Call me the troubleshooter!
I cycled up to BBC TV Centre this afternoon to do some script editing work on a sit-com pilot. I still get a little frisson of excitement when I go into this building, for the teenage me who would not believe that I would ever be working in this iconic place (when even the W12 postcode given out on the address for Swap Shop and the like seemed glamorous - now I have my own W12 postcode I know the truth). It's tempered a little these days with the disappointment of past failures. I can remember coming in here in the mid-90s, full of hope and ambition and excitement, only to get slapped in the face and eventually turfed out on my ear with security guards throwing my collection of Krazy Krockos after me, scattering in the gutter (this event might not have literally happened). There is a tinge of loss in any case, but still the childish glee at being in this seemingly impenetrable fortress.
The young man sent down to meet me and take me up to the office where we'd be working admitted in the lift up to the 6th floor that he had been a big fan of Fist of Fun. If only as many people working at the Beeb had liked us then as like us now - we might still be making the show. It feels a bit like an underground movement. Don't let the corporation know - they've tried to obliterate us from their records like some kind of Stalin or Andrew Collings - but there is still a secret resistance who know each other by the call sign "Moon on a Stick", which fortunately means nothing to anyone else in the world. Again I am both pleased by the fact that people still remember us fondly as well as slightly mournful that I didn't get to live in the alternate universe where those shows got the recognition that they possibly deserved. Overall this universe is probably preferable, as I imagine the me in the alternate one is a horrible prick, with no self-awareness, a hollow arrogance and is surrounded by money, drugs and loose women - yeah, like I say, I definitely prefer this universe....even if in this one I am a horrible prick with no self-awareness, a hollow arrogance and no money, drugs or loose women. Damn.
But fate's fickle finger means that whilst my contemporaries are swanning off to Hollywood, I return to the building as a lowly script editor. In another 15 years maybe I'll look back and wish for script editing work. Maybe I'll be in Hollywood myself. I hope not. Most of those films my contemporaries are doing really suck! At least I have my dignity. Well, no. I don't have that.
At least I have a push-bike.
Does Steve Coogan have a push-bike? No, he just has a fleet of flashy sportscars. Who is the winner here?
I really enjoyed my afternoon though. I think I helped make a real difference to the script, which isn't always the case when you have this weird job. When I script-edited Little Britain series 3, it was really a case of coming in, listening to the boys reading out the sketches and then saying, "Yeah, that seems to be OK," or "Do you think we should change this bit?.... No, no, you're right let's leave it the same." Today though, with this new project, I had some ideas about character and structure and simplifying the plot, which made a big difference and (hopefully) improved things. I had done a useful day's work for the first time for a couple of weeks and it felt good. It was also pretty cool to be out working with other people on stuff that wasn't my own project and I wished I'd had more jobs like this over the last five years, which would have got me out of the house. It's fun being the fresh pair of eyes on a project, rather than I usually am, the bleary pair of eyes that has been working at something over and over again and has lost sight of what is good or bad about it.
There's always the danger that all my suggestions and changes will ruin the project. But for the moment it felt good to be useful. As we get older that's all we can hope for. The illusion that we have a purpose.
