IN the first of a series of columns on his theatre tour of Australia, Bradford-born actor DAVID ROPER sets the scene for the memorable trip:

“HI David, it’s Susan. Fancy touring Australia for three months, playing Mr Birling in JB Priestley’s play An Inspector Calls? 

“It’ll be next January, February and March: five weeks in Sydney, five in Melbourne and two in Brisbane. What do you think?” 

 I would have found it difficult to bite my agent’s hand off over the telephone, so I just said: “What do I think? What do you think that I think?  Just tell me one thing - where do I sign?”

And that was how it all started.

    Having taken the plunge, my first problem was my wife, Andrea.  Don’t get me wrong, she was totally behind me trotting off to the other side of the world for three months.  The problem was, she didn’t want to be ‘behind me trotting off to the other side of the world for three months’ - she wanted to be ‘with me trotting off to the other side of the world for three months’.

Plus, she wanted our twins, Harry and Jack, to be with us, too. A touching thought, granted, but a million miles from reality, surely.  Could she really not bear the idea of being separated from me for all that time, or was it that she just didn’t relish the idea of letting me loose in an antipodean paradise full of sand, sea, sharks and Sheilas? Whatever her motive, I was absolutely fine about us all swanning off together - great idea - although I was doubtful about it being acceptable to the Production Company.  It was pushing it a bit, wasn’t it? 

However, when I plucked up courage to ask if it was at all possible - lo and behold they said: “Yes, okay, as long as you pay enough to cover their return flights to Sydney, all internal flights and the extra cost of having a two-bedroomed apartment throughout the tour.”

“Here we go,” I muttered, “And how much will that be?”  Paying for all that travel and accommodation was bound to be more than I’d be earning, I reckoned.  It was a nice thought, while it lasted.  After a short pause, they dropped the bombshell: “Let’s see, £200 a week should cover it.”

For the second time in a week, biting a hand off was well in the offing. What? Three months holiday for the three of them in Australia, travel and accommodation all found, for £200 a week? It sounded like the deal of a lifetime to me, and it was. 

With me netting about £850 per week, plus 250 Australian dollars (circa £120, at that time) in expenses every Friday, taking the whole family was rapidly becoming a distinct probability.  The cream on top was the realisation that we would be spending three months in Australia at the height of their summer or, more to the point, spending three months away from England in the depths of our winter.    

However, yet another problem was waiting in the wings - taking the twins out of school for January, February and March. Would that be possible? Would it even be allowed? I went to see their primary school headmistress to explain what was on offer.  Before I had even got as far as actually asking the question, she stopped me dead. 

“Here goes,” I thought, “She’s going to turn me down.” 

What she said was: “They must go.  Of course, they must.  It’s the chance of a lifetime. Take them with my blessing. I will give you some schoolwork for them to do, so they won’t miss out, and they’ll learn such a lot from experiencing another culture.  What a wonderful opportunity.” I felt like kissing her. I didn’t, though, but I did finally get to bite somebody’s hand off! 

So, that was that.  We were all set for our big adventure. Hang about, though. I must tell you that there was one additional bonus we decided to grab, while we had the chance.  Our house desperately needed another couple of bedrooms and a shower room, mainly because the boys were growing up fast and it wouldn’t be all that long before they turned into teenagers and demanding their own rooms.  So we arranged to increase the mortgage and have an extension and refurbishment of the first floor. After all, I was earning good money, even after paying for all of us to be out there, and we could come back to a virtually new house without the upheaval of living on a building site. 

The re-mortgage was arranged, the builders briefed, and a time scale agreed on. All sorted. The day of our departure dawned at last. We lined up our cases in the hall and awaited the taxi that would whisk us from our home in Saltdean, near Brighton, to Heathrow.  We’d be leaving the UK on December 30 and, after re-fuelling in Hong Kong, would arrive in Australia on New Year’s Eve, just in time for the fireworks display on Sydney Harbour Bridge. We were so excited. There was absolutely nothing that could spoil our thrill of anticipation. Unfortunately, we had inadvertently invoked Sod’s Law, and thus the inevitable had hit the fan...

* A Former Bradford Grammar School pupil, David started acting at the Bradford Civic and later left his post as a trainee accountant to go to drama school. He got his break in 1970s sitcom The Cuckoo Waltz, with Diane Keen and Lewis Collins, and has been in TV dramas such as New Tricks, Taggart, Heartbeat and Coronation Street. In the 1990s he had a two-year run in EastEnders and he was in 2009 film The Damned United and Netflix hit The Crown.

David has written two autobiographical books, An Actor’s Life For Me and The Baby Trail, and a thriller, Dead on Time, all available on Kindle and Amazon.