mostly david ephgrave

I'm not entirely sure if this photo's of my dad on holiday in Butlins in 1963 or me in Dreamboats and Petticoats. Barry Ephgrave (far left). Either way, it looks like a great place to be, and I love the undercurrent of causing trouble to it. I dread to think of what went on on that trip as the seven of them look let off the leash, so it's probably best that pictures can't speak. Let's just say they played a few rounds of Bingo then went home for an early night. Until recently, I'm not sure I'd seen any pictures of my dad as a youngster before my parents' wedding in 1968 when he was twenty-two, so it's been nice to stumble across them as I sort through things at his house. Seeing them is also marked by the thought that the building I'm in is where he came home to as it was where he grew up, which makes it more pleasant. It's nice to see so much of his personality intact in these pictures too, as it's like a welcome reminder ...

I had an appointment at the Royal Throat, Nose and Ear Hospital today - which is a subsidiary of the Heads, Shoulders, Knees and Toes Institute - to look into my ongoing vertigo (which is some kind of John Virgo / Alfred Hitchcock amalgam). It was good to finally have extensive tests to try to get to the bottom of something that affects me almost daily. I first experienced this level of extreme dizziness while working on Dreamboats & Petticoats in the West End, which literally hit me mere minutes from curtain up. All of a sudden, I felt like I was going to collapse, and had to be taken out of the show for fear I would faint mid-performance (which was all included in the price). My GP at the time suggested it may be labyrinthitis, but they never quite got to the bottom of it. The dizziness didn’t pass for weeks, which ultimately led to me leaving the cast of Dreamboats to recover, and ever since then, I’ve suffered long bouts of vertigo so often...

In 2010, I achieved the dubious distinction of fluffing the bass part to 'Happy Birthday Sweet Sixteen' in front of its composer, Neil Sedaka. This career highlight / lowlight took place during my opening night in the West End Musical, Dreamboats and Petticoats. I had a reasonable excuse for my mistake, to be fair, as I was appearing in the show two days earlier than expected, and had only found out I’d be on a few hours before curtain up. I was shopping in Sainsbury’s when I received the call. The Company Manager told me that one of the cast had fallen ill – and while I was under no obligation to come in, as I wasn’t yet under contract, it would really help them out if I did. ‘Sod it’, I thought. ‘I might as well get my first show over and done with’. Spin forward a few hours and I was standing in the wings of The Playhouse Theatre, newly clean-shaven, about to make my West End debut. The turnaround was so quick that I’d ba...

Since yesterday, I have been suffering from vertigo. It’s not actually vertigo; it’s labyrinthitis. I decided against using its proper name initially, for fear of the David Bowie connotations it provokes. Labyrinthitis is an infection of the inner ear, which causes incorrect information to be sent to your brain regarding balance. This makes you think you’re spinning around when you’re not. When it strikes it can be very debilitating, making it hard for you to even walk down the street. I first caught labyrinthitis in 2010, when I was in the midst of a West End run of the musical Dreamboats & Petticoats. Whilst I was standing on the stage one night, moments before curtain up, I suddenly felt like I was going to faint. The floor beneath me became blurry and indistinct; I thought it might open and swallow me up. I went to see the doctor the following day, who explained the problem (this being his job). He told me that there was no cure for labyrinthitis or definite timefra...

I’m currently killing time in-between two castings, sitting in a café adjoined to a bookshop in Central London. My first casting was at 11am this morning, and the next one is at 4:50pm; just enough time between the two to consider a different career in the interim. I’m sure I could fit in a short Post Graduate course somewhere, if I had a quick scout about. The first casting went quite well; it was very in-out (with a distinct lack of ‘shake it all about’). I went in with another actor who was a very nice chap – and afterwards we popped into a greasy spoon around the corner from the casting suite, to kill some time before he went off to another appointment - and I found somewhere to loiter for the intervening hours. (We both opted for green tea, so I guess it wasn’t that greasy.) While we were there he told me of how he’d recently secured a part in what has become a recurring series of adverts – and how financially it had turned his...

Sometimes, being an actor / musician can be a bit of a poisoned chalice.    I have a love / hate relationship with being an actor / musician, but utmost respect for the forward-slash. Much of my work has been in the actor / muso field (yes, we have a field - and I often work in it). It’s got to the point where I’ve started to resent this. It isn’t all I do – there are some people I work with, particularly in comedy, who have no idea that I do it – but while it can open a lot of doors (not literally), you eventually find yourself pining for a job where you don’t have to hold an instrument. Not just holding the instrument; bloody playing the thing too. That said, I've been very lucky. Being an actor / musician got me into the West End, as well as touring to most theatres in the UK (and many abroad). I've performed to countless audiences - and been fortunate enough to play three of my heroes: John Lennon, Paul McCartney and Buddy Holly - often in venues where ...