12 November 2005
REAL LIFE: HELPING MAKES HIS HEART SING
SCOTS ACTOR DAVID HAYMAN SET UP SPIRIT AID TO HELP FIGHT INJUSTICE IN THE WORLD AND HE LOVES BEING ABLE TO MAKE A DIFFERENCE WHEREVER THE CHARITY IS NEEDED
Paul English
AS DCS Michael Walker, David Hayman plays a hard-nosed cop who spends his life devoted to the pursuit of good against evil In real life, the Glasgow actor has a similar fight on his hands. But it's not as simple as snaring a crook or caging a murderer in TV'sTrial and Retribution.
When he's not filming with the likes of Colin Firth and Kevin Bacon in new flick Where The Truth Lies, David and his Glasgow-based charity Spirit Aid are trying to turn around some of the world's more biting injustices.
From helping Glasgow kids beat the poverty trap to providing medical supplies to communities in the remote Afghan hills, the former steelworker refers to charity undertakings as his "job".
Acting is just something he does to put food on the table for his wife and three young boys.
Almost 12 months after the Boxing Day tsunami, David is sitting on the calm waters of the River Clyde, eating fish and chips on the Renfrew Ferry.
Spirit Aid have visited Sri Lanka three times since the day the waves rolled in.
Providing much-needed supplies to people living in appalling conditions, they've helped devastated communities sew the seeds of recovery.
Like the earthquake which caused the devastation, the impact of Spirit Aid can be felt thousands of miles from its humble hub in Glasgow city centre.
But even now, as he prepares to extend their mission into South Africa where he is filming a Warner Bros movie with Michael Gambon and Timothy Hutton,David remains humble about the impact of his project. Recalling his visit to Sri Lanka 10 weeks post-tsunami, he says: "At the end of the day, the work we do is like sticking a plaster over the wounds of the world.
"There's so much devastation out there it will take years.
"But to give them their dues, I think the main humanitarian organisations are getting their finger out now.
"I complained at the end of March that I didn't see a penny of the Disasters Emergency Committee money spent.
"I tried to raise the issue but got little joy. I have no idea what was happening, although I think they're starting to sort things out now."
When David and his team first arrived in Sri Lanka in March they were faced with people driven by nothing other than the urge to survive.
An in-house DVD, Children OfThe Tsunami, shows how their minibus was mobbed by desperate locals, pushing and jostling to get their hands on whatever supplies they could.The team were overcome by the demand, closed their doors and drove on, angst etched across their faces. David is not the only well- kent Scot to venture into the mud and mayhem of the disaster-hit region.
In July, River City actress Joyce Falconer who plays Roisin McIntyre in the BBC Scotland soap, joined forces with the charity to spend a month working with children in the stricken region.
And already she's planning a return. She says: "It was a life-changing experience for me.
"I'd never even been out of Europe before, let alone Sri Lanka, and I can safely say it was the most incredible month of my life.
"I'm keen to go back and once I know what the River City filming schedules are like I might try to get back out.
"Spirit Aid have established an orphanage in an area called Hikkaduwa in Sri Lanka and I'd like to get back out there sometime in 2006."
David adds: "Joyce thoroughly enjoyed it. She's now a beast unleashed and she'd go back at the drop of a hat.
"We drove down to Manchester Airport to pick them up when their flight came back in the summer,and they were like 'When can we go back, when can we go back...' They were there for a month working six days a week the whole time."
And Joyce gave the kids more than just hope for the future.
Smiling, David says: "There's a whole young generation of young people in Sri Lanka who go about saying 'Aaaayyye' with that beautiful thick Doric brogue she has. I think it'll be in their official language within a few years."
The two actors are well used to playing the publicity game necessary in their chosen careers. But these trips are anything but a PR exercise.
David says about the July trip: "The maternity hospital had nothing, so we've been equipping them with things.They asked for a kettle. Can you believe that? ? They had no hot water in a maternity hospital and babies were being born on the floor.
"This was July, seven months on. So we bought them a boiler and a kettle, equipped them with baby cots and baby mosquito nets.
"We've adopted an orphanage, we've initiated a farm, we're putting in chickens and cows and trying to establish crops.
"The level of malnutrition in the orphanages was really high. Now kids are eating the produce they planted, getting protein from their own milk, cheese and eggs and selling the surplus to generate revenue for the orphanage.
"We're initiating a carpentry workshop and a metal workshop to train the kids in animal husbandry, gardening, farming, metalwork and carpentry.
"The local jeweller, the father of our interpreter, has also guaranteed to take every single graduate of that orphanage and train them as jewellery-makers if they don't want to be farmers or gardeners or carpenters.We have made an amazing difference in such a short space of time with very little money."
Spirit Aid have also made significant inroads in Afghanistan.
David says: "We run a mobile health clinic in the Hindu Kush mountains in Afghanistan covering an area of a million people with no medical services whatsoever. Since April alone, our mobile clinic has examined and treated 24,000 people in isolated villages. I'm really proud of that."
Back home,David continues the fundraising drive. Last week Glasgow bar Oran Mor staged a charity gig with Alabama 3 and The Sensational Alex Harvey Band.
A drive is in place to have Glasgow bars raise £2250 for a fishing boat to be built and named after them in Sri Lanka.
A Glasgow gig is also planned for Boxing Day to commemorate the one-year anniversary of the tragedy.
Several years back, David tried to stage a Live-Aid style gig at Hampden Park to kick-start Spirit Aid.The project proved too ambitious for a fledgling outfit and failed to come to fruition.
The actor confesses to frustrations with some high profile Scottish rock stars for failing to help him in the past.
And he sees this year's Live 8 as a missed opportunity to raise more money.
"Bob Geldof has been brilliant," he says. "But I think he sidles up to Blair and Bush and Brown a bit too much.
"You have to keep a distance between yourself and politicians because they're a law unto themselves.
"I think hewas getting too comfortable with them.You have to stay impartial in order to be critical."
David's influence isn't as life-reaching as Sir Bob's yet.
His teenage sons and their pals joke about their dad "saving the world" again, yet they too have visited Sri Lanka.
"They went away as boys and came back as men," says David, laughing.
"We've been punching above our weight for three years. And we do work in Scotland too.
"I have three sons, and I look at them and wonder what sort of world they're going to inherit.We're destroying the planet that provides us with sustenance and we're blowing the hell out of each other at the drop of a hat.
"The gap between rich and poor is getting greater in this country.
"If you've got two in every five kids living below the official poverty line then what the hell are we doing?
"There was a report the other week that said 50 per cent of households in Scotland are on less than £10,000 a year. These are appalling figures, and it's things like this that made me start up Spirit Aid.
"I'm not a celebrity, I'm just an actor who keeps his head down.
"But I want to use that gift the best I can to get on with the other stuff I want to do - the stuff that makes my heart sing