Podcast: You're On Tonight
Episode: I’ve Understudied The Same Role For 15 Years - Longevity, Addiction & Being a World Record Holder | Clive Marlowe
Pub date: 2026-02-11

Get Podcast Transcript →
powered by Listen411 - fast audio-to-text and summarization

Clive Marlowe is a world-record holder: he has been covering the same roles on The Mousetrap for 15 years, making him the longest-serving understudy in history and understudy royalty. This is an episode like no other.

Clive reveals incredible stories from his career, including show-stops, acting through COVID, and the terrifying moment when you’re finally told ‘you’re on tonight.’ He reflects not only on what it’s like to be thrown onstage unprepared, but how to deal with your moment being over, and what it can feel like to be perpetually waiting in the wings. Covering the same roles for so long, Clive talks as well about what it’s like when the aches and pains you’ve been performing start to become real.

Most inspiring, however, is Clive’s own personal story. In this episode he speaks honestly and beautifully about the challenges he’s overcome in his life including addiction and isolation, how socialising while in recovery can be profoundly difficult, and how, in an unstable profession, he may have found the one stable job going.

Clive Marlowe - You’re On Tonight.

To watch this episode in video format on YouTube click here: https://youtu.be/MtPnQIGxtDA

If you enjoyed the show, you can follow us at:

Instagram @youreontonight

TikTok @youreontonight

YouTube @youreontonight

Get in contact at: youreontonight@gmail.com

Hosted by Liam Horrigan & Kara Alberts-Turner

Produced by and recorded at The Sound Company, London.

For The Sound Company: Dom Boucher, Luke Nagy, Gareth Wood & Nick Thackeray-Cron alongside Freya Baldwin & Seb Stone.

Show image by Louisa Sexton.

*Trigger warning* - This episode contains themes of addiction and recovery.

If you'd like to know more, head to the NHS website: https://www.nhs.uk/live-well/addiction-support/drug-addiction-getting-help/

For Resolve: https://www.resolve.org.uk/

Produced by The Sound Company. www.sound.co.uk

Get in touch:

youreontonight@gmail.com

www.instagram.com/youreontonight

www.youtube.com/youreontonight

www.tiktok.com/youreontonight

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Kara Alberts-Turner, Liam Horrigan and The Sound Company Ltd, which is the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Listen Notes, Inc.