The Man In the Rubber Mask (5 page)

‘Cretin, they want you in wardrobe,' said Sylvie. So that was it. I couldn't really eat. After slipping into my costume (I use the term ‘slipping' in a comedy way) I had to go to make-up again to be touched up before going on the set.

‘You've ruined your lips!' said Bethan Jones, viewing the damage all that tea and roast beef sauce had done. I was there another thirty minutes being re-glued, repaired and powdered, then finally, I entered the studio to do my first shot for
Red Dwarf
.

In the story, the Cat (Danny John-Jules) was out searching for Lister and Rimmer on
Starbug
, which had crash-landed and was marooned on an ice planet. The Cat had harnessed Kryten to a sledge and the scene demanded that I pull this sledge, with Danny and a load of provisions, across a snowy landscape in a blizzard. He had to shout ‘Mush! Mush!' as if I were a pack of dogs, and lash me with a bull-whip. Danny loved this scene. I was not so keen. For a start, when I was tied up to the sledge, I couldn't get a grip in all the fake snow. So Peter Wragg tied another rope to the sledge, and somehow managed to lie down on the floor and pull the sledge for me. That would have been cool, but then they brought around the wind machine, the one they'd been blowing Craig around with in the morning. To get a good blizzard effect, they would start up the wind machine and then pour Dreft washing soap flakes into the wind.

Ed arranged the camera and they started the wind machine. As soon as it was up to full blast, which was deafening, they started the blizzard effect. Within seconds, due to intense eye pain, I realised that my eye blink ability was severely restricted. The make-up was so heavy around my eyes that I really couldn't close them. Super painful shards of Dreft mild and gentle soap powder stung my forced open eyeballs, I grimaced and tried to cover my face, I couldn't see or hear anything, I finally turned away from the shot and someone killed the wind machine. I looked at Danny through soap vision; he was sitting on the sledge, in a big fur coat. He was smiling from cheek to cheek and saying ‘Mush! Mush!'

‘No, the shot doesn't work chaps,' said Ed Bye. Now there's irony for you. For the next hour or so we tried various different combinations of me pulling the sledge through various mixtures of fake snow. All of these combinations involved Danny sitting on the sledge going ‘Mush! Mush!' In the final broadcast version of
Marooned
, none, I repeat none, of these shots were used. I thought that warranted a special irony warning light on the giant heavenly dashboard, what I didn't see was the upcoming irony klaxon horn, which was warning about the following day.

Now, I have promised not to go on about the mask and the heat and discomfort, and I won't, but this day continues to hold the record for being the most ironic of all.

We moved to another hotel in Manchester, a very splendid place called the Midland. Not that I noticed its splendour much when I woke up. Five-thirty in the morning in Manchester is not a glamorous time, but what is glamour anyway? A fleeting feeling that leaves no trace. No, this had no glamour, sitting in the back of a taxi that smelt strongly of that special taxi air freshener. The sort that's in the little cardboard holder that hangs from the rear-view mirror and feels as if it's peeling a layer of skin off your nostrils.

‘Telly is it?' said the driver.

‘Yah, actually it's a series called
Red Dwarf
, I play a robot,' I said, trying to sound like an actor.

‘Never heard of it,' said the driver. He wiggled his way through the back streets of Manchester and dropped me by the side of the BBC's studios on Oxford Road.

I stumbled into the BBC building and headed for the canteen, I knew how hungry I was going to get so I thought I'd better stoke up. The canteen was shut. (Irony warning light on orange.) I went to the make-up room and sat down. I don't want to describe the process that next took place for two very good reasons. One, it's boring, and two, it brings it all back as I write it, and I don't have my prosthetic counsellors
¹³
here to help me.

Suffice it to say, six hours later I was laughing and joshing around in the costume department. I got changed into my costume and was then transported by cab to the Midland Hotel where we were recording in a gym. Irony warning light to darker orange.

In the episode called
Body Swap
, Lister and Rimmer had done a deal whereby Rimmer was allowed to have a go in Lister's body for a while. The scene we were recording was meant to show Rimmer exercising Lister's body by sitting in a jacuzzi, reading a women body-builders magazine and smoking a huge cigar. I entered with a huge selection of food for him to gorge himself on, I was then meant to light a candle with my finger and serve the food.

