My scowl would make me perfect for TV role I

’VE been considering embracing the roar of the crowd and the smell of the grease paint. After all, I’ve appeared on television in a BBC documentary about the Examiner and was almost part of a crowd scene in a locally shot film until I was moved on for loitering. So I was tempted when I read that Piece of Cake Casting agency was looking for “authentic Northern faces” as extras for the gritty historical Mike Leigh film about the 1819 Peterloo Massacre in Manchester.

They want extras who look tired and overworked and have had a hard life. I can do that.

If my chum Mick got away with being cast as a 15-stone starving beggar I can be as grumpy and down trodden as anyone.

I can scowl like Liam and Noel Gallagher and have been said to resemble Frank Gallagher from Shameless who has a face of timeless misery.

That classic local comedian Ceddie Beaumont enjoyed television extra work as an elderly customer in Heartbeat’s Aidensfield Arms for years.

He was popular because he was a natural entertainer and had a load of jokes. He was in lots of TV dramas, enjoying the days out and a good rate of pay.

I still have the script he gave me when he proudly told me he had at last got a line in an episode of Dalziel and Pascoe. It was on the first page, his character was lying at the foot of the stairs and the line was:“Aaargh” just before he popped his clogs.

I can do that. That is, if the pay is right and the catering truck does chips and I can get home in time for tea and there’s someone like Ceddie to keep us entertained.

Trouble is, Ceddie was a one off and I’m too old to make new friends and driving to Manchester every day would be a bind.

Maybe I’ll give it a miss.