Christopher Timothy
alias James Herriot

Christopher Timothy In der Serie "Doctors"

Actor Christopher Timothy (star of All Creatures Great and Small and Doctors) is a staunch Radio 4 listener. He makes an appearance soon on his favourite network, reading The Red Car, an evocative short story about memories of wartime evacuation. Ian Peacock met him during a break from filming at Pebble Mill. Christopher Timothy is sixty. Christopher Timothy is sixty. I keep pinching myself and repeating this mantra as I wait for him. Christopher Timothy is sixty. He can't be. In my imagination he's 32 and always will be (just as Alan Bennett is perpetually 53). I also keep telling myself not to mention vets. It's like "Don't mention the War" only worse. Apparently he can't walk into a pub without some wag saying: "Oh. I should have brought my dog." I'm a nervous wreck. It's like meeting John Noakes or a Womble. And the worst thing is I've been told by at least ten people that he's "very nice". I can't stand "very nice" people and the "professionally nice" ones are even worse. This is all compounded by a flashback image of him with his hand up a cow. Apparently it only happened three times, but it's the one we all remember.

In he walks, or rather bounces like Tigger, and he is nice. Not professionally nice or too nice, but nice in the best possible way. He's also completely fine about the vet stuff which I bring up within about fifteen seconds. He was in the vet series for 13 years and simply calls it All Creatures. "It changed my life. I learned to love Yorkshire and Yorkshire people. I'm very proud of doing it and count myself inordinately lucky I was given the part." In fact he was the last person to be cast, just a few weeks before the first shoot. He was completely unknown at the time, having just completed training at the Central School of Speech and Drama. Apparently he smelled of chips throughout his course there, thanks to a part-time job in a transport cafe. He was encouraged to become an actor by his father who was an army chaplain. He left Christopher's mother at the end of the war and had to give up his vocation to get divorced. So he adapted his vocal skills to become an actor, broadcaster and the first straight man in The Goons, announcing: "This is the Bingbangbong service of the BBC". "He left The Goon Show because he found himself sitting on tubes going ompedompedompedom and thinking: I've got to get out of his before it has a serious effect on me."

Christopher Timothy & Alf Wight

Christopher Timothy & Carol Drinkwater

He'll soon be playing his dad's role in a 50th anniversary Goons revival organised by Harry Secombe's son Andrew. Christopher Timothy was brought up in North Wales and Shrewsbury, where he graduated from the grammar school with one O-Level: "Scholastically, I was hopeless. But there was a time when I could write down hit parade from 1 to 20 and every film starring Montgomery Clift. A fine actor. I really wanted to be James Dean though. He was just beautiful to look at and every young man wanted to be him." He may not have quite achieved James Dean status, perhaps due to the boy-nextdoor niceness and the furry-friend factor. But he certainly has had his Hollywood-style scandals. There was the tabloid frenzy when he left his wife for co-star Carole Drinkwater. And then there were the rumours that he..... didn't like animals. Not true. He actually has a menagerie, including four elderly cats (Flora, Dora, Tiger and Mrs Beard) and two dogs (Morgan and Milly). He recently tried to resuscitate his dog Daisy using a technique picked up on the vet programmes. Sadly, he failed. But he did once assist in a real live calving and, having played Herriott for so long and narrated Vets In Practice, he's certainly no stranger to cows' bottoms. The real James Herriott, Alf Wight was a close friend. It seems the vet image will never go away, but, surprisingly, he's not remotely bothered. The All Creatures programmes are now a big hit in America, watched by ten percent of the population. He once bumped into an American couple who said he was the reason they'd come to live in England. And the spin-offs continue: "I've recorded readings of all the Herriott books, some of them four or five times for different mediums. Once for Radio 4. I hardly look at the page as it's second nature. And more likely than not we've actually acted the stories."

In fact Christopher Timothy's name appears on the credits of countless audio books. Not surprising, as he does have a cosy pullover of a voice, but he admits he finds complex dialogue sequences a touch tricky. "I've done few thrillers about spies in Eastern Europe. I'd start the guy speaking and the producer would say no no no!!! HE'S from Afghanistan!!! THIS one's from Berlin!!! I never heard that one. I have a feeling it never got done as it was so appalling. Sometimes you get a conversation on a page between five different people?" Note that final question mark. Yes. Christopher Timothy does end some of his sentences with the interrogative inflection popular among teenagers??? It's as if he really wants to include you in his thought processes??? He also ends a lot of sentences with "don't you think?" He really is very inclusive and very charming. Perhaps that's why he always plays the nice guys. He once even played Jesus. But his ambition in life is to play a real baddy. "I wanted to play Macbeth but I'm getting a bit old for that I'm afraid. I'm an actor. Not a vet or a nice doctor. I don't want to be a guy who runs into a bank and says: stick em up. I'd rather be someone who lives on an ordinary street doing an ordinary job who actually is integrally bad. Evil even."

Christopher Timothy & Jacqueline Leonard, co Star der Serie "Doctors"

I wonder if he'd like to be Hanibal Lecter. "Sort of. Yes", he replies without much hesitation and makes a sinister ch-ch-ch-ch noise. It's frighteningly convincing and I eye the door to see if the publicity woman's still there. He then reveals that Hannibal and The Silence of the Lambs are the last two books he's read, though he just stumbled on Silence in a hotel room. I'm relieved to learn that Dickens is his absolute favourite author and A Christmas Carol his favourite book: "Oh. It's wonderful. People say it's sentimental. But I hate sentimentality with a vengeance...which is what's wrong with my acting. I hate doing tears. I think it's more moving when actors are just managing NOT to cry." He also enjoys reading Alan Bennett and Ned Sherrin and is, in many respects, a classic Radio 4 listener. He lives in Chichester, Sussex, with Annie (his wife of 18 years) who's converted him to Radio 4 from Radio 2: "Annie's weaned me onto the more intellectual stuff, and not before time. I love radio. You can listen and do other things. I don't learn lines while I'm listening. But I do drive, iron and take the radio into the garden."

He listens to all features, great and small, and likes the lighter stuff too: "I love comedy programmes. Just a Minute etc. Barry Cryer's one of my favourite broadcasters. He genuinely delights in other people's funniness. To hear him laughing is just joyous. And I really like Any Questions? and Any Answers? I once bumped into Jonathan Dimbleby here in a corridor. It was like meeting a popstar and I said : Wow! I love what you do!!! And he was a bit taken aback." But his televisual tastes are a touch more populist: "I can't get enough of Who Wants to be a Millionaire? I was an answer recently. I was very chuffed but more chuffed that the guy knew it was me. It was for 32 thousand. A lot of money. I was thinking: please please get it right! And he was only a young guy, so that was pleasing." And then Christopher starts interviewing me... about myself, the BBC and Greg Dyke. We end up talking so much that we forget about our coffee and biscuits and he almost forgets to turn up on set. I guess I always did want to be his sidekick Tristan and this is the nearest I'll get. We may be in a BBC meeting room with no bovine bottoms for miles, but, in my mind, we're in the Yorkshire Dales wearing tweeds and wellies. And he's still 32.

Christopher während einer Pause