The other day I was having tea with a mate when his 12-year-old son came in to the kitchen to tell me I was on the telly. It seemed unlikely - it was four in the afternoon, the time of the lost kingdom of kids' TV from which few actors, if any, return. There were only two possible explanations: either the BBC was replaying my 1986 appearance as Grumble the Park-Keeper (unlikely; it had bombed with the under-fives first time round), or, even worse, young Ralph was watching Fifteen to One and had somehow mistaken me for William G Stewart.
"Don't worry, there's probably an entirely rational explanation," my friend assured me as I hurried from the kitchen. Thankfully, he was right.
His son, a keen sci-fi fan, had invited a friend over during the school holidays, and they were camped on the lounge carpet in front of the TV playing the Star Wars Interactive Video Board Game. As I entered the room I came face to face with my own flickering image on the screen, dressed as a battle-fleet starship commander. I instantly recalled the gig.
Actors are always being asked to do unexpected and at times faintly ludicrous jobs. This had been one of the oddest. Some years ago I had been hired for a day by Hasbro, the games manufacturers, who were marketing a new, interactive board game based on the popular intergalactic blockbuster. The idea was that you moved your tiny counters around the board not only by dice and chance cards, but also by instructions emanating from the husky-voiced Darth Vader on a simultaneously running video tape that you began to play at the start of the game.
The location for the shooting of this video had been a converted warehouse in Ealing. It had a corrugated iron roof and, in the midsummer temperatures then prevailing, was like an oven. It was also directly under the flight path to Heathrow; filming was only possible in 90-second bursts between the roar of holidaymakers returning from Malaga.
The interior was equally prosaic: the set consisted of a six-metre stretch of starship corridor. But at least we had the real Vader. I instantly recognised Dave Prowse, aka the Dark Lord himself, clambering into the familiar black costume. Prowse was in any case a childhood icon of mine, having implanted himself in my psyche in the late 1960s as the Green Cross Man, a superhero of road crossing technique in a long lineage stretching from Tufty the Squirrel through to Edward Judd (Think Once, Think Twice, Think BIKE !!!). But Prowse had later had a successful stint as the satanic starship warlord, and even though he was now struggling with a dodgy hip and was lurching alarmingly back and forth along the corridor, he provided some much-needed credibility.
My role was less crucial. I merely had to receive orders and relay information for my Lord Vader and, by inference, for the teenagers gathered on the parlour carpet. I was kitted out in what I was assured was an authentic uniform of a commodore of the intergalactic starship. It was a tight-fitting linen tunic in a delicate shade of oatmeal. The finishing touch was a small felt cap, which I was required to wear at a raffish angle. I could only count my blessings that we weren't on location in Soho.
The director, sweating profusely in a shirt that had once been maroon, explained the scenario. "You are in command of the secret Death Star, known as Drinba Four, but some Force-sensitive rebels have infiltrated Drinba. Any questions?" One sprang immediately to mind: why did my starship destroyer have a name like a toilet cleaner? Probably best not to bring it up; George Lucas might be by the tea urn for all I knew.
The filming went smoothly, and by 7pm I was sitting steaming in my vest, having a cup of tea with Lord Vader and discussing the ramifications of his dodgy hip. He still had another hour's filming, and as I left the warehouse I heard him issuing a few final instructions to the Force-sensitive rebels gathered out there in TV land. "I want to hear you call me master," he intoned. Poor Darth Vader; even William G Stewart didn't have to resort to that.
