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Las Vegas Airport, Thursday October 11th, 11.05am PT

What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas, right?

So...

Friday, October 12th................

No, just kidding. But it might mean you can't believe a word of what follows.

Actually, it seems I'll be staying in Vegas a little longer than planned. I've hit the first travel glitch. Late arriving plane means an estimated hour's delay to my flight to Charlotte NC. So it's espresso doppio and apple Danish time.

Note to Rover. Front page of today's New York Times:

"With dentists' fees rising far faster than inflation and more than 100 million people lacking dental insurance, the percentage of Americans with untreated cavities began rising this decade, reversing a half-century trend of improvement in dental health."

I'll be keeping a close eye on those news anchorwomen.



It's a little less than 48 hours since I arrived here and was met by William Powell, the owner of the Sci-Fi Center. Checked in at the Station Palace Hotel and Casino, we grab some lunch. William is one of those people I meet quite often in the States who have the most extraordinarily complicated working lives. I would hate to sound like the Dubya in Michael Moore's Sicko, condescendingly congratulating Americans who are forced to pull multiple jobs to make ends meet, but it is always slightly humbling and mystifying to hear.



So William owns and runs the Sci-Fi Center, holds down a managerial post at Home Depot while still being on active duty with the army. How the heck you make sense of a triangular life like that one, I have no idea, but the man on the other side of the table from me is doing it.



I have to say that Home Depot did not register at all in our conversation over lunch, but we covered the other two corners pretty thoroughly. William is smart, a great talker and knows his political and historical onions. By the end of lunch, we have the world in general and the middle-east in particular, pretty much put to rights. As we finish, we are sharing our mutual admiration for Bill Clinton and our hopes that a win for Hillary in 08, will put him back centre stage where he belongs. A passing cleaner with mop, bucket and a rather fetching hairnet, pauses and says, "Excuse me, gentlemen, but I couldn't help overhearing what you were saying." and eagerly joins in our discussion. Only in America. We three ? African American hotel worker, African American soldier & small business owner and European actor & sometime writer ? touch fists and move on.

To the strip. William has decided he's giving me the tour straight away, so I find myself blinking in the sunlight (it's hot and sunny, but cooler than Ohio!) and trying to make sense of it all. Beside me, and towering above me, the MGM lion crouches in golden splendour; across the street, the facade of New York New York, hotel front modelled on the Manhattan skyline complete with Liberty, fireboats spouting water into the harbour, the Brooklyn Bridge (it's part of the sidewalk) and the Chrysler Building; over there, the hideously naff, Disneyesque faux-castle of the Excalibur; up the strip the Eiffel Tower towering over the Paris (and looking distinctly and not inappropriately like Blackpool Tower); down the strip the sleek black pyramid of the Luxor.



Someone else will use the analogy of a film set to me and it's inescapable. Perhaps, more accurately, a stage set. You suspect that if you peep behind it you'll find it all held up by props and stage weights and copious amounts of duck tape. Facade. But, oh, such magnificent facade. Fabulous Las Vegas! The Entertainment Capital Of The World! Only a paper moon, hung in a paper sky. Here to entertain you! I'm surprised by how crowded everything feels. I'd imagined all this spread over a huge area, but instead these vast pagan cathedrals are hugger-mugger, cheek by jowl with each other.

Naively, I ask about The Sands. Long since gone, apparently. I notice that whereas elsewhere in Americanese buildings get 'tore down', here they get 'blown up'. A constant process of change and renewal, it seems, I suppose like plays in the West End and Broadway closing and opening.

We wander round the MGM Grand. The entrance used to be through the lion's mouth, William tells me, while the lobby used to be the Emerald Palace from Oz. Now it feels much more generically corporate. It's odd. It's stunning. The enormous revolving gyroscope over the central bar an impossible thing. Breathtaking. But in an empty kind of way. The lions in their enclosure make me uncomfortable, the endless banks of blinking, bleeping slots like an updated version of one Dante's circles of Hell. And everywhere, of course, the shows. Plan A had been to take in The Beatles Love show, but the Great Comedy Writer In The Sky has decreed that, since I'm only here for Tuesday and Wednesday nights, for the benefit of Mr B, there will be no shows on these nights. I'm tempted to snap up a last remaining ticket for one of Cirque du Soleil's other shows (their seem to be a limitless number of them: Love, Ka, Zumanity, O and more) but at $150, decide against. On down the strip as far as Caesar's Palace. Again, it's absolutely amazing in a soulless kind of way. An extraordinary construction, it's trompe l'oeil brilliantly executed, but it is just a shopping mall, isn't it?

