Gone ape

Like Keith Moon, John Bonham, Karen Carpenter and countless others before them, it looks like the latest superstar drummer on the block is finding the pressures of fame hard to handle. This picture was recently smuggled out of the Priory Clinic in Sussex where Ginger Bakewell, the sticks man for Cadbury’s chocolate, was getting his stomach pumped after an all day sesh drinking his favourite tipple Banana Daiquiri. He’d had a skinful and was evidently causing havoc inside Spearmint Rhinos where he was refusing to stop swinging on the pole. When asked for a quote his agent insisted he’d only had a glass and a half.

What's on your iPod #11

The Vibe Sound baby that’s right. Peter Appleyard’s been banging out meaty licks on his Xylophone for the best part of forty years and is still going strong. He first came to prominence in the punk era with his seminal album ‘Never Mind the Glockenspiel’ and has been the go to man for hardcore original riffs ever since. His latest project was a contribution to the Ben Affleck movie Gone Baby Gone to which he contributed the 2 minute thrash ‘Bring Her Back Sucker Jack’. Born with his arms fused together above the wrists and with one leg eight inches shorter than the other Peter was never one to bemoan his disabilities, rather he played through them and used them to his advantage. This courage is best illustrated on his 1987 work ‘Calliper Calypso’. Get it listened to.

The Mark of Zimmer

Another of my agent, Bernie Shimshelwitz’s, clients is Phil ‘The Foil’ Fowler who, back in the eighties, choreographed all the fight scenes for such blockbusters as Howard’s Way and Murphy’s Mob. Phil’s the first to admit though that stage fighting and stunt co-ordination is a young man’s game, so he’s now eeking out a living teaching fencing in old folk’s homes. He also fancies himself as a bit of a comic and reckons he regularly has his fencing students pissing themselves. And occasionally shitting themselves. Anyway, the above shot was taken just before all hell broke loose in The Incontinental rest home in Leighton Buzzard. Apparently Terry, seen here on the left, had been ‘feeding the donkey’ with one of the Altzeimer’s crew and Rita, Terry’s long-term squeeze on the right, had been waiting for the weekly fencing lesson to exact her revenge. Moments after this picture was taken Terry was laid out with his bow legs in the air whilst Rita rode around the Beryl Reid suite on her Zimmer Shopper with Terry’s colostomy bag high on the point of her foil singing ‘Dontchya wish your girlfriend was hot like me’. All’s well that ends well though and Terry’s enjoying being nursed back to fitness by a harem of forgetful beauties whilst Phil and Bernie managed to get Rita the part of Yoda in a new musical version of Star Wars called 'Watching the Dagoba'.

I could've been a contender

Sorry to have been off comms for so long. Where to begin vis-à-vis an explanation? Unsurprisingly my agent, Bernie Shimshelwitz, was at the bottom of it since it was him that invited me round to his gaff for a go on his new Nintendo Wii while Mrs S was out picketing the abattoir dressed as a cow with a placard saying ‘Humane? – I Heffer Disagree’ – we’re worried about her sanity of course, but, as Bernie rightly says, it gets her out of the house and away from Diagnosis Murder. Anyway, Bernie was well excited about his new toy and wanted me to try all of his 30 games. I was less than impressed to begin with since the first game was called ‘All Star Angling’ during which I spent an hour and a half on a virtual riverbank with George Peppard humming Moon River. All I was instructed to do was to hold me controller (or ‘doof’ as Bernie calls it) out in front of me and keep quiet – not great entertainment. I was enjoying the boxing one though until an over vigorous combination sent me crashing to the canvas with the recurrence of an old sciatica problem. (Bernie insisted on finishing his ten count before seeing if I was ok) The problem was so bad that I ended up in A & E being fitted for an orthopaedic shoe with a 6 inch sole. To make matters worse I was due in Edinburgh the same afternoon for an audition for a new spoof hospital drama called ‘Nevermind the Bloodclots’. I was short of time to catch my flight from Stansted and the site of me hobbling across the concourse with a club foot like Bambi on ice was enough to convince the airport authorities that I was the next shoe bomber. Oh, and I forgot to mention that the boxing manoeuvre that twanged my sciatic nerve like a cheap strippers thong, also resulted in me not being able to talk. You see I’d thrown a haymaker at Joe Calzaghe only to miss and put my back out whilst simultaneously knocking my own from teeth out with my doof. Cut to me then trying to explain all this to Customs in a mumbled language not one of us could understand and it’s no surprise I’ve been in their custody for nearly three weeks.
All’s well that ends well though and I managed to clear my name once I regained the power of speech and as I write this I’m sitting quietly next to a cyber Dwight Schultz, doof lolling quietly in the palm of my hand.

