The Audition Process.

I'm just going to ramble on here about auditions; it's the process that every actor knows and a lot of us hate.

Let's face it there can't be many other jobs on earth where you have to audition all the way through your career; there's only one other job where it can be worse and that's a comedian playing to nobody at all just a producer sitting there demanding that you make him laugh.

I saw something similar once when I went to my very first audition – well it wasn't my very first as I had to audition for drama school: one piece of Shakespeare, one modern piece and a poem.

Every actor will recognize those three requirements and I think I explain quite well how I started as an actor in this 90 second clip from a talk show - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VrGBnPB8IN0 - have a look and I'll wait for you.

Getting back to my first audition; I had been at drama school for three months and I saw in The Stage newspaper an advertisement for a pantomime at the De Montfort Hall in Leicester and I decided to give it a go; why not?

By the way I know people on the American continent will hardly know what a pantomime is and will confuse it with 'mime' so have a look at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pantomime which should fill you in.

I was living in Shropshire at the time so Leicester wasn't that many hours travel away and when you are at that stage of your career you will try anything; so off to Leicester I went and I can't tell you how I got there but it took a long time on many trains.

The De Montfort Hall has a capacity of two thousand and is a venue for the Leicester Philharmonic Choir and the Leicester Symphony Orchestra; acts like the Beatles played there and Buddy Holly when he came to the UK played there too and walking in that day I noticed how big the place was; an indoor stadium no less.

Most of the others there for the auditions were variety acts; I came as an actor even though I was only a drama student; trying to run before I could walk.

There was a really good double act auditioning made up of two brothers in suits who did a song and dance and many young girls with beautiful singing voices; one fella came on stage with a newspaper and started to sing 'Old Man River' then he said to the producers out front 'I also do lines.'

'Do you?' they said 'well let's hear some.'

That was where the newspaper came in; he unfolded it and started to read it out loud in a mock Shakespearian voice – 'The Prime Minister today met the cabinet at number 10 . . '

There was no hook to drag him off stage or loud 'thank you' - they just let him finish and thanked him.

Then came the comedian I mentioned earlier; he was obviously a bit like me – no experience.

He came on the stage and started telling a few jokes and of course because there was no audience – only us waiting to audition – there was nobody laughing and this threw him totally.

The more jokes he told and the more silent responses he heard the more confidence he lost till he was a quivering wreck.

I remember the last thing he did was to take a chair from the back of the stage and say 'For my next trick I am going to do a back flip from this chair and land on my head on the floor' and he stood on the chair; then he looked out front, got down off the chair and said 'no I'm not' and walked off.

It was very embarrassing and I was next; 'tell us your name' somebody said and I told them.

'What do you do?'

'I'm an actor.'

“What do you do – lines?'

'Yes I'm going to do a piece from Present Laughter by Noel Coward.'

So I did my piece, speaking to the chair, and when I walked off everybody gave me a round of applause; I suppose I was different from everybody else there but I didn't hear another word from them.

Now that has always made me laugh when an actor talks to a chair during an audition but maybe that's just my sense of humour.

Most of the other auditions I've been to over the years have been with just actors and there is a difference between auditions in London and those in Los Angeles.

In Los Angeles you really do audition no matter who you are – I don't mean people like Brad Pitt or Jack Nicholson but you would be surprised at the well known faces that audition.

In London actors don't admit they have to audition at all even if they're a nobody – like me; they call them meetings and a lot of the time that's all they are.

You chat with the director for twenty minutes and they assess who you are and base their decision on that.

Lots of times you have to read the lines from one of the scenes; one actor I followed in London had writing next to his name which read 'will not read under any circumstances.' Big headed bastard!!

When you arrive at an audition – on both sides of the Atlantic - you are welcomed with the sight of nervous looking actors who look exactly the same as you; so you can see what type you are as soon as you arrive.

In Los Angeles the actors go dressed for the role; especially for commercials.

I went for the role of Santa Claus once and there in the waiting room when I arrived were three fully dressed Santas and they knew each other.

A bit like the singing Hitlers and the dancing Hitlers from 'The Producers.'

Actors in Los Angeles have their 'sides' with them which are the scenes the casting director wants you to read from the script.

Most actors learn those lines and have worked on it for maybe the last 24 hours.

Actors here are entitled to see the sides 24 hours before any audition – union (SAG) rules.

In London, when I was there, you don't get the sides till you arrive and one time, when I went to meet Ned Sherrin for a play he was directing, they didn't let me see the script till I met Ned Sherrin himself – this kind of process gives you the best sight readers and not necessarily the best actors.

It's a pity about that particular play as Ian Dury was in it and I would have loved to have worked with him.

In Los Angeles they want the best actor for each role and go out of their way to help you which is why you get the sides.

The draw back here is you very rarely meet the director on the first audition and sometimes you don't meet him at all.

The casting director 'reads' you and you will get a call back to meet the director at the second meeting.

If you go for a big movie they just put you on tape so you are at the mercy of the casting director who usually don't know how to direct you properly.

I've been to quite a few seminars, organised by SAG, where there have been agents (they get 10% and no more here unlike in London), managers (15%) and casting directors and you do pick up a lot of hints and tips.

Number one: at an audition when you are reading don't fix your eyes on the other person you are reading with; people don't normally look each other in the eye all the time when they speak to each other. Have a look around, if you don't believe me; so there is no need to do it with the casting director.

Also look at the American TV and movie productions and you will see the actors looking around being natural.

That doesn't mean to say you never look people in the eyes but it's unnerving if you do it all the time.

I also know actors who are quite well known and they don't see why they should go in and meet the director as they have worked with them before or they are friends.

Some directors here still want actors they know to come in for casting as they might want them to do something different from what they normally do; maybe you're well known as playing a killer or a heavy and the director wants to see if you could play something light or comedic.

Or the other way around – you do a lot of comedy and they want to see if you could play that nasty streak or even a bit of violence.

Directors have said, at these seminars, that the actors who don't or won't come in sometimes miss out.

What has been fairly consistent over the years at auditions is the seriousness of the Americans, who mean business, and the nonchalance of some of the English; sometimes the English arrive with the attitude that they have something else more important to do; now what could be more important than your next job?

Of course I haven't been to any auditions in London for over fifteen years as I've been here so things might have changed.

At the last couple of auditions I went to there were some young girls waiting, and I couldn't believe that they spent their whole waiting time sending texts on their smart phones – I refuse to use the word texting – but maybe that's natural too.

We are the world.

There they all were down on La Brea the other day at the ex-Charlie Chaplin studios-ex-AM Studios doing their bit of getting out of their chauffeur driven cars and limos, being filmed as they walked the few steps towards the front gate for it to be shown on the video for their new recording of the famous song.Quincey Jones was inside waiting for them in the same studio as last time; Snoop Dog came in his limo and the rest in theirs; all too well known on their world and unknown in mine; one black man with a beard had the audacity to arrive at the back entrance in his jeep and was told by the guys in the suits and the bald heads and sun glasses that he had to go to the front; just another day in Hollywood as I went to the post office.Plenty of cops around as a young thug tried his luck on the corner with a street crime; he was cuffed and standing by the wall at the back as the world was watching the front.
Just a short post today - let's see if you click on to this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Glny4jSciVI&feature=channel

My brother.

It seems my last post about abortion and advertising was a bit of a rant; this is according to my brother; he said I lost him at the beginning.

