Chapter Two

Chris and I were intrigued but the previous entry was never finished. We did not find out what had taken Constance two days to do. She started a new page, dated only a day later.

6 January 2010

I’m in Starbucks. I’ve been here all evening, they’re going to be sweeping around my feet in a moment. I needed to get out of the house to pretend I wasn’t waiting for the phone to ring. Of course I’ve brought my phone and I’m waiting for it to ring but no one else knows that. I look like a woman enjoying her chai tea latte on a winter evening. Alone. In Starbucks. Knocking her phone regularly on the table to see if it’s still working.

I want to be Miss Fouquet, the tap-dancing secretary in the new off-West End musical about office workers – TYPECAST! -  more than almost any job I’ve ever wanted in my life. I want JohnWoodTheIngrateExAgent to know I don’t need him to get work.

I want to be on stage. It’s been 14 months since my last job. That was an ad, not even national.  I want something to do. I want an answer when people ask ‘What are you up to?’ And. I want the money.

I'm not worried, we don't have a problem, Malcolm isn't gambling, he goes to his meetings. He’s not depressed. We just rely on two incomes.  That’s normal.

It’s not as normal, of course, for one of those incomes to have been very close to the seven figure mark once upon a time and then vanish. Necessitating a new, much smaller house and lots of jobs one wouldn’t ordinarily want to do. Which has never been a problem, I’ve been happy doing the jobs I don’t want to do.

I don’t know what to do if I don’t get even the jobs I don’t want.

I'm not going to think about that. What I am going to think about are the lyrics for Miss Fouquet’s first big number. They’ve been running in my head since the audition and I take this as a good sign.

Send the memo, type the minutes!

Give the boss his morning tea!

File and phone and meet your deadlines –

Staff the desk e–fic-ient-ly!

Very catchy. Of course I haven’t tapped in years. Not since Trixie True, Teen Detective, where I saved the world by dancing out Morse code on the lid of a Russian submarine.

I just figured out that job paid me exactly ten times what this company is offering.

Not that I'm complaining.

In fact, I gave a creditable performance at the audition. Which is saying something as I can’t remember the last time I needed to audition.  I am usually invited in to read. I am given tea, fed biscuits. I often snog very attractive leading men, laughing as we hold scripts and think how much we love our jobs.

This seems to have stopped happening.

However, I was very pleased with myself, because as soon as the music started I launched into my routine. I was in time, my flap ball changes had – flair.  Perhaps reciting a speech of Desdemona’s simultaneously wasn’t the best accompaniment but I wanted to show my versatility. A tap-dancing tragedian. That’s an actor with breadth.

Sometimes I think I’m losing the thread. Which doesn’t make sense as I’m doing what I’ve always done and it has always worked before. What’s different? It’s a puzzle.

I’ve got a seat by a window, looking out onto the neat residential lanes running off the high street. Every tree in the city is bare. London in winter is a country, not a season.  A wet, dark world. By the end of February I can feel myself evolving out of my eyeballs like one of David Attenborough’s sightless grubs.

Ah! The phone!

**

Well. This was the conversation.

Voice:              Constance Hill, please.

Con:                Speaking.

Voice:              Hello, this is Smita from Hakim Optical returning your call.

Con:                (deflated) Oh yes.

Smita:              You were inquiring about your lenses -

Con:                Yes.

Smita:              - were they ready.

Con:                Yes.

Smita:              I’ll be happy to tell you.

Con:                Thank you.

Smita:              I’ll just need your details. Can you confirm your date of birth?

Con:                13^th March, 1966.

This is where I always expect someone to say ‘You don’t SOUND as though you were born in 1966!’ Instead – a long pause.

Smita:              No, I’m sorry nothing. How do you spell the name?

Con:                H-i-l-l.

Pause. Sound of shuffling and keys clicking.

Smita:              No. No record for Hill under that date.

Con:                Oh.

I have no idea what else to suggest.  Check another name? Just give me the lenses for anyone who was born on that date?

