The show can't go on for the walking dead

4:50pm Friday 14th March 2008

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I AM lucky to work in a profession where "taking a sicky" is as unattractive to the employee as it is to the employer. Not only do I enjoy my work but "The show must go on" is etched through my generation's bones like Blackpool rock.

But I have had to bow out of performing twice already this year.

I missed the last two days of my pantomime in Norwich because a respiratory virus finally defeated me and attacked my vocal chords; and I arrived at the theatre in Eastbourne on Friday and opened my mouth to produce only an inaudible croak.

I had been battling a cold and clearly had not completely mended after the last bout.

My determination to battle on may have been a mistake, as I am now still voiceless (in any way that would enable me to perform) even after three days of silence and prescription drugs for the chest infection I am now harbouring.

And boy have I been taking stuff! Every member of the cast has suggested and generously provided different wonder remedies.

I am rattling with herbal remedies, vitamins, coated in miracle honies, awash with linctuses, hot lemony drinks with whisky (no complaints there), reeking of balms and unctions rubbed into chest and forehead. I have steamed and gargled and slept upright.

But I still sound like the kind of person you don't want to receive a phone call from late at night.

But I won't be making any.

Were I not working I would take it my stride.

But for an actor "being off" is a bit like being the walking dead.

I know my understudy is excellent and they all assure me they are coping and are even kind enough to say they are all missing me, but I should be with them to open in Cardiff this week and as I write this it looks unlikely.

I suppose 11 days sick leave in 40 years isn't bad (I missed a week when I put my back out leaping onto a bed in one of those' farces 20 years ago) - but at the moment I feel a fraud, particularly when I should have been doing a matinee and was watching the FA quarter finals on TV, which I would have enjoyed much more had I been rushing offstage to the crew room to catch up on the scores.

I must really be sick!