This is my younger brother so I don't suppose it was the first time I lost him in our lives, I mean figuratively of course.

I remember when we were two little boys in an outer area of Dublin called Finglas climbing trees; in fact I think it was closer to Cabra, and my brother fell as we were climbing. We were wearing short trousers in those days, not big enough or old enough to go into longers yet, and as we climbed he slipped and came falling down.

I remember seeing the bits of twigs or sharp bits scratching his legs but he didn't have to worry as he had quite a soft landing; he landed on me!

He nearly knocked me off my branch and we would have both fallen to the ground if I'd have let go.

One day we climbed to the top of Nelson's Pillar in Dublin; it was wearing our poor mother out as it was a long climb up those spiral stairs and my brother didn't like the fact that we were going higher and higher; he had a problem with the height, so he said, but if you shoot forward about twenty years he would climb to the top of a thirty foot A-Frame ladder.

The A-Frame ladder is really supposed to be for a two man operation; one man holding the ladder the other man at the top, unless you are against a wall as in the picture, above, but in the theatre we were in the middle of the stage.

I went to the top of it a few times as we were working at the Alexandra Theatre in Birmingham setting the lights thirty feet above the stage; the height didn't worry me but the seemingly rickety ladder did.

I wasn't sure whether someone would come walking across the stage, as they worked on their part of assembling the set, and kick the ladder out from under me as we were up there by ourselves sometimes; not always a two man job when we were under pressure to get the set ready.

I would stand there when my brother was at the top, and think of the day he fell down the tree and, as he leaned forward to change the angle of a light that the lighting guy would tell him to move, I half expected him to land on me again; only this time it wouldn't be much of a soft landing from that height.

I also remember around about that time playing football (soccer) with him for some made up team or other; he played in defence and I played somewhere out of the way; as long as I didn't do too much damage I was okay. In fact I remember scoring a few goals just farting about.

About ten minutes into the match, or the game as they say here, my brother went in for a tackle and a few people landed on top of him - so what happened? They had to carry him off; he was the soft landing on that particular day.

He was okay as he came back on to a round of applause after a few minutes of touching his toes and a wipe with the magic sponge.

But football wasn't his game; he went on to play rugby for Birmingham and played representative rugby too and one day he ended up in hospital; I don't know whether he broke his ribs or bent them or what but one of them pierced one of his lungs.

I went to see him in hospital and he lay there in bed with a painful look on his face; what could I say to him?

I had come to cheer him up and, as he looked quite stressed, I tried to make him laugh; when he laughed a terrible look came on his face as it was hurting him to laugh - Sorry Pat.

Freedom of Speech and Abortion.

I haven't posted for a week!!! I was busy doing some proper writing and also entering my novel,
The Storyteller, into a writing competition which meant writing an outline of 300 words, then the first 5000 words of the novel and finally the novel itself.

Now:
I am of the opinion that sports and politics shouldn't mix and living in the UK for so many years we have obviously had a lot of experience; South Africa was banned from international cricket and rugby and then, eventually, the Olympic Games; I wouldn't appear in a TV production which would be sold to South Africa and it cost us Equity members a lot of money.

When apartheid ended, Nelson Mandela said the fact that South Africa was banned from sports helped a lot with apartheid's demise – so which way is right? Who knows?

But back to politics and sport; I really believe they should not be mixed because most of the time sports figures are the biggest arseholes under the sun and they know nothing about anything; case in point is Tim Tebow, famous for being a college footballer, who is doing an anti abortion commercial to be shown during the super bowl on Sunday and should be seen by the many millions watching the event.

Tebow was born in the Philippines the son of Christian Missionaries and he was 'home schooled' by them.

I don't know whether he was a good or bad footballer as I don't have the slightest interest in the game and think it a bit of an oxymoron that the game is called football in the first place when they hardly ever kick the ball but I wonder why they think he is qualified to do such a commercial; I have done a few commercials in my time including one for Brylcreem; I wouldn't have got that commercial if I was bald so what does a home schooled son of missionaries American footballer know about abortions?

Now what do I think of abortion? I am not for it as Mr Tebow's backers would have everybody believe - I am not for abortion and I don't know anybody who is.

However I am pro-choice and I strongly believe in the law as it is in Britain; abortion is freely available on the national health service and it is free.

If you are a married woman you have to have a signature from your husband, in case he would use it as a reason for divorce, and the abortion has to be carried out during the first few months of pregnancy.

There are no maniacs with guns roaming in search of so called abortion doctors and it appears to be an accepted way of life; however that doesn't mean to say that there are no people in Britain who are not pro-choice.

I think I have made my opinion clear on this but let me ask another question; by stopping this commercial, or banning it, what happens to freedom of speech?

Let me switch slightly; over the next few months Gordon Brown, when he thinks the time is right, will call for a general election in Britain; then there will be a three week election campaign.

On the day he calls the election television programmes will be monitored; they will be monitored to show fair play to all the political parties who have a certain amount of candidates standing.

Representatives of the parties will literally have stop watches to see how long each candidate is exposed for and if a news item is about a particular constituency and the news anchor mentions one of the candidates he has to make a mention of the others too.

Political commercials are against the law; they can use billboards but no commercials.

Commercials are replaced by Party Political Broadcasts which are free – when I lived there they appeared on all the main channels at the same time and they would last about 10 minutes or so; which always appeared like a lifetime!!

Another thing that happens there is a ban on political jokes on television; there would be no such thing as impersonators taking off leading politicians of the day – you might say this is against free speech; but what is free speech?

There's no such thing.

We're not allowed to speak when we go to the theatre or the cinema; if you went up the street shouting and cussing you would probably be arrested – so where's free speech?

Somebody was ejected from one of the halls when Tony Blair was making a speech for heckling; isn't that an infringement of freedom of speech?

On television in Britain anything goes; after 9.00 pm (the so called watershed) anything goes as regards so called bad language; words that you are not allowed to say on American television no matter what time it is unless it's on cable.

In Britain, last year, a right wing politician won a seat in the European Parliament and the BBC allowed him to be on Question Time; it cause a controversy but what could they do? They could have banned him, I suppose, but he was very careful on the show not to say anything racial.

The BBC allowed him on in the interests of freedom of speech but you have to ask yourself the question; is he dangerous? Would his appearance on the show and his charisma influence the young?

Fortunately he had no charisma and wasn't very pleasant to look at – but neither was Hitler.

You can look up Tim Tebow to see if he is attractive or not; he just looks like a load of well scrubbed muscle to me and I think his commercial will back fire.

However I think the decision by the supreme court in the Citizens United v. FEC case here a few weeks ago which will allow corporations to spend as much money as they want at the time of an election on hate films is wrong.

It's complicated so here is a smattering from the NYT: Overruling two important precedents about the First Amendment rights of corporations, a bitterly divided Supreme Court on Thursday that the government may not ban political spending by corporations in candidate elections.

The 5-to-4 decision was a vindication, the majority said, of the First Amendment’s most basic free speech principle — that the government has no business regulating political speech. The dissenters said that allowing corporate money to flood the political marketplace would corrupt democracy.

Freedom of Speech – yes if you can match the corporations funds.

All The Best; (abbreviated).

When I came to live in America fifteen year ago – well fifteen years and thirteen days to be precise – I knew that a lot of things would be different; for a start I'd have to learn to drive on the right hand side of the road and that I would have to call the pavement the sidewalk and the roadway the pavement; but there were lots of other things I didn't know about.

