Four months to 40. How I hanker for those innocent days when I was six months from 40. I had no idea then quite how much time I had, but now I only have four months and what can you do in four months? Nothing. It's not as if any of the time after 40 is going to count. What kind of life will it be, sitting there in my bath chair, defecating in my own underwear and in other people's underwear and unable to remember whose underwear I put on that morning.
Today, aptly, I was doing the photo shoot for my forthcoming Edinburgh show, "Oh Fuck, I'm 40!" So far I have the title and now a photo for the poster. I decided to go for me holding a massive birthday cake, which says "Oh Fuck, I'm 40!" on it, but which has a slice taken out of it so the "u" of "fuck" is missing (though cleverly replaced by the almost "u" shape of the removed cake).
That's all I have for my show so far. I am not sure it's enough for an hour, though I could just explain this clever conceit over and over again until everyone leaves.
We had had a big round cake with a 16 inch diameter for the shoot. It was all white with lilac piping and the middle left blank for the title to be added in post production. I had wanted the cake as big as possible to ensure maximum impact, but was still surprised at how big this frosty gateau was. It was quite difficult just to hold it up.
We were all nervous that the cake would get dropped or squashed, because we didn't have a spare. And who would be charged with the task of cutting out the slice? What if they messed it up? What if it was too big or too small or they accidentally cut the whole thing into tiny bits before the photo had been taken?
Luckily it all worked out fine and I am hopeful that we got a good shot of me looking suitably miserable, whilst surrounded by balloons, looking at this monstrous cake.
I can't be sure though as this was pretty much the only stuff in the two hour shoot that we shot on actual film. All the other stuff (various publicity bits and bobs as well as some non comedy shots for general use) was done on a digital camera, which meant that we were able to take as many pictures as we wanted and also look at them straight away on the photographer's (I'm a) Mac.
This stunning techological break-through made me consider how far things have moved on in the years since I've been doing Edinburgh photoshoots.
Then you took your chances on film, waited for the contact sheets and made your choice from that. In fact when I did Ra-Ra Rasputin, the photographer managed to fuck things up so badly that he managed to miss my head off of all the potential photos. This is quite a serious error for a photographer, though he claimed it was down to equipment malfunction. He was quite a fledgling photographer (not sure he's doing it any more to be honest) and asked me not to tell anyone and actually arranged a whole extra shoot (including hire of studio and costume) at his own expense.
If he had had a digital camera then none of this would have happened.
The next year the same guy did make up for his error by taking an excellent shot for "Richard Herring is Fat", a shoot I chiefly remember because I had to be totally nude (what is my obsession with my own nakedness?), possibly for the first time in a professional setting and Peter Baynham arrived a bit early for his shoot and walked in on me in a state of undignity.
Anyway, I have been doing all this for a long time. Maybe too long. But not so long that my early poster shots were taken with those cameras that you had to stand still for half an hour to get a decent photo.
I think progress is a good thing.
Even though it is destroying the planet.
Better to be able to see the photos straight away, whilst living underwater, than to have to wait for them and be able to breathe in dry clothes.
At the end of all this I was left with a gigantic cake, but as I was travelling on the tube there was no way I could take it with me. I would have liked to have given it to a children's hospital or some homeless people (let them eat cake) or just some fat people who were a bit hungry between their lunch and their mid afternoon snack, but there was nothing to be done. I took the hefty extracted slice with me to share with friends (to celebrate my 39 and two thirds birthday), but it felt like an awful waste of money and sponge. I had a couple of bits myself, but it was without doubt the most expensive cake I have ever eaten.
Hopefully the rats who get to eat it out of the bins will enjoy it. I will post some pics as soon as I have them. I didn't think to take any copies at the time. The big problem is that there are so many more to choose from than there would be under the old system.
But I am pretty sure my head is in all of them this time.
