For five years, actor Tony Head stirred the nation's heart in the Gold Blend coffee advertisements.

Millions tuned in hoping to find whether he would ever earn anything hotter than a steaming mug of instant with costar Sharon Maughan.

And now he has...a leading part in a TV horror series about slaughtering vampires.

His role in the chilling series is a far cry from the Gold Blend charmer who became every mother's choice as a prospective son-in-law. But just like the TV commercials, Buffy the Vampire Slayer has already become a cult hit in America, where it is into its third series.

Following a feature-length pilot film last week, it begins a 22-week run on BBC2 on Wednesday and promises to make him a star here all over again.

Head's 'will they, won't they?' relationship with Maughan became a soap opera which gripped audiences worldwide.

On their last appearance in Britain in 1992, he finally said 'I love you,' watched by 20 million viewers.

Perhaps it's just as well, then, that he retains his clean-cut image in Buffy, which is described as an X-Files for teenagers. He stars as a school librarian who encourages 16-year-old Buffy, played by Sarah Michelle Gellar, to continue her work vanquishing vampires wo are recruiting children to an evil breeding programme.

Head, 43, says: 'It's not classic horror genre because you never see any violence, although the special effects are quite scary.' It was his Gold Blend fame that helped him win the role. And the commercials have echoes in his life even today. Head has never married his girlfriend Sarah Fisher, 34, the mother of his two daughters, although they are still very much in love after 16 years. They also spend long periods apart, Sarah at their farmhouse near Bath and Tony filming for two-thirds of the year in America.

Head says: 'It's a little like me and Sharon in the adverts, with me turning up on the doorstep after I've been abroad. But it suits us that we never married and we will keep it that way.

'It gives us both our own space, which has maybe helped keep the relationship so strong.' He adds: 'The coffee commercials were a job, one of many, and it was very successful. I'm very proud of what Sharon and I achieved. So is she, and we're still great friends."

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It also made stars of the two relatively unknown actors who portrayed them. Even now, almost a year after the Gold Blend TV commercials ended, Tony Head and Sharon Maughan are still instantly recognisable.

While Sharon has been pursuing a film career in America, Tony, 40, has returned to the West End stage in a new production of the Forties thriller Rope. Yet still he has to negotiate his way through a string of fans waving jars of coffee outside the stage door at Wyndham's Theatre.

The actor has no delusions about the impact that the five-and-a-half year advertising campaign has had on his career - not to mention his bank balance - but the adulation has not always been welcome. For three months he was the target of a Fatal Attraction-style obsession when a young Frenchwoman pursued him relentlessly.

'She was a loony called Carole,' says Tony. 'Somehow she got hold of my number and used to ring me all hours of the day and night. It got to the point where I would slam the phone down, pick it up half an hour later and she was still there on the other end of the line.

'I didn't want to report her to the police because she wasn't actually threatening my life, but I was very nervous. I was convinced she was going to turn up at our house one day and embark on some kind of Fatal Attraction attack. Then suddenly it stopped and I don't what happened to her.'

So far, that one incident has been the only downside of the phenomenon created by the Gold Blend adverts, a phenomenon that has kept him constantly in work. Tony has deliberately avoided roles that merely reflected his Gold Blend character, opting instead for the opposite extreme. He played the transvestite Frank 'n' Furter in The Rocky Horror Show and is now playing a homosexual poet in Rope.

Both roles are at a variance with his image as red-blooded, heterosexual Gold Blend man, but Tony is not worried. 'I recognise my feminine side and I'm not frightened to use it for roles like this,' he says. 'I don't want to sound like a New Man, but I do believe there are a few of us men who have woken up to the fact that you don't have to fight to get on with women.

'Meeting Sarah, my girlfriend, has probably changed me. We row because I do have a temper, but Sarah has taught me, for example, not to slam my fist into the wall in a heated moment. Even though I would never hit her, she has pointed out to me that it is still a physically threatening gesture and that it reminds her that I can always overpower her.'

Tony has lived with 30-year-old Sarah Fisher for 11 years and they have two daughters, Emily, five, and Daisy, three. But they have never married. 'If our living together ever caused our kids any distress we would marry without a shadow of a doubt. But I don't personally want to change our relationship - it's very good as it is.'

Although in terms of financial security and instant fame, the Gold Blend adverts changed Tony and Sarah's life overnight, the biggest change in their lives occurred 18 months ago when a close friend of theirs, Cynthia Palmer Lund, begged them to help her because her daughter, Erin, had been diagnosed as having a brain tumour.

The couple launched a campaign to raise the £35,000 needed to send Erin for alternative treatment in America, with Tony personally donating a large chunk of his earnings from the TV commercials. Sadly, their efforts have been in vain and Erin does not have long to live.

Tony finds it difficult to contain the emotion in his voice as he talks about the three-year-old's plight.

'She is dying. It has gone much slower than any of us expected, but there isn't any hope. She can't be moved at all now, and we are just praying she has a peaceful end.

'We have become so close and so involved that it has changed our lives dramatically. It has certainly made me aware of my own mortality and that of my children. It's terrifying. You suddenly become aware of how tenuous life is.'

Because of Erin, Tony and Sarah have re-evaluated their lives. Sarah has become involved with a cancer treatment centre, specialising in alternative medicine, and the couple are considering turning their home into a therapy centre for the families of cancer victims.

Tony explained: 'When you are told that your child has a terminal illness, you are just left to get on with it. There isn't really any counselling available. If we can do something to help them, we will.'

As he talks about the tragedy that has touched his life, Tony seems far removed from Gold Blend man. But the twinkle in his eye and the wry smile that led to him being cast in the commercials is still there.

So much so that, although the commercials have come to an end in Britain, he is now as big a star in America. He and Sharon have been signed up indefinitely to continue their romance in commercials for Taster's Choice - the American equivalent of Gold Blend - and will be filming the next episode in the romantic saga in July.

'I know we got labelled as the Gold Bland couple in Britain, but the characters are slightly different in the American campaign. They wanted to get away from the charming English guy, so my character is now an American and much more up-front.

'I'm delighted to still be doing it, although I never thought I would be. It was a remarkably original idea in the first place and it became a consummate piece of drama. Amazing, when you think that all it was meant to do was sell coffee.'

Caption: Tony Head with girlfriend Sarah and younger daughter Daisy

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Page created May 1999; last updated January 18, 2001. Original material © Betsy Vera (bentley@umich.edu). This website is for information and entertainment purposes only and is not intended to infringe on copyrights held by others.