For instance a girl on the flight coming over told me not to mention the word queue; nobody would know it and to replace it with 'line' so instead of standing in the queue you would say standing in line.

In my fifteen years of being here a lot of people have got to know what queue means; or gotten to know, as they say here. I'm not claiming credit for the spread of this word as they had to call the thing you wait in when you are waiting for someone to take your call when you call a business.

That word back there gotten by the way was common in England many many years ago but was dropped and it's only used now in the phrase ill gotten gains.

Over the past month I have learned from the BBC the phrase the noughties to describe the first decade of this century. It obviously started by being called the noughts and progressed into the noughties – a play on the word naughty being bold, and – er naughty!

In fact I think the word came from the BBC.

There are lots of other things they don't say here often – three fourths for three quarters and I have rarely heard fortnight, spanner, fishmonger, cough-sweet and loads of others. I was here for many years and suddenly found that people didn't use the expression 'one off' and instead said 'one of a kind;' but the expression is catching on now; must be me again!

As well as driving on the right the brakes on a bicycle are the other way around with the back brake at your right hand so if you rent a bike (not hire one) at Venice Beach check the brakes before you set off.

We all know about the spelling – which I don't agree with, by the way; that will have them worried!! As far as I can ascertain the American spelling was used to make things easier; they spell diarrhoea as diarrhea! Now when you have spent your entire life trying to spell such a word and then when you are nearly there somebody says it's okay you don't have to bother any more, it's a little deflating!

But to anybody that has an interest in the history of words and want to know where they came from it's a bit like a name change to anybody trying to trace their family tree. The derivation of the word diarrhoea is Greek

Which brings me to my point (if there is one); I can accept center rather than centre, honor rather than honour, program rather than programme etc but when I came here I found something else that is different.

At school and in business I learned that when you write a letter to a company and start it off with 'Dear Sirs' you conclude it with Yours faithfully; if you started off with a personal address as 'Dear Charlie' you conclude with 'Yours sincerely.'

Here in America they finish them both off with just 'sincerely.'

No 'Yours' or even a difference between addressing the whole company you are writing to or a certain individual there; after the Dear Sirs they put a full colon (or as the texters say dot dot) instead of a comma; no starting each paragraph a tab in - but all that I can stand.

Just because they do it doesn't mean I have to but lately I have noticed something else that's starting to get my goat.

No it's not the phrase 'very fun' – which I have learned to live with – but now I get e-mails signed 'best.' What happened to 'all the?' Is it really so hard to put the two words there to make it all the best?

And what do they mean? Best what? Best wishes? Best love? Why don't they cut it all out and just put wishes? In fact why do they write at all why don't they just leave the page blank if it's too much trouble . . .

Oh hang on! It's not going to rain after all – I can go out!!

All the best!

The Internet Movie Data Base.

I'm changing the subject away from current affairs, disasters or even politics as this blog is to do with my novel and me – on Twitter I'm described as a Hollywood Professional Actor and Novice Novelist; and that's what I am.

One of the things you need as an actor is a way of getting yourself known to the people who can give you a job – or as the Americans say hire you.

In Hollywood it has always been The Academy Players Directory and in London it's The Spotlight.

There's a difference between the two of them but basically they are the same thing; a directory of actors both male and female. One of them is very expensive the other is very reasonable; I hesitate to use the word cheap but that would describe it better.

The Academy Players costs about $70 per year although I pay $18 as I subscribe to a casting service who have taken over the running of the Academy Players and I get a discount.

The photos in the Academy Players are usually about ten to the page – this is big enough for any casting director or director to see what you look like.

In the Spotlight you are expected to have a half page or even a quarter page – if not they kind of imply that you are a novice or not successful or, Lord help us, an extra!!!! The half pages are used by big names or even stars. I remember Roger Moore didn't have a photograph at all; just his name. He rightly (or his agents) deduced that we all know what he looks like.

The half page in the Spotlight goes into the hundreds of dollars – I can't remember how much it was the last time I subscribed; I think about £150 or so; now I may be wrong on that but it was certainly a lot lot more than the Academy Players.

So in the nineteen nineties Amazon, the people who sell books on line, started the Internet Movie Data Base; it wasn't meant to be a professional site, like Spotlight and the Academy Players, but more a fan site or for people generally interested in the film and television business.

Up to a few years ago it didn't cost anything to put your photograph on your page – we all have a page and it doesn't cost anything – but now you have to pay for the photos. I don't have to pay because I came in on the ground floor and put photos up there very early.

They had to start charging because many actors started to put their photos up. There are quite a few on my page because added to the ones I put up there are some production photos too.

The other day when they held the Golden Globe Awards here the photos of the winners were on their pages within minutes; those photos were put up there by an agency and didn't cost the actors anything.

The IMDb, as it is known, has more or less taken the place of the Academy Players Directory here in Los Angeles and you can usually tell the British based actors to the American Based ones as the Americans use it and have their photos on their pages whereas the British don't.

If you have no credits I believe you can put your resume up there – your CV in British speak.

There is also the Starmeter which leaves a lot to be desired; this is made up of the number of hits each actor gets in a week; you get lots of hits if you're in the news, have a movie out or you die.

Recent number ones have been Brittany Murphy, David Carradine and other people who have suddenly died but ordinarily what happens you go higher if you have a movie or play, or whatever, on television.

A lot of people watch a film on TV, of DVD, then look it up on the IMBb (notice the little 'b' by the way) then they click on every member of the cast and these are counted up over the week automatically and each Sunday the new list is there for all to see; when I say all to see I mean if you subscribe to IMDb Pro that is.

Tom Hanks for example is number 87; this week's number one is Zoe Saldana who was in Avator and number two is Naomi Watts.

The usual number one is Robert Pattinson who, this week, has dropped down to number ten for some reason and another regular in the top three is Johnny Depp.

If I killed somebody next week the week after I would be very high on the IMDb which brings me to a point I'd like to make.

Some casting directors, and even agents, will only consider, for certain roles or representation, someone in the top twenty thousand – which makes it ridiculous; just because you're on the news or people have looked you up you suddenly become a better actor??

The Starmeter, by the way – and there is a movie meter too – has every actor on it that has ever been in a movie so we are competing for popularity with all the stars of old; and they don't have to be stars.

Adolph Hitler is 8044; Marlon Brando is 364, Marilyn Monroe 981 and John Wayne is 472 and there are millions of others.

The average working TV or movie actor is usually in the forty to sixty thousands and people that haven't worked for years are usually between five hundred thousand and two million.

I go between eighty thousand to one hundred and twenty thousand – peaking sometimes at around sixty thousand. Most of my friends who don't do TV or movies much are in the many hundreds of thousands and as high as two million.

I think there are a lot of Lifeforce fans who look me up. I get letters (e-mails) from people who have seen it numerous times and obviously look me up otherwise I'd be down in the millions as I don't usually get credits for dubbing, looping and voice matching which keeps me going between jobs.

Looting toothpaste and flour in Haiti

Do you know what I heard on NPR the other day from one of the reporters 'in the field' in Haiti? Now I listen to NPR as it's the closest radio station to BBC Radio 4 so I expect fair non-bias reporting; the reporter said there was 'looting' in Haiti. Looting????


What kind of things were they 'looting?” The answer is flour.


That to me is not looting or even stealing – that is survival.


