Professional? Part 2/2

(Header description: Me nervously stealing prop popcorn on the set of Red Dwarf during a recording)

Hello there

It’s time for me to conclude the two-parter about professionalism that I accidentally started on Tuesday.

My original plan was to just carry on writing, which I sort of did, but this is a mish-mash of that, amended with some subsequent thoughts.  I mainly want to tell you about the Rocky Robot Show meetings we had on Tuesday, in relation to the whole professional thing.

So, on Monday night, myself and Jon – as you’d expect – had a long chat about the pending development meeting.  We decided what we wanted, what we didn’t want, how many of our cards we would flash, and how many we were keeping close to our chest.  We discussed potential scenarios, potential conversations and questions that may be brought up, and overall concluded that this meeting was for the production company to sell themselves to us, rather than the other way round.  We’ve done our pitch, they’ve bitten with interest, and now it’s time to see if it’s a good mutual fit.  That’s pretty much what happened in the meeting by the way, it was very positive, very complimentary and we are going to move to the next step of them making a formal proposal. Of course, this might not be good for us once we see it, but we’ve taken huge confidence by the fact that a proper credible animation company have been taken with what we’ve sent them.

That’s by the by for this though, it’s a different part of the conversation that I wanted to focus on.  I’m not going to tell you the actual thing I said to Jon, but I will tell you the build up, and his response.  The actual thing I said is NSFL (Not Suitable For Life), and was me trying to be as naughty as I could be in  the privacy of a phone conversation. I told Jon, sounding serious, to imagine he was in the meeting with the company now, and imagine that we’ve all settled down into the call, and then imagine that I say “Erm, just before we start, can I ask you…(insert hugely untoward comment about their business…like…hugely inappropriate)”.

Jon laughed, took a moment and then said “I think it would be another seventeen years mate”, referring to our estranged time.

Now, as it turned out, I was pretty much ultra-professional on the call we had.  I was prepped, had our stall set out in relation to their company, with a relatable knowledge of their previous considerable work.  If it had been an interview for a job, I’d be confident now. Other than a brief moment where I decided to be adamant that we wanted a million quid, and had been “very clear in our pitch”, it was all pretty mature and professional.  Yet, the night previous, when I’d suggested an awful scenario of sabotage to Jon, as a joke, I still felt the need to message him later reassuring him that I was going to be the model professional in the meeting. I know for sure, that if I had said "Just before we start..." in the actual meeting, Jon's blood would have run cold thinking I was actually going to say it.  My reputation precedes me.  I’ve cultivated that too.  With stories like the time I was at a CBBC audition and declared that their perfectly reasonable questions were part of Operation Yew Tree.  Of course there’s going to be trepidation when I’m let loose in a formal setting.

However, I would counter that I wasn’t fussed about playing a pirate on CBBC.  It was a completely disposable meeting in my mind, because I didn’t particularly want to do it. I couldn’t say with confidence that I’d have accepted it, even if it had been offered.  Still can’t say with confidence, because it very much wasn’t offered.  The Rocky Robot Show is very different.  We've worked really hard on it, over a long period of time, and we really, really want to progress with it.  It’s not a casual side project, it’s been top of my “what I want to do most list” for years.  Contrary to my flippant claims in the past, I can actually control myself when important things are at stake. No anecdote would be worth jeopardising a genuinely sound opportunity for that show.

This sort of leads on to a key disparity I’ve isolated in the nature of unprofessionalism.  Namely, whether it is necessitated by the ‘greater good’ or is self-serving.  Generally, the only self-serving unprofessionalism I’ve taken part in, was for the crime of trying to make somebody laugh.  Like the pirates thing.  Admittedly that backfired, because I was trying to make Ed laugh and he just looked at me like I’d taken my trousers off.  Which wasn’t off the cards, but the meeting finished soon after the Savile comments.

We could also make a case for the incident I told you about at Northampton PictureDrome (in part one) being self-serving.  I wanted off that stage and seized an ‘unprofessional’ opportunity to justify that.  Let’s not forget though, that the whole thing came about because I had already gone above and beyond in doing twice the stage time I was meant to, trying to ‘save’ the gig. Light and shade all over the place.

