INTERVIEW: A Touch of Frost actor looks back on his career ahead of panto appearance

John Lyons is in Rickmansworth ahead of his appearance in Watersmeet’s new pantomime, Jack and The Beanstalk, in which he plays King Crumble. He took time out during rehearsals to talk about acting, detective dramas and, of course, the magic of panto.

But before getting onto his upcoming performance, John looked back at his 17-and-a-half-years starring as DS George Toolan, sidekick to DI Jack Frost (Sir David Jason), in A Touch of Frost. The series was set in contemporary 1990s Britain, a country in the grip of recession. It debuted on ITV in December 1992, just months after Black Wednesday when interest rates hit 15%. Amid the economic gloom and tough times, the series seemed to perfectly capture the mood.

“Everything was dark. The camerawork, the sets – the stories… everything was cold…,” explained John. The drama would depict a police force low on funding, in a rundown police station in which the radiators didn’t work. It seemed a world away from the sunny and stately Oxford of ITV’s other detective juggernaut, Inspector Morse.

“But David [Jason] would always try and work in just a little touch of comedy, now and again… part of the character was to hide a hamburger in his desk, or eat a bacon butty when we are supposed to be looking at a dead body, or eating fish and chips a lot in the car. That was part of his character, a lot of it that David invented to make the character his own.”

With this bleak background and occasional flashes of comedy, John explained the series was full of bold writing, ahead of its time and unafraid to tackle some of the most gritty, hard-hitting themes including predatory paedophiles, kidnapping, drugs, race relations, elder abuse, murder and the personal and psychological challenges facing its titular character, including the loss of his wife and an often disapproving Superintendent. The series also attempted to sensitively cover diverse subjects, as John explained:

“There is one episode, Appropriate Adults, about a boy with Down’s Syndrome. His character was Billy, the actor was Timmy Lang who died earlier this year. That was such a touching story, and I think they handled it so well, and he was so good.”

DS Toolan wasn’t always set to become such a key character, in fact for the first several series he is not the sidekick he eventually turns out to be. “The idea was to never have a permanent sidekick,” John continued. “So it didn’t look too much like Morse and Lewis or Midsomer Murders. It was also to enable them to find more stories, they would have a sidekicks from different ethnicities, a woman, someone from Oxford who was the opposite to Frost. But from the very first day of rehearsals David and I got on so well together. We both came from London, not far away from each other. We both had a got rapport. Although we didn’t necessarily sit and talk about it, we began to use that on screen.”

John explained that, as the leading man, David Jason’s Frost would have the vast majority of the dialogue. John, meanwhile, started to consider how he could make George Toolan look like he had worked with the senior detective for many, many years – so much so that they had some sort of visible and special familiarity.

“I didn’t have dialogue, so I could only do it with attitude, looks, shaking my head. And I am glad to say the producers caught onto it and they could see that David and I worked well together and got on together. Not only the producers, but David did and the writers. So slowly but surely George Toolan was coming more to the fore, and after a while they forgot the idea of not having a permanent sidekick and without saying anything, I became a permanent sidekick. So, George grew through the ranks mainly because David and I worked well together – it looked as though we had worked together for many years.”

But this award-winning detective series came after an already busy career of stage and screen acting. John started his career in 1964, he was born in 1943 in Whitechapel -a true Cockney, born within earshot of the bells of St Mary-le-Bow Church. He had no thoughts of becoming an actor, until a footballing friend suggested he signed up to East 15, a brand new drama school. John did, and the rest – as they say – is history.

Father Brown

John has had a prolific stage career, with no less than three stints on the West End stage in Agatha Christie’s The Mousetrap, and recently touring the UK in Father Brown. So, what are the differences between stage and screen acting?

“The main difference is the size of your acting. If you are on TV, you try to make it as small as possible. If you watch A Touch of Frost and you watch David, especially in close up, watch what he does with his eyes. He tells you things. You can almost see him thinking. On camera you have to bring it all down and make it believable, you don’t have to rush you can slow it all down. On stage you have to be bigger, because the audience is out there. You still try and make it believable.”

In the 1960s and 1970s John become a familiar face on TV, appearing in a variety of programmes – everything from Upstairs, Downstairs, Z-Cars and The Sweeny to Sykes and On The Buses.

He recalls: “Sitcoms were difficult, because you would start on a Monday morning with a read through, start rehearsing in the afternoon. By Wednesday you were supposed to be off the script, you would then rehearse all day Thursday. Come Friday morning you would have a camera rehearsal, in the afternoon a second camera rehearsal. On Friday evening they would bring the audience in. So now you have two performances [to give]. One to the camera, and one to the studio audience. So you are in between both – but you don’t know whether that studio audience is going to laugh or not. You know where the laughs should be, because you have rehearsed it. But at the time it didn’t worry me, I was in my 20s. It would frighten me now I am older, but then it was great fun. That taught me how to pick things up and learn them very quickly. I learned a lot!”

Final foray

And now comes the distinctly unique challenge of panto – a world of magic, booing, hissing, sweet throwing, music, dance and joking. John is about to take to the stage in Rickmansworth for what, he predicts, could be his final foray into the world of pantomime.

“It becomes doubly difficult when you are doing pantomime, where the fourth wall is gone – you have to turn to the audience and bring them in. you never know what is going to come back! They are going to answer back. A lot of actors I know who say they couldn’t do it – you have got to be an outgoing person to do that.

“I have now been doing it for many may years. I am always now the elder actor, I am 81, so I should be stopping soon. This should be my last one, but for a straight actor this is the only time you get to do things that no one else will ever ask you to do. In this I will do a few songs, a bit of dancing, take part in sketches. Pantomime gives you a chance to do that. And I am always working with younger people, and I find that good for me.”

Jack and the Beanstalk runs from 6-31 December 2024.

Tickets:

Box Office, High Street, Rickmansworth WD3 1EH

Watersmeet.co.uk

01923 711063 opening hours Tue-Fri, 10am-2pm