Acting is a way of life. A complex profession filled with ups and downs, of making the most of the opportunities that come ones way. Not too dissimilar, then, to writing. For Emmerdale, Prime Suspect and Brookside star John McCardle, however, fate dealt a traumatic hand in shaping what was to eventually become a successful career when, aged just 16, his father suddenly passed away leaving his mother, Edie, to bring up five children alone.
John’s reaction to losing his father and how it went on to shape his life is now covered in his emotional autobiography You Never Said Goodbye (Create Space); an autobiography which itself came to be written almost by chance.
“The seeds were planted about three years ago when I met the then first time author Steven McLauglin on a train to Preston,” John explained during a break in filming. “Steven is an ex-squaddie who had written a book about his experiences in Iraq, which he very kindly gave me a signed copy of. It’s called Squaddie: A Soldier’s Story and what really struck me was how well he could write, how well he had captured life in today’s army and how interesting his story was.
“We kept in touch and as a few months went by, I was on Radio Lancashire talking about bits and pieces from my past and telling a few little anecdotes. Steven emailed me, said he’d caught the show and suggested I write my own book because he felt my life was one that would be of interest to others. That’s what planted the seeds, really, but I didn’t start physically writing it until I found myself out of work, which obviously gave me the opportunity to sit down and start.”
There are many ways which an author can approach writing their autobiography, but John decided on one of the more unique ways to get his story across. “Because my dad had passed away so suddenly – and as the title of the book implies – he never got the chance to say goodbye to any of us or, in fact, us to him. The fact that he never saw anything of my growing up, or heard about any of what I got up to growing up, has always stuck with me. That’s why I decided to put the book in the form of a letter to him.
“Although it wasn’t intended to be so, it actually ended up being a quite cathartic process and made me question why I did a lot of the things I did when I was younger – a lot of stupid things, to be honest. Back then I’d felt I had to grab life by the throat and live it to the full before it was taken away from me.
“I also wanted to let him know that, in some way, I’d become quite successful. Dad was a PT Instructor in the army, but I was always a terrible sportsman and he would always despair of my attempts at playing football, rugby and cricket although, like him, I could always box a bit.
“My brothers really are great sportsmen and he’d have been really proud of them, but that gene seemed to have skipped by me. The book is my way of telling him that I’ve succeeded in another way, I suppose.”
Reading the book, there is no getting away from the fact that right up until his mid-twenties, John had lived something of a globetrotting life both while his dad was alive and being posted to Hong Kong and through further travelling that came later. John lived and worked as a scaffolder for a while in Australia which led to him spending a brief period in a New Zealand prison for being, of all things, a stowaway: all unquestionably rich source material for a book, but a little unnerving for those family members who knew little of their sibling and child’s escapades.
“My mother must have had about twenty heart attacks when she read it, because she had very little idea of what I was getting up to at the time,” John laughed. “She did know that I’d spent time in a New Zealand prison because I’d written her a letter, but that didn’t reach her until about three months after I’d sent it and I was out by then anyway. My mum is still with us and is a very sprightly and sharp 87 year old, but I showed her the book first to see if there was anything she wasn’t happy with or that she felt I should take out. Happily though, she gave it her full blessing.”
“None of my family knew anything of my adventures in the Bush though and, in fact, my brother Rory, who is pretty much the tough one of the family, was probably the most shocked of all when he found out some of the risks I’d taken. He’d always seen me as this sort of namby pamby actor, I suppose, so to read all this other stuff I’d got up to came as more than a bit of a surprise.”
It might be assumed that, in order to get the book published John would have approached the same agent he has for his acting career. Not so. “I did approach a few agents with the idea but they all wanted some sort of weird deal, so in the end I decided to self publish simply because I wanted to avoid all the hoops the literary agents wanted me to jump through.
“I took some advice from a few people and decided on Create Space, the Amazon self publishing arm, who also printed the book and helped with the formatting. The editing was carried out by my niece, Joanna Cummings, who is a proof reader and a very good one at that, so I’ve been quite lucky in that respect.
