Elphick’s ‘boat race’ is his fortune

There is a drawer in Chichester, West Sussex, where a certain Mrs Elphick keeps newspaper descriptions of her son. Well, of her son’s face, to be exact.

Yet they are not quite the eulogies one might expect a fond mum to treasure. The Elphick face, descended from a line that can be traced back to Anglo-Saxon times, is described in Mrs Elphick’s cuttings as (among other things) ‘crumpled’, ‘a prune’, ‘a deflated football’, and ‘a brickworks’. And those are some of the more flattering remarks.

Fortunately, neither Michael Elphick (back on ITV this Tuesday in a new series of Boon), nor his mother is offended. “I wouldn’t like to have a typical romantic hero face because those roles can be so dull,” says Elphick.

In fact, the Elphick face has served him very well, The uncompromising features are surprisingly versatile, and in an acting career of 20 years he has spent only three months out of work.

Every age, it seems, has a use for an Elphick face. In the Sixties there was a vogue for rough, thuggish cockney types, and Elphick played a succession of heavies. The Seventies were more sinister: an evil, brooding was required and he was showered with bank robber/child molester roles. Right now, it is the age of the common man. Suddenly Elphick has the face of the ordinary bloke, the man next door, a bit of a rough diamond but basically honest and hard-working, if down on his luck just at present. Ken Boon of Boon (and Sam, his character in the BBC’s Three Up, Two Down) are the latest examples.

“It’s strange the way it has worked out,” reflects Elphick. “Both series came up at around the same time and in both I play a similar sort of character, right down to the fact that both Ken and Sam are obsessed with cowboys, and yet both writers were unaware of what the other was doing.

“Boon’s character is a lot like mine, although I’m a bit more efficient and together than him,” he says. In fact, so ‘ordinary’ is he, that complete strangers greet him in the street like a long lost friend and women in their hundreds write in with offers to console him because the Boon character doesn’t have a wife or permanent girlfriend

“I was walking down the street one day with Gordon Honeycombe,” says Elphick. “Now Gordon is 6ft 4in tall and well known. There’s no way people couldn’t recognise him. Yet it was me they spoke to. The difference is that Gordon reads the news and is an authority figure, while I’m just Ken Boon and therefore approachable. Sometimes I love it and it’s marvellous, but at other times, if I’m feeling uneasy, it’s a strain.”

Born and raised in Chichester (not London, as many people think), he had no idea what he would like to do.

“I left school at 15 and at the time they were building the Chichester Theatre,” says Elphick, “so I joined the site as an apprentice electrician.”

And he might be an electrician to this day were it not for a lucky chance. “Having worked on the site I knew all the wiring and lighting, so when the theatre was finished they asked me to stay on as a resident “sparks”. I stayed there for three years, watching people like Laurence Olivier and Michael Redgrave and Dame Sybil Thorndyke rehearsing and I became very interested in acting.

“Olivier, in particular, was marvellous. He gave off a sort of electricity. A power came off him, even when he was only rehearsing.” He was also very approachable. When the young Elphick confided that he, too, would like to become an actor. Olivier didn’t scoff.

“He explained that I would need to go to drama school and he gave me two speeches to learn for the auditions,” says Elphick. “I was offered places at all the schools I tried, including RADA [the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art] but I settled for the Central School of Speech and Drama because that’s where Olivier went.”

Years later, Elphick found himself appearing with Olivier on TV. “He remembered me immediately,” says Elphick, “and congratulated me for having made it.”

Brought up close to the sea. Elphick developed a love of boats which has never left him. As a small child, he toyed with the idea of joining the Navy, the future career of many of his class-mates, and later he helped out in a boatyard in the holidays.

That was exciting because we used to have to rescue people who’d got into difficulties,” he says. “Once we had to rescue two people who were trapped under a boat which had capsized in a storm. It was pretty hairy standing on the hull of the overturned boat, trying to pull it upright in a stormy sea.”

Today Michael Elphick’s most cherished possession is an elderly cabin cruiser, which he moors in Portugal. He doesn’t own a car, he’s not interested in owning a mansion and Ken Boon’s heavyweight motorcycle leaves him cold. But give him a boat, a warm sea and a fishing rod and he’s in paradise.

There remains just one unfulfilled ambition: a desire to play an ugly sister in Cinderella. With a face like his, he reckons, he’ll have no need of make-up!