"Double Bubble"

Hello there

Well this week has already turned into a right mess.

I am sat writing this late on Sunday night in a bit of a flap as I really wanted to have a hefty day of doing patreon posts today.  The picture above is genuinely the sight beside me right now though. Been so poorly. Didn’t do any completed posts.  I did try to, and I started a few things, but my original plan for the week has all gone to pot. I am taking solace in writing this for the future and hoping that when it reaches your eyes I’ll be loads better.  As it stands, at the time of writing, I have no taste, no smell, am fatigued and blurry eyed. And I have a sore throat and am sneezing loads.

Fancy me?  Yeah, of course you do.  Talent, wit, and charm win out, I know. Plus, I think I genuinely might have sneezed my potential slipped disc back in, so every cloud and all that.

As I mentioned in the post yesterday, not remembering Halloween has thrown me so much.  Not because that’s a big holiday round my house, we know I essentially live in the Haunted Mansion all year round, but because there was stuff I wanted to do for it.  Like an art post of the haunted house I’m making, and certainly a story.  I always do a Halloween story.  Or did.  I tried writing it this morning and did a thousand words, but tapped out. I still reckon you’ll get that within the week, but it’s a shame I missed the day.  I mean, Reboot was using up the post anyway I suppose. I’m going to try my best to rejig and that’s why I’m doing this written post for Tuesday.  It buys me a day more recovery and means I can get the Loopholes podcast for this week recorded and edited.  It’s gonna be a Loopholes Extra predictably, but they’re fun.

Today, I dozed on the sofa, watched some of the Rugby League World Cup games, and had some soup.  It was “Taste The Difference” soup, which felt particularly cruel as I couldn’t even taste the taste, let alone the difference.  Now that’s all out of the way, I’m sat at my desk writing to you before bed.

So what am I going to be talking about anyway?  Can’t do an entire post that’s just excuses mate. Well, my thinking on all this came about when I was having a chat with a pal the other day about how I was ill this time last year too.  Matter of fact, I was in hospital this time last year, this very day is the one-year anniversary of me rushing myself to A&E the morning after the final movie screening.

I was having my usual whine to my pal about how I was still angry at the film making me so ill, how I felt I still haven’t really gotten better from all that, and that it could have been prevented if my requests for help weren’t ignored. All that sort of stuff, and the conversation moved towards her asking me if I felt I’d been mistreated in everything I’ve ever done.  I mean, I do whine a lot.  Only about certain things though.  I suspect there’s a misconception that I do strop about everything.

To those people who know me in real life and have just snorted Coco Pops over their screens at my claim, I shall state my case.  I think, flattering myself as I may well be, I am on the record enough now as somebody who listens, understands, dissects, and judges according to evidence or lack thereof.  I’ve used the word forensic in a facetious way, in mock boast, but it is in my nature to collate.  I write things down and go over them, which means I tend to have a really good overview of situations.  This, coupled with my own basic observation, and unnerving force abilities in spotting a devious'un, means that when I have a whine, I’m usually confident it’s well founded.  Believe it or not, I have no confidence in debating unless I know as much as I can know.  When I used to occasionally do the paper review on Sky News, I used to absolutely dread it for this very reason.  I was totally on the blag because Eamonn Holmes had taken a shine to me and given me a shot.

Bascially, I don’t argue unless I’m really confident I’m correct, and have lots of stuff to back it up with.  That’s why I’m good at dismantling.  It’s not a trick or a skill, it’s basic common sense. Ergo, if I’m whining, it’s not casually or habitually.

At this point my pal said that she’d only asked if I felt I’d been mistreated in everything I’ve ever done and wasn’t expecting me to defend my entire existence quite so vociferously.

So I said that no, I didn’t feel like I’d been mistreated in everything I’ve ever done,  and we got on to me speaking about some times when I felt I’d been treated really well.  The reason I’m writing them here is because I’m not sure I’ve told you before, so we might as well add it to the document.  Whichever of you tries to put all these experiences in order, for my posthumous biography, He Would Have Stopped This Book If He Was Still Alive, I have nothing but sympathy for.  I think there’s plenty here to make a first volume though, if you can get your head round the chronology.

The first one I spoke about was Red Dwarf, which I’ve definitely told you bits of before, but I’m not sure I ever told you the behind-the-scenes details of when I was actually in it.  I’ll tell you right off the bat that I have huge regrets about this, which will probably be obvious, but at the time it felt like the right thing to do. Although, I did also suspect at the time that I would have huge regrets about it in the future.  I’ll explain…

The main reason I’ve been so sad about Red Dwarf of late, is because it was a wonderful thing to be involved with.  That’s why seeing the in-fighting and crumbling now is so depressing.  I was treated so very well at Red Dwarf.  Never wasn’t, not at any point. To this day they were only ever lovely to me.  As this will prove.

I’d joked for ages whilst doing the warmup that I should be in the show as a fifth crew member who has been there all the time.  I’d say that it would be brilliant if the studio audience all cheered when I arrived, so that all the nerds at home would lose their minds thinking they’d missed something.  Then we’d practise it and I’d go onto the set and swan into the bunk room whilst the audience applauded my entrance (not like that).  In all sincerity, that experience would have been enough for me.  Oh I played it cool, of course, but inside it was proper fantasy fulfilment.  I assure you, you had to work really hard to walk around the Red Dwarf set in an apparently matter-of-fact way.

Anyways, on one of these occasions, as I made my way back to the audience, a producer whispered to me that Doug (Naylor) had already written me a part in a later episode.  I think this was when we were filming two series’ back-to-back, so it would have been in the second lot of those eps. I immediately said I wasn’t being serious, but – again – internally, it was like…woah.

