Made steady progress with the writing. Script 1 is OK now, but there is still a bit to do on script 2, but because I still have tomorrow to write I wasted away most of the evening and night watching telly, half-heartedly supporting England in the rugby (if I had been on an exercise bike the result might have been different), improving my pacman score and looking at Youtube. Mainly looking up myself admittedly, but if that isn't a great way to spend a Saturday night when you should be working, but aren't (so could have gone out after all).
The latest obscure Lee and Herring addition is a thing we did for a themed Monster Night on BBC2 in 1998 called
Reasonably Scary Monsters (Part 2 is
here).
I am not sure I ever saw this at the time, though it's doubly interesting to look back on now, not only to see the changes in hair-styles and weight for Stew and me (I think I might actually be thinner than I was then), but also how technologically backward the people of 1998 were. VHS? Analogue TV? NES? Ha ha ha, you 1990s idiots. How I pity and hate you.
It's quite a funny show - we wrote our bits, but Jon Riley put the whole thing together and put together all the stuff with Vorderman and the celebrities discussing the monsters. The choice of celebs is really excellent. It was an early parody of the then quite new phenomenon of asking people on TV who know nothing to comment on a subject. I wonder if Jenny Powell really ever worried about having her limbs plucked off by a Cyclops. It seems an odd fear to have.
There are some nice lines that I had forgotten about (and in fact I only have the very vaguest memories of filming this - I think we did it in Manchester and there was an important World Cup match on the night of the first day's filming, so we got pretty wasted and were hungover for the second day. It's coming back actually. The England game went to extra time and I remember leaning out of the window of the flat we were in and shouting encouragement and other people were shouting back in the street - we lost and got knocked out. You probably have enough info to work out which game it was now - still don't remember much about the filming).
I like the idea of merfish. With the body of a fish and the tail of a fish. But it's the tail of a different fish, so often it's quite difficult to spot them. Might use that again some time. There are a few cringy moments of overacting (though that is very much the style anyway, but sometimes I push it too far) and some of it falls a bit flat, but it's still worth a look. Even though as with all these things it is a bit unsettling to be transported back a decade and faced with a younger version of myself with no idea of what the next ten years will bring him. Not a lot is the answer if you ever get a chance to travel back in time to tell him.
Anyway if the image of a 40 year old man looking back at a video of his younger self on a Saturday night in alone when he should be working isn't tragic enough for you, I promise to try to do better on another weekend. Back to work.
