The Stage

TV Diary

Published Wednesday 12 April 2006 at 14:15 by Liz Thomas

Ladies steady yourselves. After a hiatus of eight years, Sean Bean is back as the swashbuckling Richard Sharpe and is as Machiavellian as ever. Bean is glad to be back in the saddle but says he needed to break to try other things.

The star explains: “When we finished the Battle of Waterloo it felt like the natural conclusion for that particular group of Sharpe films but I always thought that one day we would get together to make more. We all went in different directions but I was always excited by the prospect of getting back together again. Then after a while Malcolm Craddock and Muir Sutherland, the producers, Tom Clegg, the director, and I started discussing the possibility of doing another. We got a really good script written by Russell Lewis and just thought let’s go ahead and do it.”

But those of you hoping of a return to the full series heydays are going to be disappointed. “I didn’t want to do another series of Sharpe, I thought we would achieve the best quality doing this two-parter. I wouldn’t rule out doing another Sharpe though, especially with Tom Clegg, he’s a great director,” the sword-wielding star reveals.

• TV Diary would like to make a formal apology to the charming Rolf Harris for snacking on treats from his beautifully arranged tray of canapes at the recent premiere party for the new Glastonbury movie at the Salvador and Amanda. There are no excuses other than the fact that the hack in question was famished after a night busy scribbling and there was not a scrap of food in sight… well other than yours Rolf. Sorry.

• What do Jodie Marsh, Jerome Flynn and Joanna Lumley have in common? Okay there are a couple of answers but the one TV Diary is getting at is that they are all set to feature on internet TV station VeggieVision.com.

The new project is the brainchild of presenter Karin Ridgers, who fairly predictably, is driven to promote non meat eating. ” At the moment we have a selection of mini programmes that people can click and watch with many more coming soon. More and more people going over to broadband which means that this is the perfect time to set up and internet TV station,” she enthused.

So along with the likes of Marsh, Flynn and Lumley, leading poet Benjamin Zephaniah and comedian Sean Hughes have agreed to help spread the message. Ridger promises that the venture will have a combination of celebrities, information, cookery and real people’s stories all with a positive [read evangelical] attitude to help spread the message. Take a sneak peak at www.veggievision.com. I am off for a bacon sandwich.