The Man In the Rubber Mask (2 page)

The idea was that because we were aspiring young performers we would ‘do anything' to get on a telly show. We were supposed to be storming the entrance lobby of a TV company and ‘doing the show right here'. The director, Mr Brian Izzard, would not contradict me I think, if I said he was ‘not Britain's leading Non-Sexist man'. A charming and hard-working individual who had been in the business many years, he dealt with me very kindly when I tried to point out to him that The Joeys were trying to create a new form of non-sexist, non-racist humour, and we didn't really like his references to ‘secretaries with big tits' etcetera. He put his arm around me and stared into the middle distance. With a tight smile he said, ‘I still love you Robert, but you do your job, and I'll do mine. Okay love? I still love you.' With that he gently pushed me away as he got on with his job.

As the rehearsals continued, Norman, whom I'd only just met, seemed to get even more depressed. He really wasn't happy about something, probably being called a ‘child' by the director. Mr Izzard had a habit of saying ‘Come along now children' to the cast, whose ages ranged from nineteen to fifty. As we were doing some sort of blocking and confusing rehearsal, Norman said something like, ‘Sod this for a lark' and walked out, never to be seen again. He didn't miss much, the show went out early in Channel 4's history and thankfully sank without trace.

I saw Norman regularly over the next eight years or so. One very memorable time was when I was compère at a comedy club in Woolwich, south London, called the Tramshed. Just before I went on stage to announce him, Norman asked me to time him from when he went on stage to when he first spoke. I nodded, not really understanding what he was asking. I went onto the stage and said, ‘Ladies and gentlemen, please put your hands together in a warm and supportive manner for the very wonderful Mister Norman Lovett.' The crowd went bananas and Norman sloped onto the stage looking slightly moth-eaten and miserable. He stood behind the microphone, the clapping died down, and the room became quieter as the audience waited for the first gag. Norman stood there in silence, someone laughed, Norman looked at them, the whole audience laughed. He looked at the whole audience. They laughed again. Norman hadn't uttered a sound. I was looking at my watch at the side of the stage, two minutes. The other comics on that night crowded around. They knew Norman was going for his record. He stood motionless, picked out by the single spotlight. The audience went silent again, not a sound. Norman stared at them. It was a comic's nightmare, standing there in utter silence. Then someone snickered, Norman gave the person the most cursory of glances and immediately the whole audience started laughing again. Four minutes. He'd been standing on the stage in front of three hundred people for four minutes, entertaining them, somehow, by doing absolutely nothing. It was very funny, it was utterly infectious, even the hardened old pros at the side of the stage were roaring with laughter. There must have been ten periods of nerve-racking silence, each one broken by someone bursting out laughing, looking at this gaunt, miserable bloke, standing on a stage wearing a cardigan. At seven minutes twenty seconds, after a huge prolonged wave of laughter, Norman said ‘What?' He got an ovation.

I saw Norman's face on a screen, on the wall of some sleeping quarters in a sitcom, set in space, with Craig Charles, who I'd seen in the bar of the Assembly Rooms in Edinburgh. I'd rubber-necked as I was talking to someone else, I thought, ‘There's that bloke, the one who's married to that women who was in
Mona Lisa
with Bob Thingummy.' Then I looked at the woman sitting next to him. It was that woman from
Mona Lisa
with Bob Thingummy.

There was another man with an H on his forehead, I recognised him too, it was Chris Barrie. I'd seen him at the Comedy Store, years before, doing amazing impressions. E-e-e-e-e-e-e-e-extraordinary David Coleman. Then another man came in, he had amazing clothes on, and big teeth, he was called Cat. I didn't know him. I'd never seen him anywhere. That's because I hadn't been to see the three hundred West End musicals Danny John-Jules had already found Diva-dom in.

