Character: Leo Maccoby/Mason
Actor: Tony Haygarth
Episode: The French Drop

Tony Haygarth turns nasty when he appears as a spy in Foyle's War.

"Maccoby is a rather sinister character who is involved in a dirty tricks spy network. His past is quite shady, he has run girls to get information from the Germans, a bit like a pimp, and Foyle put him in jail a few years earlier.

"When we meet him he is doing well, but he has a terrible problem with Foyle. He's so vindictive against him and plans on killing him. He's a bad egg all round. I hope people dislike him.

"He looks a bit rough. I was doing The Bill at the time and had to have a beard for that and couldn't shave it off. But I think it was good for Maccoby because it gives him a bit of an edge."

Tony is well known to viewers from his role as Vic Snow in ITV1's Where The Heart Is.

"I was in it for five years and it was a great series for me, especially in the early days. I had some very emotional scenes such as when Pam Ferris' character dies and I loved that. Vic was such a nice man, but I'd got a bit sick of playing the good guy so it's been great to have played a couple of villains in my last few jobs.

"In my life I have played more villains than good guys. I played the most violent headbutt ever seen on television in Between The Lines and I got thrown out of a cab once when the driver recognised me as Muller from Holocaust. Even though it's not pleasant to play such dark characters it is more interesting. You don't play them as villains because they don't think they are."

Recent years have seen Tony developing another side to his work - writing.

"When I left Where The Heart Is, I wrote a play called The Lie, which got good reviews. I have a huge interest in Elizabethan history and my latest play Of Dire Combustion is also Elizabethan, about gunpowder, which the RSC has asked to see.

"I love the era and I research it thoroughly. I write in authentic Elizabethan, using old English glossaries to get the text right. It seems to come quite naturally to me - perhaps I lived in that era in another life!"
Tony's other acting credits include TV film Scoop, directed by Foyle's War director Gavin Millar, Clocking Off, The Royal, Murder In Mind, Hornblower, Fields of Gold, Sharpe and Our Friends in the North.