Another side of David's life is his fascination with vintage cars. "I've had five Bentleys, old ones. And
once I spotted this competition, it promised a vintage Bentley to the winner. There were 30,000 entrants and I won it!
So when they told me I could have five thousand pounds or the car, I asked them what chassis the car had. And they told
me and I realised that in fact the car was worth less than the cash, so I grabbed the cash. Then we spent it.
You don't mess around with five thousand pounds. We went back to America and had a marvellous time. Then we thought,
shall we stay? Shall we go back to Tulsa? All there was at the time was my Waggoners Walk role.
And sure enough, back we came."
Back in England, David was offered a new role: Bill Warren, the barman at the Crossroads Motel. "It turned out
to be the nicest, funniest and most delightful job I've ever had. I love it dearly, it is great fun and I think that
Crossroads means a lot to a lot of people. There are some very fine actors in Crossroads, there always
has been. I mean when you think what you are doing: you're working about four times the speed of any other television
programme. If you can give a performance and still stay alive out there it's very important."
How long Valla will stay with Crossroads is another thing. Obviously it depends a great deal on what happens
to Bill Warren, but apart from that, David Valla has too many other interests to stay an actor for ever. "I am a happy
man. I enjoy Crossroads tremendously, but I don't want to be sitting around as a has-been at fifty. After
all, who's to say where my next job is coming from? Anyway, I'd like to be involved in the management and production
side of things. I don't deny my problem - I'm a late starter. But now I've woken up there are a lot of things
to do."
"The point is that everything leads to something else. I think it is marvellous that Crossroads has all
those millions of fans. They give you freedom to do what you want to do. And I've been given the freedom to be
amusing, which is great because Bill Warren didn't start off as a funny part, but as a heavy. But Jack (Barton, the
producer of Crossroads) saw something that he felt would be amusing and for that I am very grateful. Very
grateful indeed. I live a good life. I've got a beautiful house in the country. I'm having a damned good
time."