Smita:              Could there have been any other information?

Con:                Such as?

Smita:              We file everyone by date of birth. Is it possible you could have given an alternate date?

I say nothing. I feel a creeping kind of horror make its way up my skin but I am repressing what it means.

Smita:              It could be simply a data-entry error. How long have you been a customer, Mrs Hill?

Con:                Miss Hill. Most of my life.  Over twenty years. 

Smita:              Can you bear with me a moment? I am sorry for this inconvenience.

Con:                Twenty-three years.

Smita:              I’ll be right with you.

There is more typing and some breathing while a strange desire to end the call overtakes me. I don’t want to speak any further to this admittedly helpful employee of Hakim Optical. I don’t want to know whatever it is she is going to tell me and I am about to say it’s fine, I will do without the lenses, I will make some myself out of Blu-tak and cellophane when her bright tones return, triumphant.

Smita:              Ah! Here it is. Just a mis-typing. The date we have is 13^th March 1961. How old are you Miss Hill?

A vague and unwelcome memory shoots to the forefront of my mind, not unlike recalling the plot of ground where you hid the body of your psychologically abusive 6^th form headmaster and I can feel myself trying to disconnect the phone but unable to think how.

Con:                How old am I?

Smita:              Is it 1966?

I am caught within two towering and warring impulses. The impulse not to reveal myself as a humiliatingly incompetent liar and the desire to, well – be 45. Even to a stranger on a phone.

Con:                Is it?

Smita:              Is it?

Con:                I –

Smita:              Or 1961?

Suddenly it unfurls in front of me, a banner of memory.  I am 28 years old and I am getting my first pair of spectacles in London. I’m home from filming in America, being recognised in the street and stopped for autographs in public places. I am tall and curvaceous and beautiful and a classically trained actor – a potent combination the Americans snatched up as the inspiration for Mallory Queen- Girl PI – a crime show that ran seven seasons and bought Malcolm and me our Regency town house and the farm in Dorset.

I am 28 and it’s 1989 and I am asked my age at the optometrist on Tottenham Court Road and in the world before Google, before email, before fan-sites,  before public exposure to every private fact, I hear time’s wing-ed chariot in my mind’s ear, deafening in its speed. I look at the open-faced clerk gazing into my famous face and am gripped, in my oesophagus by a breath-taking panic as I think ‘I’m too old’ – and in that split second I perform an act of time distortion worthy of Einstein and Stephen Hawking and Dr Who – and I become 24.

No one knows this isn’t true. Not even Malcolm.

Now Smita knows.

Smita:              Miss Hill?

Con:                Yes – I’ll, thank you – I’m – I’ll call back.

I push a button and she’s gone and - I’m 45 again. The relief is huge. I don’t stop to think what this means.

Well, it does mean when people say ‘You don’t look 45!’ they are more right than they know.  I don’t look 45 because I’m 49.

I am in much better nick than anyone suspects.

Even John Wood my Ex-Agent. From whom I’ve had two messages asking if I’m okay and grovelling and suggesting we have coffee.

This is really bemusing.  I can’t understand why he would want to re-visit the scene of his crime. A gloating opportunity? I’m ignoring him.

HA! The phone!

***

No. Not them. Fiona. She'd put the kids to bed and was returning my call. I'd rung and left a message after I'd removed my fright make-up and taken off Miss Fouquet’s sensible shoes. She must have understood the tone of my voice because her first words tonight were

Fiona:  Darling, what happened?

Con:    (quiet) I auditioned.

Fiona:  (shocked) Good God.

Con:    I know.

Fiona:  I’m sorry.

Con:    Thank you.

Fiona:  (placating) Just an artistic director who doesn’t know you. A teenager.

Con:    He was 40.

Fiona:  (desperate) New to the business.

Con:    Twenty years ago .

Suddenly she pulls away from the receiver.

Fiona:  Barnaby NO! Get back to bed or you will spend the night away from your brother in another room entirely.

