remember staying up late one night when I was about nine years old to watch a documentary on BBC Northern Ireland about how local theatre companies dealt with the issue of the Troubles. It was 1985 and I’ve no idea why I was allowed to stay up late, or why I would have been interested in it. The actor James Ellis was interviewed on it. Ellis was legendary in our house because he was in and (Graham Reid’s seminal TV series about working-class Belfast featuring a young Kenneth Branagh). Also, he was very obviously a Protestant. You could tell by his authoritative moustache. Pre-Jim McDonald, he was British TV’s sole representative of the Ulster Protestant
