Back at the cast hotel, I could hardly speak, my voice was so raw, so I did what any sensible actor would do, and stayed up till three in the morning carousing and playing pool with my new mates.
First of all, welcome to everyone who's typed "cock" into their search engines and arrived here. Having already written pages with titles such as "Banging Away" - about my drumming skills, by the way - and "Sex, Drugs and Northampton", and dealt with subjects such as trying to shave off my pubic hair when I was fifteen, I'm quite used to receiving visits from all and sundry ( although quite how "My Sphincter is a Ring of Fire" and "Big Balled Boys in Birmingham" gets people here is anybody's guess...) This may not be exactly what you were looking for but, hey, thanks for stopping by and may I suggest you try www.poultrysupply.com and sort yourselves out.
The fact that I have no photographs whatsoever of my time in Birmingham filming the ground-breaking police serial, "Back Up", for the BBC, speaks volumes. I had met the writer and director in February 1995, fresh out of my silver turban and the rather fetching thigh-length boots I'd been required to wear that Christmas in Croydon.
They'd called me in to read for a seven line part in episode three and ten minutes after I'd left they rang my agent and offered me a regular slot as Inspector Harlow - nickname "Jean" because of his shock of blonde hair.
The interview did seem to go well. I was still on a bit of a roll career-wise and went in there with a combination of hysteria and bewilderment at the way my life seemed to be turning out. The interview ended with my confessing to them how it seemed almost impossible for me not to be funny, even if I didn't want to be, and then getting up, shaking their hands, and walking straight into the stationary cupboard by accident. The writer told me a month or so later that, normally, hearing an actor come out with that ridiculously egotistical statement would have meant an instant dismissal, but that I had been so genuinely concerned and so obviously accurate in my self-assessment, they had no choice but to believe me and give me the job!
Despite my warnings, they gave me the part of staid, humourless Inspector Harlow and, at the read through, the sterner and more serious I tried to be, the louder and harder the rest of the room laughed. As I read, I remember shrugging to the director to try and apologise. She nodded sagely and hatched a plan to remove all trace of humour from every bone in my body.
Rehearsals were to be replaced with a weekend away on one of those team building courses usually reserved for ridiculously unfit, overweight, middle-management.
Now, actors are a strange bunch at the best of times. You're never quite sure what chinks in their psyches drove them to do the job in the first place; what thwarted desires impelled them to perform publicly; what massive egos and personal insecurities led them to be only able to express themselves socially on a public stage. (During the shoot, we caught one of the cast, as we were being 'Previa' ed from one location to another in costume, surreptitiously look down from his window at the driver of a car alongside and quietly pretend to talk into his mock-radio as if he were running some sort of check on him. Power. Warped. Weird. It was so bizarre, we all felt that to confront him with it just wouldn't be funny. I noticed in the paper recently that this particular actor is now running for a Tory seat. Mmmmm.)
The best way for me to describe the weekend is that it was perhaps like the fun trip to Quasar you have with your mates where you want to have a laugh but one of your number gets carried away, produces a bandana from his pocket and starts running around hitting people in the face thinking he's in "Apocalypse Now".
Suffice it to say, the bossy ones got bossier and the subservient ones got weaker. An element of pressure to perform was introduced when the Malaysian ex-model they'd brought over at great expense to play one of our team, and who I'd chatted to very nicely thank-you very much at the first reading, was unceremoniously sacked and sent home after the first day. You can imagine the intensity within this bunch of insecure actors the next morning. Suddenly, everyone became extremely vocal and keen as mustard, all self-regard thrown out the window as they built log bridges and swung in the trees as if their lives depended on it.
I say 'their' because it was felt that my presence was unnecessary, as I was to be playing their ineffectual boss and, as such, mistrusted and ostracised by the group as a whole. So, while these guys ran around the beautiful Clumber Park, "Krypton Factor" style, I was sent to a hair salon in Mayfair.
As I said, my character's nick-name was "Jean" because 1) his very blonde hair and 2) his surname. If you've seen any of the other pages in this site, you know that I am about as blonde as Dwain Chambers.
Hence the visits to this extremely expensive salon where only organic, natural products were to be used on my hair to turn it a beautiful shade of gold. As you can see from the only picture I have from that period, it certainly turned it something. It was so bright, it had to be sprayed brown for the filming. As it was, my nickname only was mentioned three times in six hours of television. You would have thought that, having cast me in the role, they would simply got out their Tippex and come up with something else, but, no, they decided to spend three hundred pounds turning me into Darren Day.
