"Sad c****" is actually "sad clown", but I thought the asterisks were more on brand.*

 Well, there is absolutely, positively no way I'm going to let myself stage Jonah Non Grata again for the first time in nearly ten years, without getting round to plugging it on here with at least twelve hours' notice, so here is that plug, and HERE are the tickets. It's on for one night only this Midsummer's Saturday, at the Soho Theatre on Dean Street – a venue I've always hoped to infiltrate – as part of the London Clown Festival, a scene I've always similarly nursed a pang to crash.

 

 Me crashing clowns. Hi Dan. Hi Neil. Hi Ben. Hi Dan again.

 

 After that one night only, the old bag of tricks, fish, and creamed rice – older even than this blog – will head up to Edinburgh for loads more nights in August, as threatened, and I do plan to bang on about that a lot more on here in future, so don't worry, but for now I'll just say that the Assembly Rooms tickets are HERE, and that I have a lot of people to thank for this happening but mainly one person. That person's precise attitude towards being so much as even mentioned on this blog, however, is currently unknown to me at half past one this morning, so I'll just – for anyone who doesn't know what PR is – post this helpful and unrelated video from 2012:

 

 

  I didn't know what PR was either, but looking at the Metro, it... seems... to be... working... Does the writer below even know me? I don't think so. No reason they should, either: no explicit promise is actually made about the quality of whatever funny bones I may have, just that they'll be mine. 'An exciting biblical adventure'. Great. That's the "Why now?" taken care of too, I guess. So there I am, in today's paper. Being picked in the Must-Sees. Easy as that. Type discount code "FLIGHTRISK" for a fat fifth off tonight's tickets! 

 

 * on brand for Lucy, I mean. Keeping it ****

Is it a loud man getting things wrong?

 Here, ol' Unattendees, to celebrate my love for you all, is a tree giving a little house a hug. Sorry I haven't been posting more, but I am once again between keyboards (in case you were wondering, this post has been compiled entirely from copying and pasting parts OF ITSELF) but this hardware situation should be resolved when I get back from France, pictured above – where I have, as always, been spending Christmas with my folks – and below is the advert that will pay for it:

 

 I might even have enough left over after to take a show to Edinburgh, something I haven't dared do since 2001. Guess which show. "I don't know, Simon. How many shows have you made?" Well exactly, that one. Although, thinking on the previous post, I am growing obsessed (again*) with how abysmal a part of real world, far right economic discourse beloved, old sci-fi tropes such as space exploration and Ai have become, so maybe it will be two shows! Maybe it will be none! No, I've written it down now (or pains-takingly pieced it together from individual characters torn from THIS VERY POST) and 2025 is likely to frighten a lot of us anyway, so nits like me, who are sitting pretty pretty, should give courage a go too! Happy... changing things, then. Yeah. No. Franceuck it. Happy 2025, readers. Happy Change. 

 

Vancouver last August, where this ad was filmed – along with many futuristic sci-fi shows from the noughties, meaning I'd wanted to visit this city for decades. But when I finally get there, everywhere else had caught up, and the biggest thing distinguishing this Pacific shoreline now from, say, Leeds or Chelsea Wharf is just the number of people to a canoe.

 

* Did you get that that was what "Time Spanner" was about? I mean, it was about other stuff too.

Themepunk Roundup: My Life as an Action Butler

 

Thanks to Gerard Giorgi-Coll. 

 

 This year, unlike last, I've been doing jobs. They've been jobs I've enjoyed, and sought out, but also what you might call out-of-work-actor jobs. There should be a better name for these though, not because I fancy arguing the toss about what counts as acting, but because, ever since I worked at the London Dungeon I have actively enjoyed performing improvisation-friendly, site-specific shift work with a regular band of friends in front of as broad a demographic as possible – Tourism jobs, if you like – and "out-of-work-actor job" doesn't really do that justice. A lot of performance work won't guarantee these things. Themepunk, as I'm going to try calling it for now, hopefully does, although you might get less time to rehearse. Here are Neil Frost and I finalising the route of The Classic Tour back in July:

  

  Press my tummy to view.

