Charles Collingwood is best known for playing Brian Aldridge in The Archers, a part he has inhabited for more than quarter of a century (he is also married to the actress who plays Shula, perhaps the most loathsome inhabitant of Ambridge, but we'll pass that over in decent silence). In The Archers, Brian is the long-suffering husband of foghorn-voiced Jennifer ('Daaahling!) and father to her (and in some cases his) ungrateful brood. With his robust commonsense views, Aldridge is a rare beacon of sanity in tree-hugging, gay's-the-word, multi-culty Ambridge - indeed without him The Archers would be all but unendurable. If he has a fault, it is the excessivly tender heart that has led him into a few scrapes along the way - not least when he unwisely took pity on a barking mad Irishwoman and fathered a boy with a name consisting entirely of vowels. Naturally, with the mother dead, Brian is doing the decent thing and raising the brat in the bosom of the family...Collingwood was educated at Sherborne, after which he took a double first in Suavety and Charm at the Academy of Smooth, and sailed into the world of showbiz. In 1981, he co-hosted a quiz show on Southern Television with Bernard Manning (that's true). Nowadays, he is a frequent, and always welcome, presence on many a radio chat show and panel game. Like any sane Englishman, Charles loves cricket. Favourite wine: Soave. Favourite dance: American Smooth. Favourite neckwear: Need you ask? Hail Collingwood/Aldridge - cravat hero!
The cravat is emerging as the ideal neckwear for radio...
ReplyDeleteA harsh judgment Gaw. Would sound better without the last two words...
ReplyDeleteI've never actually seen how a cravat works, or what it looks like underneath a shirt. Like the question of why some men wear those little stretchy metal bands around their upper shirt arms, It's one of those mysteries I may never solve.
ReplyDeleteedit:ahhhh, now I know...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7lgO0I3Wcao
I assume he insists on wearing the cravat throughout all of his thespian performances?
ReplyDeleteI can't help feeling that those chaps you see with a mobile phone hanging from a cord around their neck are doing their best to emulate the cravat but haven't yet got the knack of tying it correctly.
ReplyDeleteEven so, I've been slightly put off the cravat after learning that it hails from the Balkans via France. I'm wondering whether there might be a more suitable home-grown alternative.
A charming and respectful post, Mr Nige, but surely we must never be shown what the Archers' characters actually look like! (The pictures are better on radio, blah blah etc...)
ReplyDeleteNige, your words have stirred me to mount a (last ditch?) defence of the cravat.
ReplyDelete