The Stage

Derek Thompson: 25 years as Casualty’s main man

Published Monday 5 September 2011 at 12:53 by Tony Cooke

As the BBC’s Casualty celebrates its 25th anniversary this month, Tony Cooke talks to Derek Thompson, who plays Charlie Fairhead, about his role at the centre of the medical drama

On an industrial estate in Bristol, past the windscreen fitters and left at the judo centre, sits an unmarked warehouse. Inside, framed proudly on a wall of one of six double-decked Portakabins, is a certificate from Guinness World Records: “Most enduring prime time medical drama series”.

Welcome to the studios of Casualty, BBC1’s flagship Saturday night drama, this month celebrating 25 years on our screens. What started as a 15-episode series back in 1986, is now a year-round operation. During the current series, the show will sail past the 800 episode mark. That is not including its spin-off Holby City, crossover specials between them, and “brand extensions”, such as the historical Casualty 1906.

At the centre of it all is Derek Thompson, aka Charlie Fairhead. Thompson is the only core cast member to have stayed with Casualty from the beginning, and he’s often now called the soul of the show.

“It feels like it’s not a bad suggestion,” Thompson says to that. “Because I’m not sure that history is not the soul of anything. I’m the history of the show. Charlie carries the history of the show every time he steps on to the place that you know and recognise.”

While other characters have gone, come, and gone again, Charlie remains. He’s been shot, run over, nearly drowned and had a heart attack, but somehow his lolloping figure still gently calms the cubicles of Holby. Thompson, now sitting in the studio’s ‘conference Portakabin’, explains that he doesn’t have any choice but to say he likes the character - he knows him.

“Charlie is based on a bloke that I met on the tenth day of the job called Peter Salt, who was then a charge nurse at the Bristol Royal Infirmary. I’ve got the greatest excuse that any actor could ever have for disputing a line,” he says.

Salt was, in fact, a key inspiration too for the show’s original creators, Jeremy Brock and Paul Unwin. Trying to devise a replacement for hit BBC police drama Juliet Bravo, Brock and Unwin visited Salt on his ward. The nurse interrupted their chat to inform the parents of a child that their son was dead, before picking up their conversation where he left off - in that moment, the young creators realised the extraordinary demands of the job.

“There was no question of cynicism,” Brock said in a subsequent interview. “He had been sincere with those poor people. He knew he was witnessing the worst moment of their lives. But he had switched gear almost instantly. We suddenly saw that all the staff there had to do it, otherwise they simply couldn’t function.”

Thompson sums up the enduring Casualty formula as being half soap opera, following the private lives of the staff, and half continuing drama, telling one-off stories of the characters drawn into the hospital. So why does he think it has outlived all professional diagnoses? He puts it down to allowing writers to find the emotional honesty in situations. “Casualty still trusts writers to do that - find the emotional revelations that come bouncing up at you like a rake in the long grass,” he explains. “I think that’s the greatest secret of its success. You don’t expect to have this moment of somebody saying, this is important in my life, and I realise it.”

He’s particularly proud of the way in which each episode is treated more like a self-contained play, each given to a different writer, and often covering tough, topical issues: “It wants to be current. It wants to be of social significance. Watching it back, it occasionally feels like it’s dangerously close to Newsnight.”

Back in 1986, Thompson was a 38-year-old actor with 20 years’ experience of rep theatre, theatre in education, TV cop shows, and getting ‘sliced’ by Bob Hoskins in The Long Good Friday.

He thought he’d be in Casualty for three series, tops. So what made him stay?

“They just keep putting the money up,” he says, then laughs. “That’s not bloody true. BBC? You’re joking. It’s completely unspectacular my attitude to my work in that I really do enjoy it. I’m satisfied mostly by the fact that it’s a team effort.”

No programme can stay on air for 25 years without evolving, and there’s no doubt since those early days Casualty has become slicker, more natural, altogether faster-paced. But Thompson says as an actor, it has felt remarkably constant: “I don’t feel that Casualty, or my involvement, has ever had hot spots or cold spots. It’s always been the same.” Perhaps that’s how he’s stayed in the series for so long - he’s not looked back with rose-tinted protective goggles? He’s quick to agree: “I’m not a nostalgic person, no.”

It must be hard, though, when an old friend leaves the cast?

“No it’s not, there’s a natural feel to it, the organic process,” he says. “I’ve lived through so much of it now, I call it generations. They’re families. That’s been a real fund of enjoyment, and source of a lot of sweet memories.”

If he could pick a favourite actor he’s worked with on the show, he says it would be Brenda Fricker.

“She’s the closest to a fairground ride that I’ve ever met in another human being,” he says.

As for his most satisfying moment? Watching Robson Green go from Casualty porter Jimmy, to leading man status: “From day one he was completely unreserved, emotionally and professionally.”

Now, as he gears up for another cycle of Casualty, things are changing around the sanguine Thompson again. Just in time for the show’s 25 anniversary, the production will leave its Bristol home, and relocate to the BBC’s new studios in Cardiff.

Thompson has made no secret of the fact he disagreed with the move from the start.

“I was fiercely pissed off when they first mooted it, even more pissed off when they said it’s a fact,” he says. “Because I thought, I cannot see the advantage. It will cost money. If it costs money why not put that money into the show? They could have built a better studio here.”

However, decision made, he’s learned to grin and bear it. Leaving the Bristol set, some parts of which lack any heating or air con, won’t be all bad.

“In the winter it’s freezing. When they see the breath in front of our faces, they bring a heater in,” he says.

Also getting another revamp is the cast. In perhaps an attempt to return to the show’s roots, series 26 will see renewed emphasis put on the nurses, with the nursing staff bolstered by two new permanent cast members - Michael Obiora as Lloyd, and Madeleine Mantock as Scarlett.

A little later I sit down with Mantock. This is her first major acting job after leaving Arts Educational Schools London, and she seems to still be in shock.

“Someone told me earlier I’ve done 11 weeks, but I don’t know,” she says. “At the moment, I get up, I go to work, I do the scenes, I go home, learn my lines, and I do the same again. It is a bit Groundhog Day, but it’s nice.”

Mantock admits there is now “a lot of pressure for names to be cast” in the show, and that established actors were also considered for her role. Casualty, though, has always been a springboard for new talent - aside from Fricker and Green, its alumni of stars includes Kate Winslet, Orlando Bloom and David Walliams.

The fact that Mantock had only limited camera experience before she started, shows how confident the team is with nurturing fresh actors. That doesn’t, however, soothe all her nerves.

“I feel a bit strange that I’m kind of learning how to do this and it will be in public,” she adds.

So far, though, she’s been bowled over by the public’s love for the show. Fans camp outside the studio most days, and Mantock is amazed by their strength of feeling.

“They gave us a 25th anniversary card and they each wrote a little passage. One of them wrote: ‘Thank you for helping me through the past ten years of my life’, and that was like, wow,” she says.

I rejoin Thompson, and he tries to give me a quick tour of the famous set, but every few minutes he’s stopped by passing cast and crew. They don’t need to talk to him, but want to. It’s obvious he’s not just the soul of the show, but the soul of the set as well.

How would he feel if they tried to write him out now?

“I’d buy a shotgun and find the writer,” Thompson says, then laughs. “No, I’d feel fine about that, because I’ve still actually got the actor’s hunger after all these years for the basic fact, which is you do the play. If they don’t want you in the play, you can’t make your own part.”

Casualty continues on BBC1 on Saturday nights at 8.30pm. Visit www.bbc.co.uk/casualty