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If I told them once I told them a thousand times, it’s world war first THEN pandemic. Jeez guys, it’s not that complicated!
Still I am enjoying the way that we're gradually easing our way to WWIII, like slowly adding hot water to a bath. Mmmm, lovely. And the great thing about WWIII is that it will be such a success that there will never be a WWIV. Finally we’ll sort everything out and the world will be at peace. Untroubled by a living soul.
The water in Venice is disappearing apparently. All those pizzas I bought to stop this place flooding. My bad guys. Apparently Pizza Express has stopped doing the Veneziana and so there is no longer a discretionary 25p donation to the Venice in Peril fund, which is a shame, as me demanding not to pay the amount, because it was discretionary turned out to be a great dating move. The pettiness combined with the pedantry and the understanding of what discretionary means, plus the hilarious confusion it threw the waiting staff into proved to be the perfect aphrodisiac on the two times I did it. The first occasion was a cast meal where one of the diners was Julia Sawalha and I am not saying that the bit was the reason she dated me for 18 months, but it must have helped and
the other time was on one of my 50 dates and again things went very well that night too. Why did I only try this twice? Maybe the thing was just too powerful to risk wheeling out on a regular basis and I suppose it would be awful if a waiter said "Oh not this again." It surprises me that I was bold enough to do this kind of thing at all, but maybe I was more confident that I remember myself being. I’d like to pass this secret on to others, but a) Venice is now in peril of just becoming a regular non-watery city and b) they no longer do the scheme. But I think in the wrong hands this risky move might go horribly wrong anyway. Play it too straight or too comic and you might just look like an idiot who doesn’t want to give to charity. Though women love a bad boy, so that might still work.
Tonight we went to a party and screening celebrating the fourth series of Meet The Richardsons, which I play a very small part in. It’s a really fun series if you haven’t caught it and I am a big fan of the Jon Richardson/Lucy Beaumont double act at the heart of it.
I went up to Sheffield last summer to film my scene, which took about two hours and we improvised most of it - most of the acting jobs I’ve had recently have been improvisation, which is great for me as I am getting increasingly bad at remembering lines. They didn’t screen the ep that I am in, though did show a couple of clips along with cameos from a whole host of impressive celebrities. It’s out in April I think, so time to catch up on the first three series.
I have always felt a bit awkward at events like this and try to flee as quickly as possible, but we did hang around for drinks afterwards and I met Tim Reid who writes the series with Lucy and who also co-created Car Share, which is a terrific series. And he introduced me to Jed Mercurio, the writer of Line of Duty, who it turned out was a big fan of my comedy work from the 90s and we all had a chat about how tough it is to get scripts made and working with utter cunts. So I expect I will be in the next series of Line of Duty now. And then finally I can stop doing this stupid blog and leave you idiots behind. It’s reassuring to hear that even the world’s most successful writers have had to endure idiots failing to pick up their scripts, but both of these two fine men have at least succeeded in the end. My years of writing pilots in the hope of them leading to series may be over as I am not sure I have the fight left in me, but I have been lucky to at least have scripts produced and to be paid for my failures, which puts me in the elite of being a successful writer even though I feel like a failed one.
Joe Cornish predicted that I had 30 years left in me and so am only halfway through my career, so maybe there’s time to write the new Call of Duty, though mine will be more like a Call of Doody. At least Jed Mercurio knows who I am. A cool man, with an even cooler name. No wonder he’s doing well. Who wants a script written by a guy called Herring?
No one apparently.