Okay, by now the irony warning light was on red, but the klaxon hadn't quite gone off. Had this been a US peacekeeping force as opposed to my irony control, the F-111's would have been in the air, missiles armed and ready.

I noticed when I first arrived that the crew were all wearing shorts and T-shirts. Of course, this wasn't a gym. It might be called a gym but really it was a sports and leisure centre. That meant it was a place where fat businessmen went to shower down and sit around sweating for a bit after a heavy night's drinking and shagging.

‘Morning, Robert.' It was Peter Wragg standing next to me, holding a glove, a gas bottle and a lot of wires. He started to fit the glove on, run the wires and the gas tube up my sleeve and out behind my head.

‘It's just an electric spark cigarette lighter,' said Peter. ‘Bog-standard, we'll be back here, and on the cue, we'll fire it up. A flame will come out of the end of your finger, you light the candle and blow the flame on your finger out, then we turn the gas off.'

‘Great, that's fine, yeah,' I said, which is liberal speak for, ‘Oh my God, I'm going to die but I don't want to be rude to this nice man.'

Ed Bye was chirpy and happy as usual, ‘Alright chap?' he said.

‘Bit hot,' I said, and then felt guilty for complaining.

‘It's bloody boiling in here,' said Ed. ‘You must be roasting alive in there. This won't take long.'

Irony klaxon horn sounding for the first time, just one blast, but I should have noticed. Craig came in, wearing a pair of swimmers and a dressing gown, looking truly like the Crown Prince of Packet.
¹⁴

‘Hey, Krytie, you're looking good man,' he said as he shed his dressing gown and dropped into the pool. Craig was immediately in his element, looking at pictures of highly muscled semi-naked women, smoking a cigar and lounging in a pool.

We went for a take. I had to push a trolley laden with food and not trip up over the wires and tubes strapped to my back. Craig was mouthing his lines; Chris would dub them on later. I had to guess when my cue was by watching his lips. Then I presented the food and went to light the candle.

Peter saw his cue and hit the button. A sharp jolt of pain shot up my arm, I jerked, then there was another.

‘I'm being electrocuted!' I said, not noticing there was a flame coming out of my finger. I waved this flaming digit around for a moment; it didn't seem to want to go out. ‘I am going to die,' I thought, ‘I am going to burst into flames and die. Not while I'm trying to save a family in a burning building, not heroically, but while making a British comedy TV show. How ironic.'

Peter Wragg saved my life by blowing the little flame out. The fact that he saved my life was a mixed blessing I thought, it meant I was still covered from head to foot in rubber and plastic, standing in a sauna in a Manchester hotel, and we hadn't shot a thing.

‘Don't worry chaps,' said Ed Bye, ‘it's only a rehearsal.'

After they had stripped me down, we worked out that I was sweating so much under my costume that I had shorted out the wires leading to the gas nozzle. We tried the shot six or seven times, each time I got an electric shock, or the gas didn't light, or I blew my lines because I talked over Craig, or the sound of the jacuzzi was too much.

I eventually went a bit dizzy and was taken to the exit, where it was much cooler. I can remember Paul Jackson being there, the man who'd got me this job. He'd come to see how things were going, ‘How's it going, Robert?' he said.

‘It's fine,' I lied, ‘I'm just a bit hot.'

I think if people could have seen my face at that time, I would have been made to lie down. It would have looked the colour of a baboon's arse, but it was Kryten's face, calm and smooth, kind and sympathetic, in a cuboid, novelty condom sort of way.

The rest of that day is a bit hazy, what we discovered afterwards was that if a human body sweats that much, you not only lose water (I was drinking two big bottles of mineral water a day, and not urinating once), but you also start losing essential salts and mineral things. I don't know exactly what happens, but what it means is you feel dizzy and tired and a bit sick.

Of course the final irony of ironies was that none of this footage was ever used, the scene was rewritten and done in a studio. This is the sort of irony where you need to learn breathing exercises and chant little Buddhist mantras to yourself, otherwise you go mad.

Bethan turned up the next day with a box of diarrhoea salts that you give little kids in Somalia when they've got the runs. Helps rehydrate them. I felt guilty because I thought I was depriving some poor kid in the desert, which is a classic, self-centred, middle-class, guilt-ridden thing to do.

