Today's Blind Items - The Crew - Part One - A Dancing Boy Blind Item

Now that you know I did a burglary back in the day, I guess I should confess who else was in the crew. I'll start with the most obvious - someone you already know, and I just went on at some length about, because he was the ringleader: our Fagin.

(He hadn't yet in a small screen sense tried to turn a certain orphan onto smoking and adult videos, but he would before long.)

His mischievousness helped him to nearly get but ultimately lose the role (on the same network) that would help to launch a major acting career. This was in the months after the kid brother role, and the pilot for this one series. I know you know the one because I was on set sometimes too - the main actor could have been an older brother to me.

But the boy in question here - when asked to fetch the DynaTyac from one of the producer's cars - decided it might be a better idea to take said Mercedes for a little ride. That's when/how he lost the role of the mischievous friend to the other actor.

This particular lot had a free speech zone back in the day, largely because several current and former actor kids had become highly religious, and wanted a place to express their views. Seeing the crowd around this one actor kid turned preacher - get to who this was later - our actor kid wanted that kind of attention.

So he tried it himself, and...no one cared.

Undeterred, he decided to start preaching the gospel...of mischief (ie you actor kids can do whatever you want, regardless of what your parents say, because the book of Randy and Jeff). Who actually fell for this? Well, me for one (but those ideas were Very Popular with the tween set). I was mesmerized, and so were some others. We became his Oliver, and Artful Dodger, and Charley Bates.

He got us into big, big trouble.