I've been away a while...

So, you’ll be wondering where I’ve been. Well, after I failed to get the old cast and crew back together for revival of ‘Kiddie Fiddler on the Roof’ there were few Edinburgh Fringe opportunities left and my agent, Bernie Schimshelwitz was seemingly concentrating most of his efforts on his newest client Vicki Michelle (and who can blame him?)
So, I decided to recharge the old batteries both physically and mentally and I enrolled on a month long retreat with specialist firm M T Promises. The idea was for me to spend the first week learning some transcendental meditation techniques and then a further three weeks in a remote cave somewhere, cut off from the outside world; mobile phones, computers, Moto Service Stations etc. The first week went well despite my tendency to snore and cry out for Lorraine Kelly during the lengthier meditation sessions and then it was off to my cave. In an unusual twist they blindfolded me before driving me for some three hours to the secret location in order, they said, to begin the disorientation process. I was given a knapsack full of Peperami and Capri Sun and told to get in touch with my inner self. Well, my inner self made a pretty rapid appearance after I discovered one of the Pepperami had been a good eight months out of date and, to be honest, it was down hill from then on. I tried hard to use meditation to find inner peace and tranquillity but my mind was quickly haunted by a blood curdling and terrifying screaming. The terror was constant and seemed to shake the very ground with it’s intensity. Three hideous weeks soon turned to six and, finally I could take no more. I crawled out from my subterranean tomb and balked at the daylight. I was approached by a young man in a luminous tabard crying out “It dangerous under there you dicksplash!”
To summarise; I had been duped. M T Promises were a bunch of Eastern Oriental chancers who’d gone out of business just days after cashing my cheque. They slung me in the back of their Nissan Cherry and dumped me under the Thunder Mountain ride at Alton Towers on their way to foreign climbs. I was cold, I was hungry, but who was there, who was there? My old friend and agent Bernie Schimshelwitz with a promise of an audition for the part of Charles Hawtrey in the biopic ‘What do you mean you didn’t know?’ Bless you Bernie, and strike Cheddar Gorge off our list of Xmas do venues.

Hell is other people

Yesterday my agent, Bernie Shimshelwitz, sent me on a doomed mission to audition for a low brow theatre tour of The Usual Sexpests. Typically they’d already cast Adam Woodyatt in the part I was up for before I got there so I found myself at a loose end in East Anglia. Stuck for something to do I decided to go and watch Drag Me To Norwich in Hell, or should that be…
The film is top notch and nothing pleases me more than old ladies vomiting on nubile blondes so I was enjoying myself immensely right up until the last two minutes of the film when a mobile phone rang directly behind me. A little annoying, but nothing when compared to the fact that, not only did the Arthur Mullard looky-likey answer it, but then he proceeded to engage in a full volume, one-way conversation about haemorrhoids and cinema seats. By the time he got to the all too familiar line of “Until you’ve had them, you don’t know what it’s like” I’d had all I could bear. “Excuse me” I projected for the whole auditorium to hear, “but if you don’t cease that hideous conversation immediately I’ll shove that Blackberry so far up past your dangleberries you’ll be dialling your sister-stroke-wife every time you apply your Preparation-H”. The ovation I got from the cinema audience took me back to my closing soliloquy in ‘Kiddie Fiddler On The Roof’, Maidstone, 1985. Now, if anyone knows what happens at the end of the film I’m all ears. I need to know before the sure-to-be-released Drag Me To Hell Too.

Lost in Translation

I had this Sanskrit tattoo done when I was in Goa a few years back filming a Crimewatch special. The tattoo artist assured me that it translates as ‘Grant me the serenity to accept the thing I cannot change.' But the waiter at my local Indian restaurant told me last night that it actually says: ‘Milk, milk, lemonade, round the corner chocolate’s made.’ Gutted.

