Vegas Buddy

TIM Healy is back in the heart of the Geordie nation, back with the Quayside’s Live Theatre, where he started out as an actor, and tackling the role of an “under-employed architect” and jazz-singing private detective.

Healy can’t help but chuckle about the Alan Plater-penned musical play, Looking For Buddy, because he’s finally landed the role of his dreams.

“For the first time in my professional career I’m the juvenile lead. It’s taken me until I was 58, but I’m finally in a lead role where I get the girl instead of being a heavy or an oddball,” explains Healy, who has rented a flat on the Quayside during the five-week run of the play.

“We still have the house at Stocksfield, although it has been better for us (he, wife Denise Welch and sons) to live in Alderley Edge (near Wilmslow). So I decided to rent a flat on the Quayside. It’s got a great view of the Tyne and I can wander along the river to the theatre and let the cobwebs get blown away on the way to work. What a great way to start work,” he says.

The actor has somehow found time to take on Plater’s bitter-sweet look at revamped Tyneside – using the plot of a hunt for the music of legendary jazz trumpeter Buddy Bolden – while nipping out to Spain to film ITV1 comedy series Benidorm. “Alan sent me the play last year and I really wanted to do it, but while I was rehearsing it I was asked to film the ITV series Benidorm with Johnny Vegas.

“So I only had two weeks of rehearsal for Looking for Buddy. I had great fun filming in Spain because I’m playing a horrific transvestite called Lesley who Johnny Vegas’ character pulls in a chat-room. I turn up and he finds out it’s a bloke. I’ve had a lovely letter from the writer, Derren Litten, saying that he wants me to be a regular character in the next series.

ITV is in all sorts of problems financially so it all depends if it gets re-commissioned. My scenes are coming out soon, in the autumn,”

explains Healy.

He rated the famous Spanish Costa resort as a real eye-opener.

“Nobody has thought a thing about design with hotels of conflicting design being built next to each other. It’s only when you look at pictures of the resort in 1960 you realise it was a fantastic Spanish fishing village. Now its just full of boards offering an English breakfast.

“You’ve got happy hour all day and when I got off the plane at 10.30am most of the people collecting their luggage were drunk.

Everywhere you go people are legless. I was lucky I only had five days to get all the filming done. And if you do see me there in future I’ll be working,” Healy says.

The actor says he was a little nervous about taking on Looking For Buddy because he knew there was going to be jazz songs, but all he had was the words and no music.

“All the lyrics make a statement, but Alan Barnes has done a fantastic job setting them to music. I’m really enjoying singing them in what is