Christmas at Chez Tarq

With Christmas on the horizon and my unexpected release from Cockmouth Theatre Company’s pantomime, I find myself writing Christmas cards too all and sundry. It really is a marvellous way of both keeping in touch and making sure you are in peoples’ mind when casting their next show. Obviously, the better cards are sent to those who will, at some point, hopefully, reward you with a deep and well written part, maybe a domestic thriller, where someone other than your character is murdered, although initially it looks like they died in a tragic accident while washing up. Or maybe the lead in a show which a policeman from the future solves crimes from the past through time travel because he already knows the culprit. These are but two ideas I have included in a card to Peter Welbourne, the television producer who so kindly cast me as onlooker 3 in an episode of Casualty.

There is an art in looking on at the action. As an actor, one wants to be at the heart of it, the focus of all eyes. The dramaticas Majoris. But one must resist such temptations and look on, with the necessary emotion. Concern. Fright. Admiration. Shifty. All emotions which can be conveyed via body language and tone. I decided to make the character a solicitor, embroiled in a case where his client has gone missing under mysterious circumstances, whose very life may be threatened by the criminal gang he seeks to incarcerate. A man of character, whose life’s work has been largely pro-bono because he believes in the sanctity of the law, yet when he needs the law to protect him, he is found wanting. The Police seem uninterested to help him, and his plan – to hide in that remote country shack until the trial is over and the danger faded – weighs heavy on his mind, not least because he cares for his staff and they would be without income should he have to vanish for a prolonged period. This, along with an ill elderly relative and a penchant for antiques  - one of which may hold the key to the solution of all this business - adds to the weight on his slender yet manly shoulders. Conveying all that in the two seconds I was on screen without words was, I have to say, a feat of acting supremacy, even though I had to peer over someone’s shoulder I like to think the viewers caught sight of me and thought ‘good lord, there’s a solicitor type fellow with an interesting tale to tell. We’d much rather follow this chap than all this medical guff’ but as usual the vultures of the BBC thought otherwise, dug in their talons and edited me out.

I was also fortunate this year in making an appearance on the reality show ‘Falling Stars’, a show where celebrities are voted on by the public to be pushed out of a door of a plane. I pride myself in coming second to receive ‘the shove’ out of fourteen people, the first one being the Go Compare man. God rest his soul.

I would like to point out this is not a show for people who are otherwise unemployed elsewhere. I know for a fact several of these people are in demand. Paul Ross for example has many enquiries from Glazing Firms, while Richard Bacon is swimming in offers from Debenhams’ Ham. I myself had a lucrative advertising contract which, on taking this job, I was unable to fulfil, and consequently handed back the sandwich board.

If you want to send your favourite celebrity something, here’s a list of things some of them really like

Ant & Dec                   : 2 stroke lawnmower oil

Paul Ross                    : Any book of Les Dawson jokes

Claire Balding            : Stout Walking Thong

Gavin Esler                 : One of those things with the sucker on a spring – he can’t get enough of them

Esther Rantzen          : Notepaper scented with onions

John Humphries        : Brilcreme

Ross Kemp                 : Anything with Snoopy on

Dale Winton               : Snails.

Simon Calder             : Buckets

James Corden            : Vouchers for cycling proficiency tests

Of course, you can send whatever you want, but it is always best to stick with the list. I once sent Bill Turnbull something, as a sort of improvised gift, and he put my windows through. I don’t know it was him, but he was smiling a heck of a lot on breakfast the next day. Turnbull can be very bad tempered; rumour has it Shirley Bassey interrupted him once during an interview and off camera he later flushed her head down the toilet.

Anyway, I best get on with writing these cards. Away with you.

Walking (but not in Memphis)

Just come off the telephone after a conversation with Marvin Spules. Fascinating man, who, at 27, has become the latest hot property in the television world. Had I the guile, acumen and raw talent he possesses in droves, I would surely be up there with Gielgud, Pottier or Inman. He says he wants me to front a new show, a reply to the Balding strand 'rambling', called “Tarquins' Trots”. Fronting a television show is difficult for an actor; we are always concentrating on being someone else, and to be oneself on screen is to an actor what climbing K2 with no arms is to a mountaineer.

One must show a side of one that people wish to see, or one is naked and without pretence. As a presentation style, I mean, not literally [note: check not literally with Spules]. Take the late lamented Kenneth Williams. He presented many shows and no one even suspected he spent his spare time beavering away at home writing horrible things about everyone in his diaries. I was mentioned several times, although it was deleted by the censors, presumably because it was a little vague or litigious or gynaecologically inaccurate. It would have been nice to have seen my name in such a book, I remember the thrill when I was mentioned in 'Look In', the popular magazine of the 1970s, where some pop band was referred to as 'as popular as Tarquin McPhereson'. I forget which band it was, but it was there, I have the cutting. And copies are stored at my late-Mothers' house, so any rum cove who says I am imagining it I can prove them wrong.

Spules says the show would be myself and a celebrity walking about in various locations, chatting about our careers and memories. It would be so much better than Balding stumbling about all over the place, burbling on about careers and memories. No, we will walk with purpose. With the confidence that five years at RADA and twenty years of rep gives you. Yes, those who come with me will be the doyens, the very cream of their professions. Not the rubbish Balding has. You know she was talking to a man who had an ant farm the other day? Where's the nourishment in that? Unless you eat the ants, which I have read people are thinking about. But she didn't mention that, no. She just droned on and on about how they had their own societal structure. Piffle. If they were so structured as a heirachy, where's their contemporary theatre then? Eh? Where's the improvised avant garde or the Brecht or Shakespeare or Dostoevsky or lloyd-Webber? Tell me that! No, they just collect twigs and stuff and make big hills. And pardon me if I am wrong, Ms Balding, but has any of these hills been cut open to reveal an actors workspace and suitably comfortable auditorium? I doubt it. There's scant evidence of even a green room buffet, and that in itself is evidence enough to dismiss your hypothesis.

While I think about it I will actually make a note that should this series be given the green light, I want to make a requirement from candidates appearing that they walk in a manner befitting such a show. I will personally vet their gait. I can't have them slouching about. Three things. Walking, marching about and strutting.

Walking is vitally important for any actor. A walk indicates a characters intention. For instance, Terry Scott had a wonderful ponderance in his movement, whereas, say, a Nazi guard had a more regimented step. Imagine if they had been swapped around! June Whitfield would have had to deliver her lines constantly avoiding a kick in the chin.

I am on fire with ideas.