Thanks for all your emails about my overflow problem. I have managed to work out that the problem is caused by the toilet cistern continuing to slowly fill after it has been flushed, thus there is a constant tiny dribble of water coming out of the pipe and down the wall. I have tried to fix it myself, but to no avail, so some lucky plumber will be making £80 for coming to my house and doing three minutes work. I don't mind paying him the money. It is a tax on my own lack of manual dexterity. I will get round to finding the lucky plumber soon for whom I am the equivalent of four lottery balls. The opera director Stewart Lee had a similar problem and he says that the wall will dry itself out naturally, through nature, in the passage of time.
Herring's Second Law has held up on every single visit to the gym this week. I expect to receive the Nobel Prize for Physics next year for my gym based scientific research.
The diet continues to go well incidentally. My blob is now almost entirely in the orange "moderately overweight" section and I am about 83kg, an impressive 9kg lighter than at the end of Edinburgh and over two stone lighter than I was at the beginning of the year. People who haven't seen me for a couple of months are noticing the change and it's all been pretty easy so far. The plan is still to be down to 80kg by the end of the year, but with December coming up with the greed and unpleasantness of the Christmas season who knows what will happen?
I have the additional impetus of knowing that I will be filming a bedroom scene (not too steamy a one, but I will be partially bare no doubt) in February and so don't want to look too grotesque. The camera adds ten pounds. So I will probably look like I did in September!
We did more auditions today. One of the actresses who was reading for the part of my character's girlfriend said "This is all right for you, isn't it? Sitting in a room all day, auditioning pretty actresses and choosing which one you're going to get to snog. I was thinking about it on the train on the way here. I bet you're having the time of your life!"
Up to a point there is some truth in that. It's a strange situation to find oneself in, but at the moment I'm still in writer mode and it's hard to make the connection. It's like when I wrote the full frontal nude scene in the play "Excavating Rita". I knew there was a chance I would be playing the part, but at the time I was being the writer and just trying to come up with what would be best for the play. The minute I became the actor who had to take his clothes off I was suddenly questioning the necessity of such a scene. Surely I could keep my pants on at least. The director (not me, I don't like to direct my own work, to avoid having to intervene between the writer me and the actor me) was insistent that the writer's wishes had to be upheld. As a writer I was glad about this. As a performer less so. It worked out OK.
When I was writing the current project I was quite doubtful that I would be in it. So I just wrote what would make the best film. Now I am in it I realise I have to be in bed with an actress and later attempt to have sex with her against a tree (in the script, obviously, though I am a big fan of the Method). It sounds like a win win situation, but it's quite a nerve-wracking prospect.
And luckily it's the writer me that is attending the auditions, so I am more interested in casting the best actress for the part, rather than any personal considerations.
But the woman who pointed out this fact is correct in as much that it's an odd situation for me if I stop and think about it. So I try not to think about it. Sometimes being schizophrenic is not such a bad thing.
It made me think that an audition would be quite a good way to choose an actual girlfriend. You put out a casting call to all the available women, call them into a room for 15 minutes and interview them, film them and make them read out little conversations that you imagine you might have with them once you were together. If you'd written a script about how you saw things going then a lot of the single women could decide beforehand whether they want to come in and read for the part. The fifteen minute interview would give you an idea of how things might go. Then you would offer the woman the "part" and then start to negotiate what fee she would require for being your girlfriend. The ones who were more desperate would be happy to take less money and the ones in demand could charge whatever they wanted.
Ah, well maybe this is where it starts to break down. Or is it in fact where it starts to become more realistic? No, it's where it all breaks down. Yes, definitely.
WIN a PSP
Question 22
There is an advert on the inside back cover of the menage a un show programme. Who or what is that advertisement for?
Remember you can purchase a menage a un programme by donating at least five pounds at
my Justgiving website and then emailing me your address. Or you can pick one up for free at my gig in Cheltenham next Monday.
All money goes to SCOPE.
