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Hard drinking, hard headed and with a face only a mother could love. Geordie actor Jimmy Nail came out of nowhere to play loveable rogue Oz in the 80’s TV hit “Auf Wiedersehen, Pet”. However the fame that came with his unexpected success became a burden to the feisty northerner who had once spent four months in prison for GBH. To cope with the publicity that was crushing his personal life Nail, already a seasoned drinker, began to rely more and more on alcohol to drown his problems. However as he describes in his recent autobiography “A Northern Soul” (Michael Joseph) a trip to New Zealand stopped his steady descent into alcoholism. In October 1987 Nail was approached to make an advertisement down under but didn’t want to leave partner Miriam who was eight months pregnant with their second child. However the New Zealand advertising company pestered him relentlessly for two weeks until his agent suggested that Nail put forward a ridiculous list of demands in order to put them off. The demands included two first class return tickets and a NZ$250,000 fee. To their great surprise the company agreed to all their requests. The shoot was scheduled the same week Miriam was due to give birth and as she was unable to accompany him on the trip Nail took along close friend Tony Mac instead. On the Singapore Airlines flight there were only three passengers including Nail, Mac and the son of the President of Singapore. The 29-hour journey from Heathrow to Auckland via Singapore was a veritable smorgasbord of booze. Nail later remembered that there was “as much champagne as we could drink and, of course, we made pigs of ourselves”. In fact he would later say the drinking was so extreme that it nearly killed him. His ten days in New Zealand were wonderful as the country was still “rather like England was in the 1950s”. The reception he received from the Kiwi public was enthusiastic and polite. As part of the deal with the advertisers he had asked for a Winnebago and he drove this around the North Island sightseeing. In Auckland he shared a meal with Billy Connolly who was doing a concert tour and also sang “Someone To Watch Over Me” at a local jazz club. However while filming the commercial for barbeque products he became so worried about his girlfriend Miriam that he had a panic attack. A doctor called to the set diagnosed hyperventilation and pulling out a box of needles, performing acupuncture on the panicking actor. The results were so successful that Nail has used the treatment ever since. On the return journey to the UK Nail and Mac hit the bar again and it was a badly hung over prospective father who returned home. While he was sleeping off the effects of his binge drinking Miriam went into labour and on his first day back gave birth to a son, Fred. Finally realising how much drinking had impacted negatively on his family life Nail gave up alcohol and apart from one beer the day his father died has not touched a drop since. “After my near-fatal binges in New Zealand I’d crossed the line. Drink wasn’t fun anymore: I’d gone off it. I believe that saved my life”. Appearances: Television: Auf Wiedersehen, Pet, Spender, Crocodile Shoes, Blott On The Landscape, The Tenth Kingdom Movies: Evita, Still Crazy ©Jen Longshaw
2001-2006
Please do not copy in any manner, print or electronic,
without permission from the author.
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If
a New Zealander asks if you're feeling crook should you be insulted
or touched at his consideration? And why is going to bed with a hottie
no reason to get excited in the Land of the Long White Cloud?
