Why Dr Finlay is going to war

Press, 5 July 1978, Page 21

Why Dr Finlay is going to war

1 he Battle of Culloden is being refought for television by stars of three of television's most successful series—Dr l inlav. Inspector Watt and The Invisible Man. The trio are being brought together for a 82 million series of ‘’Kidnapped.*’

He strode into the quiet Devon pub and the locals wondered whether someone had put something extra-powerful into the local cider. For the stranger was dressed in the flamboyant regalia of an eighteenth century highland chief, with a claymore and bushy grey beard to match. It was only when he asked for his favourite whisky that they recognised the voice that once glued 11 million viewers to their TV sets every Sunday night. It was Doctor Finlay, alias the actor Bill Simpson, who is relighting the Battle of Culloden, assisted by Detective Chief Inspector Watt, and The Invisible Man. Simpson, Frank Windsor and David McCallum have joined forces in a S2M TV series of Robert Louis Stevenson’s adventure tale “Kidnapped,” due on British screens in late summer. Already the series seems set to become a major international > hit. More than a dozen networks have expressed | interest.

I The role of the Highland I rebel James of the Glens, I in ragged kilt and sackcloth leggins, is a far cry from the clean-cut Dr Finlay, or the taciturn vet in his last TV series, “The Mackinnons,” but Bill Simpson admits he’s enjoying himself enormously. Although he has recorded more series for radio, Dr Finlay closed his TV casebook in 1970 after nine record-breaking vears, and would never want the pressures of such a long-running series again. “I have an awful lot to thank Finlay for,” he remembers. “But since 1970 I have broadened out a lot as an actor and I’m far more able to cope with all the things that used to put me in a panic. For one thing my private life is so much happier and more settled.”

Bill Simpson had been playing Dr Finlay for six years when his life away from TV reached its lowest ebb. “My first marriage had broken down,” he recalls, “I got very emotionally battered and it all culminated in my having a minor heart attack when I was appearing on stage.” The big change in his life came when the series writers gave him a new girlfriend — Tracy Reed, and Bill remembers that their meeting was “hate at first sight.” But not for long. Now he and Tracy are happily married with two small daughters, and divide their time between a house in Oxfordshire and a rented cottage in Scotland. For nine years, the 8.8. C. had one of its big-gest-ever hits, and one of the cheapest. The vast majority of filming was done at the village of Callendar in Perthshire. “We had an awful lot of fun working on the series,” Bill Simpson rein e m b e r s . “Andrew Cruickshank, who played Dr Cameron, has a great sense of humour and an infectious laugh. When he got a fit of the giggles, it stopped the series dead.” Bill is proud of the fact that the series, set in the ‘thirties, was considered so accurate that many of the episodes have been used in London teaching hospitals to show students special cases. He is certain that “Kidnapped,” one of his favourite books since boyhood, will be just as faithful to the original — even though the young hero David Balfour is being played by 24-year-old German actor, Ekkehardt Belle. David McCallum, the Scottish-born star who plays the rebel Alan Breck in Kidnapped, also knows what it’s like to be a prisoner of a hit TV series. He has been in three: “Colditz,” “The Man From UNCLE,” and “The Invisible Man.” Looking back, he says that the pressure exerted by the success of “The Man From Uncle” was one of the main reasons for the break-up of his first marriage to the actress Jill Ireland. “I found it very hard to admit to myself,” he says, “that things were going wrong, and when the series became a hit it meant that I was away a lot, filming and doing promotions. “Whether things would

have been different had I stayed at home, I just don’t know. These pressures are part of an actor’s life and you’ve got to learn to live with them.” Today, David McCallum

is married to a former New York socialite. Katherine Carpenter, and lives mainly in New York. “But I’m delighted to be back playing a Scotsman again,” he says. “Even if it is in Devon.”