As we return to the strip, darkness has fallen and the dazzling light show has started up. Neon Billboards everywhere, screaming their wares at us. Celine Dion here, David Copperfield there, Elton John coming soon. With perfect timing, we arrive outside the enormous waterfront of the Bellagio just as the fountains do their thing. A light and water show, jetting 30 feet and more into the air, the length of a couple of football pitches, choreographed to whichever song happens to be playing. We get Francis Albert singing 'Luck Be A Lady Tonight' (surely Vegas's anthem) and it is entrancingly beautiful. Perhaps because, unlike everything else around me, it isn't trying too hard: a simple combination of elements and something I'll never forget.

We retrace our steps, past the touts handing out cards and passes for night clubs, strip clubs and escort agencies. Back at the Station Palace, I spend some time being an Anthropologist on Mars, drifting between the slots, the gaming tables and the sports betting area. I'm struck by how grim it all seems: no-one appears to be actually having a good time. It's hard to understand the way this goldfish bowl grips the American imagination ? I don't think I've met one who didn't love this place ? especially coming from the UK where there's a bookmaker's on every high street and a slot machine in every pub. I grab some pasta and a pint in the Irish-themed pub where, oddly, but most welcomely, last Sunday's game between Liverpool and Tottenham is playing in its entirety on the giant TV.

And so to bed.

Monday October 15th. Howard Johnsons Hotel, High Point, NC, 12.15pm ET

A lot of ghosts are with me. Drove down here from Greensboro this morning. I expected to find it changed out of recognition and wasn't even certain whether the sound stage where Steve Hardie worked his miracles (the number of sets he squeezed in there doesn't bear thinking about) would still be there.

In fact the hotel has barely changed at all. The studio is still there, but looks distinctly closed. A sign on the door says that the fire department attempted to inspect it on such and such a date, but were unable to gain access. Wandering around, I realise I can almost exactly pinpoint where my room was: first floor with balcony overlooking the pool which is, as it was 16 years ago, closed.

Roy at front desk tells me the studio was donated to the North Carolina School for the Arts but they don't use it much. Active movie production ceased about two or three years ago, which is more recently than I'd expected. Probably it will disappear quite soon. I notice a poster for O Brother Where Art thou? in the lobby and wonder whether any of that was shot here, but then I see there's also a poster for Breakfast At Tiffany's....

I had hoped to get a cup of coffee or some lunch here, but the Studio restaurant and the Action Lounge are shut. Still the half-assed hotel it was in 1991 when tales of mis-placed alarm calls and failed room-service orders were legion amongst cast and crew.



It feels frankly stupid to be feeling sentimental as I sit in my car and write this, but I've always said Hellraiser 3 was probably my happiest experience making a Hellraiser film (despite dissatisfactions like having the one version of the make-up that I thought was seriously flawed) and being here has brought a lot of memories and faces swirling back. I'm soppy enough to call Pete Atkins and his wife Dana in LA, but only get their answering machine. They met here, 16 years ago almost to the week.

(Doug & Theresa in Vegas, Oct 10th)

Tuesday October 16th. As before. 4pm ET

This narrative remains stubbornly stuck in Friday.

As I arrived at The Woods of Terror with Dawn at, ironically, sunset, there is at last a slight autumnal chill in the air. It almost feels like October. It won't be super cold, but I'll have got as far as a sweatshirt and jacket by the end of the night.

I love this woodland setting as daylight fades, watching blue shift to black among the tops of the high, straight trees. A fine grey dust gets kicked up everywhere, the consequence of a 4 month long drought in North Carolina. Woods hold some of our oldest fears, don't they? As blackness wraps around us, who knows what's out there?

On Saturday evening, I wander down to mingle with the actors as they prepare for their night's work. I'm always struck at these haunts by how seriously the kids approach their task. Under the temporary awning, costume, mask and make-up are pulled together and the various ghosts and ghouls, witches and werewolves take shape together with Leatherface, Michael, Jason, Freddy...and Pinhead. The guy playing the Dark Pope is positively swelling with pride as I chat to him. He's eager to demonstrate his lines to me and most impressed that he's worked on an English accent, dropping the 'r' in "tear', 'your' and 'apart' and amused that he's made 'No tears, please' so perfectly politely English that it rather sounds as though he's asking the maid not to put any sugar in his tea.

Later on Saturday evening, I go through the haunt myself: a clever combination of hayride and walk-through and taking a good hour or more to complete. My inner child/romantic is still naive enough to believe that we might, in some Bradburyesque way not be quite the same souls when we emerge as we were when we entered. I encounter Pinhead. He knows it's me, draws himself up to his full height (he's a little lacking in that department, truth to tell) and threatens to do some damage to my soul. Bravo, sir!

