 And that is who dares wins the legendary S.A.S. film starring Louis Collins. Louis, yeah. Every man wanted to be him, every woman wanted to be him as well. Louis was a lad and a great character and you know he was the James Bond we never had. Anyway. Right. Do you want to go now? Yes, I'm going to go and cut. Now we're going to talk about Robin of Sherwood which was huge in the 80s, am I right? It was probably, I don't think that show could be made now Chris to be honest with you. Not for the money and again it was of its time and it was almost like a time bubble, a time capsule in a way because not just the contents of the show and I think I'm actually proud of the fact that for those that don't remember, God what was her name? I just had it a name flip through my head. She was, was it Wallace, the lady that was the moral arbiter of the UK? I was actually in a show that Marjorie, no what was her name? She was the woman that was the, she used to complain about everything if there was too much sex in it or too much violence in it. Mary White House? Mary White House. I believe that Mary White House, in fact I know that Mary White House hated the show because we had so many things in it that were pushing the edge of stuff. We did do a show about Satan or Lucifer, we did do a show about that. And obviously about Robin from the rich and giving to the poor. So there was a lot of things that Mary White House didn't like and there was, although we couldn't show any blood, we never showed any actual blood except tiny tiny amounts, never any blood, it was too violent. And although we did go out at the watershed hour, Saturday afternoon at five I believe, and the one show that she was really worried about went out at seven because it was two hour, two hour thing, The Souls of Wailin went out between seven and nine. And I remember Richard Carpenter who wrote it was in debate with Mary White House. We all watched it because I was fascinated being involved with the show that Mary White House objected to. And she came on, I think it was a wogun or something. And she came on and she's got introduced and Richard Carpenter got introduced. And Richard was introduced as a writer, as a TV writer. Mary White House made this big diatribe about why Robin Assure was evil and satanic and God knows what else. And Richard Carpenter just said, he said, all right, so look, he said, let's just start this, I'm a television writer. I write fiction, I write shows about historical characters like Robin Assure, Robin Hood or, you know, you know, Dick Turpin or whatever. But they're they're entertainment. They're you know, they're based on practices. I'm not a professional television critic and funded like Mary White House. And Mary White House said, I'm not professional. Nobody pays me for what I do. And he said, ah, so I'm dealing with an amateur, an amateur with an opinion. And then he proceeded to take Mary White House from limb to pieces. So, yeah, Robin of its day was very much of a time. Everybody wanted to be in the show. Lou Collins did an episode. I was given responsibility for making sure I didn't get any trouble where he played Robert Mark, the new chef of Nottingham. Lou came and did a show. Martin Shaw came and did a little guest star. Everybody did Ian Ogle v Ian out there. Make the saint. He came and did a guest. Everybody came and did an episode. It was one of my all time heroes. It is alongside your good self-mark, of course. Ray Winston. Ray, yeah. Can I just explain why I love this man? Bear with me, let us get us back on. He made a film that had a real big impact on my understanding of life, especially coming from the, as to say, you know, my background. I'm just going to get flash up a picture. It was this one here. So, Ray, if you ever get to watch this, you, Caffee Burke, were just absolutely brilliant in it. And it really helped me to understand the sins of generations. Kneel by mouth. That's the one. That's the picture I'm showing. I was in it. Really? My scenes were cut by Gary because my scenes were too violent for the American audience. I heard it. He said you were too handsome. Well, he did say that as well, but only to me afterwards in the bar. But actually, no, the real reasons he told me himself in LA was he said he had to cut the scene because it was actually too violent and too racist, and an American audience just wouldn't have it. Particularly after the scenes that you've seen. Ray's performance in that and Caffee Burke, absolutely brilliant. Absolutely amazing performances. Didn't they walk the red carpet for this one? I think it probably got, like Tim Roth's one, Warzone. He did a film as well called Warzone for Tim Roth, which I think got awards, but only in Britain because I don't think anybody else really understood it. Nill by the mouth, I certainly don't think people got it. But there's a lot of people, an American audience, I don't think probably some of them might have. It was a very British film, as you say. And Gary wanted to make his film, and he did. He was allowed to do that because basically the money went, go make your film. And I'll always remember being on the set with him once and he said something that was actually so, as for an actor, was such a relief. And it was a scene where Ray was coming into the police station. This was all ended up being cut out of the film. And Ray comes into the police station and he's meeting his mate, it was me, he was a policeman. And he comes into the police station, as he walked in, Ray kind of went from one side to the