? I thought he was wonderful in Spanish! :-)

NY: No that would be fun wouldn't it. 'Los hombres des mañana' (said in perfect Spanish which I, unfortunately cannot type.) The first foreign sales were to Mexico. Thames TV finally deigned to pay us for that one about five years after it went out as I was able to show them loads of Mexican fan mail. They tried to pretend it hadn't been shown there.

RL: Did they dub it or put in subtitles?

NY: They dubbed it. I always felt that one of the reasons why it was perhaps internationally successful, apart from it being multicultural, was the fact that in a different language they'd have got decent actors. So the performances were probably a lot better.

The lovely Misako Koba I couldn't really understand. I used to stand next to her at rehearsals and not understand what she was saying… So you know when that was dubbed into French, or what ever, it would probably be perfect. Both Japanese and Chinese when speaking English find it can be very difficult. You need to take that into account when you're casting. But there aren't many Japanese actors around. There aren't now and there weren't then. Mind you she was cast as Himalayan, wasn't she? Well Nepalese is even more difficult to find. You're grateful for what you can get!

RL: The only real casting I'm surprised about is Stephen Salmon.

NY: Again it was a bold idea to cast black in those days. It's still difficult, and I say this as an agent. There isn't as much work around for a black actor; there was very little work back then. Even black adult actors at the time were not very good. And the argument always was; well they're not given a chance. I'm not sure that was a valid argument.

I think it's a matter of syntax. If English isn't your first language because you come from Jamaica the rhythm is different. Stephen was a cockney. But yes. I don't think he was a terribly good actor. I don't know where Roger found him but he wasn't a professional actor at that point.

We did smile at one scene where the line was… 'He's dead TIM.' (Said in flat cockney tone.) He said it in such a casual fashion when someone had just been killed that we found it a little bit contradictory. I think that after the first series they felt that the guy was not a natural actor so they parted company.

But it was a bold attempt to get a young black kid in a leading part in a children's TV series. It was probably the first… And he did his best.

25. JC: What did Nick think of Philip Gilbert playing so many "different" characters? Was he chosen because it would cost too much money to hire another actor, or was there another reason?

NY: Probably! Knowing Thames I would think that was exactly the motive. You'd have to ask him as to whether he was paid any more. I don't think so. The idea was really to try and personify the computer, although they were working on tight budgets.

26. JC. What is your favourite memory from the show in general?

NY: Favourite memory… that's a difficult one. I have a warm feeling about the whole series. I don't remember it being anything but fun to do. We had a great time making it. The interesting this is that there are… Having watched the show recently, after 25 years.

There are certain episodes that I have no recollection of even recording and I don't drink and never did! And there are others where I can tell you exactly what I did when I walked off the set. So that's really something rather strange. I don't think I've got a favourite memory.

There are certain things that stick out like in the very first episode when we blew the boat up on the Thames and it all went horribly wrong. It was done with the police and fire brigade being present and then they decided to re-shoot it because it wasn't a big enough explosion and didn't bother to tell the police. So, of course, fire brigades from four counties came rushing to see what disaster had happened.

And of course we had a lot of quite well known actors. The one where we couldn't stop laughing was with Keith Chegwin. I think it was the Roman one. He did a dramatic death scene in a short toga and his purple Marks & Sparks knickers appeared. It made us laugh and every time we shot that scene we couldn't keep a straight face.

The same with TIM; when he first appeared in his ambassadorial cocked hat. It made us corpse and we couldn't stop… Although I've always played rather snotty, supercilious, serious characters I like to think I've got a sense of humour. I can always see the funny side of everything and anything. I had to temper that a great deal. I was also highly technical and critical of bad special effects. Although they might be grateful at the time for me to suggest; 'Why don't you shoot it like this or why don't you do it like that.' I think it was somewhat resented. Basically, an actor should just say your lines and not trip over the furniture.

RL: Everybody seems to have a warm feeling and be happy to talk about it.

NY: Well I think if you were interviewing me now on the set of some major movie, or the Royal Shakespeare Company, I might be a bit more reluctant to talk about some thing I did all those years ago. But as none of us is still acting. I'm not sure if Mike still is. A serious actor might not want to put it on his C.V. You move on! I was in my late… 35-45… when I used to get gorgeous young women saying. 'I used to rush home from school to see you.' But that's all gone now. I look at twenty year olds now, who weren't even born when the last episodes went out. It's all very frightening…

End of part three….

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