I've been set up in the Museum (where I disgraced myself with Erica) for my signing, with a heater to keep me warm and Crystal to assist me. Ed has assiduously been doing the rounds of the conventions for some time and so along with a goodly array of posters, Fangoria covers, figures and photos of yours truly set up behind my table, a lot of familiar faces and autographs gaze down at me: Ashley, George, Kane, Gunnar, Jonathan, Bill, Sid and more. Thanks for keeping me company.

On Friday it was late - early, in fact - by the time I left the park with Dawn and joined everyone else at a 24hr eatery for a 2am breakfast. On Saturday, I'm under my own steam, having taken possession of a rented Dodge Caliber, which enables me to leave the park a little earlier. Stricken with hunger on the way home, I indulge in a piece of Americana only rarely visited: a six-pack of Bud and a drive-thru McDs.

Having the Dodge also enables me to engage in my triple US driving indulgences: country music stations, ranting preachers and frothing right-wing talk show hosts. The first named comes up trumps and has me banging the steering wheel in glee. Where else are you going to find a couplet like this?

Momma lived by the Bible
And the Bible lived by the bed.

Sublime. If anyone can identify that, I'd love to hear from you. I also caught a video on CMT (which I also failed to identify) which seemed to come perilously close to illustrating the old joke about what happens if you play a C&W song backwards: your kids come back to life, your car comes out of the ditch, you come off the bottle your wife comes home and you get your job back. Also caught a great Big & Rich track (I just became aware of them through the John Lennon/Darfur CD) which I shall follow up. 'Spare the horse, ride a cowboy', I think.

Sunday saw me out and about hunting a laundromat, finally catching Halloween and later giving the first of my Anchor Bay interviews to CNN radio. This was enlivened by having the hotel fire alarm go off mid-way through the interview. It was one of those 'Do I ignore this, because it's always a false alarm, or do I take it seriously because maybe, just maybe...?' dilemmas. The interviewer and I discuss the possibility of him picking up the scoop of talking me through my final moments as I get burned to a crisp in a North Carolina hotel room, before deciding to leave the line open while I head down to the lobby to see what's going on.

Turns out someone overdid the popcorn.

Monday October 22nd, Spirits Bar, Orlando Sanford Airport, 4.07pm ET

Just arrived here and marking time ahead of my flight up to Knoxville Tennessee, surrounded by Thomas Cook Brits on their way back to Glasgow and Manchester. No time for diary writing over the weekend as the Screamfest Convention picked me up and spun me round for one of the best Con weekends I've had. The Penn State leg of this diary should have been written up on the flight from Philadelphia to Orlando las Friday, but I slept instead.



So it's back to last Wednesday. I arrived at State college Airport to be met by Sergey of the Paranormal Research Society. Let me explain.

I am performing at Penn State University as part of UnivCon 6: The Greatest Show Unearthed! So there are ghost walks and hunts, workshops on 'Psi Dreaming'; 'Tuning Into Your Sixth Sense'; and 'Being Goth/Pagan/Vampire In The Paranormal Community' as well as the simple issue of 'Why Are We Here?'. There are talks by Demonologists and Exorcists and, kicking the whole thing off on Thursday evening, someone billed as a 'Distinguished Entertainer' who, on closer examination, turns out, rather alarmingly, to be me.

On Thursday, Sergey, who tells me he arrived in New York from the Ukraine, aged 3, with his parents, picks me up at the hotel at around 5pm and we grab some food before heading to the Scwab Auditorium where I will perform. This is the 5th year I've been performing An Evening With Death, and having played venues as varied as lecture halls, refectories, ballrooms, a tent and a park, it's always a delight and a relief to find myself in a proper theatre. Schwab is certainly one such, large but not huge, with a proscenium arch stage and a horseshoe balcony. I've even got ushers in uniform being briefed as I arrive.

I set about prepping the show. This runs about as smoothly as is possible. The acoustic is close to perfect. There are the usual puzzled faces when I respond to the question 'Do you want a hand held mike, or a clip-on?' with the answer 'Neither', but I can tell that the danger here would be pushing too hard rather than not being heard and that amplification would be entirely unnecessary. Without me even enquiring, a perfect white wash of light fills the stage and nothing about it needs to be changed, apart from taking the levels down a little. Appropriate table and chair are found, black cloth flung over the table, and the stage is set. I turn to Matt behind his mixing desk at the back of the hall and explain his cues relating to the Hellraiser theme playing over Midnights of November and The Hellbound Heart at the top of the show. We set the levels and he seems happy. We run through it in real time, and he's faultless. If only life were always this simple.

