No, I’m not talking about Nigel Havers – do behave yourself. I’m talking about the man she’s currently bickering with Rula Lenska about. Audrey calls him Marc. I call him actor Andrew Hall. Or, more properly, I call him Russell Parkinson from 70s-80s sitcom Butterflies.
Ah, Russell… I used to get quite breathless when he was on-screen. Maybe it was his very figure-hugging jeans and lovely loose shirts. Or his lovely curly hair and firm jawline. Russell was always successful with the “chicks,” but could be kind and sensitive and (when provoked) nice to his long-suffering mum. He was cool, albeit in a slightly embarrassing, scripted-by-an-older-person kind of way, but he carried it off well.
Unlike his Butterflies “brother” Nicholas Lyndhurst, who went on to become a household face thanks to Only Fools and Horses etc, Andrew Hall kind of faded from televisual view. He’s had bit parts in Holby, Casualty and EastEnders (he was the man Janine almost slept with the night before she married Ryan), but has mainly been working in theatre as an actor and director.
So how has he aged (he’s now in his mid-50s)? Well, with that bone structure you’re never going to go far wrong, and he’s still pretty handsome (though PLA Jr reckons he speaks without his top and bottom teeth ever losing contact with each other). And he’s still got the fabulous, posh caramel voice that used to make my teeny toes curl. Most definitely worth fighting Rula Lenska for.
2 comments:
Russell was born in 1954. How ridiculous is this? Hunky Mark in his mid 50s become besotted with Audrey who is 71. Newsflash to writers - this is not fairy land, men in their 50s fancy women in their 30s not their 70s - totally daft.
You'd think, wouldn't you ... but my mum's 72 and her partner is 46. So it does happen, and in their case, very successfully.
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