mostly david ephgrave

As of today, I've been a professional actor and musician for twenty years. Allegedly.  Doesn't working in the same field for two decades technically constitute a career? If so, I look forward to the sense of security kicking in, both psychologically and financially. However, I know I should at least give myself a pat on the back for managing to stay in an industry so notorious for people dropping out. To still be acting twenty years after my showcase at London's Fortune Theatre is not to be sniffed at, whatever my bank balance/sinus issues say to the contrary. All in all, I haven't done too bad. My first two jobs - both No. 1 tours for Bill Kenwright - set a high bar in terms of the scale of theatre I was playing and the work I was doing. Being a musician definitely increased my opportunities in the early days, though I risked being typecast in a genre I was determined to not get stuck in. However, it gave me some great opportunities of which playing my heroes Paul McCa...

I find it hard to accept Bob Dylan'a album Time Out of Mind is twenty years old now. This is not the only example of this type of disbelief. I’m also struggling to come to terms with the fact Paul McCartney’s Flaming Pie was released two decades ago, and that the first series of I’m Alan Partridge is the same age too; everywhere I look, I'm surrounded by things far older than should be; something which also applies to me: I can’t believe I’m twenty years old either.   Part of the problem stems from finding it hard to differentiate between the past two decades' names; the jump from 2000 to 2010 and onwards just doesn’t have the same ring as the difference between the Fifties and the Sixties; it’s all too murky and indistinguishable. But this doesn’t take away from the fact more time has passed since Time Out of Mind’s release than between JFK’s assassination and my birth; that’s unfathomable on every level for me. Something else that surprises me about that a...