Barnaby: (faintly)There is no other room.

Fiona:  You’ll spend the night in the bath, then. (back to the phone) Sorry Con.

Con:    He was nice. I just – I’m just losing my –

Fiona:  I told you  - .

Barnaby:  I’d get wet.

Fiona:  What?

Barnaby:   I’d get wet when Daddy had a shower.

Fiona:  Well, you’d best consider that the next time you think about getting out of bed.

Distant background wailing.

Fiona:  What? What for God’s sake!

Barnaby:  I don’t want to get wet. Daddy would step on me!

Fiona:  Daddy’s not here. Get to bed or I’LL step on you.  Sorry Con. It’s been diabolical. Colin is in Brussels and they always act up when I’m on my own. I’m out-numbered. They do it on purpose.  And the horrible thing is, I don’t care.  My whole life has revolved around them for thirteen years.  I have nothing more to give. Oliver is old enough to impregnate his classmates and David looks like a creditable drug-pusher, freakishly tall for eleven. My work here is done. I want to escape.

Con:    Oh darling.

Fiona:  I’m turning to straw.

Con:    Sweetheart.

Fiona:  My hair, my – nether regions. I’m like the Sahara desert. No one told me at 50 I’d become Arid Woman. Do you know what it takes to get any intimacy that doesn’t require industrial quantities of lubricant? It’s not worth it. Colin and I think about it and we have to plot our manoeuvres like a military strike. At 2200 hours I will apply the ointment. At 2215, he’ll advance. 2222, further lubricant. He feels dejected and I feel – a mess.

Malcolm and I have been married over 20 years. We are very good friends.  Which means we don’t argue, we travel well together and we haven’t had – mess – for a rather long time.

Con:    Have you tried magazines? Or the internet?

I was giving myself away here.

Fiona:  What? Oh. Ha, no. No. Not that imaginative, I’m afraid. We’re just soldiering on. If I weren’t terrified of cancer I’d be slathering myself in HRT. It’s hateful.  You dry out, then you die. I’m sorry. You didn’t ring for a catalogue of my hormonal ills.

It’s true I hadn’t and it’s also true I felt unable to comment as I’ve been relatively unscathed by it all.  Unlike my mother who went insane with the menopause and couldn’t speak civilly for three years. She slept with a rubber under-sheet because she got tired of sweating through her linen to the mattress. My cycle is slightly irregular but that’s it. Some things even seem better.  

I have less hair on my legs for one. That has to be good.

Fiona:  I’m sure auditioning is an anomaly.  You’re a famous genius, darling.

Con:    Tell me again.

Fiona:  David has your photo on the back of his door.  Mallory Queen, Girl P.I.

Con:    No! Which season?

Fiona:  1987. In the black leather.

Con:    Well, good. That’s how I want my godson to think of me. Bosoms and hair.

Fiona:  If God exists, she made all of you. That includes your – hair.

I love Fiona. I was thinking how much I loved her when I felt buzzing and looked down and saw another call coming through.

And it was them.

Chapter One

On 1 January 2011, a brown paper package arrived at the offices of MY Production Company, bound with blue nylon string tied in a knot. Our P.O. Box had been transcribed in a big, uneven hand using very dark ink. There was no return address.

The package contained a brown leather notebook made of very thick paper, every page of which was full of the same, wild hand using the same dark ink: lists, bullet points and underscored words punctuated the text.

A series of sketches and letters fell from the back. There was no name, no identifying address, numbers or email. Every page was dated and it was obvious, quickly, that we were holding the diary of someone’s life.

We sat reading for as long as our conscience and the temperature allowed (the office was cold; the heating works but there is no insulation). After the better part of an hour our fingers were pale and we put the diary aside to return to the morning’s work, catching up on correspondence, plotting our pitch for Torches (the play closest to production) and writing an agenda for our next board meeting. By 2:00 we were too cold to keep typing and felt productive enough for one day, a public holiday at that. I put the kettle on while Chris found a pack of chocolate biscuits and some fruit cake, a propitiating gift from a man I’d been seeing who turned out to be married. I opened the thin, wax paper more in sorrow than in anger - and not enough of either to keep me from feeling able to eat most of the loaf myself.