The next three days were spent in various locations around Manchester, filming inserts for
Backwards
. This included Chris Barrie and I walking backwards through the Piccadilly shopping arcade dressed as a mechanoid and a hologram, and an unimaginable number of people utterly failed to notice us. You can see on the footage they used that most of the busy Tuesday morning shoppers were totally oblivious of the fact that they had just walked past two men, one who looked a bit like Captain Scarlet with an H stuck on his forehead, the other with a square rubber head and a shiny silver body, who was walking backwards. We had to walk backwards, and I didn't understand this at the time, because when the film was run forwards, we would be walking forwards and all the shoppers would be walking backwards.

After one of these long days, I went back to our hotel, where we'd done the make-up, got cleaned off, had a shower and drove to Edinburgh. That was a mistake because I was utterly exhausted and couldn't really see, but being a soft, southern bastard, I thought: ‘Manchester's in the North, so is Scotland, so Edinburgh can't be far.'

As I drove for hour after sleepy hour along near-deserted A roads across the borders, often driving with my head out of the window to try and keep awake, I realised I was very wrong.

I got to the little flat I'd rented in Edinburgh at about two-thirty in the morning to be greeted with tea and toast from John McKay, my writing partner and co-actor in
Onan
. He filled me in on the gossip and told me what was happening with our show, which was due to open the following day.

 

The run of
Onan
went extremely well, after a difficult start, when the audience clearly didn't know if we were doing a comedy or a tragedy. Once we got into our stride, we flew through the season, got rave reviews, had lunch, stood in the bar, laughed like actors, which means throwing your head back and making a lot of noise. We didn't make any money even though we were sold out from day one, we were packing them in, people were fighting for tickets. I used to go into the box office and hear, ‘Gimme a ticket to
Onan
yah bastard!' Punch, thump, crash. ‘Get off, that's mine you rotten pig.' Smash, tinkle. ‘Calm down everyone, why don't you go and see Paul Merton?'

‘'Cos we want to see
Onan
!' Thump, kerunch!

Well, it wasn't quite like that, but it was fun, and I forgot all about rubber masks and time travel. I met Hattie every now and then. She was doing very late-night stand-up comedy in the same room as I was working in, but that was the only contact I had with
Red Dwarf
.

Then I got a bit of glamour. I mean, it's sad isn't it, but every now and then a bit of glamour does wonders. After the final show of
Onan
, the audience cheered and clapped, we bowed, ran off stage like actors do. I changed, washed my face, ran out of the front door of the Assembly Rooms, got in a taxi, got taken to the airport and flew back to London. As the plane climbed and circled around Edinburgh I could clearly make out the Scott Monument, Newtown, George Street and the Assembly Rooms. I could see the roof of the Assembly Rooms where I had climbed, illegally with a lot of drunk comics, to watch the fireworks display.

Considering I have never lived in the city of Edinburgh, I have spent an enormous amount of time there over the years and I feel attached to the place. I can walk around the streets and look up at windows and remember, ‘Ah, I had sex in that room once.' Or, ‘Ah, that's where that party was where Jenny LeCoat fell on my head.' Or, ‘That's the pub where I met Jasper Carrot.' It's sad really isn't it, to admit that you have those sort of thoughts as you wander about; they're very personal thoughts but I thought I'd share them with you.

I sat back in my seat and felt a bit glamorous, and a bit sad. I think glamour and sadness go together very well as an emotional cocktail, like loneliness and self-pity, or love and happiness. I was sad because I was leaving my girlfriend Judy Pascoe and a lot of my friends in Edinburgh, and now as I flew south, it felt like such a sudden parting. I'd barely had time to say goodbye to John McKay, who I'd been working so closely with for the previous three months. Plus I was missing the last day of the festival, where everyone walks around with a hangover and reminisces about what went on during the previous three weeks.

Plus I was missing the big benefit gig, on the last Sunday of the festival. I had been involved in that for the previous four years or so, it was a great show, more like a party for the performers, with the added benefit of a huge audience. In earlier years the benefits were for the Nicaragua Solidarity Campaign, but then when there were democratic elections in Nicaragua, and the conservative opposition to the Sandinistas had a landslide victory, with a little matter of the aid of millions of US dollars, the glamour went out of the Sandinistas' rebel cause. So the benefit became one for the Terrence Higgins Trust. Okay, now it's easy to be critical of benefits and what they do, reviving flagging rock stars' careers, etc., but for all the free publicity it gave to a lot of the performers, it did raise a fair sized wedge of cash.