What did the reporter think that the so called looters were going to do with the flour – put it into packets and sell it as cocaine??


Shame on you NPR.


On that part of the island bodies are piled high and the stink of those bodies is unbearable so one of the other things that is being taken is toothpaste which they smear under their noses to prevent them from smelling the flesh of the decaying bodies.


Looting???


Of course there are criminals who live in Haiti just as there are criminals here and the criminals in the prisons in Haiti have, by some accounts, escaped from the damaged and demolished prisons – a lot of them killed too, I presume.


But why are some people so quick to look for the bad things; people like Rush Limbaugh for example?


Why does an arsehole like Rush Limbaugh say 'We have already contributed to Haiti – it's called US Income Tax'?


Answer me that – anybody! How can he be so evil?


The day after the earthquake people were coming up to reporters and journalists and asking for money because they were hungry; they wanted to join a queue where somebody was selling food.


Selling food in an emergency? Unbelievable.


Lots of people at the moment are leaving Port au Prince by buses as they are fed up of waiting for the rescuers to arrive and it is reported that the buses have doubled the fares - oh dear.


Now I don't want to come across here as mister angry from the comforts of my apartment in Los Angeles, as there is a lot of good being done to rescue people in Haiti, and if I was religious I would call some of the rescues miraculous, but from what I see and hear everything is arriving there too late.


The earthquake was six days ago and there are nurses who volunteered here in Los Angeles to go and the last I heard they were waiting for permission to go to Haiti; there may be a chance that they have to help from a ship in the bay.


That may be the best place for hospitalisation but to actually have to ask permission in the time of an emergency is ridiculous and who is going to get the victims – six days after the emergency and counting – to the ship?


I also detect, as well as in the news coverage, competition between the various countries and aid agencies to help; in fact a spokesman from France has accused the USA of actually occupying Haiti.


Just a short post for today – I'm off to Philippe's for lunch in down town LA – it's raining heavily so it will be an adventure.

News Cameras in Haiti and no aid!

It's seems futile to write anything even vaguely entertaining or even witty here today with the stress and hardship that is happening in Haiti; the news programmes here and the Internet was full of the late night talk shows debacle with NBC frightened to get rid of Conan O'Brien as they would have to pay him forty million dollars and all that news has rightly disappeared; I like to think that but I doubt it.

Now we have the news companies invading Haiti; the head newscaster of ABC, Diana Sawyer, is there; she flew in from Afghanistan to witness it on behalf of us all here in America.

She was dressed like a female Indiana Jones and squirmed her way through the broadcast whilst her underlings in America were left to read the rest of the news.

ABC already had reporters there with cameras and to get Diane Sawyer's flight into Port-o-Prince took a lot of negotiations as there is no tower at the airport and other airlines were in danger of running out of fuel as they had to circle the airport so many times.

Yesterday ABC were there when a baby was found amongst the rubble – they witnessed it but to hear them on TV you would think that they carried out the rescue.

It wouldn't surprise me if ABC has the baby they think they rescued flown back to the USA to make more false kudos out of it.

It beats me why the head of the news has to actually be there when the reporters were already there and it seems to be the same all over.

I flipped over to CBS and there was Katie Couric in Haiti and it must have been the same story there with her aircraft circling the airport and keeping other planes circling; maybe one of them was the one with Diana Sawyer on board or maybe one with urgent supplies.

The one person that should have been dressed like Indiana Jones was Brian Williams of NBC as his face was very sun burned when he was broadcasting from there last night; at least he gave his microphone to someone else who knew more about the situation there.

It's probably the same with every other country with their TV crews taking all the room on the island.

It must be terrible for the poor victims of the earthquake who are looking into the distance for help and they see a group of people coming towards them. They see the people getting closer and closer and the victims hopes build up but when the people get close they are a load of reporters with their cameras to take photographs and ask stupid questions; what a let down; no wonder they are piling bodies and using them as road blocks.

Don't get me wrong I think there should be reporting from Haiti as it informs people what is going on; it encourages us to send money, as that is what they want, and I think it's wonderful that we can just send a text to 90999 using the word Haiti in the message and $10 will be sent to the Red Cross and added to our cell phone bills.

Things like Twitter and Facebook really come into their own at times like these as Haiti, at the moment, is almost out of touch with the rest of the world.


The poor people of Haiti have had to suffer for thirty years or so of dictatorship with Papa Doc and Baby Doc and the USA didn't think it was their business to try and remove them – regime change – as they were not communists.

They were also brainwashed with their belief in voodoo and lately a gang culture and drugs; some of the people interviewed there were saying things like “you know what I'm saying; you know what I'm saying?” Now where did they get that vernacular from?


The buildings in Haiti were built with no building code and look what happened – no regulation means collapse and liken that to anything from the banks to the stock market to anything.

Now we are going to try and rebuild the country when we have rebuilt Iraq and Afghanistan; plenty of work for the banks to raise money for, plenty of aid that we can send them and plenty of conditions for that aid - lovely jubbly, as Del Boy would say; a nice little earner!

I'm not a politician and I can talk as much drivel as the next man but it has been three days since the earthquake and relief from the USA is only getting through today.


This island is not far from the USA so why is it taking so long for medical supplies at least?


The people of the world probably think that Haiti is an island country; well it isn't. It is an island shared with another country The Dominican Republic. I have heard no reporting from there, I don't know if the earthquake affected it and I don't know if they are offering their facilities in this disaster. I find it almost unbelievable that Cuba wouldn't help as they are around fifty miles from Haiti and as they offered help to the USA when Hurricane Katrina blew into Louisiana why aren't we hearing what they are doing? Because, as usual, the good news from Cuba is never reported here.

Are the American TV News Companies not telling us everything? I can't believe that - could you?

It goes without saying the negotiations for Jay Leno and Conan O'Brien will carry on and the banks will fight to give billions of dollars in bonuses to their executives; nut cases will still blog that we should leave Haiti to get on with it and help themselves (I actually read this) and Pat Robertson, a southern Baptist, will come out with more statements saying that Haiti has been cursed by God for past deeds.

All sounds pathetic doesn't it - and it is!

Twelfth Night - or what you will.

Here we are the twelfth day of Christmas – January 6th – one of the first Shakespeare plays I played in was Twelfth Night (or what you will) and the twelfth day of Christmas is usually the day when you take down the
Christmas trimmings and put the Christmas tree out or, if it's a false one, back into the box.

But the first thing I noticed when I moved here was the Christmas trees being thrown out the day after Christmas, or within the next few days, and everybody going back to work.

No Boxing Day like in England, no St Stephen's Day like in Ireland; just a bald one day Christmas.

No full afternoon of sport, horse racing on the TV, cold turkey and ham sandwiches, no taking of the Alka Seltzer to get over the hangover – no nothing!!!!

Back to normal.

I know there are firms here who give the staff the week off but at my wife's company they just get the one day for Christmas. The fact that she only went back to work this week after Christmas is nothing to go by as the company shut for the week and didn't pay their employees; she is being paid but that comes our of her annual vacation time; how pathetically Scroogy is that?

Now I live here in America and I believe that when in Rome live like the Romans – not that all the Americans who go to Rome live like Italians as they still look for their 'Holiday Inn' when there – so I try to live as much as I can like the Americans; well not necessarily the Americans more like Los Angelinos.

So I get pancakes at breakfast once a week at the Fig Tree on the beach, I wear shorts most of the time, I call Office Depot Office Deepoe and I call Ralphs – Ralphs.

