Paper Monitor
10:32 UK time, Thursday, 1 March 2007
A service highlighting the riches of the daily press.
Strewth. That silver fox looks familiar. Where might Paper Monitor have seen him before?
He's a dastardly magazine boss in Ugly Betty, you say? Nah, that's not it.
The Toothpick Man from the X Files? Uh-uh. Vice-president Prescott in 24? Nope. An adventurer turned patient in ER? A missing link in Lost? A businessman who died of a heart attack in The OC... no, but something about that last one rings a bell... heart attack you say?
[Sound of penny dropping] That's it, the penny's dropped! Heart attack - just like Jim from Neighbours! And that's because the same actor plays both roles - well, all of the above mentioned roles, says the eagle-eyed Daily Mirror.
While most former soap stars can only look forward to playing a panto dame, Jim - sorry, Alan Dale - tells the paper how after leaving the Aussie soap under a cloud, he eventually made his way to LA. And hasn't looked back since.
No longer does Bouncer the dog chew up the scenery; instead he's the one doing the chewing in just about every hit US import there is.
And he explains why he didn't take part in the recent 20th anniversary Neighbours reunion that Paper Monitor enjoyed so much. And it's not just because his character - Jason's dad and Kylie's father-in-law - was killed off in 1993.
"They treated us badly so I don't owe them anything... We didn't discover that the show was a hit in England until it was on the front page of the local paper. They didn't tell us because they didn't want us to know, because they might have to pay us more."
So not such good friends, after all. Paper Monitor's illusions are shattered.
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