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I am always keen to do the occasional acting job, but only ever get offered the parts of dubious sex pests, rather than the romantic leads that I crave. It’s weird to only get jobs that are, in essence, an insult. But today’s job was even more insulting. The booking was for Ally. I had to come along as he can’t work unaccompanied for some reason. But he was the star.
I also brought along Tiny Dick as I thought there might be a role for him, even though no one had asked. Right Bollock stayed home. He tried to fucking kill me, so I am not helping his career.
The short film was written by and starring Bilal Zafar and female Stevie Martin was playing his girlfriend. Ally was playing his dad. I very much like working with these two. It was directed by Ben Mallaby who has been at the helm on quite a few bits that I’ve worked on, including
the six part robot sex sketch for AIOTM and
While You Were Away where my character had cut off his genitals. So really, nothing we could come up with would surprise him.
We were on a deadline, my parking space was only good for four hours, but that was probably quite helpful and we worked through the idea a few times, chucking in a fair amount of impro. I say we, but I just sat back and let Ally do the work. He was playing a character obsessed with cancel culture who kept saying the wrong thing, so this wasn’t much of a stretch for him. It was an inspired decision to bring along Tiny Dick (though regretted not bringing his own smaller version of Ally) and Ally operated him, creating a new character called Little Daddy whose catchphrase happened to be “Sit on it”. Stevie was actually unable to get through the scene because she found this too funny so Little Daddy had to stop saying it and she had to react to nothing. Hopefully it will be as much fun to watch as it was to film. Since I first worked with Stevie (I was going to say met, but we didn’t meet for quite a few months after that) I have been convinced that she’ll be a big star and things are moving in that direction for her and Bilal is a fantastic talent too. It was working with both of them during lockdown that gave me the confidence to attempt Twitch of Fun. I don’t know if that’s a positive or a negative for me, but I am still glad we did it. So it was apt that we were all brought together to do this bizarre project with Ally.
As I walked Ally into the cafe as he made his entrance I did wonder about where my life had got to and who I was. I am 55 years old, almost three times as old as any member of our young and excellent crew. I suppose it was more confronting to leave the room we were filming in, because there were a couple of people on reception and I became aware that whilst they did their proper job I was trying to make it look like a 131 year old puppet was walking into their cafe and I wasn’t there, even though I clearly was.
I feel good about it on average though. But I bet if the man from Shabab had seen me he would feel pity for the way my life had turned out.
I really enjoyed the four hours (I got back to my car with four minutes to spare) and was buzzing with joy for the rest of the day.
Our episode of Odd Couples was broadcast tonight. Inevitably from a three hour record a few of our favourite bits didn’t make it in - like me snorting pepper and Catie revealing the swamp like conditions that my farting can create. I had wondered why I said “I’m worried I might fart” in the final task, but then realised it was a call-back to the bit that had been cut out. It has a surreal quality for being there without the set up, but this is how things can go in shows like this when you have no control over the edit. John and Lucy are both extremely funny separately and together and it’s very much their show, so I was pleased to get a few gags into the final edit, even if they lost some potentially funnier Catie and Rich moments. I have to say that getting to do Catie’s make up was one of the most enjoyable things that has happened to me in my life. Rachel Riley was horrified that a husband could do something like that to his wife, but I think more marriages would survive if both parties could occasionally do something like this to each other. And although (spoilers) we lost the contest, I think our ability to have a laugh together with something like this made us the true winners!
Watch it here.