An English public schoolboy I was talking to the other day was calling it Rafes, which is the public school way of saying Ralphs (public school being the aristocrats and upper classes of England, by the way, and not the American version which they call private school) – you would think the English would call their posh private schools something other than a public school wouldn't you?

So back to Christmas – I have been here for fifteen years and I am only just realising that most Americans only have turkey at Thanksgiving.

We had to pay through the nose this year for our turkey as we had bought our turkeys other years when they were cheap at Thanksgiving and put them into the freezer; this year we were sick at Thanksgiving but not as sick as we were when we paid all that money for a turkey!!

3D Movies.

Well here we go with another end of another year but this time it is the end of the 'naughties' – as they say on the BBC World Service – the naughts, the zeros or whatever else people are calling it; I'm sorry I only found out recently that they were calling the decade the naughties as I like it.

And at the end of this year the number one movie at the box office is a 3D film called Avator; this film up to today has taken $242 million at the box office in America alone.

Now this is an avalanche, a stampede and people feel obliged to go and see it as they feel a need to have the experience and it sounds to me that it relies on computer graphics and style over substance.

It will probably bamboozle itself to the best picture of the year in the academy awards in March but I have to ask – is it the best film?

Would it be fit to even tie the bootlaces of The Searchers, for example? I don't think so.

In fact I don't even think it is the best film of this year - but what has that ever had to do with choosing the best film?

The thing is it's a 3D film with loads of new technology and I have friends who are saying that all films in future should be in 3D – I hope not!

A film, to me, has to rely on the acting and the story – I'd also like to be able to see it and hear it and not have to strain my eyes and ears because of bad sound or picture.

Let me interject here to say I haven't seen Avator yet and I'm not going to review it as I'm not a reviewer – I'm an actor.

So back to Avator and 3D; when 3D was tried in the fifties loads of movies were released with people falling towards the screen, thrusting their swords at the camera and generally doing extra things just for the 3D effect.

There is a good old pot boiler called The House of Wax starring Vincent Price, I seem to remember, and if you look at that movie you will notice that for no reason, outside the wax museum, a man chants a song to the camera – early rap?? - whilst holding a table tennis bat with the ball attached by a rubber band; as he chants he hits the ball at the camera in rhythm with his song; there is a bouncing musical backing and I have seen the film a few times just for this sequence.

What am I getting at I hear you asking yourself????

Bear with me – when sync sound was invented the producers flooded the market with musicals and when colour TV came on the scene we were inundated with rainbow sets and multicoloured dream coats in more TV shows than I care to remember.

I think this is going to happen again now that we have 3D – loads of 3D movies will be at the multiplexes, with performers doing the equivalent to the man in The House of Wax, and the movies I like will be elbowed out by this new piece of technology.

I loved a little movie this year called Hurt Locker which would have been a great film in any technology. It didn't need 3D to be great; it has a great cast and if the studios had forced that movie to be in 3D the audience would probably have been subjected to bits of bodies flying into the audience and real life explosions.

I will probably see Avator but I will try and see Up in the Air, A Serious Man, Crazy Heart and A Single Man first.

Avator is a film made for fourteen year old boys – the same people that camp outside the Chinese Theatre here if anybody even mentions that another indeterminable episode of Star Wars might be showing there in the distant future – and I want to see grown up films.

I want to see well acted, well scripted and well shot films that are under two hours long but will I get my wish?

Who knows?

Happy New Year!!!

The Day I Met Peter O'Toole.

I hadn’t played cricket for years when I suddenly got a call from a friend; he was coming up to Northamptonshire to play and there might be a game for me if I turned up: “Oh by the way” he said - Peter O'Toole is playing.

The call came on a Sunday morning and the game was to be that afternoon; I searched around for some kit and found my old cricket boots, a white shirt and my cricket sweater; no white trousers, I’m afraid, but I didn’t want to look too keen in any case; that wouldn’t be cricket.

The things people like about playing cricket are batting and bowling and when you get a game with a new team those are the two things they never let you do; you have to field and go in at about number nine or ten; and as for bowling? Forget it!

Looking back on that now it amazes me the way we stood for it; when people ask if you will help them out and make up a team you should say “yes! If I can bat or bowl.” But again – that wouldn’t be cricket would it?

I had promised my son that when the famous England international cricketer, Ian Botham, came to Northampton to play the local team I would take him; I asked him if he wanted to come and see Peter O’Toole but it was met with a negative response – who is Peter O’Toole? he said.

The field, where the match was due to be played, was in another village but was was easy enough for me to find as I was very familiar with most of the sleepy picturesque villages of Northamptonshire.

A few of the players were already there when I arrived and it was good to see my friend Nick; we first met when we appeared together in a national tour of a Mike Harding play “Fur Coat and No Knickers” but I hadn’t seen him for about a year.

My cricket boots and sweater were in the car when we greeted each other and I asked him how he got involved with Peter O’Toole: - It's his nephew’s team; he said he plays quite often.

About ten minutes or so later Peter O’Toole arrived; he didn’t just turn up in a car with others or sneak in, he arrived in the truest sense of the word; he arrived; he was with his nephew in an open top sports car; even before he got out of the car he dripped with charisma, eccentricity and just basic star quality; there was no mistaking that this was Lawrence of Arabia.

He didn’t look too healthy; a bit thinner than I had imagined and very pale; but it was Peter O’Toole all right; he smiled as he emerged from the car and headed towards the dressing rooms.

As he greeted everybody it became obvious that this was no mere mortal; this was the bon vivant on his day out, smoking a cigarette through a long holder and not sparing anyone in his wake that charming and attractive smile.

I was glad I had left my cricket gear in the car as both teams were in full attendance and all members were fully dressed in their whites; I would have stood out like a sore thumb in my jeans in any case.

I managed to get a bit of a “field” in the warm up though; the part where everybody throws the ball as hard as they can at each other to see how brave or foolish they can be. Peter O’Toole seemed to be catching the ball okay which surprised me as I didn’t even know he played cricket.

While we were having the warm up a few cars arrived and out of the cars came a few strange looking people of all shapes and sizes; yes the press and local radio reporters.

When they spotted Peter O’Toole the cameras and the shutters started buzzing and snapping; this was in the nineteen eighties when the paparazzi didn’t quite have the reputation they have today so nobody was that alarmed.

The time came for the toss: Peter O’Toole’s team would bat first and Peter and his nephew would open the batting. The opposing team took the field and went into the ritual of trying to knock each other’s heads off with the cricket ball; the umpires, who in that class of cricket came from the lower order batsman of the batting side, took to the field and we were ready to go.

When Peter O’Toole and his nephew emerged from the dressing room there were two other batsmen with them each carrying a bat and each walking towards the middle with the nephew and his Uncle Peter; it seemed that both Peter and his nephew had leg injuries and needed runners.

It was a strange sight seeing the four of them heading towards the middle followed by about three or four press photographers; they surrounded him snap snapping and flash flashing as he took his guard and when he was ready he looked at them; he didn’t say anything, he didn’t have to; they got the message and sloped off to the sidelines.

The opposing bowler had marked out his run and was making adjustments to the field as everybody waited for the first ball; Peter O’Toole looked valiant as he waited for it, his runner was standing out at square leg and his nephew’s runner was standing next to the umpire at the far end with the nephew, himself, standing as far out as his uncle’s runner. At one point it looked like more batsmen were out there than fielders; everything was ready to go.

