Guy Adams’s blurb reads: “Guy Adams collects careers like baseball cards. In his, surprisingly limited, time he has tried his hand at Museum Curator, Tour Guide, Historical Researcher, Newsagent. His main occupations however have always been acting and writing. In the former he has mugged people in Emmerdale [An ITV soap], watched Rugby in Where The Heart Is [Another ITV soap] and … oh … lots of other things.
Lately, he’s become better known as an author, so I asked him …
Editor You seem to have shifted focus from acting to authorship in recent years. Is that true, and if so why? If not, how do you see your career stretching out into the future?”
Guy Adams It is most definitely true although the reason behind it is more practical than creative (I’ve spent the last three years tied to one location for boring familial reasons). I finished on a bitter high, the comedy show I had been touring, Fergus Harper Says Goodnight - a two-handed sketch show that I wrote as well as performed with Phil Jarrett had just seen an enthusiastic, five-hundred strong audience at Birmingham’s Glee Club and I’d just achieved a childhood ambition by portraying Sherlock Holmes in a revival of The Secret of Sherlock Holmes.
My acting life was somewhat replete.
Then it all fell apart, responsibilities, family illness, blah blah…
And I found myself wondering what to do creatively. I couldn’t not be creative. I’ve always written, it’s gone hand in hand with the acting since childhood but had remained second-fiddle for most of my working life, writing was the hobby if you like. I’m a dreadful polymath when it comes to creativity you see, I get dreadfully bored working in only one medium or style (I dabble in photography and design too never having been able to paint or draw worth a damn, even had a stab at music and sculpting… We’d best not discuss the results of either for the sake of my pride).
The only viable answer seemed to bring the writing to the fore, see where it would take me.
Three books, an award nomination, a quarter share of a publishing company [Humdrumming] that continues to surprise with its successes and a burgeoning career as a freelancer — working currently with Simon & Schuster and Kudos Film and Televison don’t you know. Oh yes, I rub shoulders with all the interesting people darling, would be the quick answer.
A little ironic really, I’ve made the transition to full-time in the field I always considered a hobby with more speed — and frankly success — than I ever did in the ‘job’ I trained in.
Makes you wonder why I wasted so much time dressing up and pretending to be someone else.
But then even writers do that at the weekends…
I’m painfully aware that the bubble could burst at any moment of course, there is stilll a big paranoid voice that warns of impending failure (it’s all been a massive joke, you can’t write for toffee and you’ll be back on the dole line this time next year) but here’s hoping.
I did have a brief return to acting recently, performing in Bournemouth as Lord Illingworth in Wilde’s A Woman Of No Importance, which was great fun and, if nothing else, an opportunity to show my wife-in-waiting and the soon-to-be-stepkids that I wasn’t a complete waste of space in my previous ‘career’.
It’ll always be there, it’s just become the hobby.
Writing also offers a greater degree of artistic control which suits an ego as misguidedly large as mine. I was actually very lucky that I worked with actors and directors that I sparked off for most of my Thesping but there can be no doubt that actors are really only the ‘raw meat’ of the creative process, you wouldn’t get far if they weren’t of suitably fine cuts but a director, set designer, writer or costumer can still render them inedible scrag-end should they prove deficient in their area of influence.
Now the buck stops with me and if I do something that stinks then there’s nobody else to blame (a mixed blessing to be sure, but the sureity of it can be a relief).
As for the future… well, who knows? It’s a rackety old business this and I could be reduced to greetings card messages and rejection slips at any moment. But, for now, I keep going, getting all those ridiculous notions out of my soft brain and onto paper in the hope that it will continue to offer sufficient sheckles to keep the family in cake and gin.
All donations gratefully received, contact your local bookstore for information…
