RICKY Gervais smarmed and sneered his way through his much anticipated new comedy Extras on BBC2 last night.

He plays Andy Millman, a wannabe actor condemned to play walk-on roles or merge into crowd scenes, all the while grumbling about the stars.

But is it really like that? Are the bit parts really so bitchy?

They can be, says John Gothard. He has played hundreds of background characters in a long career as an extra for shows such as Heartbeat, Coronation Street and Emmerdale.

"All extras have all done everything. They're working eight days a week - when in reality you get a couple of days a fortnight," he confessed.

"They say, 'when I worked with...' and drop some star name they just happened to have seen, or who might not have been there at all."

John, from Sherburn-in-Elmet, remembers seeing two extras playing a husband and wife sitting in bed together. The wife even had a line - "Good night, dear" - before turning off the bedside lamp.

She spoiled the first two takes by insisting her character "wouldn't do it like that".

Questioning her character's motivation on take three, the director was ready to offer some advice. "For god's sake, just turn the f***ing light off."

John himself was turned off when he "died" in a hospital scene and they pulled the plug on his life support machine. The show was A Touch Of Frost.

"I was there in some stylish, throwaway underpants like you wear in hospital, wired up," John said.

"When they 'switched me off', the rest of the crew crept out and didn't tell me. I was lying there for ten minutes before they sneaked back to see my reaction."

He is now resting from showbiz as he works on his main business, making flight cases for musical instruments and other fragile items. But he vividly remembers one part he turned down, for an episode of At Home With The Braithwaites.

"It's a nice little part," his agent told him. "You are playing a council official and you are caught in this brothel. You are laid face down, spreadeagled and tied to a bed totally naked. Then they place a daffodil between your buttocks."

The shrift John gave this was short. Extra short.

MUCH relief for Dr John Sentamu, who was elected Archbishop of York yesterday. But who was standing against him?

Although the result was hardly on a knife-edge, the York Minster College of Canons did their best to add drama to the pronouncement. The Dean of York, the Very Rev Keith Jones, was in such haste to declare the winner he very nearly fell down the Minster steps. Two passers-by unwittingly got through the cordon and were pounced on by a couple of Minster ushers. And the whole thing was done and dusted before the Archbishop's PR man arrived.

Dr John will be glad he stayed in Birmingham.

WE have reached day five of our Five Days Of Death. And we end with an extract from the epitaph of Henry Jenkins (d 1670), found in Bolton-upon-Swale churchyard, which gives us all hope...

A person obscure in birth,

But of a life truly memorable...

A life of labour and a mind at ease

He lived to the amazing age

Of 169 years!

Updated: 10:43 Friday, July 22, 2005