Small Man in a Book (28 page)

Travelling the world with
Xposure
.

I met Quentin Tarantino at a film festival in Nottingham; after the interview we talked about Elvis. I interviewed Andie MacDowell while she was in London promoting
Groundhog Day
. If you ever see the footage, someone should have told me to keep my mouth shut. (I’m almost drooling – I look like a lascivious wolf from a Tex Avery cartoon.) I flew to Morocco to watch Robin Williams filming
Being Human
and got to meet him, briefly. It was on this trip, actually, that I realized this wasn’t what I wanted to be doing. Robin was brought over to meet me and the small crew we’d assembled for the trip, and I was introduced to him as ‘the guy who’s making the documentary’.

Eurgh! That’s not me, I’m not a journalist! I’m one of your sort – I want to do what you do.

I was getting the urge to perform more and more. Meeting all these actors and visiting their film sets was great. It was exciting. But I was always there on the wrong side of the equation, and it became increasingly frustrating. The team was splendid, though, and I got on particularly well with the producer, Colin Burrows, a thoroughly good bloke who remains a friend to this day.

We had a little thing we’d do whenever he’d come over to me and ask if he could have a word.

I’d always reply in a Dudley Moore posh voice, ‘Is it bad news, sir?’

How we’d laugh.

Then, one day, he wandered over and it was indeed bad news. There was a new big cheese at Sky and, just as had happened at Radio Wales a few years earlier, I didn’t cut the mustard. So I was out.

I always remember Colin’s face as he said, ‘And you’ve just bought the flat …’

Oh dear. This was a considerable blow and served as something of a wake-up call. I made a decision to turn down any presenting work and just concentrate on acting and comedy. If I was ever going to get anywhere as an actor and a comedian, I would have to stop all the presenting and focus on what I really wanted to do. To make money in the short term I started to search for voice-over work.

One day, I was walking back from lunch with Jerry and told him that I wanted to do comedy.

He replied, ‘We
all
want to do comedy.’

I decided there and then to leave him.

This focus on comedy had been growing for the past couple of years, in part through the variety of characters I was creating and performing on
Rave
, but also through the work I was doing in Bath with an improvisational comedy group I’d joined, More Fool Us. I had seen the group advertised in
PCR
, which was (and possibly still is) a round-up of castings and new projects in theatre, television and film which hopeful actors would subscribe to.
PCR
arrived through the post each week, and the lucky subscriber would then pester the various directors and producers mentioned within its pages for an audition. More Fool Us was the only time that my subscription bore any fruit, although I do remember reading one week that Richard Curtis had written a film and that it was to be called
Four Weddings and a Funeral
. I raised my eyebrows in despair at the British film industry, thinking that a film with such a title was most unlikely to be a hit.

The More Fool Us team, including Julia Davis and Ruth Jones.

This particular posting, however, talked of a new improvisational comedy group being set up in Bath and gave the phone number of a contact with whom to arrange an audition. Off I went to Bath, my audition went like a dream, and I was asked to join the group. It was run by Paul Z. Jackson, a former BBC Radio producer who had already worked with Caroline Aherne, Paul Merton and someone called Steve Coogan.

Paul’s idea was that we would train for a few months before any performances were embarked upon, learning the basics of improvisation and bonding as a team on the way. Paul taught me techniques that I still use today, the most basic of which can be summarized as ‘yes, and …’ Also known as ‘accept and build’, it boils down to responding positively to whatever has been said to you, before adding another piece of information to the mix.

For example, if a scene began with a teammate saying to me, ‘Ah, Doctor, I see you’ve brought your penguin with you today,’ I would agree and add a little something.

Possibly, though not necessarily, ‘That’s right, he’s an expert on all things to do with the throat, although he’s a little under the weather himself at the moment.’

Straight away we’re building the scene, as opposed to blocking each other.

‘Penguin? No, no, this is my briefcase. And I’m not a doctor, I’m a bus driver.’

Paul was also big on clarity, on little things that make a big difference, such as repeating the suggestions that came from audience members and always thanking them, which in turn made other members of the audience more inclined to offer suggestions. Having said that, the suggestions invariably revolved around toilets and sex. Perhaps it’s a British thing. When asked for a figure from history, you could be pretty sure it would be Henry VIII who would be offered; when looking for a location, it would inevitably be a toilet; and the household implement of choice was an egg whisk.

The weeks of workshop sessions that preceded the first performance were hugely enjoyable affairs; it was like going back to college. Working in radio and in local television for so long had given my professional life an almost journalistic feel at times, and this wasn’t what I was looking for. When I was a roving reporter on a magazine show in Wales I came into the office once and the team was cock-a-hoop about having just secured an interview with someone who was in the news at the time. I couldn’t share their excitement; it felt alien to me. I just wasn’t interested in people – at least, not in that way. I was very interested when it came to watching them, studying them and then using these observations to build up a character, but not in the way that they were, which was essentially a journalistic way.

