I caught the end of an old
Time Gentlemen Please episode last night. It's strange chancing across this show (partly because I am not used to anything I am involved with being repeated) and it seems like it all happened a long time ago. I think this episode was filmed in 2000 or 2001 so I suppose it is. Work was so intensive especially on this first series: it was 13 episodes that got bumped up to 22 mid season and I did over 90% of the writing. I was writing an episode a week towards the end, so it was something of a mental strain. It's not surprising I burnt myself out a bit. The episode on tonight was based on the return of Martin Greer and Stewart actually wrote the first draft of this one, then we all re-wrote it together, so it wasn't surprising that I didn't feel overly familiar with it. But to be honest I don't feel very familiar with any of them. That whole first year pretty much melds into one and I am able to enjoy the programmes as if I am new to them, because essentially I am.
Towards the end was a very short scene filmed in a train carriage, which I didn't remember at all. I thought to myself, "Wow that's quite a lot of expense to go to for a tiny flashback scene. I can't have been there for the day of filming because I don't recall that set at all."
So you can imagine my surprise when during the closing credits there was another scene in the train carriage, this time featuring the false Martin Greer and the bean-faced postman. This was surprising because the bean-faced postman was played by me. So not only had I been present on the day of filming, I had actually filmed a scene on that very set and yet I couldn't remember a thing about it. I haven't done that much TV and usually I would at least recall the set up or the location of something I've been in (sometimes people quote a specific line from a fifteen year old sketch at me and I don't know what they're talking about, but this is different), but of this scene I had not a scintilla of recall. I even briefly wondered whether they had somehow found a lookalike to play me whilst I got on with writing the next week's show. I doubt they did that, but it would explain the gap in my memory. Perhaps Charlie Boorman was drafted in, but I think that's unlikely as at the time I was clean shaven and had short hair. And Dom Joly would have wanted too much money.
Perhaps I have repressed the memory because the other actor in the scene, Simon Greenall abused me in some way. There's no way of knowing without going through hynosis, but I suspect that he almost certainly did and I intend to go to the police about it right now and sully his name, because having to admit that my memory is failing me would be much harder on me than destroying a good man's life. (All actors are perverts anyway. If the news teaches us anything it is that, so even if he is innocent this time he will surely be being punished for some other terrible misdeed).
I have to conclude that the leguminous faced person on screen was myself, but can only presume that I was actually catching up on some much needed sleep at the time and got through the performance by means of somnambulism.
Anyway it was good to travel back in time and see the me of five years ago and to be able to relive the event that had been wiped from my memory (maybe by some evil government agent or something). I had no idea of some of the things that would befall me in the next half decade. Had I known then that at some point I would mistake the sound of a lift for my own brain having an idea then maybe I would have lived my life differently. No. Like Jodie Marsh I regret nothing. Nothing. Like Jodie Marsh I have much to regret, yet still bullishly believe that to admit that would show weakness (rather than as is the case, strength) so I will continue to live my life blinkered to the truth and forgetting anything that impedes on my false view of my own self.
Today's photo was taking during the recording of the episode I am talking about. See if you can spot Celebrity Fit Club's Jeff Rudom!
