Up to Glasgow today for a three day stint at “The Stand”, a marvelous venue where I had one of my best gigs of the year back in August. It was a long train journey and I had hoped to get some work done (a stint in Armando’s prison cell is looking increasingly likely as I have not got any further with the script despite my hopeful meeting last week), but I was tired and so watched Dr Who on my computer instead and marveled at Billie Piper’s out of proportion, yet beautiful face, which looks like it has been drawn by a cartoonist wishing to create a parody of what makes a woman attractive. If it was then he has done a god job. Big eyes, big mouth. Could have ended up looking like Wallace from Wallace and Gromitt, but is more reminiscent of Jessica Rabbit, who is the cartoon character that I would most like to have sex with, combining as she does my three favourite things: women, rabbits and drawing. Billie Piper’s fascinating face alone would make this series worth watching on its own, but thankfully there are loads of other great things to enjoy as well. Eccelstone is a fine doctor and Piper is more than just a pretty freakish face as well. It takes the concept of a strange man traveling through time and space seriously, but not too seriously and the tone is exactly correct for great Saturday night family viewing (or for watching back to back for six hours on a long dull train ride). I enjoyed it very much and it is great to see a show that stupid executives have kept off the screens so long, brought back by fans who understand what it is meant to be and executed so brilliantly. Unlike you (probably) I have actually appeared in a Dr Who adventure, which is another thing that would have made the 7 year old me think I was living the life of a God. I have had my head crushed by a cyberman and my tummy squeezed by a Pan’s Person: it’s like I am living the dream of a 70s snot-nosed TV addict. Do you think I might soon wake up and find myself back in my tiny single bed in my orange bedroom in Cheddar. “Mummy, mummy, I had the most amazing dream. I was in Dr Who and I met Pan’s People and then I wrote about it on a tiny laptop computer and everyone in the world could read about it on a thing called the Internet!”
“Yes, yes, son, of course you did. Now eat your space dust and get on your Chopper Bike and go to school.”
It would kind of make more sense if all this was a crazy dream of a stupid kid. It would explain a lot about my largely dull and intermittently surreal life. Even now it seems highly unlikely to me that I was ever on TV. ItÂ’s ten years since
Fist of Fun began and to be honest that feels like another lifetime and I don’t quite believe it happened. Me and Stew had our own TV show where we could do anything we wanted and the BBC spent a million pounds and let us have a big parade through a town centre as people held aloft a giant pie made out of leftover pies – “Yes, yes, son, of course you did. Now take off your parka coat and drink your can of Quatro and then you can watch
Captain Caveman”
“You know mum, if you were to write what you’ve just said down and then wait thirty years and then just read that out on stage you could make millions of pounds selling DVDs, although I would advise you to change Quatro for Spangles as no-one will really remember the former.”
“What are DVDs? You and your imagination! No-one would pay to see me just saying stuff from the Seventies.”
“You’d think that, but in the future people are stupid enough to do just that.”
“That’s enough. Your Vesta curry is ready now. And some other things from the 1970s are going on”
“It’s not as easy as those futuristic comics make it look is it?”
But it does seem unlikely that for four years I was allowed to say whatever I wanted on television. I donÂ’t think I appreciated how amazing that all was at the time. And when I think back to it all it feels like a different person than me was involved. Some young idiot with little idea about anything. It must have been a dream. This must be a dream still. I hope I wake up before I have to write this stupid script.
