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?