“He was much better than me, I have to say. By the time O’Brien was about to make the movie, Paddy was working elsewhere – and Meatloaf ended up playing his part in a now iconic performance. It wasn’t a huge industry like it is now.”Īfter about four years, Paddy moved on to other acting jobs, partly because he didn’t follow the show to New York (where it initially bombed). You could go out to supper at The Casserole that was down the King’s Road at World’s End and famous rock stars just walked in, like Jagger and Bowie. “We’d get free drinks at restaurants and that sort of stuff. Rocky Horror was such a cult hit (and still is – it’s said that it’s always playing somewhere in the world even today) that the cast were treated to celebrity status – although Paddy explains that world was very different from what it is today. Oh yeah, by the way, do you want a part?” Paddy O’Hagan, current owner of 14 Chamberlain Street, Wells, who, as well as being a former actor, is also an energetic member of the community, having founded Wells Food Festival and who is now the chair of Wells Art Contemporary At the end I got up and said “Well, good luck with it” and said, “Cheers. Then we chatted about B movies and discovered we had a shared interest in ‘Creature Features’ – It Came from Planet X, films like that. “He sat down at the piano,” he remembers, I got my saxophone out and the whole place was playing rockabilly. After growing up in a schoolhouse in Suffolk in the late 1940s (his father became a headmaster after the war and they lived on school grounds), Paddy joined an experimental theatre company called Pip Simmons which led him to both a performance with the black political group, the Black Panthers and later, an audition with actor, writer and musician Richard O’Brien, who wrote Rocky Horror. “I started acting after college,” explains Paddy over the phone in Wells, Somerset, as Coronavirus prevents a face-to-face meeting. The other photo is that of Tim Curry, who played Dr Frank-N-Furter. Paddy played the dual role of Eddie and Dr Everett Scott, the wheelchair-bound scientist (parts later played in the film of the show by rock singer Meatloaf). A humorous tribute to sci-fi and B-movies, it premiered upstairs at the Royal Court Theatre in London, 1973. They were both taken on the stage of the original Rocky Horror Show musical. “If you could buy them, you would.” He has a wry sense of humour, slightly off-beat, which is no surprise when you discover the reason for the pull-up pictures is that he’s in one of them. “The legs are great, aren’t they?” laughs Paddy O’Hagan, who, along with his wife Judith, owns the six bedroomed house in central Wells that this hall belongs to. The hallway at 14 Chamberlain Street, Wells – complete with photos from the original Rocky Horror Show – which the owner starred in. And along from that is a further sizeable black and white photo, with another man wearing stockings and a fedora, kicking one leg forward in defiance and sitting in a wheelchair. Yet look closer and you’ll spot something incongruous.Īmong the ornate, gilt-framed paintings of European seascapes and stately-home portraits, hangs a large black and white photo of a man in sheer stockings and suspenders and leather jacket holding a mic, arm thrust jubilantly-high in the air. This is a statement entrance, designed to impress all those who enter with its stately sense of calm and subtle authority. Lifestyle A fascinating house in Wells that takes centre stage in more ways than one Posted: 08th Mar 2021 Find out why this grand house in Wells takes centre stage in the city – and meet owner, Paddy O’Hagan – chair of Wells Art Contemporary and original Rocky Horror Picture Show cast memberĪ grand staircase sweeps down from the first floor, into a large, light reception hallway, illuminated by an oculus – a large glass box on the roof -and dressed with antique occasional tables, ceramic chinoiserie lampstands topped with pagoda lampshades, an aged Persian rug and a large, glass fronted bookcase.
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