out. If you think this might happen then make sure that you superglue them to your genitals. It might hurt a bit, but it’s worth it, you really don’t want tennis balls falling out of your Elizabethan trousers during a Hamlet monolog. It will take away the audience’s focus (that’s a theatrical expression for people in the audience saying, “Oh for fuck’s sake, this is shit!” too loudly) from your face.
So, you’re on stage now with the biggest part and lots of tackle enhancers (that’s another theatrical expression) down your pants. Now is your time and it’s vital to remember that when you are acting you must shout and point at yourself and stand at the front of the stage. Shouting at the audience is called projecting, like they do in cinemas. This is what they teach you at acting school although I didn’t go to acting school myself. I don’t believe in acting schools. Acting schools are shit. You’ve either got it in your blood or you haven’t. You can always tell someone who’s been to acting school because they can’t act. And they’re on the television all the time and get all the parts in all those shit television dramas like that police thing with all those balding overweight arseheads. Bob or somebody.
It is very important that you make sure to learn all the words in the right order before you shout them at the audience. It often helps to have a young woman to help you with your words. This is known in the industry as your word bird. Now, you know that hole at the front of the stage in between the stage and the audience That is what is known as the orchestra pit and that’s where you will need to put your word bird who can tell you what the words are if you forget them. She must be able to read as well and speak and she must have the book or the script (which is a technical term) with all the words written in it. And for God’s sake don’t have any mouth action with your word bird before you go on stage because if all her teeth are stuck together it’s a “no no” for tricky speeches (which means no good).
When you are at the zenith of your career like I have been for the last thirty years (even though I am only thirty-seven*) you, erm, something or other. Got it? New paragraph.
Hey, we’re moving on this one. We’re moving down the page. Hang on a minute.
That’s better. I needed that.
Right, here we go, you know this bit anyway but I’m going to have to put it in here all the same because you never know what kind of stupid twat is reading your book, do you? Right, so the audience are the people who sit in the theatre. But they don’t sit on the stage. That’s where the acters stand, or sit and that’s where they stand or sit† and shout at the audience. The audience are in the dark with their sweets, rustling things and coughing occasionally. They’re arseholes, don’t forget, but they’re also your friends. You love them. Sometimes you can tell them the number of your room at the Travelodge (always get a double smoker‡) and they can visit you later. It also helps if you tell the audience that you are having trouble with your marriage and you might be available for some tragic lonely adultery but without anybody finding out, of course.
Waiting for Godot is a play by that great playrighter Samuel Beckett. We did it at school (and I did it a few years later in the West End with Adrian Edmondson who was much better than me in it and is much more talented than me in everything he ever does). There is a lot of waiting around in it and I found out that if I sat at the front of the stage, the audience would look at me rather than Pozzo (he’s a bloke in the play). I found out that if I coughed a lot during his speech, I could deflect attention away from him onto me. I even put some grease on the stage one night and he slipped on it. Unfortunately, he didn’t hurt himself badly and it didn’t work out very well at all really because everyone in the audience looked at Pozzo falling off the stage and not at me. But I was learning my trade.
I was like a kind of impresario at school. I managed to get loads of games of sports cancelled in the new school gym so that I could stage decent rehearsals (rehearsals are what you do when you are rehearsing for a play) (rehearsing means practising). I managed to bribe other boys to bully smaller children whose parents had not bought tickets to my productions. When we did Rosencrantz and Gildernstern Are Dead (top play), three of them were thrown in the River Seven along with their geography projects, for example. And it worked, we had packed houses for a week and some wonderful reviews in the school magazine. Fair enough, I was the theatre critic on the school magazine at the time and wrote the review myself. But when I wrote how great I was, I was only being honest. Because I was great. If I’d written anything else, I would have been lying. And I don’t lie. If you were to cut me in half, I would have “truth” written right through me just like those sticks of rock they sell at the seaside that have the name of the seaside town written in them all the way through them like Blackpool or Brighton or Skegness or whichever town you happen to be in at the time. See how much stuff I know? You didn’t waste your money on this book did you, Shylock?
So, after the raging success of Rozencrantz and Gildernstern Are Dead with my packed houses and fabulous reviews, I knew where my future lay. I could see all those future edge cutting performances stretching away in front of me, performances that would be so much better than everyone else’s. I won’t mention them now because I don’t want to demean the work of other fellow professionals. It’s not that I can’t remember who these people are and it’s even more not because I think they’re a bunch of tossers. I don’t say things like that. I’ll just let you make your own mind up. It’s a free country. It’s just that some people are bad people and I’m striking a blow for you my viewer and friend. You are freedom and freedom is my missile. We are rolling around together in the freedom bed, deep in the bunker of war. There are bullets, there is blood, there are chicks and there is fame. Feature films as well. Major worldwide tours and groundbreaking radio voice overs obviously. Some are for grocery products and some not. I know about marketing and the global media worl. I know that media is the plural of medium, a medium being something like BBC1 or ITV or the Sunday Times—and Readers Wives obviously. And Doris Stokes. That’s not a joke. Although it could be if you wanted it to be. I can do anything. You must never forget that you are riding on board an out of control pantechnican roaring down a steep hill with the brake cables cut and a pelican crossing of school children and a lollipop woman up ahead. But fear not, viewer, for I am at the wheel and I can tame this mother.
Mr Wallace
Masters Common Room
King’s School
Worcester
April 28 1972
Dear Mr. Wallace,
As you can see, I did not call you Fatty Wallace—I strongly disapprove of the hundreds of boys who call you that. I have told them too, although they do not pay any attention to me. I do not think you look fat, I just think you are well built. In fact, I think you look really handsome today sir. I like that jacket and your tie really suits you. Also, I was waiting to be beaten last week outside the Masters Common Room and I could not help but notice how much more stylish your cubby hole is than the other Masters. I have left a Penguin biscuit in it for you today, sir. I know how you prefer Club—I have seen you eating them at breaktime—but they sold out of them at the tuck shop I am afraid.
I also think your flared trousers are very with it and the height of fashion and I do not find it funny when your shirt becomes undone when you bend down and we can all see the top of your buttocks. I have never tried to flick pieces of paper into your crack—sorry, cavity—and deplore those boys that do. I hope I have hair on the top of my bottom soon too.
I want you to know that I am really enjoying the Othello rehearsals. I have been watching you in rehearsal and remarking to myself how remarkable your directing is, although dare I say it, you have made one fundamental mistake in your theatrical stratergy. Dewsbury is mis-cast. Othello requires an acter with intelligence, with looks and sympathy and what is more, he cannot even do the right axent. He sounds as though he comes from southern England. He has obviously never even seen the Black and White Minstrels. I,