Bad Cop, Good Guy

by Angela Wintle
This Is Brighton & Hove
11th May 2002

Chris Ellison is a bloke's bloke who's pretty good at painting watercolours.

This interview has been a long time coming. I first approached Chris Ellison two-and-a-half-years ago but, every time he agreed to meet me, something always cropped up.

The reason is simple. Chris detests giving interviews. "I hate talking about myself. I just loathe it." So what has made him change his mind?

Well, Chris has a play to promote. From May 20, as part of the Brighton Festival, he will take the lead in King Of The Beach, written and directed by Peter Mantle.

It will be the first time he has trodden the boards in a long while - he sees himself primarily as a television actor - but he is relishing every minute. He says it is the first decent stage role he has been offered in years.

Chris Ellison is a difficult man to pin down. On the surface, he comes across as a bloke's bloke. He is the first to admit he likes a drink, he is an ardent Chelsea supporter, he used to be an amateur boxer.

He talks in a direct, no-bullshit way and you sense he is not a man who wears his heart on his sleeve. It came as no surprise to read he likes gangster movies - The Godfather Part I and Part II, are his favourite films - and he admires politically-incorrect comedians such as Jim Davidson, Bernard Manning and Roy Chubby Brown.

But Chris, like Dennis Waterman, with whom he has much in common, is not as straightforward as he seems. I mean, can you imagine his best-known character, DCI Frank Burnside from the popular ITV series The Bill, painting watercolours? Exactly. But Chris does and is extremely good at it. And I mean really good.

In fact, he has written and illustrated several children's books, including one about a little boy who talks to animals. He is also a blues and jazz fan and loves sailing - until recently, he owned a yacht, although he admits he was a lousy navigator.

The hard man of countless police and detective dramas is also a former member of the Royal Shakespeare Company and they weren't spear-carrier parts either.

"I remember sharing a dressing-room with John Wood and Ben Kingsley. There were these two great actors and there was me sitting between them. The theatre director Trevor Nunn came in and said: 'Darling, you were marvellous.' I thought: 'Well, he's not talking to me' - and he wasn't," he says, throwing back his head and laughing.

Chris is not prone to self analysis but admits he is nothing like Burnside. For a start, he is a devoted family man. "I can be quite sharp-tongued but, if you saw me at home, I don't think you would say I was anything like him. I mean, I'm quite soft and sentimental, really.

"People are always very disappointed when they meet me - especially women - because they expect me to be quite mean." Stop it, Chris. You're ruining my illusions. Next thing, you'll be telling me you like sloppy love songs. Actually, he says, he once recorded an album but it came to nothing.

I feel shortchanged. It's as though I've booked tickets for Rambo and, instead, I'm being treated to Bambi. But there's more. Far from enjoying a night out with the lads, he says he is a loner.

"I would be quite happy living way away. I have this place in Portugal which is quite remote - and that is for good reason. I like that kind of environment. It suits me. In fact, I'd prefer to be living there than here. I like wide, open spaces."

The fact he is telling me all this is a miracle. Before we started the interview, he laid down a few ground rules. Two subjects were out of bounds, he said: His personal life and his family background.

"It's just the way I like to be," he said cagily. Does he have something to hide? "I just don't do it - that's it. Okay?"

In fact, once he gets warmed up, Chris speaks quite openly about his private life. It is his family background - more particularly, his parents - he refuses to talk about.

His mother was the actress Diana Morrison, best-known for her role in the hit wartime radio show It's That Man Again (ITMA), fronted by comedian Tommy Handley. His father was the popular radio quiz-master John Ellison.

But when I mention his mother, he angrily denies she was an actress, then refuses to say anything more on the subject. "I hate all this. I really don't want to go in to it. I don't know where this stuff has come from but I would prefer to keep it to myself, if you don't mind." I can picture him throwing the newspaper away in disgust at this point so I'll let the matter drop.

I meet Chris at The Old Market in Upper Market Street, Hove, where he is currently in rehearsals. He is tanned - "I've just come back from Portugal" - and casually dressed in a tracksuit and trainers. He has filled out a little since his peak days on The Bill and his hair is thinner but I can still see why women fell for him in droves. He looks down at the table when I mention his sex-symbol status, clearly embarrassed.

