Can't Stand Up for Sitting Down (24 page)

I am
not in the next two scenes so I get to wander about and have seventeen more
sausages, read the papers and not do anything I’m supposed to be doing, like
refreshing my memory for the two shows of the
Book Club
for Channel Four
that I’m recording that evening. I take occasional trips to the lovely
temporary toilets that are outside in the cold as none of the toilets inside
are working and we have no water either.

I am
then back on for three more scenes in a row which take place at the nurses’
station, where I have to talk to Jo Scanlan, who is playing Sister Den, about
dolphins, and then have an argument with Vicki Pepperdine, Dr Pippa Moore,
about some money she owes my husband. We initially film one scene as written
and then do the same scene again a little bit more freely I can’t help myself,
I keep trying to put in one-liners, which I know I shouldn’t because they look
too contrived and will not get into the final edit, but it’s a knee-jerk
reaction, I’m afraid, and not being a proper actor but a comic, it’s also my
default position.

1 p.m.
The midday meal comes upon us and I’m feeling knackered already as,
however early I have to get up, I still can’t go to sleep at a sensible time so
I reckon I’ve had about five hours which is not enough for me. I need about
twenty.

After
eating, we piss about for a few minutes until we are called to have our make-up
checked and go back to the ‘ward’. In the afternoon we do more stuff at the
nurses’ station with me on the phone to someone who’s looking for a bed and
then me trying to get Sister Den to do my annual appraisal for me.

5 p.m.
I have a special dispensation to shoot off early and get to
Kennington in South London for two episodes of
Book Club.
I drive out of
the hospital and try to take a short-cut and mess up and find myself in an area
I don’t recognise without a main road in sight. I then have to use my satnav,
which tells me I am heading in exactly the opposite direction to where I’m
supposed to be going. This has added a good ten minutes onto my journey and
always happens to me when I’m supposed to get somewhere quickly.

Finally
I am facing in the right direction and arrive in Kennington half an hour later
than I’m supposed to. I stop at the shop and buy an evil-looking little bottle
of something that’s supposed to wake me up, but just makes me feel mildly
irritable and anxious instead.

6.15 p.m.
I arrive at Cactus TV in Kennington and am whisked into another
make-up room where I am transformed from grubby nurse into international
beauty … ish. I then get shooed up the corridor into the studio because I am
so late, where my fellow conspirators await me. They are Dave Spikey (him off
Phoenix
Nights
and a good egg to boot), Laila Rouass (off
Footballers’ Wives),
very
beautiful but such a down-to-earth laugh that you don’t want to smack her in
the gob with the envy of the aging stout old woman, Gok Wan, a one-man tornado
of sound and light who, as an ex-fatty feels like and is a real ally and Nat
Parker, the actor who plays the lead in the TV series
The Inspector Lynley
Mysteries,
who is a like-able gentlemanly aristocrat with a twinkle in his
eye.

Our
special guest is Martine McCutcheon who I have bumped into over the years on
such diverse shows as Jools Holland’s
Hootenanny
and Comic Relief and
she has her own book out to promote —
The Mistress.
We are reviewing a
novel by Liz Jensen called
The Rapture
which I liked even though the
plot went a bit bonkers at the end, so we discuss the book in a pretty relaxed
way and try to find positives about it because we are not there to slag
everything off.

By this
point, the sofa on which I am sitting is temptingly comfy and it wouldn’t take
much for me to lie down and never get up again. I have a slight headache — that
gritty-eye feeling you get when you’re tired — and an inability to read the
autocue with any degree of professionalism. It all seems to whiz by mercifully
quickly and then we have a break between shows.

8 p.m.
I go back to my dressing room for a wee and start to nod off on the
toilet, not a good sign so I down my second little bottle of evil highly
caffeinated energy drink and this seems to help. It also helps nipping outside
for a fag with Gok, since if anyone can wake me up, it’s him. He speaks at 900
miles an hour and I find myself being pulled out of my comatose state in an
attempt to follow his very funny discourse about his family This and my magic
liquid seem to have pulled me back into the land of the living and I feel I can
soldier on a bit more. I’m desperate to go home after the second show, but I
have agreed to do a gig for some people from the Labour Party at 10.30 that
night, giving me half an hour after the show to get my stuff together, drive
over there and find the venue.

The
next show sees Stephen Tompkinson as our guest and we are reviewing a sweeping
novel set in Ethiopia and America in the 1930s called
Cutting for Stone
by
Abraham Verghese. It’s very good so it’s not difficult to find things to say
about it. Stephen is good value for money chatty and relaxed, and I have to be
careful that I don’t get so relaxed I start to keel backwards.

10 p.m.
After the show has finished I rush to my dressing room and
carefully fold my clothes — do I bollocks. I stuff them all into a carrier bag,
because much as I would like to think of myself as one of those people who has
designer clothes carriers, I simply am not and never will be. I was always the kid
who turned up at school with my packed lunch in a Sainsbury’s bag and suppose I
always will be.

I get
into the car feeling like a limp old piece of rag and seriously consider
cancelling the Labour Party show. But I find I just cannot do it. My mum
instilled the Protestant work ethic into me when I was a nipper and I am one of
those people who still go to work if I am half dead. So I program the satnav
for the Brompton Road and set off at rally-driving pace to try and find a night
club called The Collection in SW3.