David Hayman ushers me into the spartan offices of his charity, Spirit Aid,
with a flourish. “As you can see,” he says, “there’s no expense spared when
it comes to our headquarters.” We head off on a brief tour that takes in an
editing suite, where volunteers are piecing together short films, before
going downstairs, where Hayman offers me a seat on an old couch while he
grabs a rickety chair that appears close to collapse.
The bare surroundings, however, don’t tell the whole story. Since Hayman, the
actor best known for playing Detective Chief Superintendent Michael Walker
in ITV’s Trial and Retribution, established his Glasgow-based charity in
2001, it has become one of Scotland’s most successful small-scale
humanitarian organisations.
What started as a modest proposal to raise funds by putting on concerts has
evolved into an international body with medical projects in some of the
poorest countries in the world, including Afghanistan, Sri Lanka, South
Africa and Malawi. The charity has grown so strong that Hayman believes it
is now time to put it on an official footing in countries where it has so
far managed to evade the bureaucracy that can smother vulnerable
organisations.
One of those countries is Afghanistan, where the future for western aid
organisations hangs in the balance after 34-year-old Gayle Williams was shot
in Kabul on her way to work at the British-registered Christian charity
Serve Afghanistan last month.
Her murder sparked fears that Taliban militants were targeting foreign aid
workers to force them out of the country. In total, almost 30 aid workers
have been killed this year, the overwhelming majority Afghans. Serve has
already suspended its operations in the country, and Hayman, who plans to
visit Spirit Aid’s Afghan office in a couple of months’ time, agrees that
the security situation could result in other organisations, including his,
pulling out.
“In the last year I’ve noticed a big difference,” he says. “The situation in
Kabul is very tense. The expat community have always had a sort of bravado
about them, a black humour, but now very few are going outside their front
doors.”
So far the 14 Afghans who work for Spirit Aid in the northern Baghlan province
have not experienced any trouble, but Hayman is cautious enough to ask me
not to name the town where they live and work. He also accepts that his
spontaneous trips there, entering the country on a tourist visa then
gladhanding village elders and mullahs in exchange for being allowed to
work, are no longer feasible in such jittery times.
“I’ve always managed to work under the radar and avoid red tape,” he says. “We
do things low-key: there’s no sign on the door or on our buildings. Our
trucks don’t advertise who we are. But it’s getting to the stage that if we
are to stay, I have to officially register as a non-governmental
organisation. I need to sit down with my directors and work out whether we
stay or withdraw.”
Hayman, who regards Afghanistan as the most important country in his global
humanitarian operation, wants to stay. “If you go into a war zone, you are
making a statement and you have to be prepared to stand by it.” On previous
visits, he has been asked by local elders if he wants armed security. He
always says no. His next trip might be different.
The fraught situation is a far cry from Hayman’s first visit to the country in
2002, when he arrived with £10,000 in cash to spend on medical treatment for
children. His money paid for a clinic in the foothills of the Hindu Kush
mountains that serves more than 120,000 people. Spirit Aid also has two
mobile units, and child mortality in the area has dropped, thanks to a basic
immunisation programme.
Hayman, 57, spends several months a year flying around the world visiting his
charity’s relief projects. He employs indigenous workers wherever possible,
and keeps in constant touch with them. He also oversees the fundraising arm
of the operation, including Operation Loo Roll, a project to sell toilet
paper to companies, with a portion of the revenue going directly to Spirit
Aid. Last year it raised £100,000.
There’s a justifiable note of pride in his voice as he talks about how the
charity’s money is spent: a school that has just opened in the Khayelitsha
township on the outskirts of Cape Town; an orphanage set up in Sri Lanka
soon after the 2004 tsunami; an Aids creche in Malawi.
Hayman didn’t set out to lead such a diffuse organisation. In 2001, his aims
were humble — he and a group of friends would raise money for children
through gigs in Glasgow. A year on, it was just Hayman and one friend and no
gigs. Then it was just Hayman. “I could have walked away from it, but I
decided to give it one more go,” he says. “I begged, borrowed and stole
enough money to keep going. Somehow, I scraped money together and made my
first solo trip to Afghanistan. I was hooked.”
