I have this morning received a call
from a 'Lawrence', one of the myriad number of interns employed by
Sharon, who seemed to be under the impression I was scheduled for an
audition this morning. I dislike when agents schedule you to do
something and don't tell you. It makes turning up difficult.
As an actor, and I don't know about
other actors but I find this to be the case, I need time to think and
consider how I will approach any part. For the role of 'man eating
toast' in the Rowntree Jam commercial, for example, I spent a week
eating nothing but toast. While doing this, I considered what sort of
man I was. Was I married? Was I a professional man or one of the
workers? How did I relate to my friends? What car did I drive? What
was my relationship to my Mother like? How did I react when the cuts
to live theatre in the provinces were announced? All these things
were, to me, vital if I was to cram in as much pathos, character and
meaning as Rowntree has crammed in real apricots.
You may think a lot of this work is
wasted; oh no, I reply, waving a correcting but none-the-less stern
finger in your direction, it is a vital and living necessity that I
portray something like this to the best I can, breathing in realism
to every gesture, conveying the meaning of life to this man to the
wider public through the medium of eating toast. They would know his
joy, his pain, his very soul, exposed for all to see and savour, the
essence of the human condition. Through this medium, and using me as
a conduit, he would be revealed to the world.
I attended this particular audition
with a 108-page dossier of information on the man, his likes for
Chopin and the Chemical Brothers, his passion for Bolton Wanderers,
the hidden rage which lies behind all unharnessed talent. The
director, who couldn't have been older that seven, tossed my
information to one side 'You're only here to eat some toast' he said,
not realising he'd missed out on my accounts of the man's jury
service where he always thought an innocent man had gone to prison,
completely negating the tale of the trouble he'd had with local kids
trampling over his tomatoes and the ineffectual response of the local
Police. The trials and tribulations of his planning permission
application for that new patio. He missed all that. “Just eat the
bloody toast, McPhereson” said the prepubescent plebe, and eat I
jolly well did. Of course, my diet of six loaves of bread every two
hours for a fortnight had given me something of a wheat intolerance,
but I soldiered on. I tried to imagine I was one of our brave lads
during the first world war, trapped in a filthy trench, facing the
Somme and the Germans, knowing their new machine gun was waiting to
launch the bullet which would end my life. Only replacing the
Germans, the Somme and the gun with some toast and the prospect of
slight indigestion.
In all my research I had forgotten to
actually decide which sort of jam this man would prefer. I was
shocked to find I had been dished up raspberry. “Raspberry?” I
pondered, incredulously. “This man would not eat raspberry! He is a
strawberry man. Strawberry is his perchant, his raison d'etre. His
toast camouflage.” A heated argument ensued in which I stated that
to do this character credit and give him any credibility at all, it
would have to be strawberry or the whole thing would fall down and
the whole of Britain would be laughing at our incompetence and
unrealistic portrayal, and he put his point that I either did it or
piss off.
I ate the jam, but with every mouthful
I slowly and surely sank into a deep and loathful mire of despair.
They never called me back.
Lawrence seemed insistent that I had
been told but checking my diary I found nothing to indicate such an
engagement. Apparently I was to be a henchman in the new Bond film
'Snookerhips'. Or at least audition for one.
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