And I'm done. Retiring to my dressing room, I have the unusual luxury of the best part of half an hour in hand before I'm led through the (reputedly haunted - there will be a ghost hunt here later this evening - possibly to do with having the University founder buried right outside the auditorium) bowels of the theatre to creep unseen into a dark corner to make my entrance from the back of the hall through the audience. Again, having performed this show to audiences ranging from a bare dozen to several hundred, I've taught myself not to get anxious about numbers, but I'm reassured to see about 300 souls in seats.

From the moment I start with Housman's opening words 'In midnights of November/ When Dead Man's Fair is nigh' I know this is going to be a good show. And it is. Not even hyper-active photographers (not using flash, as requested, but no less off-putting with cameras bobbing up and down and red lights popping on and off: I ask them to desist in the first break after Death And The Student) and a cell-phone with a loud rock ringtone that goes off just before Ogden Nash is going to speak (I pause, but the guy takes an absolute age to fish it out of his pockets) puts me off. It's one of the best performances I've given. If the Distinguished Entertainer informs you that people were on their feet and that shouts of 'Bravo!' were heard, he does so with all due modesty and solely in the interests of accurate and faithful documentation.

An excellent show is followed by a Q&A which is equally good (remake question first up), but my evening is not over. The A&E Channel have a series coming up called Paranormal State and a camera crew has come along to interview me about the show and about death in general. To get on my good side, the interviewer has turned up in his Liverpool shirt, which is certainly a first. It also prolongs my evening further because we have to have the football chat first. He's a member of the New York Supporters Club and habitue of the 11th Street bar which is LFC HQ in NYC. He's desperate to visit Anfield before it's demolished to make way for the new stadium, but says this season has stopped providing tickets to overseas Supporters Clubs which surprises me. Especially ironic as the club is now American owned.

Interview done, I'm back at the hotel just before midnight. A hasty re-pack of bags and I have to set my alarm for 4.30am (hence the sleeping on the flight down to Orlando) to make my 6am flight back to Philly.

Saturday October 27th. Room 1828, Patricia Grand Hotel, Myrtle Beach, South Carolina. 3.30pm ET

I've now succeeded in getting almost a full week ahead of myself in this diary.

Last Monday, I flew the short hop up from Orlando to Knoxville, Tennessee where I'm met by Ryan deSear, Regional Manager of the Ripley's organisation who brings me, via dinner, up to Gatlinburg. I'm marking time for a few days before my appearance at Ripley's Haunted Attraction in Myrtle Beach. Ryan has extended Ripley's hospitality to me here in Gatlinburg, only a line in a song until now (It was Gatlinburg in mid-July/ And I'd just hit town and my throat was dry/ And I thought I'd stop and get myself a brew) and I had a kind of wild-west frontier town image in my head (kicking and a-gouging in the mud and the blood and the beer).

But no. Very far from it, in fact. It strikes me as a kind of mini Las Vegas of the Smoky Mountains, without the casinos. It's largely a single strip filled with attractions, souvenir and craft shops, hotels and restaurants and clearly vacation ground to largely retired blue collar Americans. Of the tourist attractions, Ripley's seems to own most of them: the Believe It Or Not! museum, the Haunted Attraction, the Guinness World Of Records museum, the Moving Theatre and the Aquarium among them. Ryan has provided me with a VIP pass to these and many more, but I have other demands on my time while I'm here.

In addition to the interviews I've been doing for Anchor Bay, I've also been approached by Foundry Communications PR in New York. Monsters HD (the first TV network devoted to screening genre films in HD) are having a Hellraiser marathon (1-3 and 6) tonight (Saturday) and I've agreed to do interviews in support of this. CNN (again) and Westwood One on Tuesday. 15-20 mins each. Straightforward enough. Then you read the small print. Each puts interviews out to 2,000+ affiliates and CNN claims a radio audience of 13 million. On Wednesday I undertake what's called a radio 'tour' which means I stay on the phone for two hours whil I get dropped in and out of morning shows across the country, some taped but mostly live, in what sounds like the itinerary of a crazed Greyhound bus on speed: Buffalo, Billings, Columbus, Dayton, Youngstown, Louisville, Lexington, Jacksonville, Hartford, Tucson, Reno, Palm Springs, Las Vegas, Poughkeepsie, New York City and Tampa Bay among such honoured company as Nicholas Picholas, Sludge, Sherm and Porkchop along with a former Playboy playmate and 'original' Hooters girl. And Cinematical for AOL when that's all over.