 

 I was definitely surprised when Big Ben – below with Neil, both fellow Dungeon alumni – got in touch to say the two of them had been asked by the Ghost Bus Tours to come up with a new, family-friendly, two-handed blockbuster alternative cabaret, complete with songs, costume changes, and a light dusting of Eat The Rich for its open top bus route, and to ask if I'd like to help develop the tour for actual money, and maybe perform it with Neil too, but it was a nice surprise. I figured doing a show on a bus with Neil would be an excellent way to spend a summer without having to go up to Edinburgh, and so it has proved. It's called "The Classic Tour" because that's what was written on the buses. Here's where they keep them:

 

All the other actors Neil brought on for this gig are beautiful too, although audiences have also been pretty Edinburgh-sized as well – appreciative twos and threes until tours were cut – but I'd spent long enough doing Time Tours not to be surprised by this, and I'd heard the Ghost Bus Tours was down to one actor a show as well now, hence my orginal surprise at Ben's call. But this is the bus tour I've always wanted to do, and I'm doing a few in November too, so if you fancy it, HERE.

 

 Yes! This was a plug all along! I'm also going to plug a beautifully written, handsomely received Big Finish Audio Drama I recorded last year: "Torchwood: Art Decadence", in which, as you can hear from the trailer below, I inadvertently play exactly the same character I do above. Don't tell Big Finish, They think I've got range. But I'm in, readers! I'm IN! ACTUAL ACTING JOBS! Available HERE.

Meet Hotten Crusty!

The author, entirerly comfortable doing a first-time Northern accent in front of cameras.

 

 I swear, I didn't just come back on this blog to plug stuff, but back in December, I was asked by Jamie Annett – the director of that episode of EastEnders I'd enjoyed being in so much - to take a day off from the Polar Express, to come and film a lovely little scene opposite "Bob Hope" (played by Tony Audenshaw) in Emmerdale. That scene went out tonight, and the internet has gone WIIIIILD...

 

  Okay, that scene's not actually mine, mine is fourteen and a half minutes into episode nine-thousand-and-five, HERE. Personally speaking, I liked Bob. His child's just died, and when I ask him how the guitar playing's going, he finds sweet relief in pretending they're still alive. Another really lovely scene then, and Tony was beautiful, and I remembered to hold my clipboard the right way round, and no-one asked me to drive the van, and the rain held off, and, once the scene was done, we all had Christmas dinner at the top of the hill. Rock on.

 

(Note, road sign right way up.)

I call this piece "The Person Who Has To Explain The Art"

 No sorry, my point was that when I initially saw those road signs turned upside-down by French farmers over Christmas my first thought had been simply, oh I guess some stuff's upside-down now. I had clocked the symptoms a few weeks earlier while tearing through Norwich Castle on a twilight ticket and noticing that one of the paintings had definitely been hung the wrong way up. Screwed, in fact. Screwed to the wall – see above. In the next gallery I noticed another, by a different artist, again definitely upside-down (I don't mean to boast, an artist like me just has an eye for these things).

 

  Every room in fact had one painting inexplicably set upside down, and my first thought here was, oh I guess this is some kind of protest – exactly the feeling I didn't get when I saw the protests in Languedoc. (Mum tells me farmers are now blocking every road into every city with tractors, so that's less ambiguous.) I couldn't think what might be being protesting however. So I went up to the information desk and said "Hello" firstly, and then "Can I ask why some of the paintings are upside-down?" and the smiling woman at the desk handed me a leaflet sporting the name Mark Wilsher, explaining "Yes, it's an artist. Five works have been turned upside down. It's all about your reaction to it." And I'm trying to work out how best to explain the way she said it, because I think that's the point of this post.

 

A sidenote: I come from a generation who have been taught, upon reading the words "the smiling woman at the desk", to imagine immediately something counterfeit and sinister – the polite, public face of an industrial carnivore – but after the trip to the castle I went back to punch imaginary tickets on a train pretending to go to the North Pole, or pour and serve real hot chocolate, because most of the jobs I've taken have been pretty public facing – not just the out-of-work actor stuff, but the actor stuff too. Other credits on my CV include: Announcer; Host; Voice; Receptionist; Narrator; Waiter; Lift Operator; and Conductor, bus. But even the murderers on that list were narratively never threats to the public. I like the public, and I like being the public. 

