Episode 7 (Season 2) sees Helen and her granddaughter Susie about to take a trip to Lancashire to celebrate a birthday party. Helen likes to hand over the receipt to the recipient when she buys a gift, and Susie is not too sure that this is acceptable behaviour. Does this qualify as role reversal? Then a phone call from a stranger brings new complications.
This week's guest performer is Liverpool actor, Roy Carruthers, in the role of Dimitri. Please help support our guest artists by donating the price of a drink, or by becoming a patron. And also, it's enormously helpful if you drop a comment on the website, letting us know what you think of the programme.
Actor
Born and raised in Liverpool, England, Roy experienced life in a variety of jobs, before he came to acting after graduating from University as a mature student at the age of thirty-eight. Previous theatre credits include: the MI5 agent in ‘By The Waters of Liverpool’ (Empire Theatre, Liverpool), as panto villains Abanazar (Dubai Media City), the Sheriff of Nottingham and King Rat (Gracie Fields Theatre, Rochdale), Tony De Vito in ‘Lennon’s Banjo’ (Epstein Theatre), Victor Franz in Arthur Miller’s ‘The Price’ (Liverpool Unity Theatre), Frank in ‘Ladies Night’, Slater in ‘Funny Money’ and Santa in ‘Night Collar’ (Royal Court Theatre, Liverpool), The Fourth Wall (Old Red Lion, Islington) and Mafioso (Hill Street Theatre, Edinburgh).
On TV he appeared in ‘Longford’ (Granada), ‘Good Cop’ (BBC TV) and as Frank in the Feature Film Sparkle (Magic Light Pictures).
Roy supplied over 50 character voices for 10 unabridged audio books of the Redwall series, by best-selling Liverpool author, Brian Jacques and can often be heard on BBC Radio 4; credits include ‘Cobwebs’ and ‘Brief Lives’, ‘The Sad Story of Jim Thorpe’, ‘William Quilliam: The Sheikh of Liverpool’ and ‘The Strange Case of Oliver Cromwell's Head’ plus two appearances on the Radio 4 show Pick of The Week.
Composer and Arranger
Mark Bunyan was an out gay cabaret performer to start with, then wrote a youth musical JUST GOOD FRIENDS which played to packed houses and was named Best Musical of 1982 by City Limits magazine. This led to various other musicals with various degrees of success. (The most recent, BEING COLONEL BARKER (www.beingcolonelbarker.com) and DEFINING DR MINOR (www.definingdrminor.com) were workshopped at the Royal Academy of Music and have their own websites. Websites will be soon available for www.emyntrudeandesmeralda.com, www.unburiedtreasures.com and www.trueromances.com.
His stage play, DINNER, won the international playwriting competition —and had a successful run—at the Warehouse Theatre, Croydon. In 1995, he was canonised by the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence, as St Mark of the Musical Tendency, for his contribution to gay liberation which included, in 1983, co-founding, with the late Brian Kennedy, the Pink Singers, now the oldest LGBT+ Choir in Europe.
A short documentary about him, MARK BUNYAN, VERY NEARLY ALMOST FAMOUS, was a selection at the San Francisco International Gay Film Festival in 2013 and is available to watch online for 99p (get some friends round and charge them 20p each) at https://vimeo.com/ondemand/mark.
Mark served as a local magistrate from 1995 to 2019, won two national gold medals for trampolining in the over-60s category for the British Gymnastics association and has recently started flying trapeze.
He lives with Andrew, his partner of 47 years and counting. As you can tell he’s probably a terrible b… Read More
Begin at the very beginning, with Episode 1 "Kind Like Sharon". Or pick it up at Season 6, which is the beginning of Helen's life as a Super Hero!