Extra-Curricular Activity

F

or the love of God, let me act!’ I felt like screaming, amid the shocking dearth of extra-curricular drama in Gloucester and the surfeit of opportunity to chase cheese wheels down a hill.

Luckily, my drama teacher at school noticed my frustration and suggested that I join the Gloucester Youth Theatre as an outlet for my dramatic urges. The teachers’ strike was ongoing at the time and our educators had ceased supervising extracurricular activities as part of their industrial action.

This meant that the usual plays and inter-house drama competitions were cancelled in the name of financial justice, and all my performance energy was expended being disruptive in class. Dora Brooking, a wonderful drama teacher beloved by the students for possessing a maternal energy that soothed even the thugs, decided I needed something more than school plays to satisfy my passions. She had cast me as the lead in a school production of Tom Sawyer, one year before the harsh reality of staff underpayment brought an end to all the fun, having noted my enthusiasm for the performing arts. In what can sometimes be a sea of apathy, teachers are drawn moth-like to kids with light bulbs hovering over their heads. It gives them something to work with. I will be forever grateful to Dora Brooking, for not only spotting my light bulb but also helping me turn up the wattage.

Tom Sawyer was an amazing experience for me. I had been cast at the end of my first year at Brockworth Comprehensive and taken a big thick script home with me for the holidays. I underlined all my dialogue with a red biro and was thrilled to see that barely a page turned without multiple scarlet slashes reminding me just how much I had bitten off. The show went on in November of the following school year and proved to be an extraordinary adventure.

I developed a huge crush on the girl playing Aunt Polly. She was sixteen, a full four years older than me, and was widely regarded as the prettiest girl in school. The smell of her perfume, coupled with the adrenalin rush of performing in front of five hundred people over two nights, created in me a powerful memory, which I can recall in full detail even now, twenty-eight years later. I didn’t necessarily decide to become an actor that year, but my love of performing was utterly secured and Dora knew she had found anally who wouldn’t simply see her subject as a doss.

So it was that Dora called Mum and Mum called her friend Barbara Luck who ran the Gloucester Youth Theatre and arranged for me to start attending the weekly get-together, held on a large barge moored down at Gloucester Docks. I was extremely nervous about going, despite my love of performing. I didn’t know anybody other than Barbara who I had also developed a slight crush on after seeing her inSneef Charity at the Cambridge Theatre in Gloucester Leisure Centre (I fell in love all the time as a kid).

As we pulled into the car park at the docks in our red Ford Escort, I could see the assembled theatre youths waiting for Barbara to arrive to let them on to the show boat. The group were rehearsing for their Christmas production, Followthe Star, on which I would serve as a technical assistant, having arrived too late in the season to audition for a part. I squinted into the darkness to get the measure of my fellow drama types and noticed very quickly that they were all female. This group of confident, outgoing women, who all knew each other, were about to take delivery of a goofy fourteen-year-old boy with a tendency to fall in love and a sense of moral confusion with regard to his carnal desires. This was only a matter of months after Meredith Catsanus’s titmageddon and a full two years before the girl over the road would so confidently unbuckle my belt. Suddenly, I was alone in the car. It was just me and this shadowy crowd of mysterious and exotic women. I couldn’t help myself. It just slipped out of my mouth, like an opportunistic prisoner noticing a hole in the fence. It was out before my brain could sound the alarm.

FUCK!

My mother’s shrill admonishment barely concealed her amusement and my own gasping apology was lost amid a fit of giggling. The Freudian significance of the comment was lost into the ether; so much more was the shock of hearing my barely broken voice utter this profanity in the back of a Ford Escort in 1984. There was no punishment though, only a warning about putting my brain into gear before I spoke. The incident progressed my relationship with my mum into a more adult phase, as if a certain spell had been broken between us, like discovering the truth about Santa, the Easter Bunny or God, and now I would occasionally hear her swear for comic effect or at least refer to swearing by making an ‘efF sound. It was a while before I dared utter the С-word in front of her, and when I did, it was met with far less amiable acceptance. I was a college boy by this time with some grasp of etymology and linguistics and my casual use of the word had been wilfully inflammatory.