Anyway, I was missing all that as I sat thirty thousand feet up and tucked into my British Midland chilled chicken roll. The man in the seat in front of me turned around and asked me, ‘Are you the bloke that was doing that play about porn?'

‘Well, it wasn't about porn, as such,' I said defensively. ‘It was about a couple of left-wing, right-on, non-sexist men who set up a pornographic magazine.'

‘Yeah, the play about porn, because it's already been done,' he said. ‘Look at this.'

He handed me a copy of
Forum
magazine, ‘That's really what you were talking about isn't it.'

I argued with him, I said, ‘What we were trying to say with the play was more about the state of politics in the country as a whole than a direct commentary on the role pornography has to play in society, as a whole, across the board, at this point in time, in any way, shape or form.'

I flicked through the magazine; I'd never actually looked through a
Forum
before. Don't get me wrong, I'm no porno virgin. I'd seen it all, I had to do the research for the play, the trouble was I started the research when I was thirteen. But
Forum
had never interested me, there weren't enough pictures for a start, I handed the magazine back to the guy and tried to sleep. Of course that was a bit futile as the flight is only forty minutes and we were coming into land.

Red Dwarf
rehearsals proper started the following day, in Acton. The first episode we recorded was
Marooned
, which meant that Hattie, Danny and I had virtually nothing to do. It's one of my favourite episodes, not just because I'm not in it,
¹⁵
I just think it has some of the funniest lines from the series in it.

 

Lister:
Are you saying I've got a big bum?

 

Rimmer:
Big? It's like two badly parked Volkswagens.

 

Danny, Hattie and I spent quite a lot of time in the BBC canteen as Chris and Craig learned reams of lines. The BBC canteen is on the top floor of the building and on any given day in here, you can see the stars. Ahem. You can see a few actors who are in a few BBC sitcoms. The actors from
You Rang M'Lord?
are all dressed as if they are about to go and play golf, which is no doubt what they do. The people from
Blackadder
all look professionally depressed, which is probably how we all looked too, that being the trendy look for our generation.

During lunch break, Craig and Chris would join us and we devised this thing called a luvvie-ometer, which would sound when we spotted a major league ‘luvvie' entering the room. Luvviedom is a very specific complaint that it is horrifyingly easy to catch, which is why the
Blackadder
and
Red Dwarf
actors appear so morose. A miserable countenance seems to be the best way to counteract luvvieness. A luvvie is always pleased to see everybody, always ‘up' always ‘exhausted' (i.e. working a lot) and always has a string of anecdotes a mile long … which have … beautifully timed pauses … and exquisitely timed delivery. They also never have a point or a punchline at the end of their stories. Merely a raised eyebrow and a knowing expression. The end of a long and dull anecdote is when most actors realise they need writers.

I know of very few performers who have not been struck down with Luvviedom at some time, I know I've had it, try as I might to avoid it.

‘Hello there, Robert, how are you?' says a very nice floor manager I worked with a year before.

‘Oh God,' I say, looking to the heavens, ‘utterly exhausted,' head shake, ‘really it's because I'm crap,' stare at person and nod vigorously, ‘I'm a crap actor, I shouldn't be allowed in here.'

The nice floor manager knows the score and responds thusly. ‘You're a very funny actor, I saw your show in Edinburgh, it was excellent.'

‘Oh, that's very kind, but anyway, no, I'm shagged. Utterly drained, but it's really nice to see you, how are you … oh, there's Ben (Elton) I'd better say hi.' Walk walk walk … ‘Hi Ben.'

‘Do I know you?' says Ben Elton. ‘Guards, take this man away!'

No, that's not true, I don't know many famous people, but I do know Ben Elton. Sort of. Well, can I truly say I know anyone? Do we even know ourselves? Rarely. Anyway, Ben used to do his set before The Joeys in salubrious gigs like Chats Palace in Hackney and the Covent Garden Community Centre. He's a very nice man, and there's an end to it. I'm not going to do some big luvvie number about me and Ben going way back, because it's not true.

