Everyone took such delight in Tristan getting into a bad state.
He bore the brunt of the dirty vet’s work – although, when I did put my arm up a cow’s rear, it always seemed much messier scene than when anyone else did it. Once we had to stop filming to let Chris throw up in a bucket. To this day, I’m a lemonade and lime man. The beer was real, which caused problems in the drunken scenes, since I loathed beer. I had to spend a lot of time in the Drover’s Arms quaffing pints. I think he liked the fact I gave as good as I got. Sometimes he’d whisper his lines, sometimes he’d bark them. He was unlike any other actor I’ve worked with, fascinated by the different ways of playing a scene, incapable of resisting the temptation to experiment. He enjoyed our scenes together so much he insisted more be written into the script. At drama school they’d pumped received pronunciation into us, but Robert was a classical actor, with an aristocratic lineage. With my south London accent, I was intimidated at the thought of playing younger brother to Robert Hardy, who was cast as Siegfried. ‘I loathed beer’ … Peter Davison with co-star Carol Drinkwater. If he had a funny line, he’d often say: “This doesn’t suit James, let’s give it to Tristan.” At times, I’d have to tell him not to, because he was giving away all the nice bits. But he still had this strong belief that we were an ensemble, everyone a co-star.
Since Chris was playing James Herriot, he was the star. At a meet-and-greet with the other actors, Chris walked in, took one look at me and said: “Too tall, recast.” I was afraid the producer might take another look and say: “Yes, he is.” The book describes my character Tristan Farnon as short and dark, the absolute opposite of me.
But for years after, my agent was constantly shouting down the phone: “He’s an actor, not a vet!” Peter Davison, actor I knew if you made a series of that, with the gorgeous Yorkshire Dales as scenery, it couldn’t fail. People reading them would laugh out loud. You have to remember: I grew up in the 1950s, the era of cowboy movies and rock’n’roll.Įvery book you saw on a bus or a train at that time was by Herriot. Send his wife some flowers – and recast.” So I perfected this stupid sort of John Wayne walk. It should have been longer but I heard that the BBC hierarchy had said: “Oh, dreadful news about Chris. Halfway through shooting the first series, I broke my leg and I was out of action for nine weeks. ‘Everything in the show was real’ … Robert Hardy gets to grips with a cow in 1978.
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