‘Oh, come on, Mum,’ I sighed at her protest. ‘It’s just an old Anglo-Saxon word for the female organ which has been adopted by an inherently misogynist language as a negative epithet. It’s the same as “fuck”, it basically means the same as copulate, but the latter is perfectly acceptable. Why? Because copulate has its roots in Latin and Latin reminds us that we are a sophisticated, learned species, not the rutting animals that these prehistoric grunts would have us appear to be, and isn’t that really the issue here? We don’t want to admit that we are essentially animals? We want to distinguish ourselves from the fauna with grand conceits and elaborate language; become angels worthy of salvation, not dumb creatures consigned to an earthly, terminal end. It’s just a word, Mum; a sound meaning a thing; and your disgust is just denial of a greater horror: that our consciousness is not an indication of our specialness but the terrifying keyto knowing how truly insignificant we are.’

She told me to go fuck myself.

The smell of the medina crept seductively into the courtyard of the riad and punched Simon Pegg full in the face as he wound the traditional Berber keffiyeh around his head.

‘Oooh, I’d love a tagine!’ Pegg enthused.

‘Sir?’ enquired Canterbury, who was dressed in a full burka so as not to anger the locals. This had nothing to do with the edicts of sharia law; robots were permitted to wander freely in Islamic territor ies. King Mohammed IV’s own robotic chamberlain, Abd Al-Ala, was often seen clanking through the souks purchasing spices or bartering over leather goods (the King had a thing for satchels). The problem was that Canterbury was something of a celebrity, famous for being aide to the world’s most famous international playboy and adventurer, and his presence in Marrakesh would doubtless cause alarm. This in turn would render Pegg’s disguise as a handsome, swarthy Berber trader absolutely pointless.

Also, Pegg had spray-painted a pair of tits on Canterbury’s breastplate after he got drunk on sherry at a Soup Dragons concert in 1991 and couldn’t get it off. He regretted the act enormously and had thought many times about spraying over the lewd graffiti but had refrained from doing so in case it invalidated his warranty. It was the same reason Pegg had refrained from removing Canterbury’s flashing earring, resulting in the asexual android being called ‘gaybot’ by some of the other automatons at the 1998 science expo at Earls Court.

‘A tagine ...’ hissed Pegg through a day of stubble, which added to his disguise and also made him look even more handsome, which was impossible but if it wasn’t, it would have done, even though it couldn’t have but it did, . is a sort of slow-cooked, North African stew, named after the ceramic pot in which it is cooked.’

‘Forgive my impertinence, sir,’ beeped Canterbury, ‘but I know what a tagine is. My own recipe for quail tagine with prunes and almonds received first prize in the 2005 Great Robotic North African Cook-Off, held at the Birmingham NEC and sponsored byASDA. You were there.’

‘I know I was there,’ retorted Pegg hotly, ‘I was just slightly distracted by the little matter of Lord Black trying to turn the Oasis Centre into a hydrogen bomb. Do you have any idea how many goths would have died?’

That was the following year,’ replied Canterbury calmly, ‘you were actually one of the judges at the Great Robotic North African Cook-Off.’

‘Cock off!’ dismissed Pegg.

‘Cook-off,’ corrected Canterbury.

‘No, I mean cock off, I wasn’t there,’ clarified the charming adventurer.

‘Yes you were,’ Canterbury insisted.

‘You’re absolutely right,’ conceded Pegg. ‘I remember now, I voted for the Prime Minister’s Sexbot. He made these amazing Moroccan harost balls with dates, raisins and nuts that were absolutely to die for!’

‘What?!’ buzzed Canterbury, his computerised voice riddled with consternation.

‘Nothing,’ backtracked Pegg. ‘Forget I said anything.’

‘He stole that recipe off the Internet!’ seethed Canterbury. ‘And those balls were undercooked.’

‘Canterbury-’ Pegg tried to calm the indignant robochef down, even though he knew in his heart he had royally fucked up.

‘I had to go to south London for those prunes. Do you know how difficult that is? It’s all spread out and confusing.’ Canterbury’s agitation seemed to be getting out of hand and Pegg couldn’t afford a rogue robot at his side, if they were soon to leave the riad and penetrate the market in search of the Scarlet Panther.

‘Reset code delta one zero,’ Pegg said casually. Canterbury snapped to attention, his eyes became fixed and glowed a deep red colour, like a Cylon from Battlestar Galactica but not going from side to side and making a noise like Knight Rider.

