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I turned 18 for the third time today. It’s such a big deal to turn 18 the first time, and yet when you turn 18 the third time no one gives a fuck. I hope to turn 18 a fourth time before it’s all over. And will happily bow out at that point if you can guarantee me 18 more years.
18 years ago I had a big party and still felt alone. Today I opened presents in bed with my wife and kids at 6.30am and didn’t drink all day and went out for a meal with Catie in the evening and felt like happy and secure. I don’t actually remember what I did on that first 18th birthday. I was waiting for my A level results and maybe working at Axbridge Mushroom Farm. I must have hung out with my friends or girlfriend. Who knows? I wouldn’t remember my 36th birthday if it wasn’t for Warming Up and I don’t recall much beyond the little that I wrote down.
I took it easy all day and ate biscuits and sweets. On top of the crisps and pizza that I had yesterday I think I might have set my weight loss back a fortnight, but as long as the splurges are occasional rather than normal then I think that’s OK. I will get back on the rowing machine tomorrow!
Someone pointed out that I am exactly 30 years younger than Bill Cosby and exactly 30 years older than Malala, which at least suggests that things improve with each new generation.
I remember feeling like I wasn’t doing a great job with this (I was a bit preoccupied with writing 20+ episodes of the show, but had also got to rock bottom with my confidence as a performer, but actually I did OK with this and Mike is a pretty good peripheral character, pissed off with his life, always sarcastic, except when he sees Janet and his softer side emerges, only to be crushed due to his bean face (I still sometimes quote the line “Damn my leguminous face,” but I am not sure I actually ever said it in the show - it was definitely in one of the scripts). I tried to piece together where this bean face thing came from and I am far from sure, but I think that Peter Baynham once called me it and I had never been accused of having a bean face before and so was surprised by it. So that felt like a good thing to base a character on - a man with something approaching a bean face who hadn’t realised he had a bean face.
In the final episode of the first series I had wanted to complete Mike’s story arc and there was a scene where he pops into the pub as Janet is trying to avoid the attentions of someone else and pretends Mike is her boyfriend and kisses him, much to his delight and shock. There was the additional joke of my Fist of Fun obsession with Julia Sawalha and the fact that we were dating at the time, of course. The last episode was long and the director prodded me towards the decision to cut the scene for the good of the whole. I gallantly agreed to expunge myself, but I think it was the wrong decision. Those little character stories are what makes this show, I think and it was worth 30 seconds of air time to wrap things up for Mike. But I don’t think he’d appeared in many (or any) of the last 10 episodes, mainly because I was busy writing the last 10 episodes. I didn’t even go to the records.