next. And the cameraman said, we have to shoot this again because he keeps crossing the line, which is a very technical thing to do in the film business, crossing the line, which where you come from, it keeps crossing the line. And Gary was like, what do you mean crossing the line? He's walking into the thing. He said, yeah, but it crosses the line, it's confusing if you want to shoot a reverse and all that. And Gary said, I'm watching Ray's face. If anybody watching this scene is going, he's crossed the line, I shouldn't be directing this film. He said, this is, you know, I'm looking at Ray's emotional journey on the film. Technically, nobody cares about it and I don't. Just keep doing what, so we did. And I thought myself, Gary knows what he's doing. He knows what he wants and he'll make it a very powerful film and he did. I mean, it's a powerful piece of filmmaking. It's one of the friends at home. I'll see if I can put a link for it below. I'm sure I can find a copy. It was a bloody good film to what. It was so engrossing. Engrossing, is that the right word? I don't know. Yeah, like it made you just, you were glued to the screen. Yeah, yeah. Acting was just British acting at its best. But as I said, the bit, what was this son called in it? Absolutely brilliant actor. And he worked with me on King Arthur. I did King Arthur in Ireland with Ray as well and he was in that as well. And we chatted about that because I think he at one time had some, I want to make sure I've got the right person. If you're looking at IMDB, you want to dig it up. Because I don't want to say the wrong thing. We talked again about that journey with what we talked about earlier on. And he'd kind of been on that journey and got himself. But Charles, I don't want to say the wrong name because I don't want to get sued. I don't want to get us sued. But yeah, I'm wondering if it's Charles Cree miles. Let me just have a look. He can sue you then if he wants to. But I think he'd been on a, yeah, Charlie Crip challenge. I think he'd been on an intriguing journey. Let's put it that way. And I think the film was, you know, but it's not a film, I'm not to be honest with it. It's not a film that I would want to watch twice or three times and sit there on a Sunday afternoon. It is more of an ever emotional battering than anything else. But there is that beautiful scene, yet there are the most tender moments where the women are all dancing together with their mom. She's dancing with her mom. Oh God, that is so Northern England as well. I know it's set in London, but there's so many parts of it you go, oh God, I understand that. And the women are comforting each other and just dancing together. I went, oh God, I'll break it. Yeah, it was set where I was born, South East London. Yeah. The reason, not just the fact it's an exceptional film and the acting in it, it's just class. But it's the bit where, yes, Charlie Cree miles. Actors always look so different in depending on the stage in their life as with your good self-mark looking at you in Robin there. We have here. But also depending on what role they're in, they've got different appendages on their face. Is that the right word? I don't know. But the bit where he goes, my dad shot my fucking dog. And then I got it. I've got the whole thing the film was trying to say. It was the intergenerational descendancy, if that's again the right word, of abuse. How these sins of the father come down through the family or mother or grander or whatever it might be and how they manifest to those of us with traumatic trauma. How addiction, pop rears its ugly head in later life. Just absolutely brilliant. But sorry, we went off Robin there a bit. Well, let's go back to Ray for a second because I think it's important. Ray boxed for England. He boxed for Repton Club. So Ray is staunch. He's got the art of a lion. And I can honestly say he's not changed in the 35 plus years that I have known him and his wife Elaine. And I'm very honored and very proud to call myself his friend. And I have to say that those friendships were formed during Robin because I think there was a very early recognition between Clive, Ray, Pete Williams, myself and even Michael, pray to some extent that what we just launched ourselves into was an adventure. Nobody'd done this before. And it's bizarre because when Ian actually told me about this, I was actually working with a writer called Randall Graham that used to produce, he wrote Sweeney's and Minders and all kinds of stuff. And when he told me he was doing a new show Robin Hood I was actually kind of poo pooey about it. And Ian was like, you wait, you wait, right? So I got the first script and I went, yeah, this is not Richard Green. This is very different. And so we were all pretty much aware from the very beginning and it bonded us because we had to go to Stevie Dent's farm, Steve Dent, the now the world famous stunt coordinator. And we all did our archery and sword play and knife fighting and everything else. We had two weeks of riding horses and learning to handle horses and all that kind of stuff. And there was an element of danger in it, which you're not allowed now, really. I mean, horses themselves are dangerous. So we had to understand the dangers of that, but archery and sword play and all that kind of stuff. With Teddy Walsh and Gabe Cronley. And it bonded us into a little unit. And so for three years of our lives, we were the merry men. And that friendship has survived all these years. And you have to be willing to put yourself out there and