‘Please state reset perameters and confirm.’ Canterbury’s voice was monotone and businesslike, reminiscent of Pegg’s fourth wife Sienna, who worked in a call centre although she talked like that normally too. Pegg looked at his watch. He squinted and went over their recent conversation in his head.

‘One minute should do it. Confirmation alpha seven.’

There was silence but for the barely audible clicking of Canterbury’s processors crunching the override procedures. Pegg checked his emails on his iPhone 4 as he waited but found nothing but a spam email from a Scottish souvenir website. He cursed himself internally for buying those cashmere socks for his mother’s birthday.

‘It was a one-off, damn it! I don’t want a fucking newsletter!’

‘What would you like to do first, sir?’ chirruped a suddenly animated Canterbury, making Pegg jump.

Pegg took a deep breath. ‘I’d love a tagine,’ he said breezily, massaging his chest and trying to emulate his earlier tone.

‘Sir?’ enquired Canterbury.

‘A tagine,’ replied Pegg helpfully, ‘like the one you made at the Great Robotic North African Cook-Off at the NEC in 2005. It was so delicious. I shouldn’t tell you this but I voted for you, you know.’

‘Thank you, sir,’ stumbled the flattered droid. ‘I’m extremely grateful for your support. To be honest, I thought perhaps you had voted for the horast balls made by the BJ5000 after I saw you emerging from the utility cupboard together.’

‘Don’t be absurd,’ replied Pegg, a bead of sweat forming on his brow. ‘Your tagine was by far the best dish. For me to vote for those tasteless, undercooked doughy balls would have required some serious buttering-up.’

Thank you, sir.’ Canterbury seemed happyand did not press the subject, much to Pegg’s relief. ‘I only question your judgement, sir, because we have more pressing matters at hand. We must locate the Scarlet Panda as soon as possible, and discover the whereabouts of the Star of Nefertiti, or face the destruction of the Earth on a scale that would give Roland Emmerich a fatty.’

‘You’re right, I... Wait a minute.’ Pegg suddenly tensed, looking at his robotic friend through partially closed eyes. ‘What did you just say?’

Canterbury made a rewind noise.

‘Give Roland Emmerich a fatty,’ replied Canterbury.

‘Before that,’ pressed Pegg.

Another high-pitched squiggle signified Canterbury’s reviewing of his vocal tapes.

‘Discover the whereabouts of the Star of Nefertiti?’ offered Canterbury.

‘Before that.’ Pegg wound his hand in the air, a note of impatience in his voice.

Canterbury wound back further, before pressing his internal play mechanism.

‘We must locate the Scarlet Panda,’ Canterbury repeated.

‘Scarlet Panda? Don’t you mean Scarlet Panther?’ Pegg’s confusion was evident.

That’s what I said, wasn’t it?’ insisted Canterbury with insistent insistence.

‘No,’ corrected Pegg with measured confidence, his muscles tensing one by one as his body became aware of its surroundings. The earthenware plate on the wall to his left would make an excellent improvised Frisbee-style weapon, as would the ornate Berber sword mounted on the wall which wouldn’t require as much impro, being as it was already technically a weapon. Pegg also had two Israeli-made Desert Eagles under his djellaba, so he was fairly prepared.

‘The Scarlet P-P-Panda,’ stammered Canterbury. Something was definitely wrong. Canterbury shook slightly; a trickle of white liquid issued from the side of his audio slot. ‘I seem to have acquired a virus, sir, it’s affecting my cognitive centres. It’s ... it’s wiping my memory.’

‘When was the last time you interfaced with a potentially infectious node?’ enquired Pegg, knowledgeably.

‘I can’t remember!’ panicked the ailing bot. ‘Wait, the vending machine at the bus station. Someone must have ...’

‘Oh God, Canterbury,’ whispered Pegg, his voice riddled with concern. ‘What about all those recipes?’

‘I backed them up on one of those little stick things . . .’ said Canterbury, trying to be helpful, despite the ongoing destruction of his memory centres. ‘You know? A ... a ...’

‘Flash-drive?’ shouted Pegg.

That’s it,’ returned Canterbury.

Pegg gave the air a victory punch, delighted that he’d got the right answer.