Our next appointment was hours away in Camden, a New Year’s dinner with friends. I put on my jumper, Chris found a scarf and, dragging our chairs close to the radiator we huddled over our tea and studied the battered notebook in our laps. Turning the pages, we decided, for diversion, to take turns reading the entries aloud.

Had we realised then what we know now, would we have started the story? Hand on heart, I cannot say. But it’s a story we have decided to share with the world, as, we suspect, someone knew we would.

Besides. It's bloody good copy for the blog.

***

[Inscribed on the frontispiece:]       

Age cannot wither her, nor custom stale her infinite variety.

[first page]

5^th January 2010

Cold. Quite windy in south London. I am thirty minutes early for the audition and bought this notebook in the train station. I’m playing Miss Fouquet, a secretary. I’ve decided she carries a notebook everywhere she goes in case her boss says ‘Miss Fouquet, order flowers for my wife’ as he passes her desk.

I don’t know if secretaries still write things down. They probably speak into their voice-activated IPads that flash blinding laser beams into their eyes as a reminder, every five minutes.

I think I have a good shot at this. I can do this job. This is my job. I am this job.

I feel no fear.

I feel no circulation in my thighs either. This converted church obviously wasn’t converted in time for central heating. But I’m fine.  I survived a winter tour of  Scandinavia as Hedda Gabler in 1999.  Schnapps and star jumps in the dressing room.

If my fingertips go white I’ll thrust them into my arm pits. Sadly there are no young men auditioning for this play. Otherwise I’d ask to make use of their arm pits.

THIS IS THE YEAR I RETURN TO THE NATIONAL. On the main stage.  For a season.  This little book can be the Diary of my Comeback in Triumph. 

And it was only 90p and it’s single spaced. It’s good to work out of Zone One.

There are three other women waiting in this draughty hallway. I’ve sized them up and I’m not too worried. One is quite pretty but I think she’s too pretty. I’m wearing my fright make up – pale eye-shadow, slightly orange lippy that looks like Miss Fouquet is trying too hard. I was applying eye-liner in the dark this morning so I wouldn’t wake Malcolm. I hope I don’t look like Boy George.

Boy George. That dates me.

Everything dates me.

I should write in bullet points so when the director glances over at my lap he’ll see a real notebook kept by someone who is prepared to be a real secretary:

TO DO LIST

-        Get a new agent

-        How dare he, how DARE he dump me??? at Christmas?!! I hate him. I HATE my agent. My ex-agent.  John Wood, John Wood, I want to see you -  mangled -  in a defacing industrial accident in front of those pert, 20 year olds you salivate after in the drama schools across the city.

-        I don’t actually hate him but I have no idea what to do with someone you really like when they have plunged a knife into your back.

-        I'm quite ready to play Julius Caesar.

-        I’d be a great Julius Caesar. I’ll suggest that to My Agent John.

-        Oh no I can’t.  My Agent John has been put through an imaginary combine harvester.

-        I will re-create, for posterity, the sad exchange between us, two days before I was leaving for Yorkshire to spend Christmas with my recently bereaved family.

-        Not that I’m bitter.

        Setting:

-     The third floor of a derelict Regency terrace house that he shares with five other agents in central London, the air blue with static electricity from computers, mobiles, copiers, scanners and shredders.  He has the second-best office.  There's a window.

-        Moth eaten burgundy-coloured carpet. Cigarette burns where the ash-trays used to be. Real bashed-up charm, an unpretentious workaday quality.  They are one of the biggest agencies in the business and they always acted small.  Intimate and – oh I mustn’t think of it.

