Ideas For How to be Funny in an Audition for a Football Commercial

Call an imaginary Emile Heskey a galoot, while jumping up and down.

Call an imaginary Paul Scholes a bloody ginger genius, while jumping up and down.

“Can you hear that noise? That’s my heart breaking after you lost you useless bunch of nobs.”

Penalty porn: where the ball is like a strange shaped penis and the goal is like a massive net based vagina.

Crazy goal celebration dance where I shake my ass like a YO! MTV RAPS bitch whilst singing 'Relight My Fire' by Take That but with football centric lyrics.

Say “Your Mum” a lot.

Do an impression of Goldmember.

Love a football player so much that you offer to have a womb sown into you and to have their babies.

Trust me, you had to be there…

Pray to the God of Adverts

Ever since I got the job for the Casino Royale Scratchcard commercial (my first ever ad job), I have hit a strong run of form when it comes to being considered for and securing acting jobs in adverts. It’s something that I hope continues for many years, as not only do adverts pay well but they also increase your exposure to a far wider audience than most other acting work; sometimes to markets that never previously knew you existed.

After the James Bond tie-in (which was also on the big screen), I got a massive break securing the lead role in an advert that will be hitting the screens in the good old USA very soon. No more details as yet, so as not to be in any breach of contract but it’s a very funny commercial which I hope will get me seen by important people over in America and lead to more work there; so keep ‘em peeled my United States readers!

Then followed a great job shouting at a TV in Ealing for SkyBet and their horse racing gambling madness and a few weeks ago I shot a commercial for legendary British cider Strongbow and yes, they do film the famous arrows slamming into the bar for every single ad rather than just using stock footage.

I put the good run of form down to being funny, weird looking and my regular prayers to the God of adverts. I’ve got another audition tomorrow so if you could all have a brief word with Lord Christ of commercials, I’d be very grateful.

Cheers!

Soldiers Still Dying in Our Name

I have a few friends in the British military, who not only act as a constant reminder that we are at war but also keep me informed of the latest developments that UK troops face.

It’s been a while since we’ve spoken and personal matters, whether love or house buying or acting, have rather distracted me from the bigger picture of world affairs and illegal wars fought in far off lands. I had a rude awakening to the eternal fact that young men are still dying in our name, seemingly forgotten as they go about their work in Afghanistan (yes, we are still fighting in Afghanistan), suffering causalities as our media outlets prefer to focus on Home Office mishaps, reality TV brutality and British Airways strikes.

My friend’s company were in a vehicle that hit a landmine, one died instantly, most were blown from the transporter relatively unhurt but one was trapped under the burning vehicle, on fire himself. Unable to move the massive weight on top of him and seeing a comrade burning to death and in extreme pain, his fellow soldiers attempted to amputate his destroyed legs with the only thing they had to hand: a spade.

Imagine that: burning to death in some foreign land, knowing that death is at hand as your brothers try and hack off your useless limbs. The young soldier in question died before he could be saved and he is not alone. Every day brings fresh UK and US causalities and we go about our lives; protected from the continuous stream of young dead lost in a vain cause, seemingly taking the military dead for granted.

I for one will not forget them and what they have been asked to do and the price they have paid.

Comment Blues

Oh dear.

It seems that a certain person has been abusing the comments system on this fine blog and, via a series of malformed sock puppets, has been talking to themselves like a big asshat.

Seems the previous post had not made my feelings quite clear enough on the matter but now I'm hoping that the individual in question will show some restraint and respect and stop being a twat.

Here's hoping...

OI! FIX UP! LOOK SHARP!

PLEASE NOTE!

The comments section of my blog is not for people to indulge in flame wars or to leave lengthy comments that are only loosely linked to the post in question.

Thanks for your time.

Teaching Situation

"Have I dis-respected you, or hurt you or behaved in a bad way?"

The children in the class shake their heads, they look confused.

"Have I treated you with respect and given you all the help and assistance I can to help you acheive your goals?"

The children nod their heads and look even more confused.

"Then why is it that you are dis-respecting and hurting me with your behaviour? If it's not something that I've done then all I ask is for you to treat me as I treat you."

They all nod and eyes drop with embarassment to the floor, the rest of the lesson passes without incident.

Sometimes we all need a reminder of how to behave with those that are only trying to help us be all we can be.

Full Frontal Nudity on a Sunday Night

I'm really ill at the moment, so the last thing I wanted was for my Sunday night to be spent watching a gay Spainish man show me his ball bags and someone with serious learning difficulties doing a spazzy dance. But if I wanted peace I shouldn't have gone to the Battersea Arts Centre.

I was there to perform with other members of UK Theatre Company Knavish Speech, in a short excerpt of a new show we're working on called "BED". We were not the only ones performing however...

We were butressed by a man who seemed wrong in the mind and played a tape of himself saying one thing while his body did the opposite; this went on for 10 minutes and created such a pained willingness in the audience for the car crash to end that I'm surprised we didn't have a happening.