During our time at Acton we would rehearse for three days, then have a technical run-through, which is where all the crew would watch, then we'd climb aboard a coach which would drive us to Manchester, we'd check into the Midland Hotel and I'd generally go to bed.
¹⁶
Not so the rest of the cast. They would imbibe fermented vegetable products and discuss the issues of the day. On the rare occasions when I didn't have to get up the following morning at five-thirty, I would sit, with a long glass of mineral water, and join in the hectic banter.

‘What's happenin', guy?' says Danny.

‘Goin' clubbin', man,' says Craig.

‘Kicking,' says Danny.

‘What are we drinking chaps?' says Ed Bye.

‘Mine's a Bud,' says Chris.

‘I'll just have a mineral water, with lemon and ice,' I say.

‘Wimp,' says Craig and jumps on me for no obvious reason. Suddenly three very smartly dressed black men would enter the hotel bar escorted by four or five drop-dead-beautiful women, and Craig and Danny would go off clubbing, which I assumed had something to do with sex in interesting positions with people of a like mind, which is why they all joined a club, but that could just be me.

There was one memorable occasion when I had already been woken by a rude alarm call, got semi-dressed, stumbled out of bed and into the lift, got out on the ground floor to be met by Craig and Danny who had just come back from clubbing, and seemed to have enjoyed themselves greatly.

Craig and Danny's energy never ceased to amaze me. If I'd stayed up all night drinking, dancing and doing other repetitive body movements in the close proximity of another person, I would need considerable medical attention for at least a week. This would have to be followed up by a prolonged period of counselling, therapy and the love and understanding of my friends and family.

Craig would sit down on a make-up chair next to me, I'd ask him how he was, he'd take a puff on his cigarette and say, ‘Bit rough, man.' A bit rough! If I'd done what he'd done I'd be dead.

Our two days in Manchester were pretty intense. The first day in the studio was where we pre-recorded all the complicated technical stuff, the second day was spent rehearsing with the camera and sound crew, and then recording the remainder of the show in front of a live audience.

A live audience. It never occurred to me to be nervous about this. I had spent the previous ten years in front of live audiences virtually every night of the week, but they weren't live
Red Dwarf
audiences. As I entered the back of the studio in Manchester on my first live
Red Dwarf
recording, the buzz from the audience was extraordinary.

Paul Jackson
¹⁷
went out to warm them up, which was a bit like warming up a car which has just driven a hundred miles. This audience was running hot. Paul was very good, he cracked a few rude jokes and we were introduced one by one.

‘Ladies and gentlemen, as Rimmer, Mr Chris Barrie.' Huge, deafening applause, whistling, whooping.

‘Ladies and gentlemen, as Lister, Mr Craig Charles.' Stupendous hysterical rapture.

‘Ladies and gentlemen, as the Cat—' no more could be heard as Danny pirouetted into view.

‘As Holly the computer, please welcome Hattie Hayridge.' Very interested polite clapping, with the semi-audible audience thought of, ‘Oooh, so that's what the new Holly looks like.'

‘As Kryten the mechanoid, Mr Robert Llewellyn.' Polite smattering of semi-supportive clapping. The audience thinking ‘Bloody hell, what does he look like?'

The recording took place, the warm-up man kept the audience from flagging between takes. Every week Craig would walk up to this man, take the microphone from him and say to the audience: ‘You know who this guy is don't you?' The man would buckle over in dramatic embarrassment. ‘You know who he is, I'll tell you, he's Ronald McDonald. He's the bloke in that fucking clown outfit.'

Craig would then give the warm-up man the microphone and we'd continue the show. To give him his due, he never took umbrage at the constant ribbing he received from the cast; it became part of the evening's entertainment.

After the recording I would head straight to make-up, everyone else headed straight for the bar. By the time I was stripped, oiled, pummelled, powdered and cleaned off, I would run to the bar just in time for a quick orange juice before getting into the bus and heading back to London.

The journey back to London was often very rowdy, everyone except Mike Agnew, the floor manager, was high from doing the show. Mike would have worked so absurdly hard for the previous two days, he would flop down on the long back seat of the bus and be completely oblivious of the noise surrounding him. We would have videos of
Star Trek
playing, Craig would be roaming the coach looking for cigarettes, cans of beer or trouble, Danny would be holding court about how much Pavarotti earned.