When he’s not administering aid in foreign lands, Hayman dedicates himself to
acting. Last year, he worked for eight months on Trial and Retribution and
took on a role in The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas, the film based on John
Boyne’s book about the Holocaust, seen through the eyes of an eight-year-old
child.
So is acting still his first love? Hayman bursts out laughing: “If I could
walk away from my industry tomorrow, I would. I’d spend all my time
overseas.” But his film and television work must be lucrative? “They are,”
he says. “I use my TV money to subsidise the work we do. I do need it.”
After 10 years of playing DCS Walker, he has no plans to hand in his badge,
even though filming takes place in London and Hayman hates spending time
away from his wife, Alice, and their sons David, Sammy and Sean, who live in
the west end of Glasgow. “I rent a flat when I’m there and live like a
monk,” he says.
He has agreed that when the next series is commissioned, he will direct the
opening episode. He’s never directed himself in a starring role before but
doesn’t envisage any problems. “I have been playing the guy for 10 years,
after all,” he says. “I really should know how to do it by now.”
Lynda La Plante, who writes Trial and Retribution, also has faith in him. “I
trust her and she trusts me. She might write, ‘He sniffs,’ and I’ll turn it
into a full-blown breakdown, but it works.”
He has a cheerful scepticism towards his profession. “Sometimes I think, is
acting really a way for a grown man to make a living? Occasionally, when I’m
shaving my head to play Walker and putting on that Armani suit, I think,
what am I doing? This isn’t a proper job.”
That’s certainly the view his parents took when he told them he wanted to be
an actor. One of three children growing up in a working-class family in
Drumchapel, Glasgow, he was expected to leave school and get a job like his
father, an electrician. Lacking any academic qualifications — “I was a
dreamer at school” — he started work as a would-be engineer at 16.
One day, wearing his grease-stained boiler suit, Hayman got off the bus from
work and marched into the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama, where
he grandly announced his intention to become an actor. “I know it sounds
crazy,” he says. “I still have no idea where that came from. I am a shy
person. There was no family history of acting. It was an entirely unexpected
thing to do and I can’t explain it.”
On the advice of the academy’s staff, Hayman signed up with an amateur
dramatics group in Maryhill Road. His father was appalled, his mother more
supportive. The next year he was accepted to study drama and — he touches
wood as he says this — he hasn’t been out of work since.
It took 10 years for his father to grudgingly accept Hayman’s chosen career.
It was not until he appeared as hard man Jimmy Boyle in the film A Sense of
Freedom that his father acknowledged his work — and then only because his
workmates had seen the movie and said he was good.
Now Hayman’s parents live near Brisbane, Australia, close to his sister, who
emigrated more than 20 years ago. His mother, Mary, 83, was diagnosed with
Parkinson’s disease 17 years ago and her condition has deteriorated. “It’s
very sad,” he says. “I was there two months ago and I’ll go over again soon.
She’s very frail now and completely dependent on my father to look after
her.”
With his brother living in America, Hayman is the only member of his family
left in Scotland. “It’s a bit strange that out of the five of us, I’m the
only one here, but I love this country and I love Glasgow. There’s nowhere
else in the world I’d rather live.”
In the 1980s, Hayman was a member of the Labour party, but on the day it moved
away from its unilateral denunciation of nuclear weapons, he ripped up his
membership card. Since then, he has aligned himself with the SNP and become
an advocate for independence. He believes Alex Salmond’s government has done
a fantastic job over the past 18 months in all areas except one. “Their plan
to raise the age at which you can buy alcohol is a big mistake. They’ve shot
themselves in the foot with that. It’s an appalling idea and smacks of Big
Brother,” he says. “It will turn a lot of young people away from the party.”
In part, he’s basing his opinion on the reaction of youngsters that he’s
worked with through a branch of Spirit Aid called Shooters. It’s a project
that invites disadvantaged teenagers to make short films about any aspect of
their lives. More than 400 have taken part, writing, producing and editing
their own work. “Film-making is kind of sexy and that’s what drags the kids
off the streets,” Hayman says.
With trips abroad in the pipeline, Hayman is looking towards the possible
expansion of Spirit Aid next year. “I’d like to get a foothold in
Palestine,” he says. “Things are going to have to change over there. It
wouldn’t be an easy place to go, but I’m thinking of what we could do to
help.”
www.spiritaid.org.uk
