press launch at the Café Royal in Regent Street, London, writer Steven Moffat pledged to write an episode in which Mark is naked throughout. To a large extent, this vow is realised in the second series. Between 1991 and 1995, Bathurst also appeared on television in No Job for a Lady, The House of Eliott and The Detectives and on stage in The Choice, George Bernard Shaw's Getting Married at Chichester with Dorothy Tutin and Gogol's The Nose adapted by Alastair Beaton, which played in Nottingham and Bucharest. He also filmed a role in The Wind in the Willows (Terry Jones, 1996) as St John Weasel. Wider recognition In 1996, while appearing in The Rover at the Salisbury Playhouse, Bathurst got an audition for the Granada Television comedy pilot Cold Feet. He arrived for the audition "bearded and shaggy", on account of his role in the play, and did not expect to win the role of upper-middle class management consultant David Marsden. The role in the pilot was only minor and created at the last minute to support characters played by James Nesbitt and Helen Baxendale; the only character note in the script about David related to his high salary. Bathurst identified the character as merely a "post-Thatcherite whipping boy". Bathurst reprised the role in the Cold Feet series, which ran for five years from 1998 to 2003. He described the character of David as an "emotional cripple", originally with little depth. The third series features an affair between David and a political activist played by Yasmin Bannerman. Bathurst appreciated the opportunity to bring some depth to a previously one-dimensional character, but was more impressed with the storylines that came out of the affair, rather than the affair itself: "It was the deception, the guilt and the recrimination rather than the actual affair, which was neither interesting nor remarkable". Like other cast members, Bathurst was able to suggest storylines as the series went on; one episode features David celebrating his fortieth birthday and Bathurst suggested the character could get a Harley-Davidson motorbike. Granada paid for him to take motorcycle lessons and a test. On the day before taking his test, the filming of a scene where David takes off on his new bike was scheduled. Bathurst "wobbled, missed the camera and crashed into the pavement", leading director Simon Delaney to exclaim it was the funniest thing he had ever seen.