I did my photo shoot for my new Edinburgh show this afternoon. It all comes along surprisingly early. We decided to shoot a few different set-ups so we could choose which one we liked best. There were a couple where I was going to be super-imposed either sitting on a yoghurt pot or standing up to my chest inside. I also wanted to do a shot of me sitting amongst piles of yoghurt, eating yoghurt and looking with horror as I realised I was being photographed.
Ed who works for the evil, lying PR machine of my management company Avalon, had thus gone out this morning to buy forty pounds worth of yoghurt and nothing else. If ever there was a time when the phrase, "Someone likes yoghurt" should have been correctly employed it was surely now. But apparently the check out person bit their tongue and decided not to comment, perhaps correctly afeared of a man who wanted that much yoghurt and nothing else. He wasn't even trying to pretend that he wasn't planning to bathe in the yoghurt by buying only 9 yoghurts at a time. He was saying, "I bathe in yoghurt and I am not even ashamed of it". I hope Ed's picture will now be at the entrance to all supermarkets with a not reminding security to extricate him from the store forthwith.
Ed was very pleased with himself for having found some Disney based yoghurts (not that the yoghurts themselves were mouse or duck flavoured, the pots were merely decorated with characters from Disney movies- shame). I pointed out that we couldn't really use them in any shots as Disney might sue us for use of their image and in any case, the pots contained fromage frais, which is NOT yoghurt. I had Ed fired immediately, so now he is jobless and also has the reputation of being a yoghurt obsessed freak. Life can be cruel.
When a photographer is testing out a shot to check the light and angle etc are correct he takes a polaroid photo. I've attached some of the ones from today so you can see what we were going for. Obviously the yoghurt pot is going to be morphed in later using technology. I think I prefer the ones of me being caught unawares, but it depends on what will look best on the poster.
We had some fun with some shots "in the pot" where I had a hand full of yoghurt that I was making as if to eat. Creamy yoghurt splattered all over the blue backdrop that you can see on some of the photos. I said that I hoped they'd throw this away afterwards or the other photographers were going to wonder what had been going on at the photoshoot. "No, no, it's not what you think. We were taking pictures of a bloke with a hand full of yoghurt, emerging from a gigantic pot of yoghurt!... We all got aroused - who wouldn't?- one thing led to another and we couldn't control ourselves."
I was laughing so much during these shots that I am sure they will be useless.
Though much of the yoghurt ended up being Onanistically spilled upon the ground, there were still many untampered yoghurts left at the end of the day. I considered sending them along to an orphanage or old people's home, but then I realised that I had paid for them and they were mine, so I decided I would keep all that I could eat and have anything left over burnt in a giant furnace.
Magnanimously I declared that everyone at the shoot could have one (but NO MORE than one) free yoghurt for having done such a good job. I could see from everyone's astounded and appalled reactions how difficult a choice that was going to be. Some of the people tried to act nonchalently as if they didn't really want a yoghurt after spending all afternoon looking at a man scooping the stuff into his mouth with his hand, but I could see them eyeing the Tweenies raspberry flavour yoghurts so grabbed them quick. I was the star of this shoot, so I get the pick of the yoghurts. That's just how it is.
What a strange job I have.
Diane was coming round for dinner. I was making the main course and she was bringing pudding. She had unthinkingly brought a large tub of strawberry yoghurt. Not even as a joke.
I didn't mind. Even though I had spent all afternoon with the stench of yoghurt in my nostrils.
I like yoghurt.
There, I've admitted it at last.
