Perry Benson Talks Somers Town - page 2

12 January 2009

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And what about the kids in the film what were they like to work with?

I had worked with Tommo before on This Is England so I knew him quite well, which helps as well even though you are creating a new character. And Piotr, the other kid, was brilliant and very grown up for his age, he was only fourteen, he seemed very mature for his years and when he first arrived at the beginning of the shoot he could hardly speak any English but after three weeks he was fluent which was amazing. But it as a case of having to learn something, when you are chucked into the deep end you have to I suppose.

Your other film that doing the rounds at the moment is Mum and Dad can you tell me a bit about that?

Mum and Dad is a very brutal horror film, it's quite different from Somers Town, and it opened on Boxing Day in about fifteen cinemas. But it is the first film that Revolver that have dealt with, they are the distributor, that is a multi-platform release so on the same day it's released on DVD, able to download and you can buy it on Sky download.

It is quite important for me as an actor and it is the main reason that I took something that was quite a departure from many of the roles that I have played, which are down trodden comedic parts.

You began your career in television so how does working in TV and movies compare?

Well I still do work in television and I have just finished a very small part for the BBC in The Fall and Rise of Reginald Perin but that enabled me to write a song for it so that was the main reason why I did it, which I sung on the George Lamb Show on BBC Radio 6 yesterday called Mad Mum.

I suppose, from an actors point of view, it all depends on the budget because sometimes the budget can be exactly the same, like the BBC project that was quite well funded, so it's probably better funded than the film Mum and Dad and indeed Somers Town.

The role of Henry Livingstone in You Rang M'Lord is still the role that you are best known for did you ever expect that this would be a role that people would be talking about twenty years after you first started?

Well I suppose that it is a very strong role and David Croft and Jimmy Perry are very good writers so you expect it to live on I really enjoyed working with them, and everyone involved, it was a really nice time for me.

From the conception and the pilot right through to the end I probably worked with them for about ten years, and I worked on Hi-De-Hi as well, and after that David Croft wrote something called O, Doctor Beeching! which I worked on as well. I got to drive steam trains which I wasn't all that interested in before I did that but now I have a great interest in the whole railway thing, not in a divvy way, but I really liked it.

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