Why my Green is blue

Tears of a clown is a great song with a perfect title. And the well-documented showbizz truism that a comedian's act often hides personal torment and sadness is also the idea which underpins The Curse of Comedy, BBC4's series of dramas about troubled performers. Hughie Green, Most Sincerely is a film which focuses on the much-imitated presenter, portrayed with gusto by Waking The Dead star Trevor Eve. In public, Hughie was the jovial frontman of hit shows such as Oppoertunity Knocks and Double Your Money. But in private, he was considerably less jolly. Damaged by the neglect of his mother, Hughie - who was born in London but raised in Canada - was plagued by insecurity. A former World War Two pilot with the Canadian RAF, he fought a fierce rivalry with fellow presenter Jess Yates (Mark Benton), creator and host of Stars on Sunday. And in his restless quest for personal contentment, he reportedly slept with more thant 1.000 women. One of Hughie's conquests was Jess yates'wife Elaine. Decades later it was revealed Hughie was the biological father of the Yates'daughter Paula, who had herself gone on to find fame as a presenter. Paula died in tragic sircumstances in 2000, three years after Hughie's death, aged 77, and the publication of the true story of her parentage. Despite his endless quest for consolation with others, Hughie was a person who only seemed to find happiness when shut away with his train set, and it was the complexity of the man which drew Trevor Eve to the role. 'It's like a Greek tragedy', asserts the 56-year old, whose other credits include The Family Man, Troy, The Politician's Wife, A Sense of Guilt and his breakthrough show, Shoestring. 'The woes are passed on to the next'. Trevor - who's married to former Holby City star Sharon Maughan and whose daughter, rising star Alice, has followed in her parents' footsteps - studied footage of Hughie in his attempt to capture the essence of the presenter.

He also learned a huge amount from reading Hughie's 1965 autobiography, Opportunity Knocked. 'I found that especially useful,' Trevor observes. 'two-thirds of it was about his life as a pilot, one-third of it was about his life in showbiz, and there were two lines about his private life! That was revealing. He emerged as a complicated man, full of self-loathing. 'Hughie was hunting for a talent that he didn't possess. He drank, consumed pills and reportedly slept with around 1.200 womesn. His life was marked by loneliness.' It's an incredibly sad story but why are we so fascinated by these tales of the tortured souls of outwardly sunny TV personalities? 'I think it's the juxtaposition that's so fascinating,'says trevor. 'We are gripped by the fact that a performer has been in our livingroom being cheery and then we find out that his private life is hell. People want to know about the dark side. it wouldn't be much of a story if Hughie was all sweetness and light, was wonderful to his family and opened a garden centre. people wouldn't say, "I've got to see that film about Hughie and his nice garden centre!'"