Ray is. I'm pointing to our friends at home. The man in the picture is this man. It's your friendly assassin. The friendly assassin. And that came about. The truth is, because there's much talk about the legend. So it was Naz, Naz. Nazir. Nazir. Which means the hawk. And I was going to originally be called Edmund the Archer. And the character in the original script was Edmund the Archer. On the first day of filming, Ian Sharp came up to me and said, how do you feel about being called Nazir the Saracen? And can you do a sword fight with two swords? And I said, yeah, fine. How long have I got? And he said, about 15 minutes. I went, okay. So Teddy Walsh and I went and chose some swords we could actually fight with. With two handed sword fighting style. Luckily I'd done some. So I knew what I was doing. And Michael Parade and I went behind the trailers and bashed the crap out of each other for two weeks. And we put together the sword fight, which is now the one where Nazir becomes a merry man. And so during the course of that, Ian Sharp asking me that, then Paul Knight asked me, the writer, which this had never happened. This will never happen in television, probably ever again. Richard Carter recalled me and said, okay, we've got this character. I didn't intend for it to be in the show, but it's going to end up in the show. It's now called Nazir the Saracen. Have you got any ideas of what you would like to do with this character? And I said to Richard, I said, I actually just before we started this was reading Runciman's History of the Crusades. So Stephen Runciman wrote three of the best books, three books, and I've read all three volumes. It's even Runciman's History of the Crusades. So I said, I happen to know there's a strong relationship between the cult of the assassins and the Knights Templar and their relationship and how they trade it. And Richard Carter went, we'll use that. I'll use that. He said, but there's no dialogue. He said, I really haven't written any dialogue for you. I don't know if I could ask you. I said, I don't want the dialogue. Give me the action. Give me the knife throwing, the sword fights, the horse riding, give me the archery, give me the tracking, the trailing. Give me all that. I don't need the dialogue. I work on the Clint Eastwood style of acting. If I can do it without saying the words, I will. So you don't need to give me dialogue. Give me the action. And he went, done. And that's what they did. So that's where Nazir the Saracen, his origins grew out of that. My gosh, can we just explore a bit the term assassin as in the Middle Eastern term. Am I right in thinking that they used to smoke hashish? How's it, then that's where the name? Well, that's the origin of the word assassin comes from Hashashin, or Hashishin, which was apparently the origin of that. And they're all what they called the old man of the mountain. Their fortress was on top of, kind of is it Aleppo or somewhere else now? It's gone out of my head, but they had a fortress on the top of the mountain. And the idea was that they recruited people by visiting the castle. And they had literally all the wine and all the slave girls, all the basically the harems, everything you could want. And the old man of the mountain would say, if you think this is heaven, you wait till you get to the real heaven after you carry out the mission, right? So they got loaded. They had a few splits and they were in heaven. They could have anything they wanted, anything of beauty that was there. And they went on their missions, believe it, it didn't matter whether they died on their mission or not because they were going to heaven afterwards, which has kind of been carried on in some traditions with suicide bombings and things like that. So that's where part of the origin came from. Of course, it was politically used by both the crusaders and the Knights Templar. Sometimes they worked, they were completely, although they were muslim by origin, they did work sometimes with the crusaders and for the crusaders. And sometimes they worked with the, they apparently tried to assassinate Saladin as well at one time or another. So they were pretty open to about who they actually got paid to assassinate. But yes, that's part of the history was they smoked hashish and had been given all these pleasures. Back to your Robin's story then. So, and you're allowed to lie about this, Mark, that's absolutely fine. Don't shatter my illusion here or my reality. I'm betting you got lots of girls when you made this series. I have to say, there's many stories about this. And we were like rock stars. And, but everybody had either stable relationships. I mean, Ray was married, you know what I mean? And he was, you know, very well-behaved as was Clivey and all the guys, we just actually were more interested in doing the work. And the one time that I did see something that I was, was Michael Prey, we were out some doing a disco. And we've been invited to this disco and Clive will tell you this story as well. We walked in, because I was never much interested people. I don't think, you know, everybody was interested in Michael Prey. They weren't interested in the merry men. And Michael walked in and this woman flew across the room. And it was like something out of alien, you know what I mean? Like a face sucker. She literally just went, locked onto him, threw her legs around him and he couldn't peel her off. So he had this girl that really stuck to his face. He was like trying to get one of those things of aliens off it. And I think