A few months ago I did a gig which gave me an annual membership to a chain of posho members clubs. It's nice to have somewhere slightly special to go, especially when I haven't had to pay for membership (though you still have to pay for drinks and food and it's not cheap - it's a good business model if you can manage to set something like this up), but unfortunately you do have to share these swanky bars with a lot of wanky people.
We went for a nightcap at one of the clubs tonight, in a quiet library bar. There were only four or so other people in there, but two of them were working on a script. It was 9.30pm and they had come out to a club to do their writing. Which is all right as far as it goes - actually, no it isn't. It's ridiculously ostentatious and wanky. You've all seen people in Starbucks pretending to write their screenplay (you might have seen me doing that), but at least they can claim that they can't afford an office, or just want to get out of the house. To sit in a bar in the evening, loudly conferring about your (self-proclaimed) fantastic script is something different. Especially when it costs so much to be a member there. I suspect they had a perfectly nice flat or house that they could have work-shopped in, but they wanted the other people in the bar to know that they were writers and they were working on a script. Either that or they had no self-awareness of how wanky this was, certainly no shame. Had I been forced to write in such a situation (and I can't see how I would be, but let's say that my wife was being held hostage and would be murdered unless I completed a thirty minute sitcom script without leaving whatever room I was in) then I would have conferred quietly and unshowily, maybe even writing notes for my writing partner rather than bellowing my ideas. These guys were putting on a little play for us. Interestingly they thought the play was about how awesome they were, but in fact it was a play about what knob-ends they were. Which in itself is a more interesting idea than anything their workshopping was creating.
I am being a little grumpy. I've been there. I've been so excited by an idea or a possibility that I am sure I have talked loudly in bars about it. When I was first acting in a radio pilot I remember pointedly studying my script on the tube, not for my own sake, but because I was hopeful that people might spot it and realise that I was such a big shot that I was a radio actor (in what turned out to be a never-broadcast pilot). But when I did that I WAS BEING A WANKER. I am sure other people spotted it at the time and pitied me.
And if you sit in a bar, working on your script, congratulating on each other and saying things like, "That's my favourite line in the script. I can already see the T-shirts", then you're being a dick and need to have a look at yourself. I'd tell you the T-shirt slogan, but I don't want to be accused of plagiarism or be sued for stealing their amazing idea. And also it wasn't all that amazing. He wanted the feedline on the front and the "punchline" on the back. Let's say the phrase was "We're All Screwed.... So let's screw." It wasn't even that good though. But if you see anything like that on a T-shirt then you'll know that I was wrong. Though I am tempted to make and giveaway ten thousand T shirts with the actual slogan on and give them away for free, just to freak these over-excited men out.
Don't work in a bar at night-time. That's my first rule of professional script-writing.
I would have loved to listen in more to the cringeworthy conversation but a group of four women arrived who also talked very loudly to each other (at least having a conversation and a drink) so I couldn't hear them any more. Maybe all people who can afford to join a members' club talk loudly, because they live in such privilege that no one has ever told them to shut up. Or maybe I've misunderstood and all these clubs are for people who are members. But I was glad we were only staying for one drink.
It took a lot longer to render (don't know what that means) than anticipated, but the Chris Addison podcast finally went up in the middle of the night. It's now up on video
at go fasterstripe or as free audio at
the British Comedy Guide.
And look at little Ray Peacock trying to copy everything I do as usual. Still he's quite funny with it.
See his ad here. Without him I wouldn't have had the lamp post ads (which were tied to his). I don't think he's giving anything free away with his show though. Certainly not any jokes.
