SPENT some time yesterday with John Thomson talking about a new ITV1 conspiracy thriller called Mobile.
More of that on another day. First a couple of tales to relate about John’s recent brushes with both Dame Helen Mirren and Sir Alan Sugar.
John is pictured as businessman Sir Alan Prentice in this Sunday’s Kombat Opera Presents: The Applicants.
It’s the first of a series of BBC2 comic operas inspired by TV shows, starting with Alan Sugar’s The Apprentice.
“The look is just uncanny, really. It’s great. I feel like I’m a proper character actor, because it doesn’t look anything like me,” said John.

YOU might know him as former beat cop Tony in Shameless or killer Kenny in last year’s Cracker revival.
Now Anthony Flanagan is about to take the lead as a detective hunting a serial killer in new two-part ITV1 thriller Instinct.
But he’d just filmed an altogether different role when we met earlier this month.
Stockport actor Anthony plays an engineer called Orin in episode seven of the new Doctor Who series.
Not that he has any ambitions to fill David Tennant’s shoes when the moment comes for the Time Lord’s next regeneration.
“It’s almost like Coronation Street,” he told me. “You’re just living nine months doing the same sort of thing.”

THREE major TV dramas, six interviews and some serious swooning.
The Mayfair Hotel in London was the venue yesterday for the launch of ITV1’s new Jane Austen season.
We saw chunks of Mansfield Park, Northanger Abbey and Persuasion before talking to the stars of each adaptation.
Billie Piper plays Fanny Price in Mansfield Park with Felicity Jones as Catherine Morland in Northanger Abbey.
But I suspect the biggest screen impact may involve the spirited Sally Hawkins and Spooks star Rupert Penry-Jones.

HAVE you been following The Comedy Map of Britain?
The Saturday night BBC2 series reaches Manchester this weekend with more revelations about comedy locations and the people involved.
There’s never before broadcast footage of a TV pilot starring Caroline Aherne as “Mrs Murton”, interviewing Rochdale brother and sister radio hosts Andy and Liz Kershaw.
Eamonn Holmes, who knew Caroline as a secretary from the time they both worked at BBC Manchester, talks about her ambition to get on screen.

MY first encounter with Kevin Whately was on a dark and wintry night the best part of 20 years ago.
He and Manchester star John Thaw were promoting a new series of Inspector Morse films. It was to be one of many meetings with the pair.
Never quite at ease at being interviewed – well, who in their right mind would be? – Kevin nevertheless always answers questions as openly and honestly as he can.
He still misses his former co-star and friend John, who died of cancer in February 2002.
I spoke to Kevin again at a service to remember the Burnage-raised actor later that year, when he recalled Thaw’s “mischievous sense of fun”.
The Geordie actor was naturally nervous about returning to the role of Oxford detective Robbie Lewis for a pilot film last year, this time as the leading man.

SOMEONE asked me yesterday to list my favourite interviewees. It’s an impossible question.
You can mention the likes of Robbie Coltrane, Helen Mirren, Michael Palin, Amanda Holden, Alun Armstrong and Ray Winstone.
But the list could stretch to hundreds – not all of them famous.
It’s also a particular pleasure to interview an unknown young actor heading for their first taste of TV stardom.
The likes, for example, of Swinton’s Rob James-Collier, who has proved such a hit as factory boss Liam Connor in Coronation Street.

EARLY Doors star John Henshaw was on very good form at the launch of Confessions of a Diary Secretary.
The saucy ITV1 comedy drama was screened yesterday at The Hospital in Covent Garden, followed by interviews with the cast, writer and production team.
It tells the story of the two-year affair between Deputy Prime Minister John Prescott and his diary secretary Tracey Temple.
Manchester-born John wears a £1,000 hand-knitted wig in the Whitehall farce, which will be screened on February 28.

THE story of how Oscar nominee Dame Judi Dench is to star in an £8m costume drama set in Cheshire could probably make a series all of its own.
It was confirmed around this time yesterday that Dame Judi is to play the lead role of Miss Matty Jenkyns in five part BBC1 serial Cranford Chronicles.
Based on three novels by Manchester Victorian author Elizabeth Gaskell, the project was originally postponed in 2005 amid claims of BBC budget cuts.
The “witty and poignant landmark drama”, to be made by the BBC and American TV company WGBH, is based on Mrs Gaskell’s childhood memories of growing up in Knutsford.
One of the main driving forces behind Cranford Chronicles is the producer, Knutsford-born Sue Birtwistle, who also worked on the 1999 adaptation of Mrs Gaskell’s novel Wives and Daughters, and global BBC1 hit Pride and Prejudice.
Sue explains: “Five years ago, I made a wish: to be allowed to conjure an entirely new drama out of three Elizabeth Gaskell novels and to persuade Judi Dench to play Miss Matty. Dream come true.”

SO there we were, watching a preview of a new TV drama at ITV Network Centre in London.
Written by At Home With The Braithwaites creator Sally Wainwright, the first episode of Bonkers lives up to its title.
Even so, prepared as I am for most things, I have to admit I didn’t see a certain twist coming.
It involves a film star called Felix Nash and something rather strange.

HE was the leader who inspired a television generation in Granada’s glory days at Hollywood-on-Irwell.
David Plowright liked a good party – and he would have loved the one thrown in his honour last night.
The former Granada chairman, who died last August at the age of 75, was remembered at the London Television Studios on the South Bank.
It was a moving and uplifting event, full of tributes.
And with new ITV executive chairman Michael Grade the last to speak, it also stirred the very soul of British television.