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A bit of fun at the cashpoint

Have a look at this sketch penned by a couple of young friends of mine, and leave your lovely comments.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/comedy/extra/video/p00314g7

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Whoops!

My 7 years of bad luck continue to rumble on without mercy. Honestly, ever since I broke that glitterball at Susi Quatro’s house in 2003 I’ve had nothing but misfortune. Last week was no different. I was due to play the part of a referee in a new BBC thing (turned out quite well without me. See here.) but put my back out playing twister with my barista, Dan Tang. Dan confessed that he’d never seen anyone stitched up so badly by a ‘right hand, blue, left foot blue, right foot blue, left hand red combo as I was that day but still insisted on his trademark victory dance as I writhed in agony on the floor. A visit to Doctor Hugh confirmed the worse. Not only did I have a “spasy back.” The muscle trauma was so hideous I was at high risk of shitting my pants at any given moment. Doctor Hugh sent me limping home with a prescription for 1 neckbrace and 24 rolls of Andrex. That night I got a call from my agent Bernie Shimshelwitz, to be honest I thought it was a prank at first as I could hardly make out what he was saying. Turns out Bernie had cracked a tooth on Mrs S’s Flambe duck and was suffering terrible speech restrictions due to a quick fix oversized temporary crown. After a while I became accustomed to his cluttered speech pattern and accepted his invitation to accompany him to the funeral of his old friend Ray Sparks. Ray was one of the old school entertainers and came up through the ranks with Tarbuck’s mob. Sparks was a controversial character and once famously called Prince Charles a F*cknut at the Royal Variety performance line up. His death had come as a shock to the entertainment world and even though the coroner reached a verdict of ‘death by mis-adventure’ the industrial lube, ‘specialist mags’ and Henry the hoover found with and in Sparks’ body told a more detailed story. I knew when Shimshelwitz picked me up the next morning that it was going to be a difficult day. Firstly, I was hoping that lying on my back across the back seat of Bernie’s Volvo would calm my twitchy back down but as he had arrived in a pimped up Cinquecento I knew this wasn’t a goer. Apparently the Volvo was ‘doomed’ after Mrs S had bottomed out on a hump back bridge the day before trying to outrun the paparazzi who had apparently mistaken her for Gary Glitter. The Cinquecento belonged to one of Bernie’s ‘associates’ in the adult entertainment industry. The image of a half naked glamour model on the bonnet suggested that the car was part of his marketing machine as did the words ‘Are you horny?’ running down either side. The car was not ‘funeral friendly’. The extent of Bernie’s dental shocker was immediately evident as the mis-matched crown made it impossible for him to close his mouth giving him the appearance of an extra fro The Hills have Eyes. He was clearly dosed up to the eyeballs, counteracting his allergy to the painkillers he was necking with antihistamine tablets and Pernod. I had no choice but to let him take the wheel as the neckbrace I was wearing afforded limited driving vision. It took me a good 10 minutes to painfully lower myself into the passenger bucket seat after which it was plain to see that Bernie was in no mood for hanging around. He was giving the “porno pocket rocket” a proper ragging and by the time we reached the motorway the revs were off the dial. It was only when I suggested that he change gear that it became apparent that Shimshelwitz had no idea that the car was a manual drive. We had to stop at a florists on the way to pick up two floral tributes Bernie had ordered, one saying ‘RAY’ and the other ‘MISSED’ but when we arrived it was obvious that Bernie’s enforced speech issues had conspired to stitch him up. The florist, who had attempted to interpret Bernie’s instructions to the best of her ability, presented him with a single arrangement that read ‘RAPIST’. My agent looked at me with the expression of a man that expected nothing less and I returned the gesture. 4 minutes later we were back in the sexed up motor heading towards the church with the word RAPIST written in flowers on the parcel shelf. Defying all rational possibility things then took a turn for the worse when Doctor Hugh’s prophecy regarding my bowels came to pass. I felt a twinge in my back followed by an immediate desperation to find a lav. Bernie had no choice but to drop me off right outside the church and left me to find a loo whilst he reversed parked behind the hearse. I minced inside and frantically scanned the packed church for signs of a bog. Taking pity on my plight the vicar directed me to his private chamber at the back of the church where the age old conflict between good and evil reared its head as I evacuated my guts. When I emerged, it was clear that the stink bomb I’d just dropped had taken its toll on my fellow mourners. I could tell from Ray’s widow’s reaction that this was not the sort of turn out she was expecting. I sheepishly joined Bernie and his RAPIST at the end of a pew and as my agent gargled with the Pernod from his hip flask I quietly cursed Susi Quatro’s glitterball. Roll on 2010.

