Mike’s “Brando” moment

Mike Lockley

Award-winning Sunday Mercury journalist Mike Lockley is to tread the boards – cast as himself in a play based upon his own feature-writing.

Mike (pictured) told media website Hold The Front Page: “I’m just pondering how to play ‘me’, to be honest. I’m leaning towards Brando in Apocalypse Now. Bit nervous, but, on a positive note, I’ve played me for 64 years, so if anyone can pull it off…”

His bid for acting stardom comes after Walsall-born playwright Ian Henery was inspired by one of Mike’s articles in the Mercury. Mike’s feature ‘Fu Manchu was a Brummie’ chronicled the career of Birmingham author Sax Rohmer and the prejudices England’s growing Chinese population faced after he created the character of evil criminal mastermind Fu Manchu.

The article prompted Ian to pen a play chronicling the struggles faced by the first wave of Chinese immigrants to settle in the city. The plot of ‘Coming to Birmingham: Making of a Modern City’ sees two Chinese families, enraged by the Mercury’s article, confront Sax Rohmer.

Mike, a former Columnist of the Year winner at the Birmingham Press Club-organised Midlands Media Awards, will play himself in an open-air performance of the play to be staged at Birmingham’s Cannon Hill Park on 25 June.

Explaining why he created the play, Ian said: “Even the clothes Fu Manchu wore were women’s garments. Yet Rohmer, too, was an immigrant – his family came from Ireland. He created the stereotype that sparked films and books.”

He said Mike had produced “powerful words.”

Ian, who is a former Walsall Poet Laureate, was commissioned to write a trilogy of plays for China West Midlands, which strengthens connections in business, education, culture, art and sports for deeper understanding, greater collaboration and mutual prosperity between the West Midlands and China.