 

 

 Anyway, I don't want you to picture me leaving that exchange with the smiling woman at the desk in any way huffy or aloof. And I don't want to give the impression she didn't seem very much on the side of the exercise. But she did say "It's all about your reaction to it" it in a way that made me wonder how previous enquiries might have gone. I said "Aw thanks" and took the leaflet to let her know she wasn't going to get any trouble from my end at least. I don't know. Perhaps I'm projecting. Perhaps she wasn't deescalating anything, just happy to help. Perhaps I was also projecting when I thought it might have been a protest, or when I thought those upside-down road-signs in France might not. Walking away, I thought: "Well, I guess my reaction to seeing some paintings turned upside-down is to find out why they've been turned upside down. Sorry if you were expecting more, Mark." 

 But now I think maybe the work was actually having her to explain the work to me because – as you might be able to tell – I've had a far more complicated reaction to that. 

 (Sorry I didn't post much here about The Polar Express, but there was Instagram. And that's me with the outstanding Miles Mlambo above. And below, that's me getting over two million likes on TikTok. Boasts of equal stature.)

@bethmae0 💫✨️Just be you✨️💫 #polarexpress #fy #fyp #fypシ #fypシ゚viral #fypviral #foryou #foryoupage #foryoupageofficiall #trend #trending #quoteoftheday #mumsoftiktok ♬ original sound - bethmae🤍

Remember to keep everything natural.

   

 Actually, there are a couple of self-tapes in here from August too now – I took down the original cut from youtube before I could blog about it, because I'd suddenly landed a second job and the clip I'd used from that was pretty much the entire role, and I'd signed a Non Disclosure Agreement, and I didn't want to lose the job, which films tomorrow (it's not this one:)

Otherwise, this has been a quiet year, which is why I decided to do something with all these old self-tapes that had been filling it. No complaints, although I do keep wondering about going back to the moustache, but my agents say no. Oh, I've got a voiceover agent now! That other – first – job which I landed from a self-tape, a clip of which opens this video, that was a voice over, but as you can see, I still decided to dig out – almost literally, as both the density and deriliction of my costume wardrobe have turned it quite earthy – my old London Dungeon shirt. So, yes, I got to be in "Good Omens" sort of. Those who can and who have not yet enjoyed John Finnemore's peerless take on the Book of Job in episode 2 are strongly recommended to do so ("Come back when you've made a whale." Outstanding stuff.) And for those who have not yet enjoyed this, and can, here you go...

The Real Professor Bum-End

 Argh! You have exactly TWENTY-FOUR HOURS left to listen to the latest episode of John Finnemore's Souvenir Programme HERE, recorded back in April in what I thought at the time to be a very hot venue, as Lamda had no means of turning off its radiators. What other backstage gossip would you like? Why is there an illustration of a reconstructed elasmosaurus skeleton at the top of this post? Light might be shed on this by the corrected version below ("Drawing Number Two", for any fans of The Little Prince) with the head now on the right end...

 

 And here's the man responsible for both: "Bone Wars" veteran Edward Drinker Cope, photographed, so it would appear, at the exact moment that he realised his mistake:

 

 

"F********CK!"

 

All other episodes of all nine other series seem to be up on in perpetuity now (HERE), but – I repeat – there are only now twenty-THREE hours left to listen to the latest one. All the gangs's back: Frint, Wattis, Straightwoman, even Uncle Deaduncle. I mean... I know you all probably knew this already and have obviously heard it, but that's the plug, nd if you haven't heard it, apologies for that baffling paleontology tangent. The idea now, I believe ideally, is to produce a new forty-five-minute special every year until we're all dead. Can't wait! No hang on, I mean I can't wait until the next...  You know what I mean. Is it warm where you are? I've noticed a distinct smell of stale punch around trees this week and am trying to remember how I know what stale punch smells like. ENJOY!

