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So my acting career continues to soar, though I am a bit concerned about the kind of parts I am being offered. In Mosquito I played an unpleasant man who used escorts and then in While You Were Away, a sweaty ill-looking man who had made a very poor life decision. Today I was in a radio sitcom in which I was playing the client of a dominatrix. And not just a regular pervert. I was a man who never washed or cleaned his teeth and who the mistress is repulsed by.
I am worried that I am being type cast as a disgusting, dirty pervert and I just don’t know why people have this preconception about me. I mean, sure, it’s a role I have played in my stand up quite a bit, but there’s more to me than being a man who pretends to be a lonely idiot who can only have sex with animals and inanimate objects and dreams of making love to robots. I also play snooker against myself. Where are all the snooker roles?
But in two of my three last acting jobs I have played a man who pays for sex, so that’s clearly the vibe I give off. But the only way I have paid for sex is in shame and the occasional embarrassing infection, so I am nothing like the characters I have played. So I suppose that in a way it’s a massive compliment to me as an actor. The casting people know that I am not a seedy, disgusting, relationship fuck-up, but are confident that I can channel that and bring it to life. I suspect that a lot of pervert actors are furious with me, believing that perverts should only be played by real perverts, not by upstanding, happily married members of the non-pervert community. But there have been no protests. Almost like the pervert actors see me playing these parts and think, “Yeah, fair enough, the best man won."
Nice to have my own niche, though disappointingly thus far none of the roles have called upon me to actually be having perverted sex on film. Just be ashamed of perverted sex that I’ve had off screen or want to have. It’s all the stigma of playing a pervert but none of the benefits. I suspect that the acting community views me as so perverted, filthy and disgusting that the other performers insist that when I am cast as a pervert it can only be in a hands-off sense. Why don’t the Oscars have an award for Most Repulsive Actor?
It was a whirlwind of a job. I arrived at the studio, read my lines with the actor playing the dominatrix, then read our lines separately and then that was it. This is the beauty of audio. If this were filmed I would probably have had to spend almost 30 seconds in make-up so I looked suitably hideous.
Ah well, it’s a living. My daughter will be very proud of me. "What does your dad do?"
"He pretends to visit prostitutes."
"He doesn't even visit prostitutes?"
"No, he's worse than that. At least there would be some honour in the honesty of that. He just pretends."