The memory loss is a side effect though, sir,’ said Canterbury ominously. The virus was not intended to destroy my info-storage platters, it has done something far worse.’

‘What?’ said Pegg, the smile falling from his classically good-looking face.

‘It knocked out my early-warning sensors.’

Pegg’s body filled with the hot sensation of readiness, which usually precedes a proper tear-up, and had to admit internally that he was shitting himself.

The Scarlet Panther, sir,’ said Canterbury.

There you go.’ Pegg’s body relaxed into a slump of relief. ‘See? Your memory’s coming back. Now quickly, get your sensors back online. For a minute I thought we were in trouble.’

‘We are,’ said Canterbury flatly. ‘My memory centres have been all but wiped clean. The only things still working are my primary recognition functions.’

‘But if the only things working are your primary recognition functions,’ said Pegg, catching on, ‘then that must mean you are actually looking at the Scarlet Panther and if you are actually looking at the Red Panther she must be ...’

‘Behind you.’ A voice like velvet covered in chocolate slid through the warm air, spinning Pegg round to face his old enemy/love interest. “’Elio, Simone.’ Pegg felt her voice in his underwear, even as it issued from her full, red, round lips. ‘Don’t worry about Canterbury, eet’s not permanent.’

Pegg and the Scarlet Panther stared at each other, a smile playing across both their mouths, their bodies tensed with anticipation. Things were about to get extremely physical and they both knew it. The question was, would it be violence or would it be sex? Pegg hoped it would be both.

‘Why is my watch a minute fast?’ asked Canterbury.

‘I’ll tell you later,’ said Pegg as he lunged towards his quarry.

A Fine (B)romance

I

was never allowed to watch The Sneeney due to excessive violence, swearing and use of Dennis Waterman, so I can’t really tell you much about it. (Starsky & Hutch, however, was a firm favourite of mine, to the extent that the first poster I ever bought and Blu-tacked to my bedroom wall was a huge diptych of the actors, Paul Michael Glaser and David Soul. It was probably the last obsession I had before that giant star destroyer rumbled over my head and made everything else seem trite.)

There was something beguiling and different about Starsky & Hutch that sucked me in and hooked me completely. It wasn’t an elusive ingredient or a special je ne sais quoi\ it wasn’t the set-up or the storylines; it was entirely the chemistry between Glaser and Soul and the close friendship between their two alter egos. There was an affection and sweetness in their interaction that went beyond what students might interpret as a gay subtext. Sure, cultural commentators who thought themselves awfully clever might glibly proclaim that Ken and Dave clearly harboured a latent desire to get inside one another’s tight jeans/chunky cardigans, but in truth, this reading of the relationship between Starsky and Hutch is way too simplistic.

Whether it was the intention of the writers ora product of that immense chemistry between the two lead actors, Starksy& Hutch was a captivating study of true love and affection between two straight men. Culturally, it probably marked the point at which the action hero first attempted an evolutionary step awayfrom his Dirty Harry forebears and morphed into a more emotionally three-dimensional archetype, less constricted by the rigours of machismo and permitted to rehearse a little vulnerability and even - dare I say it - femininity.

The opening titles are a brilliantly concise mission statement for the show, depicting a dizzying montage of action moments, persistently undermined by subtle comic touches and hints of an almost husband-and-wife closeness between the lead pair. It opens on the famous ‘striped Tomato’, a scarlet Ford Torino with a white flash on its wing, careening through the litter-strewn streets of LA. We then see our heroes grab a perp each and roughly bend them over the hood of a car (you can see why a media student might get so excited). Then, as if to dispel any thoughts of rough bum sex, we find them in a strip joint as Ken Hutchinson is hypnotised by a gorgeous exotic dancer, who is pumping her hips at him seductively.

The seemingly nonplussed Starsky blows into his partner’s ear to get his attention, demonstrating emphatically that these guys are into girls but have more important things to do with each other. We then hit the beat and see them doing those all-important things: Hutch eagerly walks alongside the Tomato, gun drawn, as Starsky drives with the door open, suggesting collaboration and partnership; the duo emerge drenched from a swimming pool, partly a pre-Mr Darcy demonstration of soaking wet masculine cool but also evidence that they are prepared to go through shit together as a team. We then see them having a laugh in Captain Dobey’s office, while dressed in undercover costumes. Hutch is a cowboy, Starsky a Travolta-style disco dancer; both outfits are slightly camp but acknowledge the guys’ innate sense of fun.

