20121118

Working with Animals

Occasionally in this mixed up world, one is asked to do something which one knows one would secretly delight, but which one must hide ones' delight as not to lower ones' fee.

[note to self - lots of ones in that sentence, don't want to sound like Queen Victoria, does one?]

This week I am in Lowestoft Wild Monkey Park, for a commercial representing the Ironing Board Safety Council. They have councils, panels and departments for all sort of ridiculous things these days. You can't move for advisory bodies and Health and safety executives and welfare officials and security personnel. It's all a far cry from one producer, a man working the camera and a ostrich puppet.

People are so demanding now. When I made 'Clifton, The Ostrich Legged Lethario' a few years back (a biopic of Bernie Clifton, whose entire catalogue of stories for his grandchildren seem to increasingly involve an ostrich), it was just me, Michael Gambon, Michelle Dotrice and a ostrich. The four hour script we had (which we edited down from the original nine hours) was packed to the gills with japes and feathery head burying and we knew we could make a film at least as good as Cleopatra, although instead of the pyramids, cast of thousands and romance of the Egyptian landscape, we had a mantlepiece. We took it in turns to film as one of the other two played with form, and I particularly remember the tender and emotional scene towards the end of the film where one of the sticks that work the neck (on the ostrich, not Clifton) broke and caused much eye watering sadness.

We intended to show the film at community centres and old peoples' homes up and down the land, to share in Cliftons' struggles, to show it wasn't all pecking at imaginary bits of trill or attacking Michael Parkinson. Both Gambon and Dotrice were busy, Michael on his stage work and Dotrice had some pottery to be getting on with, and so it was left to me to demonstrate the result of our out pourings to the world. I also too responsibility for the subsequent Public Order offences.

My point though is this; for that production it was three people. For this advertisment we have over six hundred people involved, and I have no idea what any of them actually do. I know what I must do. I must iron a shirt faster than the Orangutan, which I can't see being much of a problem. But all these people... why? Why Lord?

20121107

Stage and Television Today

I once again apologise for my lack of entries into this, my online world. I am afraid I got embroiled in a particularly strict game of Farmville, which resulted in broken arms.

On the plus side I must say having your arms broken by a group of otherwise lovely friends is a real eye opener. I have not been able to do anything for myself for a while, and this has made me appreciate my arms all the more. Arms are wonderful things, allowing you to signal, lift, wave and all manner of other activities which normally we take for granted. Where, I wonder, would Magnus Pyke have been in his televisual career had not we evolved arms? He would have been explaining things wobbling around like a weeble.*

 I am not sure how the human race would have developed without arms. Certainly from a performers point of view key works would have been presented in an entirely different way. Shaw's Arms and the Man would have had to have been retitled, Hans Christian Anderson would have another name and I don't even want to mention Goldfinger.

All this thinking got me thinking, and thinking resulted in creativity. Why not, I surmised, why not do a musical based on arms? If Lloyd Webber can do Cats and someone else can do some nonsense connected with engine lubricant, I am sure I can do one about Arms.

I began the laborious project of working out how this would work. How would we have a collection of arms, just arms, on stage, singing songs about being arms?

Would they have left civilization after some catastrophie unknown? Could there have been a disease which makes them fall off or have to be amputated? The obvious problem was how to get them to sing; it would have to be a disease where your mouth ends up on your upper arm, otherwise it would just be a load of severed limbs on stage thrashing about, and I think we've all seen Billy Elliot.

I'll have to think carefully about this. It could be a winner.

So, arms now working as good as ever I am entreated to some marvelous physiotherapy. 

*It's been pointed out to me that Magnus would not have been wobbling at all, due to the fact he had legs. Well, suppose something had happened to those legs? Suppose he had upset Wiltshire Women's Guild during a demonstration game of Canasta? I would venture to suggest his scientific pontifications would not have been quite the profound insights into the universe and the laws governing it, had he been a-wobbling around like an egg, that was my point, but oh no, the lady proof reading this has to point out these things like some spoil-your-conversation Nazi and insist I of all people write a full and hearty explanation of why my comment relating to Dr Pyke was flawed in almost every respect. Like there was going to be any comeback anyway.**

** I have been contacted while I was writing by the estate of Magnus Pyke to the effect that I must make it perfectly clear he was not a weeble, and that any connection between his eminent work in science and wobbling whilst failing to fall down is mine and mine alone. The modern world, eh??