Clive and I, we couldn't move for laughing, but we weren't envious. Let's put it this way, we weren't envious of that. Michael was the big art-throb. He was the one that all the girls were at. We, trust me, we weren't big enough fish for any of that kind of stuff. Mate, believe me, you don't want that stuff in your life. It's hard work, yeah. Yeah, well, we were all focused on the work, like I say, really. And it was physically taxing a lot of days. You came back sore from horse riding or for onyx and cuts and little dinks that you got from what you were doing. You know, there were long days, you know? And we actually started the last series. We started literally in February or something on March and it was freezing cold. That's why you see us all in furs and with the head wrapped around the turban like, we were absolutely freezing cold. So it was hard. It was physically hard work. Yes, I bet. Can you, was it boring at times? I mean, all this waiting around on set that we hear about, is it? I would ask, did you have your, what is it, not your caravan? What's the word for your trailer? We had a caravan that had been hired from one of the blokes on the set. That was his weekend escape caravan or something. We had a caravan that all of us sat in in a golf course somewhere while we were waiting to shoot. Or it's a golf course now, it wasn't a golf course probably then. But we didn't really have trailers. We had a bus, which was the dining bus. I think we had a trailer on the last series so we could afford actually a more of a caravan. There was a lot, there is a lot of hanging about, but if you're a member of the main cast, you're probably like we were, we were more busy than you would imagine. And when we weren't doing that, we were rehearsing sword fights or practicing sword fights. And in fact, the only time that reminds, that springs to mind when I actually took a break and disappeared into the woods, because even then sometimes I was like, I have to clear my head, you know what I mean? I actually, we were shooting somewhere and we were sitting around waiting for another scene between somebody else. I can't remember what happened. And I just went for a walk through the woods, climbed up a tree and I remember sitting on this big branch in my costume. And I had a flashback to me being a young boy in Sherwood forest playing in the major oak, which I did. Cause I grew up in Yorkshire, just down the road from Sherwood forest or clumber park. So as a child, I was allowed to play in Robin Hood's major oak. You can't, you're not allowed near it now. There's some idiots set fire to it. But when I was a kid, in fact, there were photographs of my parents, my grandparents, all at Robin Hood's oak in clumber park in Sherwood forest. So I was sat at the tree thinking literally about how weird life was that I end up in a forest in a show about Robin Hood. And I'm sitting at the tree listening to the birds and yeah, that's the one moment I remember thinking. How bizarre. Yes, my bizarre Sherwood forest stories on my 50th birthday, I ran 108 miles non-stop through Sherwood forest. Bloody hell, good for you. And that was at the end of a quadruple iron man. So I'd, I'd have to go in eight miles now, let alone 108 miles. I thought 800 feet, let it like eight miles. But if the interesting thing about that is if you just saw the recent documentary about Prince Charles, sorry. Philip. Prince Philip, or Prince Charles is in it. Prince Philip, where he does a drive round Windsor. I actually found it very, very moving. I was in his presence a couple of times. I won't say I was ever introduced him because I wasn't because he was in fact the colonel chief of the intelligence corps. So I was kind of in his presence a couple of times. And he seemed to be an absolute gentleman, just very understated under, you know, just the gray man really in the way. And until he was public, you know, I mean, then he had to do his job and he did. But the rest of the time, he seemed to be just a, you know, just a gentleman. And he does a whole spiel about her and the hunter. It wins a great part, which is of course one of the legends, where it comes from, where one of the gamekeepers used to wear antlers on his head to be able to get into the middle of the herds of deer. So he talked about her and the hunter. And it's funny how that legend then got spun into the ghost of Windsor Game Park and the spirit of her and the hunter. Very strange. There's some very strange hunting related narratives attached to the Windsors. And I don't want to get too deep, but of course, Diana was the hunter goddess, wasn't she? Of course, yeah. In Greek mythology. And on their honeymoon, the photo opportunity on the honeymoon, they did it from the hunting lodge. Is it Sandringham? I'm... I don't know. And yeah, maybe that's not go there. Just some very bizarre narrative. Oh, and when she was buried, she was buried on that island on the, was it the Bauer Morrill estate or the, sorry, the Spencer estate? And one of the, someone, I'm not sure if it was a servant, if you use that word these days or who, but they were really surprised because that was where they buried their pets. Traditionally, they buried their dogs there, basically. And Diana, the hunter was always pictured, if you look at her statues with a dog. And the alleged fiat uno that they believed hit the car in the tunnel. And this is true, it belonged to some immigrant, like for example, an Albanian immigrant to Paris or something, they found this guy and he painted the car orange to