Contrary to what certain members of the cast said in interviews on the bonus discs of the home releases, I did not run up to them excitedly saying I was going to be in it.  Does that sound like me?  I’m not saying I wasn’t delighted and excited, internally, but I wasn’t walking around like a competition winner.  I just sat tight, waited to see if it would actually be confirmed, and did all my warm up stuff very professionally (apart from the gatecrashing, stealing a load of popcorn from the set, encouraging nerds to accompany me in an ambush of The Force Awakens set next door, and drawing pictures of the cast on the actual clothes of audience members).

Eventually the script came through, the offer was in place, and it was for an evening that I couldn’t do the actual warm up.  I’m pretty sure this was an attempted bribe to get me to the studio (as you’ll hear about in the second story), but the two scenes I was to be in were pre-records as they had VFX in them. If you’ve seen the episode, you’ll know I was in one scene, but you’ll have also seen a scene that I was written out of, which would have made more sense if I had been in it.  This is because (this is the regret thing) it was my then girlfriends birthday that night and there was a posh-ish hotel booked up north for it.  I mean, I shan’t lie, I wanted to do the other scene instead, not least because it was with the other three cast members that weren’t in my first scene, but felt like it would have been wrong to prioritise it.  Here in 2022 I can tell you it wasn’t, and I should have done the scene, but back then it was. So I didn’t.

They did actually try to rearrange the pre-record for me, but Chris Barrie couldn’t make the proposed time.  There was a short period of about 0.002 of a second where they tried to work out who was more important to have in the scene, and unfortunately concluded they needed Chris more than me.  Actually, you know I said they were only ever lovely to me? I suppose that was a bit insulting.  Chris Barrie had been in loads of them, and this was my one chance.  Telly people, eh?

In a slightly more sincere tone, these are the moments where you feel valued.  When you see people trying to shift things round for you, or even just writing the part in the first place.  If there was a clandestine play to try and bribe me to the studio, that in itself is just a huge compliment and makes you feel well relevant.  As I say, I now wish the bribe had worked.  There was another time it did though…

Lee Mack, once upon a time, was all over me mate.  When I was doing the warm up on Not Going Out, he would (genuinely) regularly say that the thought of me not being there really stressed him out, and he lived in fear of me not being able to make a recording.  I believe he is now a Buddhist, and I’ve not done warm up on it for years because it went family friendly and they didn’t want me being all rude with the audience (as if that was actually filmed, but whatever, I was making a film anyway), so I presume he’s found his inner peace with my absence.  It was like that then though.  It fell short of emotional blackmail, but only marginally.  I never had any issue with it of course, I just – again – felt hugely valued.

The day did arrive though, when I got the series dates through, and there was one I couldn’t do.  I can’t even remember why it was, but it would have been something important.  It wasn’t a personal thing like with Red Dwarf, because I definitely remember some discussion about me being unable to cancel something that was paid so much more that was already in the diary.  That was when I found out my proper value on the show, and it was a great boost.

Lee was quite smart with this really, because he overwhelmed me with information.  A few weeks before, we had been talking about my upcoming night of absence, and he had said “I’ll write you a part in the show”.  I said I didn’t want him to write me a part in the show, and that it wasn’t worth doing that.  I meant that by the way.  I was basically telling him that I wasn’t going to be absent because I didn’t want to be there, it was because something else had got me first.  I can still remember the look he gave me.  We were in the costume and make up department and he had no trousers on but was giving me this sideways glance and smirk.  Like he had something up his sleeve (he did have a shirt on).  I went through to start the warm up, secretly hoping that he’d be so distracted that when I brought him out he would have still forgotten to put trousers on.  He didn’t though.  Not that week.

A few days later, I got the phonecall.  He said he had written me the part of an MC who was compering a battle of the bands that Tim (Vine) would be singing at.  Then he started this relentless pitch to me – paraphrasing – “and that’s going to be filmed in an actual club as a pre-record, so that’s location and you’ll be paid for location, and then I’ve also written you into a scene in the studio, so you’ll get (his words) double bubble for that as you’ll be paid studio, and we’ll make a big thing of it in the recording so you should do the warm up too which we are going to increase the fee for that night  and it’ll be a big event for the audience…so that’s three fees which is decent wedge (again, his words)”

I think he might have been panting by the end of it.

You know that thing, that I think we’ve all done at some point in our lives, where you end up going out with someone because you’ve been wooed by how into you they are?  Not because you were initially into them, but because their attraction to you was flattering and attractive? 

That.  That’s what it was like.  

I mean, he played a blinder really.  With the deal I mean, not the writing.  That was hilariously brief, but he was right about it being a nice “event”.  It was still stressful as anything doing the warm up as well as being briefly in the show.  I did the same thing when we did the double act on Russell Howard, and it was a big mistake.  My character in P&G was different enough from my stand up for that to be just the wrong side of confusing so close together.  On Not Going Out though, it was easier.  The only downside, which none of us had factored in, was that I’d been in the episode on pre-record already by the time I was doing my one brilliant line on set.  So the fever pitch may have been a touch muted, but it did mean I could then spend the rest of the warm up being pretend-arrogant and asking audience members if they remember that time I was in the show.

Weirdly, when I was regaling my pal with all this information, she told me that episode had been on TV the night before and she’d seen it.  Nobody else had told me though.  It wasn’t my launch into superstardom as it turned out.

It was double bubble though.

I don’t think that phrase will ever not make me laugh.

And there's my two little reminisces/stories for today's impromptu written post. Really hope you are having a lovely start to your week.  Sorry for the rather stilted post rhythm at the moment.  I’ll always do something (except for when I accidentally save the post to drafts like I did with Cabin Fever last week), and we’ll be back to proper smooth sailing as soon as I can breathe properly again.

Much love to you

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