My first scenes were to be at a fictitious training day where the Inspector Harlow messes up and blames his men for his mistakes. The venue, however, was real, and regularly used by the police to train themselves for riot work and crowd control.
Before we shot anything though, the director, who was obviously a big fan of the Method, wanted us all to spend a day actually being trained by the police in the combined arts of marching forwards with shields, shouting and Quasaring it in a large Wendy House the police had had built for the course.
I was driven from the station (train) to the aerodrome used by the Birmingham Bobbies for this riot stuff. I hadn't seen any of my fellow actors since the comedy read-through I'd given a week or so before in the BBC Acton rehearsal rooms, where it was all theatrical banter and vol-o-vents. I stepped down from my Previa and was directed towards the little group standing outside a huge hangar listening to a man in uniform. I tagged onto the back and tried to make eye-contact as we listened to this copper talk to us as if what he was saying was important. I managed to get the attention of Oliver Milburn, who was playing the young, handsome one of the cast, and lifted my eyebrows as if to say, "What the fuck is this all about?" and he returned my look with a smile-less expression and turned back to listen intently to the copper-speak, leaving me feeling distinctly silly.
After having noticed that the Malaysian girl was now Japanese, a foot taller and with a different name, I was told the full story of the weekend before and all became clear.
We spent the rest of the day having petrol bombs gently thrown at us - well generally in our direction anyway - as we marched forward in a line with our clear placcy shields inside the huge hanger. As the "Inspector", I had to scream out the orders to my men. "Shield-Cordon-FORM" "Foot-My-Get-OFF" etc. Despite myself, I got quite into it by the end of the day and really began to bark out the orders. In a strange display of Pavlovian response, the policemen there all addressed me as 'Sir' simply because I had pips on my costume and it all began to go to my head as I stormed the mock-house and ran through the flames - well, flame.
Back at the cast hotel, I could hardly speak, my voice was so raw, so I did what any sensible actor would do, and stayed up till three in the morning carousing and playing pool with my new mates.
The next day I arrived on set unable to speak at all. In the light of the Malaysian incident, this was not a great move and I could sense my fellow actors distancing themselves slightly from wherever I chose to sit.
Luckily, by the end of the day, I could make myself understood in very husky, rather butch sort of way and I survived to march another day.
Again, in the name of authenticity, the director arranged for us to each spend a day with the real boys in blue, in a real police station, with real truncheons, and a couple of days later, it was my turn.
The West Midlands OSU (Operational Support Unit) apparently had used to be known as the SPG (Special Patrol Group) but, after Blair Peach, the powers above felt that a less emotive name would be a good idea and hit upon this one with its little 'unit', gentle 'support' and well-ordered 'operation'.
Now, in my line of work, I spend a lot of time contemplating my navel and generally thinking about issues that directly touch my life - whether to shave that day etc. - and it always takes me by surprise when thrown into real life, how people convince themselves that the bureaucracy around what they do for a living is earth-stoppingly important; that the unspeakably uninteresting procedures created to complete tasks as simple as replenishing the paper clips is intoned with solemnity and weight. So it was I found myself trying to look interested as an Inspector talked at me in his office about the day I was about to have in his station; sitting there in his ridiculously comical, well-pressed, policeman's costume and hat, that served to remove any trace of humanity and compassion. All I could think about was whether he was married; what his wife looked like; whether she chose the curtains or let him hog the remote. Whether they went to bed early, at the same time every night, or whether they lived a life of excess. Whether they had children. Whether they still had sex. Whether they rowed for England - as in 'shouted at each other'...not 'sculled'.
Anyway, during all this, he had apparently told me that I was to spend the day with the station's OSU and to go out with them if they were needed; that they had nothing 'booked' for the day and were just on 'stand-by'. I was too busy imagining the Inspector's face contorted in sexual abandon to actually hear any of this, but I got the gist.
The OSU are the guys you see stuffed into those vans with the grills over the windscreen. It's a highly sought-after posting, apparently, seen as being slightly maverick. Their responsibilities include all aspects of crowd control from football matches to riots - I suppose I should simply say football matches and riots: they are the same thing, after all. Also in their remit is bomb disposal and SOC (Scene of Crime) stuff. They are the guys brought in to dig up gardens and sift through cellars looking for body parts. It sounds quite exciting and is seen as a very butch posting to get. Because of the macho element to it all, and the strong feeling of independence it engenders, no-one is allowed to be in the OSU for more than three years in order to prevent relationships getting unhealthily supportive and cliques developing along with delusions of being in the SAS.