 

(What swearing is John referring to? Listen to find out!)

Christmas Quiz!

 Thanks for playing! Just the one question: I have always been a song and dance machine. But who am I dressed as in this picture?

You have the entirety of Kate Bush's Christmas Special from 1979 to leave your answer in the comments. Go!

 

 

 (Tangentially: after hearing Paul Putner and Joel Morris discuss the "Divine Madness" VHS on Joel's brilliant podcast Comfort Blanket, I realise I've always been drawn to piano-playing singer-songwriters more than guitar-playing ones, not a distinction I'd previously noticed. Okay, NOW go!)

 

Adulting

 

 Love Goddess - The Rita Hayworth Musical has another two weeks at the Cockpit, and I'm enjoying it more and more. Here's another lovely shot from Roswitha Chesher Also making me look good of course is the show's star and co-creator Almog Pail, who gave this fascinating interview in The Jewish Chronicle recently about one of the chief inspirations behind the show – as well as "one of Israel's founding fathers" – her own grandfather Meir Pa'il. During the second act I watch Almog sing the "Gilda"-inspired "I Don't Belong To You" from the theatre's gantry, in character as producer Harry Cohn. Just standing there, hoping to exude a kind of stony, middle-aged command, I realise is a quite familiar feeling to me: I've been playing these kind of characters since my late teens, and now I'm now genuinely middle-aged, yet can't be sure that I'm approaching this moment of onstage stillness any differently to how I might if I were still seveteen. I wonder if Orson Welles felt the same when he suddenly found himself the same age as characters he'd been playing for decades. They're not any easier to play now, but then they never seemed hard. They also never seemed nice. That's what's been going through my head when the lights are on me in the gantry. And when they're off I count the audience.

 

 Top row, left to right: My brother-in-law Tom, Dan Tetsell, my sister Susy, my sister Alice, and my nephew Jake. A beautiful turnout.

When Altman, Bogdanovich, Brooks and Capra Went On Cavett To Talk About Swine Like Harry Cohn

 

 

 It's just after Frank Capra who directed "It's A Wonderful Life" talks about Hobart Bosworth losing his upper jaw to a pill of dry ice he kept in his mouth to produce convincing breath for a movie set in the South Pole, that conversation turns to the subject of Harry Cohn: "At least that era is over," Dick Cavett suggests, as we now know completely mistakenly. But Capra, like Welles, was a fan: "If he could bully you, he didn't want you around, if you could stand up to him, he wanted you." 

Capra allowed to sit at Cohn's table (source)

 

 It's also possible Capra got on Cohn's good side just by being immensely successful, and Cohn got on Capra's good side by letting him know it. Also interviewed is Mel Brooks, who describes his own introduction to Cohn beautifully, watching him wheeled around on his back from messenger to messenger "like a piece of field artillery." Robert Altman and Peter Bogdanovich are there too, it's quite a line-up, although I've never seen Dick Cavett so watery and ineffectual, but Mel Brooks has some fun with that. 

 

Cohn with Larry, Mo and Curly 

(the latter of whom Cohn forced to continue working after multiple strokes nyuk nyuk)

 Cohn seems to have been as keen to be hated as Orson Welles was to be loved, I'm having a ball playing both without the aid of a cigar, and I cannot overstate how easy everyone is making it for me. Love Goddess, the Rita Hayworth Musical returned to the Cockpit tonight. I'm a huge fan of this show. Come and join me. Tickets here!

A Second Startling Semblance, or That's Not Me In That Film

 I love this photo. This is the curtain call of the opening night of The Hound of the Baskervilles at the English Theatre Frankfurt, in 2017. The assistant stage managers for that show, Mel and Meli – who helped with quick changes, and hid behind the fireplace to rip off Shaun's trousers, and mopped up my spit take in the interval  – now flatshare in London. On Sunday, they whatsapped to ask if I was in the film on Netflix that they were watching. I hadn't done a film for Netflix. They sent me a clip. I saw what they meant.