When I was working on
See You Sunday
for BBC Wales, I did a piece in Tee Pee Valley, near Llandeilo where a community has grown up in the countryside, living in tepees. I went into one, talking to the camera and describing my surroundings as I went. There was a row of cassettes on the floor and I began to focus on them, mocking the musical tastes of the tepee dweller. I thought it was quite funny.

The director called, ‘Cut!’ and suggested we try it again. ‘Maybe not so much on the cassettes this time.’

I wanted to scream. I was in the wrong place.

In the improv workshops I felt like I belonged; this is what I should be doing. It was a good feeling, but it also reinforced my belief that I’d taken a wrong turn in becoming so wrapped up in radio and television presenting. Paul had gathered a strong team of performers and we went on to play some great shows in Bristol, Bath and beyond. Amongst the founding members was the excellent Toby Longworth, who had been part of a double act, the Rubber Bishops, with a then unknown Bill Bailey, and who would go on to appear with me in
Human Remains
and
Annually Retentive
.

After a while, a couple of new girls joined the group. Julia Davis and Jane Roth worked as a double act, The Sisters of Percy. I straight away sensed a connection with Julia and loved the times we would play scenes together in the shows. It would be some years yet, though, before we would work together properly and eventually make
Human Remains
.

Ruth Jones also joined the group; we were working on some radio ideas for BBC Wales at the time and I thought she’d enjoy the improv too. She took to it immediately. As well as being a splendid addition to the line-up, her arrival meant that I now had someone to share the journey to Bath with. We would drive along, singing all the way, usually to Barry Gibb and Barbra Streisand doing ‘Guilty’ and ‘What Kind of Fool’, harmonizing to our hearts’ content. I loved it. Fifteen years later, we were on
Top of the Pops
with Tom Jones and Robin Gibb, singing ‘Islands in the Stream’, written by the Bee Gees. Our long journeys up and down the M4 made that eventual collaboration for Comic Relief all the sweeter.

I stayed with the group for a few years, even after moving to London, but once the job on the movie show went away, money began to get tight and I decided I couldn’t afford the trips to Bath and so had to stop.

Once again, things were getting difficult financially. I had the odd bit of radio work in Wales and Martina had found a great nannying job with a lovely family in Barnes, but money was tight. For the first time in my life I had to look for a proper job. I scanned the
Evening Standard
and saw an ad for a position in telesales, based in Kensington. Dad was a salesman; I’m good with my voice. Maybe I’d be good at this.

Dressed in a suit and tie, I got the bus to Kensington High Street and went to the address given to me over the phone. I found myself in a holding room with a few other would-be telesellers and was given a form to fill in. I hated myself. It had come to this. I’d never had to fill in a form for a job before. I’d been on the radio, I’d been on the television! This was failure in a big way. Although I kept telling myself that it would just be a stopgap until something else came along, I still heard a nagging voice at the back of my head wondering whether this was it for me, if this was my future now. I filled in the form and came to the part where they asked if the applicant had any hobbies or pastimes. This was the worst bit; it felt like I was being patronized. I wrote ‘breeding rabbits’ as a way of laughing at the whole process, then handed in my form.

I was taken through to another office, where a rotund Liverpudlian in his mid-twenties asked me to take a seat and began to interview me. I’d never been interviewed for a job before; I’d never had to submit myself to this. I’d done auditions of course, and had undergone every humiliation known to man in the process, but this was different; this was so
ordinary
. But the man was very pleasant, very personable, and he seemed genuinely interested in helping me. I began to feel bad for despising him simply for what he represented, and so when he got to the part of the form detailing my hobbies I started to make up all sorts of rubbish about my love for rabbits, just so he wouldn’t realize I was lying to him.

‘So, you like rabbits, Robert?’

‘Oh yes.’

‘Go on …’

‘Well, what can I say?’

‘What is it about them that you like?’

‘Um, you know … their ears, their little fluffy tails.’

‘Their tails?’

‘Yes, their tails. Just the joy of keeping them, really.’

‘I see …’

‘And looking at their tails.’

This was first thing in the morning. After twenty minutes with the very nice man from Liverpool, it was decided that I had what it took to give telesales a try. I was taken through to a large room full of desks at which were seated the telesales staff, all chatting away to potential customers. On the wall was a big whiteboard on which were written in erasable marker pen the names of the current top sellers, along with the prizes up for grabs if sales targets were met. It was as if Mike Leigh had written
Glengarry Glen Ross
.