Help! The aged!

This is Beryl and Ted who I had the misfortune of sitting by on my recent coach trip to Bridgport (for a failed audition for Dai Another Day). At first I welcomed their attention on what was scheduled to be a very long journey, charming and friendly and on their way to visit their grandson Peter Andre (not the Peter Andre, but apparently the boy’s mum insists on both his Christian names being used). It was during this getting to know you stage that I took this snap. I should’ve guessed they weren’t your average couple when Ted refused to look directly at the camera in case the old Indian belief was true and his soul would be stolen. Just outside Milton Keynes I began to wish I’d stuck to my Harold Robbins. It turns out Beryl and Ted were the original swingers and Beryl holds the South Kent record for the most ping pong balls in one…er…afternoon, ahem. She began flirting outrageously with me and showing me her impression of a dead heat in a zeppelin race, much to the disapproval of the Notting Hill Crown Green Ladies Euro Tour who were trying to get a game of reg plate bingo going. I managed to get the subject off sex by bamboozling Beryl with talk of Twitter, Facebook and all things up-to-the-minute. She was dead keen and wanted me to get her a profile up and running. I nonchalantly suggested I’d sort her out when I got back to London, but a hitherto silent Ted misinterpreted this and when Beryl popped off to “lay a cable” in the onboard loo, he leaned over to me and said, with an assurance that suggested this wasn’t the first time he’d said it, “You’ll need a plank tied to your arse son, she’s a fanny like a wizard’s sleeve that one” This left me speechless largely due to the fact that I had been sick in my mouth.

The Smoking Gun

Well, I’ve been away from the blog again and was hoping now to be able to report to you on a lovely break in Latin America. You see my agent, Bernie Shimshelwitz, scored me a commercial for Fray Bentos’s new Tortilla range to be shot on location in Mexico. The shoot itself didn’t take long (I was only given one line: “I came to Mexico to roll my own”) so the cast and crew were given a couple of days off to explore this wonderful country before flying back to Blighty. On day one I found myself at a traditional Mexican farm and was having a lovely time with a young family from Liverpool whose youngest son La (at least I think that was his name) took a real shine to me. “Give the nice piggy a kiss La” said his dad so I could get a cute photo for the album. Seconds after this picture was taken however La sneezed violently in my direction….

I will update the blog as soon as the Metropolitan police release me from quarantine. Anyone got any Night Nurse?

Blah,blah, blah. Cut to the quick. How much is booze?

I knew we were in trouble when I saw this picture this morning.

If you knew sushi...

It’s been a while since I dropped in to Pat Maggs’ greasy spoon café (see items passim) so I decided to put that right this morning at breakfast time. What a mistaka-ta-maka. “Harrison Dahling!” she cried as only a menopausal former showgirl could, “you’re just in time to be the first to sample my new Japanese menu.” And sure enough there, in cack-handed Japanese calligraphy, was a menu board entitled ‘Nipon Tuck’. I didn’t want to let the old girl down so, being quite fond of Japanese cuisine and also being a sucker for eighties new wave bands, I opted for ‘Sushi and Japancheese’. Blimey Charlie. Let me tell you that 7.30 on a Thursday morning is not the time to be washing a Rollmop herring, topped with a Kraft single down with Morrison’s sake. I’ve been rough as guts ever since and I spent most of the rest of the morning on the throne – I’d give it ten minutes if I were you.

If music be the food of love, pass me that Banjo

I love this time of year. The first shoots of Spring start to push through, the days become longer, the sound of lawnmowers travel on the cool evening breeze and chavvy folk meander through shopping centres without any tops on. It's this time of year that my thoughts turn to Carol.

