anthony andrews on my fair lady with the RLPO and how Brideshead Revisited remains unique

By Catherine Jones on Jun 11, 10 09:00 AM

They seek him here, they seek him there, but next weekend Anthony Andrews - Scarlet Pimpernel, Nero, and of course Lord Sebastian Flyte - will be at Liverpool's Philharmonic Hall.
The actor is set to appear as Professor Henry Higgins - the role Liverpool's Sir Rex Harrison famously played on stage and screen - in a concert version of My Fair Lady with the RLPO.

You can read my full interview with Anthony Andrews in today's Echo entertainment section.
We talked about My Fair Lady, but obviously I had to mention Brideshead Revisited. In fact, I apologised for mentioning it as I feared he may be fed up with continually being asked about the show.
Here, exclusively for my blog, is what he told me.....
"You can't run from that, it's the most extraordinary opportunity to have had and it was wonderful to do at the time.
"I always say, I think it's terribly unfair the way people hold it up as an example and against as it were other pieces of work.
"And the reason I think it's terribly unfair is because that unique set of circumstances in which we made it.
"First of all we had an independent television strike which stopped for 13 weeks anybody working, and in that time we completely rewrote it, threw out all the scripts, re-did everything, and were able to take stock in such a way.
"And if we hadn't had the opportunity to do that, Brideshead would have been a very average six hour adaptation which is what it was in the first place.
"So it was the bravery of Granada television who pumped money in at a time when everything else was being cancelled, because they saw there was the possibility of something good and great, and that gave us that golden opportunity.
"And then we went on shooting and there was the peculiar time when Jeremy ran off to do a movie, even though he was under contract to us, which was very controversial at the time, but meant that we all stopped again, and the consequence of that was that we were able to re-edit, reshape.
"The whole process took two years, which no one ever gets two years to make a piece of television, and when you think in those days, over 30 years ago, the budget was £10m then, if you translate that to what it would be today, it would be completely unrealistic to think in terms of doing a piece of television for that kind of money.
"So I always say, the extraordinary thing about it is we were so privileged to be a part of something that could never happen again, that it's no wonder that it's different from other things."
So there you go. Straight from Sebastian's mouth.
Read the full interview on the website of in today's paper....and don't forget to book tickets for My Fair Lady too.