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Reference > Erinsborough News > Off To Hospital!

He’s been in A Country Practice and The Flying Doctors and he’s going back to Neighbours. Then’s it’s off to hospital…

Former Neighbours star Geoff Paine, a favourite with fans as nice-guy Clive Gibbons, is returning to the top-rating soap… but not for long!

Having left Neighbours in 1986, Geoff this month begins a six-week return to Ramsay Street before tackling City Hospital, the working title of a new Network Ten series. Geoff and his fiancée Kath will marry in September and move from Melbourne to Sydney, where the show will be produced by Grundy Television. It is rumoured to be earmarked as a lead-in to Ten’s news.

Geoff says: “They may be cutting the news to a half-hour and filling that block with the show.” He will not comment on his role in the show. Geoff is keen to be involved in another long-running soap and, despite a two-year absence, there is no doubt his Neighbours character is alive and well – especially in England!

Geoff took a holiday in the UK last year, a daunting experience. “I didn’t expect such a reaction but Neighbours is quite huge,” he says. “Gawked at” by fans, Geoff’s holiday soon became a nightmare. “We had a terrible time – we couldn’t go anywhere,” Geoff says. “Walking down the street people would freak out. There’s no situation where you like being stared at except when you’re on stage. To be scrutinised is awful.”

“We became a bit paranoid because we had to watch where we went and what we looked like.” Hounded by the press – “they’re bloodhounds!” – Geoff was followed by two reporters who “wanted to have a chat and they had loads of money”.

“I told them I wasn’t interested but they persisted. It was a quick introduction to the tabloid system!” Despite that, he is looking forward to Clive’s return. “Clive Gibbons, as I remember him, had been a doctor who had gone through staid beginnings,” Geoff says. “He left medicine, moved to Ramsay Street and set about various schemes and dreams but returned to doctoring. Poor Clive spent much of his time unlucky in love. He did have a love interest but was unsuccessful. It was his character quirk.”

When Geoff left Neighbours, Clive “moved around the corner”. “For six months people still thought I was there because a character would pick up the phone and say ‘Thanks Clive’,” Geoff says. “Last I heard he’d gone bush.”

While that was going on, Geoff had the chance to play a variety of roles. Besides a long-running stint in Dizzy Spells at Melbourne’s Last Laugh, he has been a regular guest in A Country Practice and recent did an episode of The Flying Doctors, playing Peter O’Brien’s brother - “which was funny because I was his neighbour in Neighbours”.

Off-screen, Geoff’s love life is flourishing, but most of his tv characters seem to be “the kiss of death to their partner”. “It would be a pleasant surprise if my character in the forthcoming series had better luck in the love stakes,” he says.

This article originally appeared in TV Week magazine dated 5th August 1989 and was written by Nicola Murphy

Article submitted by Steve