The story stretches back a fair few years and starts with an excited phone call from my agent, Bernie Shimshelwitz, telling me that he’d just landed me the role of a Vietnam Vet in a new ITV drama fronted by (surprise, surprise) Martin Clunes. I was well up for it, especially as I’d just played an American Marine in an episode of ‘The Brittas Empire.’ My enthusiasm was short lived however, as when the script came through it became apparent that I was quiet literally playing a veterinary surgeon from Vietnam.

I was, of course, completely mis-cast and it was a miracle that I got through the screen test. But this was back in the day when Bernie was on top of his game and Shimshelwitz in his pomp was magnificent. He could’ve sold Vanilla Ice to the Eskimos (and he did! But convincing the 80’s rapper that, after having a number one album on both sides of the Atlantic and bumming Madonna, that the next logical step in his career would be to ‘crack’ the Inuit market was a bridge too far and something that would come back to stitch Bernie right up (but that’s another story for another day.) ) So, there I was, faced with the task of playing a convincing Vietnamese man. To be fair I did put some man hours in perfecting the character, basing it on Ustinov’s celebrated Charlie Chan but in truth, coming over like a combination of Renee Zellweger, Mr Miyagi and Kim Lee from my local Chinese chip shop. The upshot was that it was too late to re-cast and the director had no choice but to throw me in the first scene. The set up involved me and Clunes trying to shoe a grumpy Shire Horse and from the get go we were in trouble. The first problem was my allergy to animal hair which led to my head and eyes swelling up like balloons which in turn made my portrayal of a Vietnamese male (unbelievably) “More racist.” The second issue was the Shire horse’s gargantuan erection which, despite numerous camera angles, refused anonymity. The next thing I know the director’s yelling for the consulting vet, that’s when cupid’s arrow struck, hard, fast and in the face. That’s when I met Carol. I couldn’t make her out at first, my puffed up peepers were dripping like a window cleaner’s sponge. I felt her hand on my shoulder. “You look like utter, utter shit.” She said. “Take these.” She handed me three industrial strength antihistamine tablets which reduced the head swell instantly. She gave me a smile (lots of teeth) and set about sorting out the horse’s hard on. Six Ketamine tablets later and the offending appendage was back in barracks, the crew cheered and pointed as the erection wilted but I only had eyes for Carol. Our eyes met and in that one moment I was Fitzgerald’s Gatsby, in that one moment I knew my ‘mind would never romp again like the mind of God.’….Basically I wanted to shag her. To cut a long one short, the director took us all down to the Brewer’s Fayre that night and I properly got off with Carol In the overflow car park and we ended up back at her flat above the veterinary surgery. We made love (full sex) for 36 minutes straight and afterwards collapsed exhausted (and itchy.) I held her until she drifted off to sleep then I pegged it to the bathroom and sneezed my arse off. It didn’t take me long to work out that I was having an allergic reaction to the animals that dwelled beneath and I knew I had to get those super strength antihistamine down my neck before allergic meltdown. I had a vague idea where Carol had left her medicine bag but my eyes were ballooning so fast I had to zombie my way into the hallway and locate its whereabouts. Like a frantic Stevie Wonder I rummaged around until I grasped the bottle of pills and downed four at once. I felt so much better and navigated my way back to Carol’s sticky pit where we spooned until I sparked out. When I woke the next morning I knew straight away that things weren’t as they should be. Carol was standing at the end of the bed fully dressed and holding a suitcase. “Don’t speak” she said “just listen.” She went on to tell me that she was flying out to Las Vegas that morning to work as an advisor on a new Siegfried and Roy show (It had always been her dream to work with those two jokers apparently.) She went on to tell me that she’d never planned to meet a man like me and never planned to fall in love. “Don’t say a word.” She said “I know you need time to think.” She placed her flight details on the bedside table, lent over and kissed my ear and whispered “Stop me.”

… Then she was gone.

…My dear old Nan will, on occasion, bring the subject of Carol up in conversation with her friends as if the whole story was a huge complex riddle. “I will never understand why that boy didn’t go to Heathrow and stop her from getting on the plane.” She’ll say. After which each of her friends will, In turn, offer their theory as to why I didn’t stop her. None of them right.