About three weeks after I went to meet Rob, Doug, Ed and Paul Jackson, I drove into the BBC special effects department in Acton. I didn't know what I was letting myself in for. I was, like most of the world's population, a prosthetic virgin. If only I'd been aware of the irony warning light flashing in the heavens when I'd spoken to Rob and Doug. I had explained to them that I was slightly concerned about playing a robot, or a mechanoid, because I was midway through developing a series for Channel 4 about a robot, and I didn't want to get typecast. Rob and Doug assured me that it wouldn't be a problem, they thought that very few people would recognise me. I think it's important to remember that I was very reassured by this. When I say important, I mean to keep the concept of this importance in context. It wasn't very important in the grand scheme of things, like, it wouldn't be very important to someone in Northern Thailand, or in the horn of Africa. It was only important to me, for about a minute, which isn't very high on a world rating of important things.

I entered the special effects room and was greeted by Peter Wragg, the master, the genius, the man behind
Thunderbirds
, the quiet, retiring master of special effects.

‘This shouldn't take too long, Robert,' he said. ‘We're just going to cover your head with dental mould and about fifteen pounds of plaster bandage. D'you want a cup of tea?'

He lead me through rooms where men in white overalls were making exploding chairs for Noel Edmonds'
Big Big Breakfast Show
, this was the room they made the Daleks in, the Cybermen's wellington boots were sprayed silver in this very building. Everywhere I looked there were old rubber monsters, slavering beasts with eyes on stalks, there were severed heads and rubber arms, model space ships and boats, men sitting at benches sawing small bits of metal.

We entered a room white with plaster dust. There I met Bethan Jones, who was head of the
Red Dwarf
make-up department. She was Welsh and as soon as I walked into the room she said, ‘I knew you weren't really Welsh, I thought you'd be fake Welsh.'

I took great umbrage at this. Fake Welsh, with a name like Llewellyn, how could she? Of course, the truth is that I'm about as Welsh as a croissant, but somewhere in my past there must have been a couple of Taffs. Peter and Bethan Jones discussed my head, Peter pointed at the bridge of my nose with a pen. ‘If we can carve in here quite steeply,' he said, ‘we'll get a better shape in the forehead.'

What were they going to do, put my head in a vice and get out a chisel? I wanted to look at the small print in my contract. I could see it clearly in my mind's eye. Why didn't I look at this more closely?

 

Section 4 (a) Subsection F9

Clause 18

The artist shall render his head, face and all areas above the throat to the company for modification, enhancement and radical change. All surgery costs and corrective therapy needed after the production to be paid for by the artist.

 

I didn't remember reading that bit. As I sat in ‘the chair' placed in the middle of the room, I was assured by Peter Wragg that I wasn't about to have radical surgery.

‘Some people,' said Bethan Jones, as she stuck a rubber bald cap over my hair, ‘go completely mad when their heads are covered in plaster of Paris. D'you think you'll be alright?'

I didn't know how to answer, it was like being told, ‘Some people completely die when they have a steamroller drive over them. D'you think you'll survive?'

Having never had my head covered in plaster of Paris bandage before, it was difficult to judge. I didn't think I was claustrophobic, I'm a pretty well-balanced sort of guy, most of the time.

As my body was wrapped in black bin bags, I began to get the distinct impression I wasn't going to have a lot of choice in the matter. I was going to get covered whether I went mad or not.

‘Here's a pad of paper and a pen,' said Peter, handing me the same. ‘This is in case you need something scratching when you're under. Just write down which bit is itching, we'll try and scratch it, then put a tick if we've got it. You see you won't be able to speak, hear, see or smell anything while you're under.' I gripped the pen and paper as if they were my last hope.

‘We start with the mouth and nose,' said Peter, who was now mixing a large plastic bowl full of bright yellow stuff that looked a bit like putty. ‘This is alginate, the stuff they make dental moulds out of, it's quite minty in taste, but it is a bit cold when we first put it on.' I nodded in the special way I have developed when I don't understand anything but want it to appear that I do.

‘We cover your nose and mouth first, then you blow through your nose and we make a little hole for you to breathe through. We need it to actually go in your mouth, so can you keep your mouth open very slightly. Okay?'

