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Emma Kennedy and I have been messing around and behaving like kids, since we were essentially kids. It’s 30 years (almost to the day) since we first performed on stage together and here we still are, nearly 50 years old and not getting any less silly. If anything we’ve go much more silly. Today we were doing the penultimate day of extra filming for AIOTM and Emma and I (or rather the character she was playing) had to pretend to be aroused by each other, but unable to act upon it. Which just meant making animal noises and jiggling around like our pants were on fire. I am very glad we’re still doing this. Be good to still be this childish when we’re 80.
We got some good stuff done today though, thanks to Andrew, Matt and Duncan, a tight and brilliant filming crew. To begin with we had to film Phoebe and me watching some of the parody Little Baby Bum cartoons we’ve had made. Bizarrely, even though the cartoons are rude and a bit violent in places, Phoebe was fascinated by them, as much or more than the originals. I then filmed a sketch with my fake wife Rachel Stubbings and messed around with Emma and then, with time still to go we quickly shot a couple of bits of stand up to camera. Meaning we got more done than I had been planning.
We have one more sketch to film and I wasn’t sure we’d have time or funds to do it. But I think we have one more day in us, even though we will have to wait until April. In the mean time we’ll be starting the process of editing everything together and I am still hoping we might have something to show you by May. It’s been a blast. A terrible, exhausting, ridiculous blast.
I continue to be amazed and touched by the hard work that so many people have put in and continue to put in in order to make this happen. There have been dozens of them. And thanks to the unique way that AIOTM is funded they are all working for a fraction of what they’d usually get.
Tonight the passive aggressive man who occasionally comes round trying to sell sponges and stuff came to the door. I was in the middle of giving Phoebe dinner and in a rush. Usually I’d use the entry phone, but the crew had just left so I thought it was one of them returning cos they’d left something behind. But the guy was up my path with his bag of stuff that I didn’t want. As you’ll know from previous episodes with men asking to prune my tree (and pretending they’re doing some work for someone else in the street), I don’t like people who come to the house to hawk stuff. I don’t think it’s right to come to people’s homes. I also vaguely remembered him from previous visits, where he’s been weirdly confrontational when he is rebuffed.
So I saw the man and said “No thanks†and shut the door and returned to my daughter. He rang the doorbell again - an aggressive move and in order to nip this in the bud I talked to him on the phone. He was complaining that I had shut the door in his face and that he wasn’t a bad lad. I told him that I had said “No thanksâ€, but he said he hadn’t heard a thank you. I mean, I wasn’t sure that he was right to be affronted. It was he who had come into my space and, although it must be frustrating to be be regularly shunned by the people you’re trying to sell stuff to, they haven’t asked you to come to the house, you’ve imposed yourself on them. It’s rather too high status to demand either politeness or an apology. It was somewhat threatening. And you know, he knows where I live.
Of course I still felt like a prick for being unpleasant. But he in turn didn’t bother to find out that I was giving my daughter dinner and was worried about leaving her alone for too long. But this aggrieved man knows where I live and has me pegged down as being uncaring to his lot. I couldn’t help thinking that this tightly wound man may one day snap and take out the continual rejection on someone who has issues of their own and doesn’t want to help him out by buying overpriced cleaning products that they don’t want. It’s be quite a good psychological thriller.
