Nick Asbury is an actor of great charm and range, with an edge that is quite scary at times. He’s also full of enormous energy, which was needed in bucketfuls when he was a member of the group of RSC actors who performed eight of Shakespeare’s history plays over a two and a half year period. I remember how exhausting and exciting those productions were to watch; they must have been hell to perform.

But Nick survived and has turned his successful blog record of those two and half years into a book that people are already queuing up to read.

Originally posted on the RSC website, Nick’s Histories blog became a massive hit, regularly notching up 6,000 hits a week from around the world. The blog, and now the book, takes us through the joys, the humour, the  trials, and tribulations of being an actor with the RSC.

As the blurb on the back of the book says:

“There’s the camaraderie of the actors, the terror of forgetting lines, technical difficulties, money problems, finding strange things in the bath, thirty-three broadsword fights and, of course, the ever-present threat of being assaulted by demented badgers after a performance.”

And as Nick wrote:

” We are engaged in performing four shows by night and restaging four different shows by day. And restaging all the understudy work as well. This is a lot of work. And my mind has turned to slush.”

It’s a dirty job but somebody has got to do it. Good job the Dirty Duck pub was so close at hand.

Nick’s ‘Exit Pursued by a Badger – One Actor’s Journey Through History with Shakespeare’ is published in paperback  by Oberon Books (ISBN 978-1-84002-892-8) on the 29th June, 2009, priced at £10.99