 I honestly cannot overstate how accurately this resembles my self image. Only when a little research revealed that this was actually Peter Serafinowicz could I begin to reframe "Yuba the Gnome" as anything other than the ground zero of an exploded subconscious. Fortunately, that Bucharest job has just turned out another advert, so I can check what I actually look like.

Badphone in a Coma

 In its very last day at Canary Wharf, I finally got round to experiencing COMA, the Darkfield show in a shipping container I'd recorded back in 2019. Pre-plague. I had to remind myself of that when I heard my old voice expressing conern about being coughed at in the face.

 

 The pill in the little tray lay unswallowed at the back of my throat throughout the twenty minutes. That's the problem with lying down. But I managed to get the top bunk. Once the lights went out, all I could hear was me reading Glen's lines from an ipad; binaural radio's so much more prevalent than it was when we first made Contains Violence in 2008, or even Ring in 2013, and like that old film of the train pulling into the station, I don't know how much longer our brains will stay fooled. I guess I'm saying, it was more like what I was expecting than I was expecting.

 

 I'd actually booked for Saturday, but had dismebarked at the adjacent and preposterously similarly named "Canada Water" station by mistake, so missed my slot. The attendants were brilliant, but I didn't want to hang around on my own – Canary Wharf was making me miss things – so I decided to head back into town along Regent's Canal, as I hadn't walked that stretch for a while, but I got that wrong too, and turned off one rivulet too early.

 

 Heading north, I didn't recognise any of the buildings, but I'm used to that. A lot's gone up. 

 It was round about the time I took the above picture that I decided I should finally get a new phone. Not for its own sake, but because I realised I wanted a better camera. That was an exciting moment. I hadn't wanted anything in ages. I used to want to make films. I tried taking some video with what I had, and was happy with the sounds I caught. There was a party going on in a flat, coots and car horns, sirens, a solitary firework.

 

 And soon it was too dark to photograph anything. See? 

 This is a whole palm tree I found discarded on its side in a weir. I definitely didn't remember there being a weir.

 I also misread a message sprayed onto the unlit footpath as "some peace. some time." until I realised one e was an l, and all the o's a's. You don't get that in Notting Hill. But I couldn't photograph that either, so here are some swans I saw on London Beach on Friday. I think that's new. I guess the new King doesn't want them.

 

NEW, PARTIALLY BLOCKED SHOWREEL!

 

 Now with added EastEnders, which means that even though I used a clip from EastEnders' youtube channel the video is still "partially blocked", so that only certain countries can see it. I don't know which countries. Has it been blocked inside Britain? Outside Britain? Are you in one of those countries? That's a shame. Let me know.*

 For those of you who can't enjoy it, off the back of Orson Welles' Haitian Macbeth here's more scrupulously researched Vodou. As a kid I rarely experienced a fear of missing out, but I remember never being taken to a massive out-of-town Toys R Us, and never being given Atmosfear or Nightmare or whatever these board games were called. Whoever came up with SNL's David S. Pumpkins sketch clearly had though, so enjoy, and happy season of the skeleton!**

 

 

 

 *UPDATE: Okay. Blocked in the UK. If you still want to see it I think THIS is the link to the Spotlight upload. 

 ** And if you simply want more of Baron Samedi and a man rocking around in a stationary ghost train, THIS is the link to the full music video.

Words we sometimes said in the basement of the Ned

 Notes designed by Susanne Dietz

 

 Yesterday was fun, and crammed, and with Serena and Tom on the chocolate coin exchange and Hannah checking bags (but not opening them –"Very nice, Italian?") a slight shunt reunion, happily. Thank you to Coney for organising The Golden Key, and to Gemma for having me, and to you if you came, and sorry if we were full. When we were trying to find a mood for the bar outside our snug and kennels, I don't think we anticipated how much time would be spent simply queueing, but that's the thing about unknowns. Choas inside the kennels was a lot more welcome, and I was very lucky to be teamed with clowns as kind as my fellow accountants Sachi Kimura and Julia Masli (the word "accountant" has a nicely ecclesiastical ring to it, once you don a robe). It couldn't all be unknowns though, so I wrote a little text for us to say and here it is.