-        Heavy oak chairs rubbed by the well-fed, well-toned or well-shagged posteriors of actors for fifty years. One chair full of my posterior, opposite his huge mahogany desk, his chair full of his chino-wearing posterior.

-        His baggy mohair jumper drags into the eraser shreds from where he has rubbed out the names of all the actors he’s letting go. Just before Christmas. Et tu.

John looks up from under a madly-long fringe, what 40 year old man has a fringe? It’s because it isn’t grey and he still has hair. He thinks long hair Keeps Him Young. He doesn’t realise his personality is in formaldehyde, that’s what keeps him young.

Of course at the time I didn’t realise he was dumping me and I was admiring his fringe.

John:                Constance. Hello.

He’s already lying.

I’m ashamed to say I was pleased I'd worn make up and my skin was quite good. I was probably smirking.

Constance:       John. You’re looking so well.

John:               I wanted to say I really enjoyed you at the Globe. I loved – I loved what you did. In the studio, fantastic. And working with old friends.  Did you chat with Kenneth?

Constance:       Oh yes. He wants tea.

John:                Well you should go.

Constance:       Yes, I will.

John:                Give him my love.

Constance:       Yes, I shall.

I should have guessed here.  Why is he encouraging me to have tea like a nurse telling the old dear to eat her greens? As if for my health?  Suddenly I am on my guard.  John chews on the end of a pencil that he takes out of his mouth and uses to rub out grease marks on his telephone. In retrospect I find this repulsive.

John:                I guess you know – I guess. Well.  You know. You know you are such –a –good – actress.

Constance:       (Panicking.  Has this been in doubt? Isn’t this the one thing anyone could ever say about me? No matter what else?)

John:                This is not about your talent.

Constance:       (blinking)  What isn’t about my talent,  John?

I feel it, I feel it – like the temperature dropping in a room, like the edge of the step you didn’t know was there. I tense up.

There is a long pause as he clears his throat and fiddles with pages in a file that contains clippings, old photos of me at the RSC, the Almeida and, more recently, panto in Theatre Royal, Bath.  You can hear the Irish in him at these moments, no matter what he’s done to his accent. He gets all – Celtic. I’ve always loved it.  

Now it sounds sinister.

John:                You’re very talented. You are a – you can still be a great actress. I’ve seen it. I know that Medea was fringe and no one saw it but you scared the fuck out of me.

I am seething at ‘still’  and don’t mention that every show sold out, but I inhale and  try to smile. I've always found it hugely annoying that I'm a good actor but I'm a horrible liar.  I know he knows I’m anxious.

Constance:       I just felt sorry for her. She’s not a monster.

John:                No. She’s not. She was just   - forced  - into an unfortunate position.

The tone changes . I glance up and see him staring at me. Suddenly I know , beyond a doubt, what he is doing. He’s preparing me to feel sorry for him. I move my chair back and cross my legs.

Constance:       Of course, you don’t ever have to choose to murder your children. It’s usually a mistake but not like getting on the wrong bus is a mistake. Just – don’t plunge that knife!

I smile again. He doesn’t laugh.

John:                Sometimes – sometimes you feel you have something horrible to do and you have no choice.

He taps the phone with the chewed-up pencil and seems to accidentally punch the number of someone in a room next door. A phone rings and a voice comes through his speaker and, simultaneously and weirdly, through the wall:

Voice:      Wood, Graves and Smart.
John:         Wendell, sorry.
Wendell:   John?
John:         Hang up.
Wendell:   Have you finished with Constance?
John:         No.
Wendell:   How did it go? Did she cry?

John disconnects. Now I am suffused with shame because to my horror, my absolute horror I am about to cry. I hate myself.

John gabbles.

John:                I have enjoyed working with you, Constance. And in five or six years’ time, when you look your age –it’s a kind of – strange situation – because you just don’t look 45 – but you are 45 - but I think a whole new world will open up. Head mistresses, police officers. If you don’t have surgery -  the mothers in period drama. Some very, very good stuff.

