Bill Simpson had nine years to become infected

Press, Volume CXI, Issue 32802, 30 December 1971, Page 4

Bill Simpson had nine years to become infected

(prom.

ROSEMARY MUNDAY

in "Nine Years as Dr Findlay," London.)

If a doctor can pick up something from his patients, Dr Finlay of the TV series should have been well and truly infected by the time he closed his casebook.

He was at it for nine years. Now, one can’t help feeling that Bill Simpson, the man who made the role famous, is slightly accident prone. His latest misfortune, in fact, has thwarted plans he had to visit Australia.

Simpson had in mind a play, “The Hasty Heart,” in which he was to be a Scottish soldier bedded down in a tropical field hospital and dying with a kidney disease. He felt the general setting

would have been ideal for Australian audiences.

This was all in the melting pot before he made his musical cpmedy debut in London’s West End. He played a bored business tycoon with an ailing marriage, and sang for the first time on stage. The production was a drawing room musical. called “Romance.” Alas: “Romance" lasted exactly five nights and flopped. The cast scurried away in a state of injured surprise to rethink their future prospects. At this point I met Bill Simpson for lunch at Sheekey’s fish restaurant. There, two things became clear: he will have great difficulty shaking off the type-cast of the TV series (there were

delighted glances from the customers and whimperings of “Dr Finlay”); and his selfeffacing, whimsical philosophy and manner give him all the tools pf a tragicomedian. The week 'before we met, he had been to his doctor to find out the results of an x-ray. . His stomach had been playing up and he immediately thought of cancer.

“All clear,” the doctor told him, and he rushed straight out and got himself a painful hangover celebrating.

SJ he went off to a health farm for a few days. When he came home his telephone was out of order and he had to call me from a public box. There he ran

out of coins and asked apologetically if I’d mind phoning the restaurant for a table.

Bill Simpson is 40. He talks quietly in a hesitating shorthand, a bit like a shy post boy reading a telegram: when his emotions are aroused the thick Scottish burr tumbles out and he tends to raise his voice. Visit to Spain

He was going tp Spain the next day for a holiday away from it all in a rented villa. I asked him if he were going alone.

“I’d say so. I mean—l’d tell (‘TELL’) you if I wasn’t. I just might not tell you whom I was going with.” On a previous trip -there had been strong rumours

that he would marry actress Tracey Reed, who went to Spain too. Bill’s friends and family told everyone he would. Then Miss Reed married another actor. This time he was taking a typewriter to Spain, telling himself he would write a play. The trouble with the disastrous musical “Romance,” he said, was it had not been witty enough. “It needed an awful lot of cutting and rewriting. I’d done everything I could and come up against a brick wall. The basic story was simple and it would have worked with the pretentiously funny bits cut.” “Romance” had survived a tour of a few weeks from its birthplace, Leeds, where Bill

had also been starring in Leeds Playhouse’s production of “Alfie” and playing the part of Polonius in “Hamlet.” The London response was less welcoming. “One man wrote the music lyrics and directed the show too,” he said. “It’s difficult for a man to see things in perspective when he’s handling all these together.” The “casebook” “Dr Finlay’s Casebook” was the making of Bill Simpson. He started life as a farmhand, and later as an insurance clerk he studied drama. He graduated to a small part in “Z Cars” as a thieving Scottish labourer who stole a bottle of milk, and was invited to take a test for the Finlay role. 1 During the nine-year run, he matured as an actor, married, divorced, was named “Scot of the year” jointly with Andrew Cruickshank (Dr Cameron) in 1964, and was watched by 14 million television viewers in Britain alone. Australia, Canada, Kenya, Zambia, Hong Kong and Denmark were among at least a dozen eager purchasers of the series, which simply dealt with human dramas against the barest medical background. He doesn’t know if he would go back to playing Finlay again, although it was "pleasant work and paid well.” Like others in a type-cast situation, he’s having qualms about the permanent image. But he’s not sure ... the team did get on so well together on and off screen. Lunch with Janet “The thing is, the 8.8. C. are desperately hard up. They don’t get money to do anything. “I had lunch with Barbara Mullen (Janet in the series) recently, and she was saying she'd heard it was coming back.” [The 8.8. C., however, says it has no plans to revive the Finlay series.] He set out to play the Dr

Finlay role as a human being and not as a doctor. “I’d been influenced by the method of acting where one plays completely against what’s written. I’d think of doctors I knew, then play the very opposite.” As the original 12 A. J. Cronin shprt stories ran out, and team scriptwriters took over, Bill Simpson found himself injecting his own personality into the role. “Cronin’s work kind of jumped off the page at you, it was so vivid. But with team writing, the characters no longer jumped by themselves.” In the fourth year of “Dr Finlay,” Bill Simpson had a heart attack. Earlier, an appendix operation. His heart attack came while he was on stage at the Hippodrome at Golders Green in a play called “Adam’s Apple.” He was Adam, and a bikini-class beauty was making up to him on stage when he started to feel faint. He held on to the end of a sofa until they dropped the curtain, then collapsed. Shortly after, the play closed and did not make it to the West End as it was hoped. While he was recuperating, he was talking about wanting to play the part of Peter Manuel, the Scottish massmurderer who was hanged. But Finlay still had a long way to go. Marriage “disaster” Simpson’s wife, Mary Miller, whom he’d met and married on location (she had a part in the series) nursed him through his convalescence. The marriage lasted two years. “It was all a disaster,” Bill said. “And when the marriage busted the letters started pouring in from television viewers. Some were most vitriolic. “They said things like ‘how dare you destroy the image created by lovely people like Dr Cameron and

Janet . . . how dare you let the whole thing down by your terrible personal life’.” The unfortunate situation became a confusion of television imagery and reality. “The heart attack terrified me,” said Bill. “I was only 35. I was working hard, but now I think it was the social life that got me. Suddenly I was a national star, flattered by the idea that people recognised me. There I was in London, the mecca of the showbusiness world in this country, and actors and actresses I’d adulated for years were speaking to me as if I was an equal. “The first four years of Finlay took their toll that way. All the pubs and clubs and fame.

“I’ve got a lot calmer, and I don’t think I try so hard to impress. A certain amount of financial security has done me a lot of good.” In real life now he’s for all the world like the quiet, charming and even shy Dr Finlay himself—whether he likes it or not. I .