There's lots of talk about how HD is sending TV news anchors scurrying to re-think their make-up, and I offer the tale of Sky's Richard Keys and his hirsute hands back in the UK. But it strikes me that HD may not be an actor's best friend, and certainly not a prosthetic make-up artist's best friend. And I'm curious as to how movies not shot or intended to be seen in such unforgiving detail will look. If anyone saw HD Pinhead, do let me know.

After interviews on Tuesday, I take the gondola ride up to 'Ober Gatlinburg'. 3,000 feet up now. The views across the Smoky Mountains on the 15-20 minute ride up are spectacular, but there's not really anything to do at the top apart from eat (of course) or gawp at some rather bored looking black bears, so I head straight back down, accompanied by a group of Amish (who knew they did tourism?) and a girl in a New Orleans/Katrina t-shirt: 'Drove my chevvy to the levee but the levee was gone.'

This is a great t-shirt town, in fact. I particularly liked 'Paddle faster! I hear banjo music!' and I'm tempted to buy a few 'faith-based' Ts to wear ironically at conventions having as they do a familiarly graphic obsession with nails and blood.

In the evening, and on Ryan's reccommendation, I head to The Pedler restaurant right next to the hotel. With up to a 30 minute wait for a table, I take the option of sitting at the bar. A guy sits down to my right and starts to ask the bar staff about Scotch whisky. I chip in and we fall into conversation. He's just been in Vegas and saw the Love show which he says was as brilliant as I'd assumed. Grrr.

In the course of discussion, my reason for being in town is discovered. Suddenly a hand clamps down on my shoulder. I turn, and my hand is immediately gripped.
"It's a pleasure to meet you," enthuses the stranger. I assume he's recognised me or overheard our conversation.
"And you," I reply.
He asks me something else that I can make no sense of. He peers quizzically at me.
"It's Geoff, right?"
"No," says Scotch whisky to my right. "I'm Geoff."
Turns out he's only the owner of the restaurant. Thank God I told him the food was excellent. Earned me a free Scotch, anyway.

I had planned to wander down the street to the Aquarium but, on stepping out of the restaurant, I discover it's raining heavily and I'm about to make a break for the hotel when a voice behind me says "Can I give you a ride somewhere?" It's Geoff.

Perhaps it's something to do with visiting an aquarium after dark, but I find the place, absolutely enchanting, helped by being almost alone in the place. The huge central tank has a half-lit glass tunnel running through it and I could have wandered up and down for hours. And I spend a lot of time with one of my favourite creatures, the sea-horse.

The following evening, I eat, partly at Geoff's invitation, at The Park Grill across the street, which he also owns. He's at the bar when I arrive, deep in conversation. We say hi and I settle down for dinner and Game 1 of the World Series: Boston Red Sox (who came from 3-1 down to defeat Cleveland) vs the Colorado Rockies.

Geoff joins me later and whisky is ordered. He's been doing his homework: went home and googled me. "I found your website, which is excellent, by the way, and read your diary.' I warn him he'll be in it. And here you are, sir. I talk about my path into acting and he shares his inadvertent road into the restaurant business and also his fascinating journey as a Southern Jew who married (his words) 'a mountain girl'. Geoff: thanks for the whisky and conversation.

Back at the hotel, I'm packing when the phone rings.
"Hello?"
"Good evening, Mr Bradley. It's front desk."
"Hi"
"Hello. Mr Bradley, there's a police officer here"
"Pardon?"
"A police officer. Well, three, actually. Shall I put him on?"
"Er, yes, sure."
Pause. Why do my palms feel sweaty?
"Mr Bradley?"
"Yes"
"This is Officer Myers with Gatlinburg PD. Did Ryan deSear tell you we might drop by?"
"No."
"He said you might be up at The Brewery, but we couldn't find you there."
I was there last night. What did I do? Who did I speak to? This is it: they're going to deport me.
"Mr Bradley, was you the one that played Pinhead in them movies?"
"Yes, it was."
And breathe.
"We just wanted to say hi."
"I'll be right down."
And I grab pen and pictures. In the elevator, I wonder whether it's a wind up. But no. Three cops in the lobby, two patrol cars outside. A quiet night on the crime-ridden streets of Gatlinburg, I guess. And Officer Todd Myers and co, thanks for one of the best Halloween scares I've had in a long time. Actually, Gatlinburg has quietly wormed its way into my affections. And to my surprise and slight disappointment, it doesn't have A Bar Named Sue.