He doesn’t believe this any more than I do. Not for me. He knows I’ll be dead by then. If I can’t act, I will die. I know this about myself. I am deciding on music for my funeral even as I humiliate myself by dropping my face into my hands and I am more horrified by the next thirty seconds of my life than I have ever been by anything I've done as I hear someone begging and I realise it’s me.

Constance:       Please. Please don’t let me go. I’ll do anything, you know I’ll do anything. I am punctual, I am prepared, I am – I am fucking thorough – don’t they always say? If I get the audition, I get the part. I can be – beautiful. (I am making my own skin crawl, bile is rising in my throat, but I can’t stop. I lean across the desk, my hand gropes for his.) This isn’t a job. This is my life. John.

Even in this state of unmitigated shame I think ‘This is how people talk in a crisis’.  I can feel myself make a note of my posture. Shoulders far forward, while my stomach is held back. Breathing is strangely slow.

John:                Con, please -

John makes a strangled sound, as though he is choking on a fur ball. I can’t see his face, because he’s dropped his head and I’m just staring into fringe, thick dark fringe. For a moment there is just the two of us in this over-lit office, the sun setting at 3 pm, me gripping him with a hand that seems to have grown talons, weeping silently, as he disgorges his lunch. Then he jumps up from the desk and nearly knocks me over as he passes, saying -

John:                You’re the most talented woman I know.

 - before he vaults down the hallway and disappears into the loo. I think I hear the door lock.

He didn’t come out before I left.

It was two days before – 


[end of entry one]

Next instalment, next Friday.

MYPC - Our PC

An interview with Chris Mofardin, Managing Director of MYPC.

The first show for the company was SIRENS, a play that incorporated live music and video into the action on stage and told the story of “the night you find out your ex-boyfriend is seeing someone else”.  This was actually based on the night Stephanie found out her ex-boyfriend was seeing someone else. So Stephanie played – Stephanie. It was convenient.

 The show was promoted with a three-minute ‘mockumentary’, filmed with the team who had shot the video.

Stephanie begins the interview asking Chris about filming in the beautiful, multi-million pound home donated by friends.

SY:      One of the producer’s jobs is to tend the cameraman as he sits in his underwear on the lid of the toilet, looking at the dog bite he’s just incurred on her behalf and for the sake of the show. How did you feel at that moment?

CM:     I felt alive. Every fibre of my being was throbbing with the anticipation of a law suit that would sink the company before it had begun so I quickly told him how rich the dog’s owners were. Really, really rich and that one was a film maker who could probably do with a cameraman, especially one who had been crippled. By his dog.

SY:      This is very revealing.

CM:     We couldn’t find any first aid stuff in their house. It was like they never suffered injuries. Maybe if you’re really wealthy you don’t. You get impermeable skin once you crack £100,000 at the bank.

SY:      What did you actually say to the cameraman on the toilet?

CM:     Ah – something like ‘There, there, it’s barely a scratch’ as I gagged involuntarily at the huge gouge marks in his thigh. His thigh! Actually I think I said ‘Shit, are you all right?’ and had to control this great desire to laugh because it was so absurd and horrific. Meanwhile you guys just kept filming! I was trying to calm down the incredibly pale cameraman and you were arguing about whether the white bedroom was too white. I was thinking “Is my cameraman’s face too white? What if he dies? What if he passes out? Will they keep filming? Will I have to hold the camera? How many roles am I supposed to have in this bloody company?”

SY:      I’d like you to tell me about your technique with actors.

CM:     The first thing you’ve got to remember is there are fricking thousands of them so they’re not as special as they think they are. No, I don’t mean that. Some of my best friends are actors. But if they call you darling and hug you a lot you’re not in with a chance. They do this to everyone.

And don’t let them do a thing before they’ve signed the contract. If they hold out on the contract, hold out on the props.

SY:      What?