The press kept quiet and we all looked to the field as the bowler came bounding in; when he reached his maximum speed, which coincided with his arrival at the wicket, he let the ball go at the top of his arch and the ball seemed to bounce at lightening speed half way down the pitch; Peter saw it coming and played it defensively on the back foot and it travelled towards a close fielder: “stay” “no” “stay” “wait” could be heard and then everybody laughed.

If they kept that up through the game it would be like the Reginald Perrin yuppies “super” “great.”

The batsmen and runners got together; they had to make up their minds as to who was going to do the calling when a run was possible; they huddled conspiratorially together then they laughed again and went back towards their places; suddenly they stopped and got together again with a kind of “don”t forget the…..’ then they were in a huddle again till they laughed and parted to take their positions.

Peter O’Toole played a straight bat throughout; he was exceedingly accomplished and hit a few cracking shots against bowlers who were trying really hard to get him out; I particularly remember a few off drives and a couple of boundaries.

Each time he did this the bowlers tried even harder to get him out and the few onlookers cheered and jeered.

Eventually it had to happen; he was out. I’m not sure how many runs he scored but it was a good knock and he got a tremendous amount of applause as he walked off with his runner trailing behind.

The press pathetically took his photograph as he reached the edge of the field and he very obligingly smiled and acknowledged the applause by raising his bat as he headed for the dressing room.

A girl radio reporter, with tape recorder on her shoulder followed him into the dressing room.

I was sitting just outside and I’m not sure what Peter O’Toole said to her – it sounded like geee yaa ferr yah here! Whatever it was the girl radio reporter came out of the dressing room like a greyhound from the trap.

After a while the great man emerged; carrying the cigarette and holder, and wearing a small towel around his neck; he came and sat next to me and as his limbs hit the bench I could feel the heat from his body permeating the air.

The girl radio reporter came and stood in front of us blocking our view of the game “Darling! Do you mind?” he said.

He was very nice and she moved away. I was very envious that I wasn’t playing and sorry that I hadn’t played for years as the smell of the willow and surgical spirit mixed with the cool Northamptonshire air, the general camaraderie of the players around me and the general atmosphere of the day, made me want to seek out a team that was looking for a has been.

The conversation for the next hour consisted of “well played” “that was never out” “how many do we have now” to “oh well; it”s our turn now.’

And there they were; going on to the field to try and bowl the other team out.

Peter O’Toole was the wicket keeper and played a good game in the field too. There didn’t seem to be any sign of a leg injury; but why would there be? This was the man that took Aqaba by land and the opposing cricket team would be easy meat for such a legend and the team did indeed collapse giving the Peter O’Toole XI the game.

He came back to the dressing room and when it was time to go, he warmly shook my hand; as he did this he seemed to look me up and down as if he was the major and I was the trooper under inspection.

Then off he went to China to work in The Last Emperor; he didn’t see his photographs on the front page of the Northampton Chronicle & Echo the next day; the photos made him look about twenty years younger and twenty pounds heavier.

The day coincided with Ian Botham’s visit to play Northamptonshire County Cricket team in their annual game at Wellingborough School; in this game Botham hit a record number of sixes which was on the television news that night but there wasn’t one photograph in the Northampton newspapers to record this great feat; the photographers were all taking shots of Peter O’Toole..

Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas

I got a few e-mails after my last post about the song 'Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas' and I have to say maybe I didn't quite get my point across; I'm not saying I want another Christmas song but I think the crooners should move on with different songs as we have heard 'Goody Goody' and 'Jeeper Creepers' - enough already.

But my brother writes and tells me that 'Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas' was recorded by 136 people from Judy Garland to Bob Dylan and that the original version was too maudlin for Judy Garland's husband, Minnelli, meaning that have yourself a merry little Christmas as it may be your last.

He thought it was in that military film when the bloke got executed in the end but according to 'Bing' it wasn't – well actually it was, Pat, your first thought was correct:

As the soldier is brought from his confinement and tied to the execution stake, the music is Frank Sinatra singing "Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas," and the moment the soldier is shot, it skips to a joyful recording of "Hark the Herald Angels Sing."

That was part of a review by Bosley Crowther Published: December 20, 1963 in the New York Times.

So BING is wrong and you're right.

I can't remember the Hark the Herald Angels bit but who could forget such a moment in a film; as I am writing this I looked on Netflix but it's not available and that is a shame as the film by Carl Foreman is a classic – a bit long but a classic.

Netflix is the on line video shop we use here.

My friend Jeffo in Florioda wrote to me and said - Well if I may boldly go against your argument, poetic license dictates the rules may be set aside. And we who write must appreciate that better than anyone. "To boldly go".......sounds much better than "boldly to go" or "to go boldly." Sure it violates the mores of grammarians, but so fucking what? It works so leave it alone.

As I said to Jeffo . . . . first of all I believe in nearly everything you say apart from the fact that I might not have got my point across; with regards to the splitting of the infinitive I am really nit-picking as I am sure I do it myself and also use bad English - the last phrase there in America would be 'use also bad English' - which to the ear, that has only been listening to English on the other side of the pond, strange. The strangest of all is the use of take and bring. On the other side of the pond it is take things to and bring things from.

Now when I say the other side of the pond I mean England as in Ireland they use the brings and takes the same as the US.

With regards to boldly go or go boldly - it depends on how good the actor is delivering the line.

Happy Christmas everybody!! The photo above is the LAPD arresting Kid Cudi here 18 hours ago - let's hope he played last night!!

Through the years we all will be together.

Have yourself a merry little Christmas/Let your heart be light/From now on,/our troubles with be out of sight . . .

Yes of course you know it and the guys who wrote it must have made a fortune out of the song especially at this time of year – every year it gets played over the radio and in stores incessantly; in other words it gets played over again – then over and over and over again.

It was recorded by Judy Garland, Frank Sinatra and everybody from the Fly Me to the Moon club; you can easily tell them as they wear tuxedos or open neck shirts outside their jackets and they have sun tans, comb overs, wigs or dyed black hair.

These songs are standards and they are still being recorded – I mean I can't wait for Tony Bennett's latest or next version of Goodie Goodie!! Can you?

The first attitude you get from the singers who sing the standards (apart from Sid Vicious – bless him) as soon as they open their mouths to sing is 'Hey!!! I'm so good!'

Well they are good; we can all recognize that but please – somebody write them a new song.

What I hate is when they take a rock song and try and turn it into a standard – it's a rock song!!!
Leave it alone!!

Walking in The Grove, next to the Farmer's Market here in Los Angeles, you will hear music by these guys piped out all day long - Frank Sinatra, Jack Jones, Sammy Davis Jr, Dean Martin etc – even my idol, Bobby Darin was drawn in to put his version of some of these songs.

But let's get back to Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas; for years I have heard it and I still hear it and the line 'Through the years we all will be together' makes me cringe every time I hear it; the guy who wrote these lyrics was one Ralph Blane.

What was the matter with saying 'we will all be together' – why did he have to say 'we all?'

I know in songs like 'Doe a Deer a Female Deer' the line 'Tea! A drink with Jam and Bread' was written that way so that bread would rhyme with thread but Ralph Blane had a free choice and wrote 'we all will.'

So I was thinking about this and suddenly the penny dropped; maybe he wrote that because that was the way he spoke – spoke I say because he died in the nineties; I hope he is still resting in peace but his family will be aware of that song as the cheques are still landing in their letter boxes.