"I didn't quite see it myself," he says. "Actors are very lucky because they can become sex symbols simply by playing a sexy character. It is nothing to do with them at all." And what does his wife make of his sexy image? "She thinks it's hilarious," he says with a loud guffaw. "She knows the truth."

Chris shot to fame on The Bill in 1988 and stayed for six years. Fans still stop him in the street and ask him to repeat his famous catchphrase: "You're nicked, you slag." "I have no problems talking about The Bill," he says cheerily. "They were the happiest days of my life. We wouldn't be sitting here if it wasn't for The Bill."

- An illustration from one of Ellison's children's books

Burnside was a gruff, ill-tempered maverick - always a copper as opposed to a policeman - with an unconventional way of doing things. In one particularly memorable episode, he flushed a villain's head down the toilet. He was also something of a mystery - even to Chris. "He might as well live in a cardboard box," he once said. "I have no idea what he does when he isn't working."

But, as he pointed out, viewers didn't want to see him having dinner with his girlfriend, with a couple of kids running round. That would have been a let-down. In its heyday, the show attracted audiences of 13 million but, by the late Nineties, the series began to feel dated - most evidenced by the appearance of two pairs of plodding feet pounding along a cobbled street at the end of each episode.

It was pilloried by TV critics - not least for reproducing rather too accurately the tedium of everyday, procedural policing. Chris left in 1993 - after the show switched from a weekly hour-long series to a twice and then thrice-weekly half-hour programme. The pressure of filming had begun to take its toll and he developed stress-induced eczema.

"I became quite ill. I just got very run-down. You had to be in make-up by seven in the morning and you didn't wrap up until six in the evening. Then you had to get home - and I was commuting from Brighton some of the time.

"Filming was very intense. In fact, it was one the fastest shows you could ever work on because they shot eight or nine scenes in a day. I always felt sorry for star guests because it was a whirlwind thing to be chucked in to."

He also felt his character had dried up. "The scriptwriters were using him as dramatic shorthand. If they wanted a scene beefing up, they just got Burnside to shout."

And his troubles were compounded when they began filming episodes back-to-back. As Chris played one of the show's most popular characters, he usually featured in two out of every three episodes and he found it hard to carry two storylines in his head at the same time.

When Yorkshire TV hinted it was interested in making him the star of a new drama - the ill-fated Ellington - Chris saw his chance and quit.

It seemed Bill fans had seen the last of him but it proved not to be. After a six-year absence, he returned in October 1999. It took considerable persuasion to tempt him back but the producers were desperate to have him - there was an upward blip of about three per cent in the ratings whenever he was on.

Inevitably, some pundits saw his return as his failure to shake off the character but Chris freely admits his career has not always gone according to plan.

Ellington centred around a sports promoter with a heart of gold and Chris devised the pilot himself, with writer Don Webb. It was screened in 1994 and attracted more than ten million viewers - prompting Yorkshire TV to commission a full series. It eventually appeared in 1996 but was never heard of again.

The show featured real-life sporting personalities, such as Ian Botham, Tommy Docherty, Jeremy Bates and Vinnie Jones. "I gave Vinnie his first job," laughs Chris. "He just played himself - getting a disciplinary from the Football Association. I would never have predicted his success but good luck to him. The boy done well."

- Ellison with his wife, Anita, left and daughter Franchesca

Last year, the couple moved into a splendid 14th-Century house in Steyning; a house with six bedrooms, a gym in an outbuilding and 12 acres of land where they keep their horses.

Chris took much of the blame for the flop. "I said: 'I'm sorry, it hasn't worked.'" He also says critics were right to slate it. "It lacked humour and it was very predictable." It was a disaster in all sorts of ways because his producer and director, Gordon Flemyng - a long-time friend - died during filming.

"That was a terrible shock and it buried the series. We still had one more episode to shoot. It was a nightmare - a horrible, horrible time in my life."

Ironically, Chris had been admitted to hospital himself during filming with a suspected heart attack but it turned out to be exhaustion. "It sounds as if I'm always collapsing but I'm not. I was simply too involved. It was a lesson to be learned." Gordon came to see him and said he had to take things easy - after all, it was only a TV series. Then he died not long after from a heart attack. They dedicated the series to his memory.

"Directing and producing the show was just too much for him. I feel awful about it because it was my idea he should produce it. To me, it was practically like losing a relative."

