From the British movie magazine Empire 5/97

"All I know is that I put my heart and soul into that character," says Gary Burghoff on his role as America's favourite bespectacled khaki gofer in both Robert Altman's movie M*A*S*H and the hit TV series that followed it. "It was a lot of fun. We shot it on the Paramount ranch, it was like camping out."

Burghoff actually got his start as another of America's favourites: Cartoonist Schultz's Charlie Brown in the stage musical version of 'You're A Good Man, Charlie Brown'.

"That was a very exciting time for me," he remembers. "After six years of struggling and studying, suddenly I was in this wonderful hit musical."

While Burghoff trod the boards for three years, firstly in New York and then in LA, producer Ingo Preminger had bigger plans. "While I was there I was asked by the producer to come in for an interview for a new motion picture called M*A*S*H. I think I was recommended by Otto Preminger who'd seen me in Charlie Brown." The result was one of cinema's seminal anti-war movies, but the film's success caught everyone concerned off guard. "When M*A*S*H premiered in Westwood, I called the manager to ask for seats and he said, 'Are you kidding? Who do you think you are? You come and wait in line like everybody else.' So I was feeling really dejected but when I got there the line went round the block one and a half times. I was just standing there and then I heard this familiar voice, and standing about four people in front of me is Robert Altman. That sort of eased my ego." The result of the movie's phenomenal popularity was M*A*S*H the television series, which apart from Burghoff, had a totally different cast.

"That was no problem. They were all wonderful people. The difficult thing was doing a television series. I've never worked so hard in my life."

But what does he make of accusations that the series watered down the moral punch of the original - the fact, for instance, that one of the first changes was the removal of the lyric 'Suicide is Painless' from the opening titles?

That music had been banned by a lot of radio stations at the time he explains. "There were a growing number of teenage suicides and I think they were worried that people would get the wrong message. There were network guidelines at the time dealing with profanity and violence, but we tended to do any storyline as long as it had been properly researched."

Burghoff left the show after five years.