The Inspector took me down to meet the team. They were all in their locker/ utility/ R&R room in the station, getting ready for whatever the day had in store for them.
By the time I left, eight long boring hours later, all that they'd had in the way of store, was doing the ironing and polishing their boots. Still, I'd learned how to get a lovely crease in the yoke of a shirt and how to glass up my toe caps. I'd also learned that, if you were vegetarian, you were homosexual and that tattoos on the inside of your forearms really hurt.
You'd've thought that this would be enough preparation for the danger of filming a BBC serial, but no. Last stop on the West Midlands Police merry-go-round was a day at "Tally Ho".
"Tally Ho" is a huge training centre in Birmingham where the police are taught how to stick their fingers in criminals' eyes without it being seen on CCTV. I jest. Although there is an element of truth. If a policemen uses a closed fist while arresting a crim, he can be done for assault. Never mind that the aforementioned crim can kick him in the balls, stab him up the arse and chop his head off with a meat cleaver. If the policemen closes his hand, the arrest is unsound. Therefore, a myriad of techniques have been developed to disable, that a very tall, muscular man, wearing nothing but micro shorts and a moustache, spent one sunny afternoon trying to teach us.
Because of the weather, the instructor decided to strip off and conduct his class with us outside on the lawn. So there we were, in a large circle around him, the actresses perplexed at just how this slightly naff, unreconstructed vision of midlands moustachioed manliness was managing to turn them on, while I became more girly by the second, as this cliche of force's fitness showed us how to hurt each other.
With all training over, we could get down to the business of acting in a TV programme.
The shoot was three months. We were all booked into the Copthorne Hotel and looked after very well by a team of PA's and assistant directors. Being a brand new serial, expectations were high, especially among the members of the cast who hadn't done much TV before. Most of the main characters were played by relative un-knowns - to increase the sense of reality, I suppose - and, understandably, these guys convinced themselves that, as soon as the first episode aired, their careers would be transformed overnight. You could see why. I mean, it was to have the prime, Friday evening, 9pm slot on BBC1. The production team and director were convinced that, this time, they were creating something special, something that would be talked about, something different.
TV programmes, by definition, are produced by committee. This means that as many key elements as possible need to have continuity and strong vision to make a cohesive whole. "Back Up" had a huge budget and, from what the production team told us at the beginning, clear objectives. It was to be a police serial with a difference. It was to concentrate on the relationships between the guys stuck in their van for hours on end. A special rig had been created to film the van interior in ways that hadn't been done before. The first episode had been written as a 90 minute pilot to be followed by five hour-long episodes that continued and developed the original story - hence 'serial', not 'series'...(ah, now I understand!). Warning bells sounded when we all realised that only the first three episodes had actually been written, and that the next three were not only to be directed by someone else, but also written by three different, inexperienced writers. We met one of them in the hotel one night. She seemed ridiculously shy and out of her depth. Sure enough, a couple of these new episodes had to be rewritten. There seemed to be no frame of reference for them. Story-lines that were sown in the first 'block', disappeared in the second. There was one occasion where we had to refilm a scene as a character appeared in it who had been seen, asleep in his vest, ten miles away two minutes' beforehand. Unbelievable.
The director who joined us for the second batch of episodes was as different as could be from Jan, the first and establishing director whom we had had from the off. Jan would begin a scene by telling the crew to go away for ten minutes while the actors rehearsed. Once we had found the truth of the scene both emotionally and physically, the cameraman was called and shown what he was to film.
The second director liked to work by writing out the camera positions the night before and fitting the actors around this plan the next morning. We had to place ourselves, chess-like, in order to be seen, regardless of whether it felt wrong to be there. The first morning, I was told to move over to the back of the shot and open the drawer and do "file-acting" in order to make his shot work...say no more.
Another rather worrying development was that Inspector Harlow seemed to disappear. From a promising start where he was involved in almost all of the action, the second batch of scripts hardly featured him at all!
Was the writing on the wall? Were they going to invoke the "Malaysian" clause? Tune in to the next exciting episode of "Colin Harlow: Not Very Special Agent!"