As I nodded yes, Peter slapped a great big handful of this minty gloop right in my face. It was very cold; it covered my nose, went into my mouth, forced my lips apart, ran over my teeth, settled around my tongue and went sort of rubbery hard. It was like eating minty custard that went solid as you ate it. It was like being covered in semi-solid toothpaste, it was like nothing else I had ever experienced. They covered my eyes next, then my neck, ears, top of my head. Their voices became muffled; all the sound was distorted as I felt something heavy and wet being slopped on top of the minty rubbery goo. I assumed this would be the plaster of Paris bandage. I felt a lot of rubbing and squibbling about, my head started to get heavier. All I could hear was my breathing, all of which was taking place through one nostril, which naturally after a few minutes, started to itch. And I mean itch, like the itch at the centre of the universe. What could I do? It must only have been seconds, but it seemed like ages, my whole consciousness was focused on this itchy nostril. I tried to wipe it from my brain, I tried to think about sex, car crashes, mountain streams in the dappled sunlight. Wide open seascapes, the mountains outside Vancouver. Anything except this damn nostril.

Then I remembered the pen and paper I was holding in my sweaty little hands. I wrote, as best I could seeing that the whole thing was done by touch, N O S T R I L I T C H. I heard muffled voices and movement around me; I couldn't tell what was going on, until I suddenly felt something poke up my nostril. I found out later it was one of those blue make-up removal things with cotton wool spun on each end. It did the trick. The relief was monumental. In the normal course of events, an itchy nostril is hardly something you comment on. You don't call a halt to a conversation and say, ‘Hold it! Wait! I've got an itchy nostril, everyone stay calm.' You just rub it, pick it and flick it and be done with it. Not so when your head is encased in seven pounds of plaster of Paris.

My steady regular breathing continued, in, out, in, out. I became super aware that I was an animal, that I had lungs that were two big bags that had to fill with air, then blow it out again. Then I could hear my pulse,
thrubub
,
thrubub
. I could almost see my heart, this funny pumpy thing that keeps going, day and night, until I pop my clogs. How does it know? Why doesn't it just forget to beat, why don't I just snuff it? I felt my heart rate increase,
Thrub thrub thrub
, I felt a small rush of adrenaline. Maybe I would die with this bloody thing on my head. Maybe they wouldn't be able to get it off and I would starve to death slowly. I'd never see anyone again, my girlfriend, my mates, my mum and dad. It was all over. I could see the headlines, ‘Princess Di Has Ladder In Tights Shock'. Let's face it, who would write about some sad actor who starved to death inside a plaster of Paris head mould in the BBC special effects department in Acton?

I tried to control these maddening daydreams; I tried to think about sex. Great big heaving … pulsating sweating … it didn't work. It was a big shock. Never before in my life had I been unable to have a kinky sexual fantasy. I'd had them during exams at school, I'd had them when I was failing my driving test, I'd had them when I was having sex! But now, in this little, quiet, private world, where no one would know, because even if the Bishop raised his hat I was totally covered in loose-fitting black plastic, it didn't matter, I just could not think about knobbing. I couldn't even manage a soft-core shampoo advert. It was the ideal opportunity to have some deeply kinky and perverted sexual thoughts. Not a sausage. In fact, a sausage would have been about the kinkiest thing I could have thought about.

What a breakthrough though, for the treatment of sex offenders. They get sentenced to ten hours a day with their head encased in plaster of Paris. It just stops all that stuff. Well, it did for me, but maybe it wouldn't work. I don't believe there are edges to human sexuality.
⁸
I bet there's some bloke somewhere who is rock hard for plaster of Paris. I bet there's a magazine you can buy in an Amsterdam bookshop called
Kinky Plaster of Paris Monthly
. Well, it's not so daft, I've seen a magazine called
Enema Digest
. When I was doing legitimate research of course.

Actually, I don't want to go on about plaster of Paris forever, but there were the Chicago Plaster Casters weren't there. This was a team of young women artists in the late sixties who went around making plaster casts of famous rock stars' … well, what can I call it and not be juvenile, let me think. Stiffies, yes, that's mature. First they made them go … like they do, and then they covered them with plaster of Paris. Once it had set they filled them with wax and a bit of string and made candles out of them.