hide the identity of it. But the witnesses said, yeah, the white fiat uno had a big dog in the passenger seat. And yes, this guy had a dog. So yes, gets even deeper again when you go under the streets of Paris in that area. Gosh, what is it now? It's, there's connotations of that punt de alma, that bridge, which just out of interest has the Illuminati flame on top of it, which just makes things that little bit more kind of bizarre again, can we say? But yeah, there's some link to that area of Paris that has some real esoteric history behind it. But anyway, let's... If you look at my, if you ever look at any of my tarot cards, you will see, because we use the goddess, the idea of the goddess with the hunting dogs is thousands of years old. I mean, the idea of the hunting pack of dogs and the guardians, you'll see in my tarot cards, I took that from ancient mythological history of Celtic goddesses with the dog. So I'm not saying that there isn't a link somewhere to that, but a lot of it, the name Diana, obviously in the huntress is synonymous with the pet hounds and all that kind of stuff. It goes way back in days. Yes, and of course, yes, but people wondering like, if I'm supposed to be... I wasn't really trying to go anywhere there. I was just highlighting some kind of relevant hunting stories, but of course, what's underpinning this narrative is rituals. The rituals that the man or woman in the street don't really get involved in, because we just go about our life, but... Well, to get really controversial, I do believe that Robin Hood was actually a Yorkshireman, because in the actual TV show, a wolf's head, which was a real thing, certain criminals were called wolf's heads, and that meant that you could collect their head and you brought it in. If you brought in a wolf's head, you were given a penny, because wolves obviously were attacking the deers and all that kind of stuff. So if you're a wolf's head criminal, it meant that you could be hunted like a wolf, but if you're a wolf's head in Nottinghamshire, you were necessarily a wolf's head in Yorkshire, because they had different, obviously different boundaries. So I believe that Robin Hood from the Great North Road, which is just north of Nottinghamshire, where there was all kinds of historical links to an actual real Robin Hood, that if you're going to rob people in that period, as we talked about earlier on, you're going to rob people who were traveling on the Great North Road towards York to get or to deposit or to collect money. So you'd rob them on the Great North Road, Wattling Street as it was known there. One of the earliest poems talks about Robin Hood going up Wattling Street, which is actually the Great North Road. And so if you're going to rob people, you would do it just before or after they left the check in in York. So I have a sneaking suspicion that Robin Hood was a Yorkshireman, and he may have done a bit of robbing and thieving in Nottinghamshire, but then he opts back over the border where he wasn't wanted. He wasn't a criminal in Yorkshire. He could be safe there with his ill-gotten gains. That's just my theory. I'm going to get hate mail now, because all the fans that say, no, he's from Nottingham are going to be writing to you going, Mark Ryan, he's a Yorkshireman drinking Yorkshire tea. That's why he's saying Robin Hood was a Yorkshireman. Yes. So many narratives, so little time. Yeah, it's a conspiracy mate, that's what I say. Mark, we're going to wrap it. We're going to wrap it. Let's do a quick thing, just a shout-out to all the boys, to Ray, Clive, Jason, everybody, and just say, you know, still, literally, three years the best I've ever spent, anywhere on a set with a gang of characters. And we're still friends to this day. We're still the Merry Men, and Ray has not changed for everything that he's done and achieved in his career. He's still the most brilliant artistic things that you know by now that you talked about, to the fun stuff that he's done, and obviously stuff I've been involved with like King Arthur. Great, great time on the set, and that's why he's beloved by people, because he hasn't changed, he's the same guy. But a big shout-out to all the guys and made marrying to Judy, Judy Trot, everybody else, Nick Grace, Jennifer Nottingham. I still blessed time in my career, for sure. Yes, and I look forward to hosting Ray on the podcast. Ray, if you're out there, I cannot wait to meet you. And of course, let's not forget that all-time classic film that woke people up to the horrors of Borstel, wasn't it, was scum. Another just as iconic as Quadrophinea and all the rest of the great British films. Can you imagine how many people in pubs have come up to Ray and gone, come on, Ray, that was your tool? Can you imagine how many people have done that? It's, you know, you don't want to get your head round it. Yes, yes. There's always one thing, isn't there, with each celebrity they've got there? You've all, yeah. If you've got a catchphrase, you're fucked. That was your tool. Yeah, there you go. Imagine Larry Grayson, everywhere he went. Shut that door. God. Mark, absolutely brilliant. I'm just going to say another thank you, because I don't know how we're going to edit this little bit, but massive thanks again, mate. You're welcome. Great conversation. I'm sure you're going to get loads of mail. Guys, are you mad? Oh, well, everyone knows that I'm mad, so that's not, that's nothing new in, that's nothing new in this household. Send me a link when you've got it up. Yeah, I will do, I will do.