Interviews · 3 December 2020
Jeffrey Holland Getting smacked, and the dive into the pool
Jeffrey Holland interviewed by Kevin Durham, 3 December 2020. 5m 10s on tape.
Comedy actor Jeffrey Holland shares about this time on Hi De Hi, during the Hi De Hi reunion. ---- 👋 So this is a fairly old channel now, the whole ‘celebrity interview thing’ was a bit of a dead end in the end. Live and learn. I now do comedy productions, please follow me on Instagram to check them out, I promise they will be a lot less painful than whatever you just watched. ---- Born in Walsall, Staffordshire, Jeffrey Holland was educated at Queen Mary's Grammar School, Walsall. Jeffrey Holland joined an amateur theatre company, and worked at a wine merchants and in the office of a manufacturing company before training at Birmingham School of Speech Training and Dramatic Art and becoming a professional actor. Jeffrey Holland's first stage appearance was at the Alexandra Theatre in 1967, in the Henry Cecil Leon play No Fear or Favour. He appeared in an episode of Dixon of Dock Green, Are You Being Served, several episodes of Crossroads and as a soldier in an episode of Dad's Army and It Ain't Half Hot Mum. He broke through to public fame in the role of Spike Dixon, the camp comic at the Maplin's holiday camp in Hi-de-Hi!. He later appeared in Russ Abbot's Madhouse.
What's on the tape
A transcript, made by machine from the audio and tidied up. It gets names and the odd word wrong, so treat it as a way to find the bit you want rather than as a quotation. Every timestamp jumps to that moment in the video.
0:01 You guys again it's fantastic but I'm just gonna go and correct linda. When she smacked me around the face. I said it's my fault because I said you can't cheat a slap in the face on camera you just gotta go for it so can we get there I'm forgiving. You now just go for it he did but what she didn't do was smack me around the cheek with her fingers. Oh what did you do on the cheekbone with the heel of her hands. Darling thank you listen nikki another correction I was not wearing a wetsuit in that pool it was the third time I couldn't wear a wetsuit.
1:15 Because I was in I was dressed as miss. Had a wetsuit a big eyelashes I have I went in the and because I wasn't wearing a wetsuit hypothermia set in I'm so sorry I thought you had something. There for a long time jeff poor girl. October we had to set the filming of the sequence back for a couple of weeks because and I went in uh because I knew if I didn't. Get out they'd have to pull me out piece of unedited film at the end of the day of that sequence.
2:19 And the poor girls were so frozen it was just unbelievable. It was just one of those incredible moments I will never forget one of those little episodes you know there was spike being a silly bugger. Which dressing up in all those silly things but it was just it was just an episode I'll never forget but one thing I do remember. Is because you know they used to chuck me in the pool on a regular basis. There was an episode where um david uh wasn't directing john kilby was directing uh john kilby directed a lot of our programs he came. To me one day and he said. Now this is where you go in the pool have you any ideas. How we do this he's asking.
3:08 How I should suggest we go into the pull. So I had a little think. And I thought well I don't really like this if we can do one you can't top. Ever again maybe they won't do it so I had to think. I'd have thought well ruth was involved in this and I said if we do it off the top of the diving board. I go in ruth and I'll be having this little scene she puts a custard pie in my face. I go off at a cartwheel into the water drop the whole distance into the pool spectacular. Thing we will never top they'll never do it again.
Read the rest of the transcript2 more
3:55 We did it it was magnificent. One minute but following the following series. They did this again so I didn't win but but there we were oh we had some wonderful time so just fantastic stuff that was great. And look at the stuff I just butt in here jeff zoey jeff it's yeah dying do you remember. When they all night they tried to heat up the olympic sized swimming because you had to go in you and sue had to go in the next. Day do you remember that I do indeed it was the octopus. Were you the octopus darling.
4:42 And all your ink squirted out of something you know private it's not but you know they spent all night. Trying to heat up the pool for you because it was so cold 42 degrees in old whatever that is now in freezing just 10 degrees. Above freezing yeah yeah very cold yeah those are happy memories.