Next, the pair separate into singles for the build-up to their respective title cards; we oscillate between them running and jumping and shooting and doing all sorts of crazy man stuff, although hinting at their fallibility as they bounce off walls and land arse first on the roof of a car. The dramatis personae then unfolds, introducing not only David and Paul but also Antonio Fargas as Huggy Bear and Bernie Hamilton as Captain Dobey, two supporting but nevertheless principal characters both of whom were black which, despite them being somewhat stereotyped, remained a progressive move. The titles end with a vignette in which Starsky saves a bemused Hutch using a shopping trolley - a traditional signifier of feminine domestication - to break down a door at which moment an explosion blows Starsky into Hutch’s arms, forcing them into a momentary embrace. Brilliant.

I’m not suggesting the programme-makers were as rigorous in their devising of this title sequence as that analysis suggests, but there is no doubt it represents a cleverly constructed semiotic narrative that tells us everything we need to know about the show, most importantly that Starsky and Hutch have a deeply co-dependent relationship.

It was another ten years before John McClane arrived on the scene and truly cemented the vulnerable action hero in the cultural subconscious, starting a process of cultural dominoes that led to audiences accepting ordinary schmoes as heroic protagonists in films such as, well, Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz. In fact, it could be convincingly argued that Nicholas Angel and Danny Butterman are partly the product of a fictional union between Starsky and Hutch; fictional because men can’t have babies and they wouldn’t have had sexanyway. Although Dannyand Nicholas might.

It is also arguable that the last spurt of absurd masculinity represented by the muscle-bound, superhuman and sometimes non-human action heroes of the eighties could be attributed to a knee-jerk response to the slight feminising of the male characters acutely demonstrated in Starsky & Hutch. The show was certainly one of the first examples of what would in the future become known as the ‘bromance’. Sure, we had seen male bonding before in everything from Laurel and Hardy’s bed-sharing to Tony Curtis and Sidney Poitier’s handcuffed fugitives in Stanley Kramer’s 1958 prisoners-on-the-run classic The Defiant Ones, but Starsky & Hutch took the notion of male affection into the mainstream. When Starsky is strafed with bullets in a drive-by shooting that leaves Hutch potentially partnerless, we feel for him because he is losing someone he not only cares about but also most probably genuinely loves.

This relationship always appealed to me, perhaps because of the closeness I developed with my father as a result of his departure or just because I am not frightened of expressing love for boys. The relationship I have played out with Nick Frost both on and off screen has been hugely indicative of this. We are dear friends and I have no problem expressing that physically or emotionally. I can look him in the eye and tell him that I love him without feeling weird or fearing him recoiling and shouting ‘Get off me, you bummer’, although he sometimes does, we both do.

Our relationship heavily influenced the relationship between Tim and Mike in Spaced, Shaun and Ed in Shaun of the Dead, Nicholas and Danny in Hot Fuzz and most recently Graeme and Clive in Paul. Tim and Mike, together with Shaun and Ed, have an almost parent/child relationship with each other, Tim/Shaun being the father to the innocent/mischievous Mike/Ed. I am a few years older than Nick and have a more thorough academic history, and although I have learned as much from him as he has from me, at the outset of our friendship, I all but adopted him.

He was entirely complicit in this and came along of his own free will and with a voracious desire to discover new things. I fed him cinema and comedy and provided something of a cultural education, while he opened my eyes to realities my previous existence had kept me cloistered from. At first, I did have something of a paternal relationship with him. I encouraged him to pursue comedy because he impressed me immensely and his success has filled me with nothing but admiration and pride. The relationship between Danny Butterman and Nicholas Angel reflects this symbiosis completely. Angel represents everything Danny aspires to, whereas Danny represents everything Angel needs to understand in order to be a more rounded human being. I’ll talk more about my relationship and work with Nick Frost later, but there is no doubt in my mind that the male closeness I witnessed as a child, watching Starsky & Hutch, informed my attitude towards such relationships in later life. Ken and Dave taught me that man love was not something to fear but rather something to embrace and then pat heavily on the back.

Date: 2015-12-17; view: 765