After us came the aforementioned Latino, who started well enough, ie: fully clothed and very witty but by the end was stark bollock baked and showing us his scrotum and talking about having metal objects being rammed deep inside him.

Who said British theatre is dead?

Fuck Your Self

When you’re cold

You cut your guts out and stick your hands in

When you’re hungry

You cut your heart out and eat it

You don’t need anyone

You just want a witness as you fuck

And destroy

Your self.

Learning About Somalia

I was in a taxi yesterday and the when you’re in a cab you either get the driver that doesn’t speak and shares his awful taste in music with you, or the driver who speaks plenty but turns out to be racist/stupid/dull or all three. This time however, I had a young Somali driver who thankfully educated me on all matters relating to Somalia and also had time to explain the intricacies of the Dutch tax system.

Before we got onto Somalia, the young man explained a life spent growing up in the Netherlands and how a heavy taxation system, structured around the Social Economic Council (a brilliant idea, where the trade unions, the employers and the governments guide economic policy together) had led to a tough burden being placed on those at the lower end of the working spectrum in an effort to support those at the very bottom. I argued that this was to create a more just and balanced social policy and that if you fell on hard times in the Netherlands, as in the UK, you’d be backed by a generous welfare system. I also argued that the Netherlands, at around 3%, has the lowest unemployment rate in Europe and is in the GDP Top 20.

In fact, upon further research, I discovered that tax revenue is well below the European average and that what the taxi driver was complaining about was the rather stiff business regulation, as favoured by many European nations, which held back his small business efforts as an entrepreneur and self-employed cab driver. He said he favoured the UK and its greater deregulation and lack of bureaucracy in comparison with the Netherlands. Fair enough I said and understood a little better the difficult job that all politicians face of pleasing all of the people all of the time with fiscal policy.

However, it was when he talked with a fervent passion and an all encompassing, first-hand knowledge of the situation in Somalia that I was grateful to be educated on a matter I know shamefully little about. I shall not list here his blow-by-blow account of the development of the current malaise in his homeland but leave you with some choice quotes that are as accurate as I can remember them:

“We have had no government since 1991, before then things were ok, imagine your country without government, without all the things a government does. We are good people but we need government!”

“There was trouble long before white man come along and drew lines in the sand, the British, the Italians. There has been war there ever since man stood up and learned to walk.”

“My homeland is a home for Islam also, for over a thousand years but America doesn’t like Islam now so it funds people causing trouble in my land to drive it out. How can they destroy something in a few years that has been there for a thousand? It is impossible, they cause only pain to my people and to themselves.”

“Our leaders are not only old men, with old minds but warlords! How can they do what it best for the people, without filling their pockets with money, when they are mad old criminals? These men have blood on their hands and we need a new start.”

Before I got out, I asked him what he would do if he were President of Somalia; he smiled and said we’d need to go on a very long journey to find the answer to that question.

Hold You in my Arms

When you came to me with your bad dreams and your fears
It was easy to see that you'd been crying
Seems like everywhere you turn catastrophe it reigns
But who really profits from the dying?
I could hold you in my arms
I could hold you forever
I could hold you in my arms
I could hold you in my arms forever
When you kissed my lips with my mouth so full of questions
It's my worried mind that you quiet
Place your hands on my face
Close my eyes and say
Love is a poor man's food
Don't prophesize
I could hold you in my arms
I could hold you forever
And I could hold you in my arms
I could hold you forever
So now we see how it is
This fist begets the spear
Weapons of war
Symptoms of madness
Don't let your eyes refuse to see
Don't let your ears refuse to hear
Or you ain't never going to shake this sense of sadness
I could hold you in my arms
I could hold on forever
And I could hold you in my arms
I could hold forever

Ray Lamontagne

Rise Above!

If in doubt, take inspiration from a Black Flag song…

There are some people out there who swim in shit and try and drag you to their level, I should know, I used to be one, back in the bad old days: so full of hate, anger and loathing for everyone and everything. I hated myself so thrust that hate into the face of others and tried to drag them down to my level: base, primitive and violent.

I smashed up everything around me because I couldn’t stand to see stuff that wasn’t as broken as I was, what a disgusting idiot, subhuman and substandard. It’s addictive to be destructive, self-centred, selfish, and self-mythologising; to this day I find it hard to rise above when someone or something offers me the chance to sink low but what can be gained from it? Nothing. Nothing at all.

I used to pretend that I had nothing to lose; I was deluding myself because it was easier to pretend no one cared than take responsibility for myself, my actions and the feelings of those people that cared about me.

I don’t give a fuck if I sound like Oprah Winfrey, you’ve got to take your own life in your hands and make it something better. And that’s what keeps me going whenever I feel like sinking, I never want to utter those words again: “I became this because of you.”