Mostly, I can sleep soundly in the belief that the times I’ve been unprofessional have been justifiable for the greater good.  The times this kicked in the most were when I used to do TV Warm Up work, and would have to negotiate the meddling folk upstairs in production. There is a crossover in my “take no nonsense” ethos here, and I’ve always been very resistant to the sort of folk who make an issue when there isn’t one.  I simply can't be doing with hight maintenance. I think, a lot of the time, this is down to ego or just wishing to be centre of attention.  Maybe a little to do with wishing to flex to feel more important/relevant.

When you start on a TV Warm Up job, it’s no shakes at all to be told the ropes, told what to avoid and guided in how to approach it.  You can then shove a dash of whatever you already do in with that, and you’ll be golden.  However, there is also a rather unsettling trend when there has been a change of staff, producer, director, whatever, on an existing show, that you’ve already got nailed.  This happened to me a few times, and pretty much every time I stuck to my guns for the good of the show.  That was what I believed.  That if I altered what I was successfully doing for the whim of a new exec, I’d not be doing the job that the folk on screen were comfortable with.  In some cases, I’d be letting down pals if I put it at risk.

There were certain shows I was a regular warm up for, where I really did a loyal job.  I didn’t have to even like the show, but I was loyal to the people.  Let’s be honest, I never once sat and watched Russell Howard’s Good News on telly.  Not once.  Not even when I was on it (I’ve seen those since, but I didn’t watch them on transmission).  I had known Russell for years though, and could see the graft he and the production team were putting in, and felt loyal to that.  Ditto with Not Going Out, and Red Dwarf, I felt huge loyalties to Lee Mack and Doug Naylor respectively, and didn’t once go out there without determination to serve the show to the best of my abilities.

Sometimes, what I knew to be my best abilities, that were tried and tested, would be meddled with.  So, for example, on the second series of Miranda that I did, there was a new producer or director or whatever they were, who had quite blatantly taken against me on sight.

That happens a lot.  I’ve no idea why.  I just rub people up the wrong way on sight. Maybe it’s my hair or the way I walk or my scruffy outfits, I dunno.  It never gets better after interaction either.  That just appears to compound the situation.  I am mischievously cheeky, but that hardly warrants being detested.  I’m also not a pushover though.  Can’t be manipulated, rarely fooled, and I don’t fall for the tricks that folk employ in their self-presentation. I certainly don’t do as I’m told, if what I am being told to do makes no sense.

So this new producer, director, whatever they were, had come in, and after the first show of the new series, had instructed the floor manager to tell me to do stuff that I hadn’t (and had never) been doing.  I was getting notes like “don’t make fun with the cast” (all of whom I got along with grand, and who had celebrated me and played along happily previously), and to “maybe do a singalong”…

I’ll wait why you try to comprehend me doing a singalong.

Still nothing?

Yep, same.

Anyway, this went on, week after week, me being told to do it differently, me saying “yeah yeah” and then doing what I always did and ripping it.  By the time we got to week 5 out of the 6, I was being lent on harder, and decided to do what I was told for one night.  I must state, and this is very important, I did not do a singalong.  However, I didn’t interact with the cast, stayed with the audience, did no mischief with the crew, didn’t climb onto any boom trucks, didn’t sneak onto closed sets and steal stuff, didn’t act out my own sitcom “as an audition”, just straight-batted it the entire evening.  Naturally, it was dire.  I didn’t do it badly, it just wasn’t the right thing to do.  Like I knew it wasn’t.

As I left the studios that night, I saw the new producer/director/whatever they were, who had a face like thunder.  “I did say…” was my comment.  They made no return comment.  Sacked me on the Monday due to “racism” because I’d said that Raji was “the brown one on The Bill”.  Clearly a joke about something completely different that was, and it still incenses me.

Yet there’s a weird vindication for me too.  I had said. I got chucked under the bus for doing what they’d told me to do. Ok, I concede they hadn’t asked me to do satirical comments about the nature of tokenism in mainstream television, but you get the point.  I doubt they ever did.

I was always a ticking time bomb in front-facing television production. The danger of utilising a performative unprofessionalism is it's  always going to one day be judged as actually unprofessional, and maybe I eventually just became that because I was tired of the power trips.  Who knows? I do know that, even in my absence, to this day I am very sneery and judgemental about people who play it safe. Some days I consider it unpalatable in how self-serving it is, and some days I just think they’re cowards.  Most days though, I don’t even think about it.  I’ve got Bat Poles to make.

We got off the rails a bit here from the original point, but it all sparked from the same musing, and it’s nice to go on a written ramble from time to time.

Hope you are doing wonderfully well over there, no matter what you’re up to.

All the love as always

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