CM:     Well, if you’re an actor who thinks he can’t act drunk without being drunk and needs a REAL beer on stage - there’s the prop.  You have leverage. The actor who thinks this said to me ‘Could you get me a beer for a prop?’ and I said ‘Can you get me that freaking contract I’ve been asking for for the past two weeks?’

He laughed, I didn’t.

He said “You’re serious.” I smiled.  

He had three minutes to curtain.

He gave me the contract. I got him the beer.

SY:      What was your experience of working with the musicians formerly known as The Crane Brothers (now Running Club)?

(http://www.runningclubmusic.com/ )

CM:     It was all fine up until the moment they decided to change their name without consulting me. I wouldn’t have minded if I hadn’t had 400 flyers printed with “The Crane Brothers” but they did apologise and promise to speak to me first if they ever made such a heady move again. I have to be grateful, however, as I had the expression “bell end” explained to me by one of them, virtually an adolescent, at a cast party. That was a highlight. Especially when I couldn’t seem to absorb what his explanation meant which necessitated him repeating the word ‘cock’ louder and louder as I leaned in gazing, puzzled, at him. And finally I said ‘Cock??’ in some bizarre, posh accent about two inches from his face while he stared at me, disbelieving that I could have reached my age without ever having heard the word before. In front of the entire cast and crew. Because that was the moment everyone chose to go silent and listen.

SY:      You were wearing your lovely silver top and had a glass of champagne, poised elegantly.

CM:     It did inspire my first choice of name for the company which was Posh Cock Productions –

SY:      Poche Coque.

CM:     Exactly. Which you crushed mercilessly -

SY:      You know why we couldn’t. Answering the phones. ‘Posh Cock, please hold.’

CM:     - choosing to name it after yourself instead.

SY:      It’s true. It is MY Production Company.

CM      No, it’s MY production company.

SY:      Any other stories about actors?

CM:     I can’t keep dissing them. I love actors, especially the incredibly talented ones we got to work with on the filming. 

SY:      I have a picture of one of them laughing at something I've said.

CM:     That's good acting.



Dave the Runner, Dave Anderson (director) and Jeff Mash (actor) enjoying SY's hi-jinx during filming.



SY:      I want to hear about your faultless protocol on set.

CM:     God. If we’d had a gag reel for the viral it would have only lasted 45 seconds but it would have been all me, not able to stop laughing while the actor playing John, The Ex-boyfriend, was being filmed. It was so embarrassing.

SY:      I was concentrating on ach-ting so had no idea why you were hysterical.

CM:     The scene called for him to be facing away from the camera, looking out a window. He had his coat on and a lighter in one hand. He’s gazing out, he puts a cigarette in his mouth, flicks his lighter but a voice off camera calls his name and he turns around. The cigarette never gets lit. Cut.

In one take he was gazing out, he flicked the lighter, his name was called and as he turned around to respond, the cigarette skated over the top of the flame and actually lit. It lit. And the camera’s rolling. No one notices. The actor subtly plucks the cigarette out of his mouth, in character, and, heroically, stubs it out on his hands. He’s obviously reached the £100,000 mark at the bank having developed the impermeable skin.

I was the only one who noticed and burst out laughing. That killed the take, I explained what had happened. Everyone smiled politely but take after take I burst out laughing at the same point. It wouldn’t have been such a big deal, I could have left, but my 14th role of the day was holding the big shiny silver thing -

SY:      The collapsible light reflector.

CM:     - yeah, under the actor’s face, so I couldn’t move. It gave me a whole new respect for performers who can say their lines without corpsing. Oh my god. I’m the Ricky Gervais of our partnership.

SY;      Who am I then? Stephen Merchant?

CM:     You’ve got the glasses.

SY:      But I’m short.

Cm:     Or that editor guy they harass. You could be him. Your choice.

SY:      I’ll be Stephen. I think he’s nice. I saw him once in Hugo’s Café in Queen’s Park. He was having lunch with a very pleasant-faced woman.

Cm:     Stalk much?