Does he think Ellington damaged his career? "Yeah, it probably did. It certainly didn't do me any favours. But the same thing happened on Burnside."

There had been talk of a spin-off series starring the popular Burnside character for years - and the new, post-watershed time gave the scriptwriters more leeway. Burnside had become darker and more manipulative and, five minutes into the first episode, viewers were treated to swear words they would never have heard from his Sun Hill colleagues.

He was now heading a small cell within the National Crime Squad and the body count went through the roof. No longer fighting The Bill's unglamorous war against shoplifting single parents and domestic violence, Burnside now faced Uzi-wielding Yardies, international gun-runners and warped serial killers.

He was given two new underlings - a ballsy feminist (Zoe Eeles) and a black, gay character (Justin Pierre). Chris always had doubts about them. "I thought: 'Don't make this politically correct, make it real. Give me coppers I can believe in'. I've never been one for doing things just because they are politically correct - not that I didn't like the actors, because I did."

The show attracted respectable ratings of six and seven million but Chris says it was buried before it got started. "It was put in a graveyard slot - in July - and it still beat BBC shows by miles. I don't think the schedulers knew what to do with it."

Chris really rated the series. "It had good notices, whereas Ellington received terrible ones. It was well written and the episodes were beautifully directed. I was very, very bitterly disappointed when it wasn't given a second series." Has it knocked his self confidence?

"Well... you take a step back. If another part came along, I'd say: 'Great,' but I would never start planning my future. It's not like going in to EastEnders."

He may sound like a disappointed man but, on the surface at least, he doesn't come across that way. Chris has taken his knocks philosophically and hasn't lost his sense of humour - even though he admits he has no work coming in.

Can he afford to retire? "No, I can't - that's the annoying thing. People assume everyone on TV is a millionaire but that is complete cobblers. I'm not saying I'm skint - I have a few trappings - but the money is not flowing in."

He has recently finished building a house in Portugal and is about to start building another larger house - partly as an investment. "I spend as much time out there as I can but don't get me wrong, work always comes first."

Chris was born in Fulham in 1946 and left school at 16 to work on a building site. At 18, he emigrated to Canada via the Merchant Navy. "I thought I would see the world but ended up tending cattle on a cargo ship."

He has hinted at a street-wise past and friendship with the former East-End villain and World heavyweight bare-knuckle champion Lenny McLean. "I knew Lenny from London clubs and boxing. He was a feared man but a great character. I didn't know the Kray twins but I knew their older brother, Charlie. He was a lovely man."

Really? "I take people for what they are. I don't think you should moralise. The worlds some of these people live in - it's either murder or be murdered."

On his return to Britain, he joined Camberwell Art School in South London and demonstrated a rare talent for drawing and sculpting. He excels at strong line drawing. "I could have been a graphic artist or illustrator but, unless you're incredibly successful, it's hard to earn good money. Besides, I was always a figurative artist, which wasn't very fashionable in those days," he grumbles.

He has illustrated two published children's books and has just written and illustrated two more called The Adventures Of Rex about the adventures of a 12-year-old boy from London.

He fell in to acting while dabbling in stage management and secured an agent very quickly. After years in rep, he landed his first TV role in The Sweeney, aged 27. He continued his tough-guy apprenticeship in The Professionals, Minder, Widows, Dempsey And Makepeace and The Gentle Touch.

Few are aware he has also done comedy, including Birds Of A Feather (he played Dorien's ex-boyfriend) and Never The Twain. He even played Bill Sykes in a West-End production of Oliver!.

He met his Greek wife Anita, a former singer and actress, 22 years ago. She was the understudy for Eliza in a West-End production of My Fair Lady (she went on to star). He was appearing at a neighbouring theatre in a play called Once A Catholic. It was a whirlwind romance.

"We met on the Saturday and decided to get married on the Wednesday. We were married three months later." He says the secret of their lasting marriage is friendship. "I know it's a cliche but it's true. The great thing about Anita - apart from the fact she is very beautiful - is we agree on so many things. It sounds horrible but, one of the greatest tests, is if you dislike the same people." He laughs.

They have two children - Louis, 20, who is studying Design For Television at Nottingham University - and Francesca, 12. Did Anita put her career aside to have children?