Like Electrons

The electron is a fundamental subatomic particle that carries a negative electric charge. It is a spin-½ lepton that participates in electromagnetic interactions and its mass is less than one thousandth of that of the smallest atom. Its electric charge is defined by convention to be negative, with a value of −1 in atomic units. Together with atomic nuclei, electrons make up atoms; their interaction with adjacent nuclei is the main cause of chemical bonding.

But to me it means getting my fists and bashing them together

And smiling

An allegory for how we are

Drawn together

A dynamic interaction

Of two powerful things

Making one

Hold My Hand

I'm making the leap, a new life, leaving the old one behind but I need you to hold my hand.

How silly of me to ask.

You were already there, your palm open, waiting for me to take it, to hold onto you for dear life.

So we jump together.

I love you.

Brassneck

It's all kicking off at the moment and I'm struggling to keep my head above water. What with trying to buy a house in London, rehearsing for three plays, directing a showcase, auditioning for lucrative commercials to make me famous and holding down the day job; it's all getting a bit much.

But then again I am a whinging twat.

Don't get me wrong, rather be busy than not but hard sometimes to keep your wits about you in an ever shrinking time vacumn but fuck it, onwards and upwards, what don't kill me only makes me stronger...

I got The People's Act of Love for Christmas and I'd like to end by mutilating a quote from it to provide a coda to this brief post:

"When it seemed there was no limit to happiness, his lover's face, her limbs, her breathing, her eyes, the gentlest movement of her mouth, or a blink, told him with a stronger dose of joy that the universe was theirs to play with, that all the world was crouched in listening and waiting, that time had stopped its jagged progress and smoothed down a place for them to love on as they chose, that there would be no more history until they said it should begin again."

For Eva-Jane

Eva-Jane said (half joking/half not):

"You never write me love poems anymore"

She’s right

She always is

She’s as right as she is

Passionate

As she is

Caring

As she is

Loving

As she is

Beautiful

When you find a love

That’ll fight your corner

That’ll watch your back

And draws biro ink hearts

On your arm

You build your life

Around it

Or die trying

Never forget:

Truth

Side by Side

"I am always with you"

I love you.

Debating Saddam's Death With Eleven Year Old Children

I've taken some work on at the moment, teaching debating skills to 10-11 year old children in the Upney area of London.

Debating is a pretty dry subject matter, it has lots of arcane references and a bewildering set of rules and can seem quite alien to kids used to having a bloody good chat but I've found that the framework of regulations it provides enables children to feel safe discussing quite heavy topics.

You may be surprised to know that it wasn't my suggestion to throw around this particular political hot potato, I keep my beliefs away from the young, the kids themselves had been discussing it and wanted to try out the debating techniques I'd taught them on a subject they felt passionately about.

It was strange watching a 10 year old justify capital punishment and inspiring to see them have such a good grasp of political issues at a young age (never mind the images of his death they had been exposed to via YouTube) but the best bit came not when the class voted that the killing of Saddam Hussein was wrong but when one young speaker said:

"He's killed people, we've killed people. How can we hang him? If we hang him, we have to hang ourselves as well."

Eating Turkish on Green Lanes

As we sat in a Turkish restaurant, tucking into fine, cheap food and discussing the merits of our New Years Eve plans and the houses we’d looked at together, we spotted a beautiful boy who kept sneaking crafty glances at us. It was clear that the game was on...

It soon developed into peek-a-boo and cat and mouse and before we knew it we were sticking out tongues, making strange funny noises and pulling the silliest of faces as our young friend popped out from behind his chair and mesmerized us with his gorgeous eyes and sense of mischievous play.

His older sister watched on, partly aloof, partly desperate to be involved herself in the game; his parents meanwhile seemed grateful for the distraction but kept apologising for his staring when in fact we loved every moment of his time and the feeling that the three of us would never get bored.

Eventually we had to leave, having hogged our table in a high turnover restaurant for far too long but we did so with our hearts lighter, a sparkle in our eyes and a small wave to our small friend.

My Favourite Tube Station...

For this is where my love lays.

My love writes on the magic of tube stations just here.

Enjoy.

HAPPY NEW YEAR!

It was a good one, which means it must have been really good because I hate new year normally. I made sure I didn't do my classic wine/beer/cognac mix so I didn't puke all over the place, just got dry mouth and seriously starting to consider a life without drink in it; really don't enjoy booze so may start going straight edge.


Does that make me square? Do I give a fuck?


Trotted around Camden, got called Pat from Eastenders, bought the most expensive round of my life and saw in 2007 by kissing the most beautiful girl in the world.

Then off to a proper boozer for plenty of shouting at DJs to play the right song, being annoyed by short arse cunts who resent how tall I am and think that gives them the right to talk to me and hoping and praying that this year is full of acting work and being side by side with the woman I love.

Peace, love and respect to you and yours.

xxxx