Content
“If you are a consumer of tabloid revelations you may have heard of Woodlands. Woodlands, or Woodlands Hall to give it the correct title, is a health farm in Suffolk about a hundred miles from London. Some journalists have called it a ‘Rehab Clinic’ but I prefer not to: I dislike the word ‘rehab’. Let’s just say that Woodlands is where jaded celebrities in the artistic and sporting worlds go to become healthy again or, as some like to put it, ‘detox’. That’s another word I hate, but perhaps an appropriate one in my case.
Not that I’m a star, or pretend to be, just a fairly successful actor who had been through a lean patch both personally and professionally. When I managed to land a role playing the villain in a big Hollywood thriller called Hard Man Returns With A Vengeance, (the third in the successful Hard Man series) my agent noticed that I was out of condition and more or less ordered me to go to Woodlands. It would have offended his professional pride if I were not in the right shape for filming a month hence. To judge from the script, some of the action sequences were going to be demanding, and there is only so much a stunt double can do, so I suppose he was right. He even advanced me the money to go there. I was wary, but not entirely reluctant.”