Very Important People.

Window Cleaner - great job!

Who is the most important person on earth? Who has the most important job? You will notice that I didn't say on the planet, which drives me up the wall, or even on this planet, which isn't so bad, but it's something I have often wondered. I wonder this because as an actor other people don't think my job is important at all. Sometimes I hear 'oh we all need entertaining' as if I am some kind of court jester, but generally it's not taken seriously. The newspapers here call us 'luvvies' – even the broadsheets – and the Trades Union Council seem to treat us as some kind of joke.

I remember years ago when I did my first commercial, pals of mine, not in the business, would wonder why it took a day – a whole day – to shoot a 30 second commercial; they would wonder why I got paid so much and why I was paid repeat fees. A chippy (a carpenter) friend of mine asked why he shouldn't get paid every time someone walked through a door he had made; my answer, whatever it was, didn't satisfy him at all.

But who does have the most important job on earth? Is it the doctor? The President of the United States? The Pope or even The Archbishop of Canterbury?

If the Prime Minister lands at Northolt Airfield all traffic is stopped for his journey in to London as if he is the most important man in the country. I remember walking along Wilshire Boulevard in Santa Monica, California, one dark evening, on my way to a bar after doing a show at the theatre there, when suddenly all traffic was stopped from coming out of the side streets and the traffic lights were cancelled. The next thing I knew a speeding limo came passed at about 70 mph – Bill Clinton: the President of the United States leader of the free world, as they call him over there, was passing through.

When Bill was sitting in the back of that limousine he must have felt important just like David Cameron must feel when all traffic stops so he can come through and . . . . and what?

Do his job! That's what! That's what everybody is waiting for; him to do his job. The most important job on the planet!!

If you were stranded in a desert or maybe a forest who would you sooner be stranded with? A Prime Minister? A Pope?

It is said that there are only two jobs that have any importance and they are a farmer and a poet; now there is no argument about that at all. 

The main reason to work is to feed yourself – put food on the table, to use the old cliché, so it doesn't matter what you do.

If a surgeon has to give priority he always gives it to the 'breadwinner' of a family; this is what they do, and they assume the breadwinner is the man and if he is in his mid forties he is priority as it is assumed, also, that there will be children depending on him but what if the other person in this fantasy of a dilemma is the 92 year old Duke of Edinburgh or the 86 year old Queen?