You've played Toadie since being a schoolboy – could you have imagined you'd be playing him one day as an adult and a lawyer?
No, not at all. I was only supposed to have done one scene, but they kept calling me back. It's really cool to have been in work for that long, because there's not a lot of work around, and to be able to learn and play someone for that long is good fun.
How did you get the part – did you have an agent or were you discovered through a drama school?
I did an audition for the character of Brett Stark and about a year later my agent got a call asking if my hair was still long! Actually I was putting them into dreadlocks at the time, so my mum spent the next couple of days brushing dreadlocks out of my hair, which was quite a painful experience!
So I was a guy called Cyborg who vandalised a property the Willis family were doing up and then they rang back and asked me to come in and play Toadie for one scene. And then it continued on.
We've seen Toadfish grow up on screen and I suppose you've grown up on screen as well, haven't you?
Yeah, absolutely. Being in high school at fifteen while becoming famous is definitely an experience. A lot of people ask me how it changed me but the thing is I've got no idea because I've got nothing else to compare it to. There were times when I got a big head and fame was really exciting and I lapped it up for a while but luckily I had friends and family that brought me back down to earth! I never really had a massive ego, I never treated anybody badly, it was more just the excitement of it all.
Toadie probably had one of the shortest marriages in soap history, didn't he?!
(Laughs) Yes! It was really good to have a storyline where you go through those peaks and troughs in just one day. We went away for a week to shoot it. Normally you go to work and at the end of the day you go home, but when you go away you feel like you're on a film shoot or something like that.
I think it allowed the audience to see a different side to Toadie.
Yes, you don't often see Toadfish so heartbroken and angry. But among all that there were also some really funny stories about what happened while we were shooting. When we sent the car over the cliff, it had dummies in it, they took the engine out so that it would fly properly through the air, otherwise it would've just gone nose down into the water. Anyway, it went absolutely flying and the window on Dee's side was open, and we saw this blonde hair out the window, and the wig and head of Dee's dummy almost flew out the window! Thankfully it didn't come out, because we didn't have another car to fly off a cliff!
Over the years you've been on the show Toadfish has had different sidekicks, who have you enjoyed working with most and which characters do you think have worked best with Toadie?
I liked Lance and Joel, because they were the first ones, but Paddy (Patrick Harvey) and Blair (McDonough) were also really good. With Toadie, Lance and Joel we were all really young and sort of thrown together. Andrew (Bibby) and I had been in drama school since we were young kids and were into acting, and Danny McPherson had never done acting before. It was really good fun, because all three of us would try to make the others laugh throughout the scenes and in quite a lot of his scenes Daniel McPherson has got a cup in front of his face! He perfected how to act with a smile on his face and try to be upset at the same time!
Because you've been in the show a long time, what's it like when you develop a good chemistry with another actor and then they leave the show?
It really is sad, but I enjoy working with new people as well - it's a challenge working out where the chemistry is with somebody. So as sad as it is, it is a new beginning as well, but I don't like to see my friends go though.
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