Counting the grains of rice:

This is a new idea.

Each of these is a promise. Not a big promise. Not a particularly important promise. Still, probably more promises than it’s fair to expect any single person to be able to keep. Which is why they’re kept here.

 

Originally, a promise was much bigger, and most people would be unlikely to keep even one. They were about the size of this table, and made of something dangerous like limestone or cows. But one night, there was a storm. And a promise sank to the bottom of the sea – so it wasn’t lost, as the joke goes, it was at the bottom of the sea – and all the islanders had to decide whether or not to still count that as a promise kept. Which they did.

Maybe that’s why we’re underground.

 

Eating a grain:

This won’t be missed. Something will be missed. But no-one will know it was this.

Taking another grain:

And what’s the smallest thing you can promise? What’s worth this?

 

 

 Proving I'd licked a duck by sticking a grain of rice to it was a lot more fun though.

(Redevelopment) Where To Find Us

 The Golden Key is on today! Here are some clues as to where we'll be, and by clues I mean very late research I decided to do on our location while leaving the bath running. That's the Parliament building of New Delhi. I was in New Delhi in 1991 when for some reason our house master pulled strings for us to perform there Václav Havel's absurdist critique of Communism Redevelopment, in which I played a middle-aged architect having a nervous beakdown with talcum powder in his hair because I was sixteen. I think I have a photo...

 

 ... That's me far right. I secretly based my performance on Bette Davis in All About Eve. Ronnie Potel's the idealistic young buck in the middle, secetly in love with my wife. I remember the audience muttering when she gave me a shoulder rub, and I bought my first ever Talking Heads album over there, and my first beer, and saw distant women doing laundry in the Ganges as the sun set behind the Taj Mahal in Agra. None of that's a clue, sorry, just memory's cute stampede. We'll be at the end of Share Mile in the "Maze of Adventures". Come and find us, and once it's all done I'll post where we were in the comments (I might also post the school magazine's review of my Zdenek Bergman!) Here's the clue. Take it away, Nibbling Nuts...

Bigcoin

 "Wow!" indeed, thumbnail. Vic Stefanu takes us on a brief tour of the Micronesian Bankvaults of Yap, whose ancient limestone currency  – (is "ancient currency" an oxyoron?) –gets referenced in Extra Credits' history of paper money, which we've all watched in preparation for The City of London's Golden Key which takes place tomorrow, Saturday.

 

 

 Come along during the day if you can. Its all free, and I've finally found out which route we're at the end of: "Share Mile", details here. I'll be in kennels with the brilliant Julia "Legs" Masli and Sachi "Bums" Kimura, so I'll definitely be having fun and yes, apparently the counting rooms were called kennels. 

 Speaking of fun...

 

 

 I don't know, I didn't want to let his passing go unremarked on here, but can any clip truly contain Robbie Coltrane? I barely had a moment to enjoy Kwasi Kwarteng getting fired before I heard the news. Every time I see him closing that plane door as an unpseaking extra in Flash Gordon I think, and then you go on to do everything. A giant Yappian coin of the acting world. Bye bye, big man.

 

 

one more clip

But Who's Counting

 

 Further facelessness. 

 In the temple-like vault of a former bank stand six-hundred-and-fifty defaced and numbered photographs of the artist Sarah Maple and her child, one defacing for every breastfeed given over a three month period. A lot more than I expected. It's called "Labour Of Love". I don't know if it will still be up on Saturday.

 

 I was down there today to scout the marble counting house I'll be in this weekend as part of Gemma Brockis' contribution to The Golden Key, a massive City of London commission from Coney and Friends, which will see the normally dead-at-weekends Square Mile come alive with activity and riff raff like me, and perhaps you! 

 

   

 

 Specifically, we'll be part of The Maze of Adventures: "Choose wisely, friend," insists the blurb  – a voice from a simpler time perhaps, before the pound found itself battling gravity like Indiana Jones – "as you will not able to see them all..." That isn't much help, sorry, but we'll be there somewhere. I'm not sure if I can give away the vault's exact location, but when I used to do the Ghost Bus Tours we'd get stuck in traffic outside of it for anything up to half an hour and have to vamp about plague pits – Oh, I hadn't thought about them! The City's full of subterranean material, but I think we'll be sticking to counting.

