Mr Raymond Russell

Raymond Russell

As a child my mother dragged me around all of the film studio offices in London's Soho. She was only 5-feet two inches tall, but she was a real powerhouse and small-time actress.

“Do you have an appointment with the head of the studio?” The snooty 1950’s receptionists would usually ask. She didn’t, but she would often just grab my hand and make a run for the guy’s office. When we got inside, and we usually did, my mum would say; “This is my son, this is Raymond Russell…” At around 5 years old, I would then break into a song and dance routine my mum had taught me, sometimes I was still singing and dancing as we were thrown onto the pavement!

I also got an agent and occasionally my mum was successful. I was cast with a small part in the American film Kill Me Tomorrow (1957). During the filming Lois Maxwell the co-star came over a chatted with me on my fictional hospital bed. Throughout my childhood I told everyone that I had slept with Bond’s Miss Moneypenny. Precocious brat!

https://www.amazon.com/Deadly-Endings-Powerful-Emotional-Thriller/dp/095339011X

I was also in the old black and white version of the Robin Hood TV series on British television in the middle fifties. The first day I arrived on the set in a kind of sack dress, that the under-financed prop department thought would make me look like a 14th Century village boy, I was a little scared. Richard Greene as Robin and Archie Duncan as Friar Tuck were really nice to all of the kids and I loved the adventure, until the director pointed to an enormous horse. Evidently the casting director had asked my mother if I could ride, obviously she said I was born in the saddle, even though I had never seen a horse except in cowboy movies. To make it worst there wasn’t a proper saddle as we were meant to be village children in the Middle Ages.

“OK!” the second director shouted as I clung to the temperamental stallion. “All you horsemen…”

OMG I thought, this monster is going to throw me in the first ditch.

“Gallop across that field as fast as you can, try to look scared as if you’re running for your lives!”

In my case that was absolutely true, I’ll never know how I stayed on the beast, but at the end of the afternoon the director came over to me and said, “Well done son you acted truly terrified.” I’ve never forgotten how to ride.

I did a lot of small parts and TV advertisements, but by the time I was 15 the parts dried up. At 16 I walked into the London newspaper The Evening News

Now here’s the serious bit.

Raymond Russell is an award-winning journalist, formally with The Sunday Times, The London Evening News and a BBC foreign correspondent. Playwright of the Off-Broadway hit, Jack, Nikita and Norma-Jeane, the television play, Two legs Good, Four Wheels Better. And the author of two non-fiction books, The London Garden & Terrace Restaurant Guide and the beautifully illustrated, The Provencal Diet.

In 2013 Russell’s Best Selling debut novel Deadly Endings was been met with wide acclaim, and is sold in 42 countries and 3 languages, he is now writing the sequel, Deadly SIN.