“I’ve also been quite lucky in the fact that I’ve come into Emmerdale at the time the book’s been published, because I’ve been asked to do a few interviews about the storyline I’m involved with on the show and been able to plug the book that way.
“I’m really pleased with the way it’s been received and it has had some lovely reviews. I have to say, as well, that I’ve been really impressed with how helpful the people from Create Space are when it comes to talking through anything you don’t understand. I’ve been really happy with them.”
As the book is something of an open letter, it has a conversational tone running right the way through; something that even for experienced writers is quite difficult to maintain, but an aspect John found to be quite easy.
“That conversational style is pretty much the only way I know how to write to be honest. Perhaps it comes from reading dialogue for so many years, or talking in pubs for even more years. The only thing I’d written prior to You Never Said Goodbye was a short film called Duke which won an award at Cannes and another in Italy.
“I’d really enjoyed the experience of writing the script for that, so that narrative style came pretty naturally when I sat down to write this and I have to admit that the writing bug has definitely bitten. If I wasn’t in work at the moment, I’d probably be sat down in front of the computer writing something fictional.”
So has John always been a big reader? “As an actor you have to read quite widely, but as a kid I only used to read things like War Picture Library and not much else until I went to college to study acting at the age of 23. I wasn’t that cultured to be truthful and hadn’t even seen a play up until the age of 24.
“That’s what really opened my eyes to how real theatre can be, that it has something important to say rather than it just being another form of entertainment. Without the words though – the script – actors, no matter how good, are always going to be a bit stuck.”
The hardest part about writing is probably getting over the fears of other people actually reading your work. “It is definitely the hardest bit, letting something out into the world that you have created more or less on your own without anybody else really looking at it.
“The first thing I did was show it to family and friends which, although it gave me a little bit of encouragement to carry on, isn’t probably the best thing to do because to certain extent they’re going to be on your side from the beginning. It is a scary moment when it is finished though and not dissimilar to when you step on stage for the first time in a play that hasn’t been produced before.
“When Sue Johnston and I did Jim Cartwright’s new play Too – which later became Two – we had no idea whatsoever how it was going to go. We were both nervous wrecks because we had no clue as to what people would think and even thought that perhaps they would hate it. Fortunately it was a massive success, thanks to Jim’s clever writing, but until you actually do it you never know how whatever you’ve written will be received. The important thing is to just write what you want to write and worry about that later.”
John didn’t start to study acting until he was 23 which, on the face of it, is quite late. However what really comes across in You Never Said Goodbye is that it is never too late to fulfil your ambitions and, as such, the book is quite inspirational.
“What really inspired me was bumping into a friend of mine, Peter, who told me he’d enrolled in drama school. He’d also travelled the world a bit and was a bit of an adventurer, so when he explained how he’d got in it motivated me quite a bit to do the same.”
“I’ve read quite a few biographies and autobiographies, but what I’ve found is that they tend to focus on one particular aspect of the subject’s lives. For instance, the Oliver Reed book revolves around his liking for having a beer or two, but misses out on what it was that drove him to become the fantastic actor he became, which I think is important.”
Things are different today for aspiring actors, with many having to fight hard for roles or move away from home to find work. “There are a lot more young actors around now than when I started. In fact the market is saturated with loads of good talent coming out of the drama schools. The problem is that there aren’t the opportunities around today that I had to gain the same sort of experience I could.
“Rep companies are pretty much a thing of the past today, so it great that The Liverpool Everyman are bringing their own company back. To employ local actors, writers and technicians in a city with so much talent is a great thing to be doing. The Liverpool Royal Court, as well, is a brilliant venue which has always encouraged local writers and actors to get involved. What Kevin [Fearon] has achieved there is amazing. Establishing a family of actors and filling the theatre up with people who wouldn’t necessarily otherwise go to the theatre can only be a good thing for the city and is something we all want to see.”