He could have spoken like that because that is the way America speaks; when I came to America I noticed that the Americans split the infinitive all the time; I always knew of the famous line at the beginning of Star Treck 'To Boldly Go . . .' as opposed 'To Go Boldly...' but I thought it was only in the writing but no; they split the infinitive so much here that I believe it has been accepted as correct.

Before I set out to write this I looked up who wrote the song and it was credited to Hugh Martin and the aforementioned Ralph Blane; as I mentioned Ralph Blane died in the nineties but Hugh Martin, who is still alive, said in an NPR interview in 2006, that Ralph Blane had encouraged him to write the song but had not had anything more to do with writing it.

Surprising what you learn when you look.

So have yourself a merry little Christmas and you never know - through the years we will all be together whether we split infinitives or not.

Socialised Medicine

Well my mother died sixteen years ago today – December 19th; it doesn't seem that long ago and I came over here to Los Angeles the following year.


I personally know of a few people who read this; my friend Jim is in Canada raising money for his film, my friend Jeffo is in Florida, my brother is somewhere in Afghanistan and another friend is in Wales – Dave.


There are lots of other people who read it but I don't know them; they exceeded all expectations in November and the numbers have gone down a bit for December but they are from all over the world – well the northern hemisphere as I haven't seen much from down under either from New Zealand or Australia.

Jim wrote in his blog that he was in or near the coldest part in the world; Jeffo wouldn't say that living in Florida would he and I have noticed that the UK has a lot of snow at the moment so I hope my babies drive carefully; my brother in Afghanistan is probably the coldest of them all; he is in a twenty foot container with bunk beds and he says it is freezing his knackers off.


Here it was seventy five today.


So good wishes to you all.

The last time I wrote in here I got a few facts wrong about the health care debate; the senate won't need two thirds majority to get this stage through; I knew it beforehand and I don't know why I wrote it but they just need sixty votes to prevent a filibuster but my prediction about the USA never getting universal health care still stands.


Now let me give you an expression which the good people of America know and which I'll bet very few people in Britain have even heard; that expression is 'socialised medicine.' I'll type it again 'Socialised Medicine!'

Socialised Medicine is what the people of America call the health care system which is used in the UK and Canada; I would think the Canadians have heard it, because of their proximity to the USA, but I'd never heard it till I came here; I had never heard the expression 'Black Irish' till I came here either but that's another story!

In the late forties when President Harry Truman tried to introduce a national health service to America the opposition got hold of a Madison Avenue advertising copy writer to come up with a frightening phrase and Socialised Medicine is what they came up with; so it's about as real as a Ploughman's Lunch; both invented by Mad Men!!

All – or should I say – most of my friends are to the left but even my most extreme left wing friends in America do not quite understand the free health service of the UK; some of them know a lot about it but the propaganda here tends to conjure up an image of a government run body with long dark green corridors where the patients wait for days to get long blunt needles stuck into their tiny babies' arms by unqualified politicians.

Maybe they think the people in the UK have to go to the doctors with some kind of book of food stamps to prove that they qualify to join the queue but no.

People have their own doctors which they choose themselves; the doctors like you to be in their catchment area, it's true, as Ronald Reagan said, but do you know why? Because the doctors in the UK after they've finished their morning surgery (called office visits in American) they go to the houses of their patients who are too sick to leave their houses.


In America if you are too sick to go to the doctors there is an answer phone, when you call the doctor, which says 'hang up and dial 911 if this is urgent' – that is the equivalent of 999 in the UK.

Nobody in the UK ever knows how much anything costs as it is picked up by the NHS and if you are nowhere near home you can pop in to a local doctor for treatment; if you don't have your NHS medical card with you they ask you for your date of birth and that is that.

The NHS gets paid for out of taxes but let me squash a myth here and now; I pay more tax here than I would in Britain.

If you live in a large conurbation, like various parts of London, you may have to wait for a while for elective surgery but not if you live in a remote area; you are allowed to travel to those remote areas, by the way, if you want to jump the queue.


On the BBC World Service the other day they interviewed people in various countries about their health service. I can't remember how much maternity leave the girl in Britain qualified for but the girl in the USA qualified for twenty weeks; TWENTY WEEKS!! Can you believe it – unfortunately that was without pay.

In Britain you get paid for your maternity leave; if you are really interested you can look it up.


Another story I picked up on the world service programme was about a woman who had cancer in the USA; she hadn't quite qualified for insurance from her employer so she couldn't get any treatment when she found out; eventually the insurance kicked in and she was treated and the treatment cost $190,000; she had to pay $38,000 towards this as the insurance didn't cover the full cost so she was left with the bill.

She did what lots of people here have to do; she went bankrupt.

So here's a phrase that people in the UK might not have heard which is quite common in America – Medical Bankruptcy.


So there are two phrases that the good people of Britain are learning today - Socialised Medicine, which is what the Yanks call the British National Health Service, and Medical Bankruptcy, which is what you get in America for not earning enough money and getting sick; and by the way America; Yank is what the people in the UK and Ireland call you; in a likeable kind of way, of course, as they are fond of you but they really should feel sorry for you for the way your government treats you.

And there we are – my little message for today; oh by the way we have health insurance provided by SAG, the actor's Union, and Aetna, provided by my wife's company which costs us a few hundred a month.

Don't get me wrong – America is a great place to be; but to use a phrase known in Britain – a great place to be healthy.

The Health Care Debate.

I was going to write about the frustration of the health care debate but what's the point? The USA will never reform health care to any decent satisfaction; the public option is a thing of the past and the latest proposal of extending Medicare to younger people is also going the way of all flesh; younger people by the way would have been 55 and up.

Joe Lieberman, who is an independent senator from Connecticut, a state which has a lot of the health insurance companies, has decided he isn't going to support it; this is after he said in recorded interviews a few weeks ago that he would.

The public option would be support from the government for people who couldn't afford health insurance; the Republicans and the blue dog democrats didn't like this as they said it would affect the insurance companies and their profits – this would be news to anybody from Britain where people in their droves buy health insurance from private companies like BUPA either individually or through the companies they work for.

I mean you don't think The Queen and the Royal Family, the Lords and Ladies Dancing, the ladies in waiting, the Princes and Princesses and that crowd actually use 'the health' do you?

They wouldn't be seen dead in a public hospital (got to be a joke there) and prefer to go to the private sector where the Emirs, Sultans and Sheiks of the world go and pay many thousands of pounds per day for their treatment; in fact probably thousands per hour.

So I don't think – and what do I know? - that the public option would have affected the insurance companies one little bit; I mean the post office, which is the cheapest way of getting mail delivered, doesn't stop people using FED-EX and the other private mail companies does it?

So let's go back to Lieberman; he was the man who stood for Vice President of the USA on Al Gore's ticket in the year 2000; to all intents and purposes he could or should have served a term as the Veep and didn't but now he finds himself with the power to make or break the democrats health care bill – so how did that happen?

At the last election he lost the Democratic nomination in his state and stood as an independent against the person who they replaced him with and because of his name value he won; he said he would support the democrats in the senate giving them the sixty senators they needed for a super majority.

A super majority means that the Republicans wouldn't be able to use the filibuster to stymie any of the Democratic sponsored bills.

