Reece Dinsdale on his dad’s final gift to him before his death on Father’s Day

Time was when it would have been easy to introduce the subject of today’s big interview. I’d have written: “Actor Reece Dinsdale, probably best known for his roles opposite John Thaw in Home to Roost, in terrifying apocalyptic drama Threads and cult classic football hooligan movie I.D.” That, while still accurate, will no longer suffice. Dinsdale has added a few more strings to his increasingly impressive bow, some a little more unexpected than others.

Among them is “associate artist of Leeds Playhouse”, which, while unexpected when announced a couple of years ago, remains in Dinsdale’s wheelhouse. Then there’s Royal Television Society-award-winning TV director and, more unexpectedly, social media sensation – on Twitter he talks honestly and openly about life’s vicissitudes and isn’t afraid to take on the likes of Piers Morgan.

Since the Covid-19 lockdown, he can also add “live-from-his-front-room broadcaster”.

Just when you might start to wonder what else he could possibly add to his CV, he popped up on our screens, two weeks into lockdown, as a mysterious newcomer to the village of ITV soap Emmerdale.

“It’s been a very interesting 18 or so months,” says Dinsdale, from the Harrogate home which has become the venue for his first foray into live video broadcasting.

The previous week he reached an audience of more than 30,000 on the hour-long chat he broadcast via Twitter.

“It’s taken me a long time to get to the point where I had the confidence to do something like that, to say ‘actually, I do have something to say and what I have to say is worth something’. I didn’t know if I had the vocabulary and I had these demons in the back of my mind saying I wasn’t intelligent enough, and it took a long time to slay those demons. I didn’t know if anyone would be interested, but I thought I would give it a go.”

The numbers of people watching ran into the tens of thousands and he kept the video chats going for eight weeks. However, it was never a numbers game for Dinsdale. It was about authenticity. “It really has been unreal, the response was phenomenal,” he says.

It’s this quality of modesty, of surprise at his popularity, that makes him so likeable and has made him such a hit on the social media platform Twitter. He is genuinely taken aback by how highly – and fondly – regarded he is.

The Dinsdale I’m speaking to is a changed character from who he was. There was a definite line in the sand, a moment that changed the man. It happened last year with the death of his father.

In January 2019 he was preparing to take on another stage role, in which he would have no doubt been brilliant, the latest in a list that included playing Alan Bennett at the Leeds Playhouse in 2014 and the lead role, one of the best performances I have ever seen on stage from any actor, in (The Fall Of) The Master Builder at the same theatre three years later. The role last January was Benedick in Northern Broadsides’ Much Ado About Nothing, due to be directed by Conrad Nelson.

“I turned up on the first day of rehearsals and the company was lovely, Conrad is a great friend, the place I was staying was great and I was all set to do this tour,” says Dinsdale.

“We had the read through and at the end of the first day my wife phoned. She said, ‘I’ve got some bad news, it’s your dad.’”

The news was that Reece’s father, Alan, had cancer and that he had three months to live. “This searing pain went through my body. I was in agony,” says Dinsdale.

“He wasn’t just my dad, he was my best mate. To be told he had three months was something I just couldn’t get my head around. He was 87 and wouldn’t be around forever, I knew that, but this was just unreal.”

Shakespeare would have to wait, Dinsdale needed to be with his dad. He left Northern Broadsides and headed home.

The emotional bond between the two of them ran deep.

“There was nothing we hadn’t said to each other, we had said it all already,” says Dinsdale. “I decided I was going to spend every day with him. It was a gift, but also difficult because I found that I had started grieving for him while he was still here.”

A couple of years earlier Dinsdale joined Twitter, partly to “remind people I was there and working”, and as his father’s illness progressed he found he had another reason to use it – as a way of sharing the grief at his impending loss. His raw and honest posts struck a nerve.

“I’m an open book and I was proud of my dad, so I was open and honest about that. I knew he was going to go, but I didn’t want him to pass and not have the moment marked. He was my mate, he was my role model, he was my glorious dad and sharing my thoughts and feelings about him was me openly grieving.

“He stood for so many people’s dads or mums, brothers and partners. I was getting constant messages from people saying ‘my dad was like that too’, or ‘my mum did this’. It was a wonderful way to see that we can all actually help each other.”

His father passed away on Father’s Day, last summer. Dinsdale was due to start shooting an episode of the Jimmy McGovern drama Moving On, working as a director for the second time on the show, the following day.

“Dad’s final gift was to teach me to be myself and have the strength to stand tall and proud, be who I am and have no fear. Before I started shooting, dad said ‘do it for me. Go and show them how good you are and what you can do’. Hand in glove with the grief came empowerment. It was an incredible gift he gave me,” he says.

Dinsdale has used that empowerment to say “yes” to most things that have crossed his desk and piqued his interest over the ensuing 12 months. It’s why he’s ended up taking a role in Emmerdale, where he recently arrived as Paul, a blast from Mandy Dingle’s past, and why he’s also been directing episodes.

It’s also why he’s not been afraid to speak his mind, particularly on Twitter where he took Piers Morgan to task for writing something about Nigel Farage “looking like a leader”.

Dinsdale disagreed with this assessment of Farage. Morgan then replied, saying: “This may explain why you haven’t had any lead roles for years.”

Without his father’s strength and belief, Dinsdale might have left it there. Instead he replied, pointing out that he’d been busy as a director and winning Royal Television Society Awards – against the show presented by Morgan.

The internet enjoyed that one. “People kept replying ‘boom’ but it was all a bit of fun,” says Dinsdale, with a chuckle. So there he is, Reece Dinsdale, a top man having fun. Perhaps that should be added to his CV, too.

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