"Well, it has always been a bone of contention. She was doing very well and theatre producer Cameron Mackintosh had high hopes for her. Everyone thought she was going to be a big star. Then she fell pregnant with Louis."

So it wasn't planned? "No, it wasn't, really," he says sheepishly. "Although we wouldn't swap Louis for anything. I've always had a feeling of guilt, though. "I know she would love to go back to work and I think she could. She joined our rehearsals the other day to cover for somebody - and she was great. She's a natural on stage. One of my greatest wishes is she could go back and succeed again."

He has always been conscious of the difficulties his children face, growing up in his shadow. "There must be a point where the children get fed up with people talking to me. When we go out, it's always me, me, me - and I have to be very careful they're not excluded."

So is Louis a chip off the old block? "I don't know. He's very quiet - more like his mother. And he looks like her as well, thank God. He's tall, dark and handsome." Despite his secure family life, I sense there have been tough times for Chris. I read he had a drink problem but he underplays it.

"I don't think I was ever getting into a dangerous situation but you would have to ask my wife - she probably thought I was. I started to drink to relax when I was under a lot of pressure - at the height of all those episodes on The Bill.

"I would go to the pub after filming and think: 'I'll just have a few glasses to relax.' Then my way of relaxing became drinking and that wasn't a good thing. It's a dangerous substance, alcohol, and in the acting profession, there are a lot of opportunities to drink." Inevitably, the conversation turns to his old pal, actor Kevin Lloyd, who played Tosh Lines in The Bill. He died after a much-publicised drink problem.

Wisely, Chris distances himself from Lloyd's exploits - fearing comparisons. "We were good friends on set but he lived in Derby and I lived here in Brighton so we didn't have a life together outside work. "I didn't see him at all during the last two years of his life, although I did ring to see if he was all right after reading some awful things in the tabloids. I have to say, in all the years I worked with him, I was never aware he had a problem - although other actors have told me it became apparent towards the end.

"Mark Wingett (PC Carver in The Bill) is a great friend of mine and, as an ex-drinker, he made huge attempts to help him. He was staying at my house when a journalist rang to say he had died. I'll never forget the look on his face."

- Ellison posing on the Brighton seafront with Zara Plessard, his co-star in King of the Beach

Chris has strong views about the media and refuses to allow pictures at his home because, as he charmingly puts it: "I try to keep you lot out of my house as much as possible."

It sparks an impromptu rant about the media's "obsession" with "illicit-sex" stories. "Journalists are always on about sex as though it's something really interesting," he moans. "They print screaming headlines: 'Is Somebody Having Illicit Sex?' and you think: 'What is illicit sex?'

"I don't believe actors who have a one-night stand with a girl should be pilloried. It's absolute nonsense. They want actors to be larger than life and yet, when they step out of line, they denounce them."

I ask whether he has ever been the subject of tabloid revelations himself. "No, I haven't but I know a lot of people who have and I know the pain and terror it causes. A journalist rang me once and said: 'Are you faithful?' I said: 'Well, I'm not a bloody red setter, mate. Red setters are faithful . . . Gun dogs are faithful.'"

Fortunately, Chris has rehearsals to take such tiresome matters off his mind. The play, a brand-new comedy, is the first to emerge from the stable of the newly-formed Brighton & Hove Theatre Company - a group of professional actors which aims to perform a classical and contemporary repertoire.

Chris plays Ron Mitchell, a loud-mouthed, East-End bigot who descends on Brighton beach with his family and soon begins upsetting everyone. As the drink and the sun take their toll, the interaction between the various groups becomes more comical and chaotic. Long-kept secrets are revealed and relationships tested.

Chris describes his character as a cross between Alf Garnett and Del Boy. "He's just one of those people you would not want to meet on holiday," he chuckles. "If you were unlucky enough to have Ron Mitchell in your hotel, you would be in trouble.

"I came on board because I knew Peter, the director. We worked together years ago and we've been friends ever since. This is the first stage role I've been offered which I think is me. It also gives me an opportunity to do something different."

I wrap up by asking whether, at 55, he is worried that parts might dry up. "I hope not," he says. "I realise I won't be playing 25-year-old leading men but I think you're all right at 55. And, besides, I'm just glad to be here." And he emits the last of a long line of hearty laughs.

© 2002

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