Born in Walsall on July 17th 1946, Jeffrey Holland's distinctive voice and appearance - reassuringly familiar to millions through his work on three of the late David Croft's most popular situation comedies, Hi-De-Hi!, You Rang M'Lord? and Oh Doctor Beeching! - remain much in demand to this day.
Long before he became a welcome presence in the living rooms of countless homes around the world, however, the shy teenager was initially somewhat reluctant to take up acting, only agreeing to join a drama group after realising there were certain advantages involved.
Jeffrey Holland: Getting Started
"I was a 15 year old amateur actor," recalls Jeffrey today, speaking to me from his London home. "I went into amateur acting simply because my friend told me that there were some pretty girls there in this particular group and I thought, 'Well, there you go!'
"I was six-foot tall at 15, with spots, big teeth, huge glasses and no self-confidence whatsoever. He said, 'Come along to this drama group with me, an amateur dramatic group for under 21s, and I said, 'What me? Actor? Don’t be so silly!' and he said, 'Well the girls are pretty'. I said, 'What time do you want me?!'
"It was almost like that really, and there were some pretty girls in that group and I did go out with one or two of them. It did my self-esteem an enormous amount of good, particularly when I was sitting around in the rehearsal room for the very first time reading a script out loud, as we were all trying to do, and I suddenly heard laughter - and it was me getting laughs. My pride just grew and swelled."
Jeffrey Holland: Early Potential
"I loved all this; I felt, 'I want some of this, thank you very much!'. I stayed on in this group and I got into acting simply through my hormones raging, basically – that’s what it was all about in the first place, but then of course I realised that I loved doing it and also that I wasn’t half bad at it, to be honest.
"My confidence had grown enormously and I realised that at the end of the day, when it came time to leave school, I really didn’t want to do anything else. I was far too young to do anything about it because my father died when I was 14 and it left my mother with my younger brother and myself to bring up on her own.
"Drama school was out of the question really, so I didn’t even think about it. It wasn’t until a few years later, when she remarried, that I rekindled the flame, as it were, and asked if they thought it would be okay for me to go to drama school and train to be an actor and they said, 'If you don’t try, you’ll never know', so I did and the rest is history."
Jeffrey Holland: Natural Comic Timing
Suite 101: And did you always display a particular knack for comedy?
"I suppose I’ve always been able to successfully do comedy and I’ve always enjoyed comedy. It’s a natural sense of timing really; you need to have good timing for comedy and I am blessed with a knack for that, so yes, I’ve always preferred it. There’s nothing greater than hearing an audience laugh - there’s nothing quite as rewarding as that.
"It’s nice to be able to do other things from time to time…I’ve just had the opportunity to go and do a thriller at this theatre near Reading and my wife and I were in a play there together last year playing quite straight roles too, which was a nice opportunity to stretch a few other different acting muscles from the usual ones we get stuck with, but comedy’s been very kind to me. I’m not knocking it, but it is nice to do drama once in a while."
Jeffrey Holland: From Repertory Theatre to Television
After finishing his formal training at The Birmingham School of Speech Training and Dramatic Arts in 1968, Jeffrey went straight into repertory theatre at The Belgrade Theatre in the nearby city of Coventry, thanks to a former student at his school.
"I joined the company through a director who had been at my drama school himself, so he went back and asked if they’d got any students who’d just left who would like to come and sort of be walking furniture, vitually extras really, in a big production that they were doing.
"I was asked if I’d go and of course I did and they asked me to stay up for the next play and four and half years later, I eventually left, having learned my trade. I was quite useful to them as a young character actor and I played all kinds of parts and I learnt the business, basically, in that theatre there.
"It was while I was there, that my then-agent was casting a net out for me and this part in Dixon of Dock Green came up. It was just the part of a young husband supporting the lady playing my wife, who was the leading character in this particular episode. So that was the first thing I ever did on TV in 1972."
Adrian Peel - Adrian is an English freelance writer and journalist currently living in Mexico. Over the past eight years, he has had articles, features ...
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