2005-02-03 - 1:26 p.m.

The filming took place on Saturday morning. I was to be picked up at 7.15 for a 9�o�clock start. What concerned me was that the same night, I was due to put on my irregular 60�s disco. This started at 9pm but before it could start it would need to be set up, which involves:

� Setting up cd players
� Setting up lights
� Putting up posters
� Moving / adding tables and chairs
� Sweeping up broken glass from previous night�s Wild West shootout or whatever the hell�s been going on in there.
� Checking for vomit (dark recesses of club)
� Checking for vomit (self)
� Being anxious about no-one turning up

Normally I set up in the afternoon, go home, relax, enter a mental state of swinging hipsterdom and return to the venue. To do that on Saturday I would have to be finished by lunchtime. To get there at all in order to set up and start on time I would have to be finished by about 6pm. Later than that and there may be angry customers with cravats, Chelsea boots and flaming torches awaiting me.

But mine was the first scene to be filmed, so there shouldn�t be a problem. As long as the order didn�t change.

�We�ve changed the order�

Here we go.

�They�re filming one other scene first. Then yours.�

By this stage, I had already changed into costume � ie pyjamas and a tracksuit top - been made up and had my hair trimmed, a cut which made me look fractionally less 60�s hipster and fractionally more 70�s Just For Men pack model. My trailer was a sumptuous, palatial split-level affair with Jacuzzi, sunbed, breakfast bar and heated fl- ok, it was an 8 by 8 cabin with a chemical toilet, located in a dark concrete tunnel under a Hammersmith office block. After three hours waiting, I started to feel like a genuine hospital patient. Perhaps this was deliberate conditioning on their part. Alone, bored, in pyjamas, in an unfamiliar room, going to the toilet every half hour to break the monotony. And feeling nervous about an upcoming procedure. Albeit a procedure where I�m filmed saying words, rather than being anaesthetised and having a kidney removed. And of course now I�m also worried about the time, and trying not to over-rehearse my two lines.

Eventually I am collected, ferried to the location and sit around some more. Then we rehearse the scene. Then we have lunch. Then I have the cast fitted � ah, hello old friend, isn�t it strange that however hard you were to get off, you�re eleven times harder to get back on. And just six hours after arriving, I�m being wheeled down a hospital corridor towards a bank of cameras, lights and people in baseball caps with rolls of tape and radio transmitters. I�m in pictures!

This is a walking and talking scene (or in my case sitting and rolling) and it makes me appreciate the actors� technical skill. They have to hit certain marks, deliver certain lines in certain places�I�m having a hard enough time remembering my ten words and pretending I know what I�m doing and making it look like I�ve done all this before. Rather than jumping out of my chair and skipping/hobbling down the corridor going �Whee! I�m in a film! Hurray!�, which, although the director has told me �milk the shit� out of the part, is not the kind of creative freedom I suspect I�ve earned.

On one take I misunderstand a direction and interrupt the actors prematurely. This is embarrassing and adds to the mild humiliation I have already felt on realising that the small talk the leading actress (who is pushing the wheelchair) makes with me at the beginning of every take is for the camera�s benefit, not because she has been wowzered by my personality and is preparing to leave her successful actor partner for me. Although obviously that�ll happen anyway.

And then it�s over. I am driven home by about 6�o�clock, leaving me time to shower and change and load a cab up with my equipment for the disco. The traffic is shit. So is the driver. He tells me he�s planning to leave the country.

�Iss shit, inni mate? Livin� here? I�m goin� to live in Spain, chill out, enjoy the lifestyle, inni�? Shit in Inglen, inni?�

But it�s hard to concentrate on his prescient evaluation of the relative merits of standards of living within the EU while the guy is executing seven of the twelve most dangerous traffic manoeuvres in driving history. The lifestyle may be better when you go to Spain, mate, but their road safety record will be taking a significant nosedive. Inni .As he swerves from lane to lane and even jumps the queue at a garage, I catch a glimpse of a shaken fist here, a furious glare there and hear horns punched in indignation all around. It�s like being the subject of the opposite of a tickertape parade.

Eventually we arrive at the pub and I shakily unload the gear. Down in the basement, something is leaking. It�s very wet. Marine life is actually starting to populate the area behind the bar. As I set up, a barman comes down and starts to mop. The results of this mopping are as follows:

20% of water: successfully mopped
10% of water: still behind bar
70% of water: shifted onto dancefloor area.

My friends arrive and nudge the manageress into action. Thanks to the deployment of several rolls of paper towels, the flood is stemmed and we can open the doors on time. Good job, because there are about thirty people waiting to get in. This is insane. Normally we�re quiet till about 11. Tonight, the place is packed by 10.30 and there�s a queue forming. Although I don�t want people to go away disappointed, there is of course something massively ego-inflating about people queueing up and waiting to get into my event. Ah, if only leading actress could see me now. She would see the error of her being-impregnated-by-her-successful-actor-boyfriend ways.

We finish at 2am, I pack up, hail a cab and go home. I have now been up for twenty hours. Naturally, as I am delirious with exhaustion, I start fannying about on the internet for a bit.

Two days later, I have a stinking cold.

That�s showbiz..

Profilage - Previosity - Nextitude