I seem to remember George W. Bush using phrases like 'it should be an up or down vote' on the things he wanted passed; an up or down vote means bills could pass on a simple majority without the filibuster; Leiberman's vote is needed in this case as the senate needs a two thirds majority to get the bill through and the two thirds majority stops the Republians using the filibuster; a bit like the penalty clock in basketball.

A filibuster, by the way, is when a senator gets up and speaks for hours to prevent the vote being taken – a bit like Jimmy Stewart in 'Mr Smith Goes to Washington' - well I never particularly liked Jimmy Stewart, Disney and all that crap and I don't particularly like Joseph Lieberman.

But what do I know?

By Chopper from Cannes to Nice; very nice!

Well yes it was very nice going from Cannes to Nice in a helicopter but at the time it didn't really feel like a pleasant experience; I went four time to Cannes to try and sell the series: three times I had to catch a chopper from Nice to Cannes and the other time I travelled by train catching it at Cannes and going west to Marseilles before heading north to Calais going through Lyons and Paris..

When I say I had to catch a chopper it was because we were partying so much there that I would have missed my flight from Nice to London if I'd have travelled by coach and the three times I choppered to Nice I travelled with a terrible hangover.

The train journey was good and I travelled on the high speed train at a million miles an hour all that way of about nine hundred miles or so and arrived in Calais smack on time – then after the ferry to Dover the London train was delayed – figures!!

But let's go back to the cutting room in London; one of the partners in the distribution company was an ex editor, and a good one too, and he helped me put the finishing touches to the movie; we tightened up the continuity and made some sense out of it but looking back now it needed a lot more work and when I have the time I'll do it just for the sake of it; we also found that a piece of the cutting copy was missing.

In the film I run up to a door leaving my car door open, only to find that the door I ran up to was locked. I walk back to my car and give the door a kick. This put a dent in the door and as I stood there I suddenly realise that there is a dent and do a kind of subtle double take; the original editor had cut that out – just a little bit of sense needed there as it was very funny! So the first thing me new editor said was 'you've got to find that clip.'

We looked and looked but couldn't find it – it ended up on the floor of some cutting room at one of the film schools; this is why I believe there are comedy editors and drama editors.

On stage an actor times his laugh; he knows exactly when to come in with the next line after a laugh and to be quite frank some editors don't; they just stop the laugh dead in its tracks as the audiences strain to hear the next line.

The next job after the fine cut was the sound edit and I had to find a sound editor – nobody wanted to do it.

I had worked on a film with Giles Llewellyn-Thomas called 'Terence Walker on the Moon' – I saw a bit of a movie on a flight once called 'The Astronaut Farmer' with Billy Bob Thornton which looked very similar; anyway I got in touch with Giles who promised to do the sound editing for me; it's a very shitty job and I was forever grateful.

I don't know how much he knew the new way to serve Guinness but at that time Guinness had introduced draft Guinness in a can; it was almost the same as the draft you bought in the pub and they achieved this – and won the Queen's Award for Industry for it – by putting a widget in the can.

Our afternoons were spent very happily drinking the various cans of Guinness I bought and this seemed to be enough of a payment for Giles – he wasn't a boozer but I might have been on a temporary basis.

We had two deadlines to meet: number one was the dub when we would go into the dubbing theatre and put all the sound affects and music onto the film and the second appointment was with Universal Studios to put the whole film directly onto broadcast-able video tape directly from the negative. This cut out a lot of the printing and colour balances which usually takes a long time. I figured if was supposed to be for TV what would be the point in making any other format than tape.

I had to take the cutting copy and the negative into the neg cutters and I left a bit of space on the cutting copy for the missing piece of film and when we first saw the shot it fitted exactly – and it was funny!

So we met our two deadlines, drank many a pint of Guinness and I rented a theatre in Soho for the first showing.

As none of the actors had been paid I figured I owed them, at least, to try and get casting directors in to see it. Most of the casting directors in London were within a hundred yards or so of the theatre I had booked and as I'd booked it for 1.00 pm I thought I'd stand a chance of getting a few of them in. I bought a load of wine and some finger food – but only one casting director turned up; but why wasn't I surprised?

Most of the actors in the film were new faces and I think I decided there and then to go to Los Angeles at the first opportunity – which I did; but not before I went to Cannes.

There seems to be a festival every month in Cannes; the film festival is world famous but they also have commercial festivals, a music festival but the two I went to were MIP and Mipcom; the former the month before the film festival in the Spring and Mipcom in October sometime.

The first time I went it was to MIP and the distributors paid for my apartment and from then on I paid my own way; they paid a lot of money to have me registered with MIP and Mipcom too.
I thought it was wonderful but most of the people who went there moaned and groaned. I had never worked very hard in factories or down the mines but going to Cannes wasn't like work to me; work to me is hard work that hurts your back.

My hosts – and I don't mention any names on here much – were drunk from morning to night; the lady had a brandy for breakfast the day she took me out to the local market and drank pastise (a kind of Pernod) for the rest of the day; I don't know what the guy drank but he was the same.

I wasn't exactly a teetotaller there but I didn't drink before the evenings.

One time I went to Monte Carlo (above right) and we ate at the famous Café de Paris (which is the picture to the left above); we were suddenly with the jet set eating wonderful food and seeing all those rich people with their amazing French clothes accents and hair styles waiting for the next Formula One Grand Prix to come along and fill their Principality with gasoline fumes.

We couldn't get into the Grand Casino, I'm sorry to say; we were in the building, which seemed to be totally made out of marble, but to get into the casino we needed some kind of ID; two of us had our passports which were acceptable but one of us didn't – there were three of us. He was asked if he had any other form of ID and when he said only his press card we were shown the door so fast it was unbelievable!!

We had to go into a casino next door or so and I won a load of money playing black jack.

There were plenty of parties in Cannes and I went to a party on a boat one night and we were watching a film on a TV monitor with Jools Holland – he was the piano player with the band Squeeze.

Jools was talking in the film and then I heard his voice too – so I turned around and he was standing behind me. I introduced myself and we had a chart and a drink and then it was time for me to go to a bar in one of the hotels; so I said my goodbyes and went.

I heard later that when I went out a few people went to the port hole to look at me walk along the plank back to the quay to see if I was going to fall into the drink; didn't realise I was that drunk.

At the bar in the hotel – I think it was the Carlton – there was a black piano player who knew me and when I walked in he started playing Danny Boy.

I had more drinks in there and the piano player went leaving me sitting on the piano stool.

With the courage and bravado of a drink I played, maybe, eight chords of a boogie which is the extent of my piano playing, and then I stopped; 'Messieur!! Messieur!!' they shouted for me to play but I had to let them down; when I sat back down at the piano Jools Holland sat on the stool next to me “hello Mate” he said and launched into a boogie.

It was absolutely wonderful; the people around the piano went wild, I clapped my hands to the music, like the drunken idiot I must have been, and that was one of the times I had to get a helicopter to Nice.

From that hotel I went to the Casino in Cannes and won enough money to pay for the whole trip – again playing Black Jack; “Why don't I move here?” I thought to myself as I made my way back to my apartment; but I didn't I went to Los Angeles where it is very hard to get a bet on.

I never did sell the idea of the series; it was a well tried formula, a buddy series, but there were others on offer too.

The film itself sold to Finland, some airlines and other places in Scandinavia. It also sold to a cable company in England called British Satellite Broadcasting but before they showed it the company was taken over by Rupert Murdoch's BskyB and they didn't honour the deal.