My first guest of the year was the exceptionally talented and very charming actress, Rosalind Eleazar, below, who many of you will have been watching in Harlan Coben’s Missing You on Netflix.
Rosalind is also one of the many stars of Slow Horses, a moody, dark and utterly delightful spy drama that includes a career-best performance from Gary Oldman who is so filthy that you can almost smell him off the television.
Missing You is at the top of the charts for streaming services as people indulge in post-seasonal binging that doesn’t include food.
Another guest I was excited to meet again on Wednesday was Mullingar native Niamh Algar, who is starring in the ITV drama Playing Nice. The last time I spoke to Niamh was when she was on The Late Late Show with Barry Keoghan to talk about their film, Calm With Horses.
In Playing Nice, Niamh plays Maddie who is married to Pete (James Norton). They seem happy with their life and toddler son, Theo but… everything changes when they get a call from the hospital to say there was a terrible mistake when their boy was born. They took home the wrong child and another couple has their birth son.
And so begins a horrible conundrum whereby the two couples have to meet and sort out the legal, emotional and myriad problems that ensue. It’s a terrific drama and Niamh is unquestionably the star. Her harried, haunted face fills the screen at every turn as the other couple start acting peculiar, troublesome and borderline psychotic.
It was lovely to catch up with yet another wonderful Irish person who flies the flag in Britain with an understated class and a widely appreciated skill. Mullingar should be (and no doubt is) very proud.
I had a great laugh with Chris Evans the other morning when he asked me had I seen the Jerry Springer documentary on Netflix. I told him I hadn’t and so we agreed to watch it that night.
Then he asked me had I ever met or interviewed Springer, below, and I told him that I didn’t know! I’ve interviewed so many people over so many years that I’m at this stage where I can’t recall everyone who joined me on radio or television in the decades I’ve been doing the job. Chris was laughing at this until it dawned on him – he couldn’t remember if he had met/interviewed Springer either.
Later that night, Chris sent me a screen grab from the documentary (of a man and the horse he had married). I googled away for a minute only to discover a clip of me introducing none other than Mr Jerry Springer to the audience on The Late Late. The band played him on, we shook hands, the crowd started chanting ‘Jerr-y, Jerr-y…’ and so I had evidence that myself and Jerry Springer not only met but had an interview live on the television.
I took a screen grab of that and sent it to Chris who had a good laugh but went one better when he told me to keep watching. Sure enough, a few minutes later, who shows up in a brief clip, only Chris Evans on his show TFI Friday interviewing Springer about Oprah Winfrey.
And so, three worlds collided and two men of a certain age with kind-of fading memories found themselves grateful for Google, Netflix and a TV archive to help prompt fading memories.