 

EastEnders Omnibus

Form.

 

 I didn't know when I self-taped that I was auditioning for a "bumbling lawyer". I just thought Russell would be one of those bad-news-delivering authority interfaces necessary to a continuing drama who might not even get a medium shot because it was all about the reactions. I didn't know to whom he'd be giving this bad news either as the names were changed in the audition script to keep storylines confidential, and I definitely didn't know there'd be a second scene in which Russell would be stripped to his shivering essence in the purifying fire of a face-off with Danny Dyer!

 But behold a bit:

 

 So no, I knew little about the brief if you'll pardon the pun, but I normally send in two takes on a self-tape: one high-status, one low-status (or if the character's status is unambiguous, one slow, one fast, or if the status and pace are both unambiguous... I don't know... one subtle and one stupid) and the low status take turned out to be exactly what EastEnders director Jamie Annett was in the mood for. I've also started to get castings for "William H. Macy" types.

 

 The costume department phoned ahead to ask me if I had a rumpled pinstripe suit to bring to set, but everything I showed them was too shipwrecky, even for Russell. What the director had liked about my tape he said, is that it had suggested a man who nearly gets away with being shit. Which actor hasn't dreamt of hearing that? Jamie also liked that I lived above a pub.

 

 "Russell's not a shit lawyer," he clarified on the hoof as the morning we were given to film both scenes powered along, "He's just shit in court," which is was why he was being so spineless, and why suddenly having to consider the innocence of his client paralysed him. "Yeah, I can see him being a recurring character definitely, the bumbling lawyer" said my new friend Danny Dyer.

 

 Maybe there'd be a spin-off. Hustle Like Russell. "You'd find him in the pub at two in the afternoon," Jamie also ventured, not a direction necessarily, just riffing now on what he was witnessing. I can't imagine being more supported on a set. And look at all this lovely business I was given...

 

  Hankie. Paperwork. Big old briefcase. To say nothing of the bag of crisps Jamie instructed me to take out to get to the paperwork – Walford's own brand, by the way, "Wells Crisps", imaginary packaging – I didn't take the placebo painkillers in the end because I thought Russell might at least have had the nouse to take his pills before showing up, but they were there in the bag if I changed my mind. Am I adequately conveying how much of a dream this job was?

 

To be on that stage in Elstree with people turning out four episodes a week, and to see the three of them working together among all the other work going on – Jamie, Danny, and Kellie Bright – without a quantum of ego between them. Just courtesy, art, and a trouble-shooting focus. For example: "Now, this line.."

 

 "I mean-! I'll just say... Do ya though?" Harold Pinter's favourite actor was right. My line says what his line said. Subtext is pleasure, to quote Matt Weiner. The scene was better.

 Another example: Despite having prepped like hell, I didn't know what would be going on in other episodes, and so hadn't clocked quite a big change to our first scene since the audition. Originally I delivered some good news (the police have dropped the charges) then some bad news (this doesn't mean Linda automatically gets her daughter back), but in the rewrite Mick and Linda already knew the good news and so as Kellie who plays Linda pointed out, the bad news wasn't news any more, and the scene as I had been playing it no longer made sense. It needed a new shape. I stopped playing my lines as someone painstakingly explaining something therefore, and started playing them as someone making excuses, desperate to leave, and suddenly it felt right, and we played what I think are two really great scenes, and there were three cameras recording it, and it went out on national television, and I'm still new enough to this medium to find all of that amazing.

 

 Have I mentioned I'm in EastEnders then? I appear about halfway into episode six-thousand-five-hundred-and-fifty-eight, immediately after the appearance of Alicia McKenzie from the production of Bleak Expectations I was in over Summer, which was a great surprise, playing Debs – I love how we all get names – and pulling the only face anyone should pull when dealing with Janine.

 

  Oh yes, I'm a fan now. Watch the whole thing HERE.