SY:      Tell me about filming, working with the director -

CM:     The director is called Dave Anderson, young and award-winning already. However, we think he was very lucky to work with us because on our first night-shoot he found a fifty pound note on the road! In my mind, that’s pretty much like us giving him the money because if he hadn’t been with us filming for two days, non-stop, 48 hours, he wouldn’t have found it. Strangely, he didn’t thank me.



Dave Anderson directing actor Mark Noble

I think he’s the David Lean of our generation. He has a beautiful eye, everything looks sumptuous and gorgeous, although he has an aversion to deadlines that is unnerving to say the least. We called him Ten-Take-Anderson because nothing was ever quite enough.

SY:      Ten takes isn’t that many. And in his defence, nearly every take we used was the last one we got.

CM:     Well that's true. He is also very calm, all the time, which makes him very good with actors and tense producers. He just puts his hands on your shoulders and says’ Talk to me.’ And even though you want to say ‘You’re two weeks late with the fricking film’! You say ‘Aaaaaahhhh…’

SY:      You sat in the editing booth with him.

CM:     For hours and hours. Dave had an endless patience and, as he only eats once every four days, he didn’t seem to mind never moving and he doesn’t drink either or go to the loo. In fact I’m not sure he’s human. But he does make a pretty film.

SY:      There is a scene where the character I played – well, me -  cycles madly across London to meet someone arriving on an incoming train and we filmed at night. 

CM:     Yeah. It would have been hilarious if I wasn’t so terrified. I was driving in peak hour traffic in the middle of London, round Trafalgar Square with Dave hanging out of the Polo window, filming you on a bicycle. You were going as fast as you always cycle and since that includes zipping alongside all the cars going slowly, we kept losing you. And then we’d  find you and shout ‘Slow down!’ and you’d nod and cycle off again. I spent the whole time swearing. It’s good we had no sound because you would have heard ‘Fuck fuck,she’s gone again, where is she?  Wouldn’t it be horrible if we ran her over? Fuck!’  

Then you and Dave disappeared into Waterloo Station to film the closing scene. ‘Five minutes tops’ says Lying-Liar-Pants-on-Fire Anderson as I’m parked illegally in a taxi lane and, god, it must have been 45 minutes. You two finally reappeared, legging it out of there like you had all the security guards after you.

SY:                  We had one. He’d said ‘Are you going to use that film professionally?’ I pulled myself up to my full 5’3” and said ‘Do I LOOK like an amate-uh??’ Dave was very charming and then we ran.

CM:                 Meanwhile I was so bored. I had nothing to do. I had nothing in the car. I had no radio, no book. I hated you two having a grand time filming, maybe being chased, adding to the thrill, while I was hoping I wouldn’t get the crap beat out of me by a bunch of irate taxi drivers wondering why I wouldn’t move. I stood there trying to look as though the car had a flat tire. Which isn’t easy to do when you don’t have a flat tire. I started talking out loud to myself the way you do when you’re alone in the house. Narrating your actions.  In a sing-songy voice. ‘I’m still parked here ♫ and I’m so bored ♪ I could eat my own brains♫ and that cabbie is looking at me and wondering what’s going on and so am I and Dave and Steph are the artistes ♪  and I get left behind because ♫ I’m just the producer, just the car-driving, camera-man-tending, actor-haranguing, writer-soothing, snack-buying, beer-withholding producer.’

SY:      So it’s been a pleasure for you, so far? Working with me?

CM:     Was that a question?

SY:      Yes.

CM:     Nothing but a pleasure. Making Sirens was the most fun I’ve ever had allegedly working.

SY:      Do you have a favourite phrase as a producer?

CM:     “It’s okay. We’re insured. Get back to rehearsal.”

(click to see the edited viral, featuring the hilarity and good looks of Fred Perry, Mark Noble and The Band Formerly Known as The Cranes):

http://www.facebook.com/pages/MY-Production-Company/176493352365085?v=app_2392950137