The truth is, as I lay in Carol’s bed that morning, as she lent over and kissed my ear, I was completely paralysed from top to bottom by the four Ketamine tablets I’d mistakenly downed the night before. It took 10 hours for me to get the feeling back in my thumbs which allowed me to text Bernie and get him to come and recover me. As he carried me downstairs past the cages of guinea pigs and chinchillas my allergy to fir masked my plippy, ploppy tears of loss.

William Shakespeare wrote: ‘The course of true love never ran smoothly.”

Fairdos.

8 miles high.

Nan’s gone a bit loco recently. It all started last Sunday when her new neighbours invited her round for a joint. Nan thought she was getting beef but it turned out to be grade ‘’A Afghani black, she loved it and told me that the Battenberg she took round for dessert was a huge success. The neighbours were kind enough to give her a bag of their finest and Nan’s been tooting like a Yardie down the day centre. The Doc thinks she’s off kilter I told him she’s more likely to be off her face.

A grand day out

After one of his low rent poker games in Thames Ditton my agent, Bernie Shimshelwitz, came away with some poor chap’s iPod and his vouchers for Chessington World of Adventure. Mrs S refused to go with Bernie since she’s morally opposed to his gambling, so while she went off to Mecca Bingo with her blue rinse brigade, Bernie dragged me along with the promise of “a safari of a lifetime”. He was not wrong. The drive round started with that all too familiar sense of impending disappointment; it was cold and overcast and the only animal prepared to come out of it’s den to breathe the petrol fume filled air was a warthog with alopecia and a chronic limp. Bernie and me were already giving each other the silent treatment since he’d opted for a Wimpy at Thurrock services over my idea of a La Dolce Ryvita at IKEA Lakeside. But things were about to get a lot more exciting. As I mentioned, as well as the safari tickets, Bernie was the proud new owner of some other man’s iPod; well to break the silence I hit ‘shuffle’ and pumped up the V. Out blasts a featureless damp squib by Coldplay, which evidently was recorded at a frequency that plays havoc with an elephant’s sense of humour. The picture above shows all too clearly what happened next as Nelly the NME Critic storms our people carrier. I was petrified into inertia and Bernie was no help either frantically bashing at the iPod screaming “Where’s Dido? Where’s Dido?”. Total disaster was only avoided when I remembered the packet of Treats I’d seen in the glove box and huzzed them at the freaked out pachyderm. Our van limped off towards a lonely looking Wildebeest and then the exit. Bernie then left me to find my own way home from, you guessed it, Thurrock services.

"You have reached your destination."

Blimey! This picture takes me back. About 5 years ago my agent Bernie Shimshelwitz landed me a part in a two hander with Bob Carolgees at the Theatre Royal, Carshalton. To be honest it was a dire little play based on the underwhelming career of cricket umpire Bob Foggle. As opening night approached ticket sales indicated that 'Earth, Wind Umpire' was not an exciting prospect for the theatre lovers of Carshalton. Determined to bring a buzz to the premier of the play Bernie called me to say that himself, Mrs S, my dear old Nan and my barrista Dan Tang were all going to jump in his new Saab and bomb it over to Carshalton for curtain up. Knowing that Shimshelwitz's sense of direction was at best frightening I offered to fax over directions to the theatre but Bernie insisted that the in car Sat Nav would guide him with sherpa sharp precision to the venue. Unfortunately Bernie did not take the Sat Nav's predictive text feature into account when he typed 'CARSHALTON' into the machine and was as surprised as the next man (Dan Tang) when he was directed straight through the fontage of the local car showroom. an apologetic Bernie placated the owners of the business by offering them free tickets to the play. A gesture that turned out to be worthless as our 12 week run was cancelled at the interval for being, as one of the kinder reviews suggested "Shitter than shit." I never worked with Carolgees again.

Big trouble...

Amongst the more hair-raising roles I’ve undertaken in my long and non-too-illustrious acting career was that of the Child Catcher in a world tour of Chitty Chitty Bang Bang. Now playing the baddie in a kids show is usually great fun especially if, like me, you’re not very fond of children. They don’t know that and they have a great time booing and hissing and there’s always a plethora of yummy mummies to be tapped up in the circle bar after the late show.
Our tour took a turn for the more sinister when we hit Beijing however. Nobody warned me that the kids over there have taken audience participation to a whole new level. In fact it’s not just the children, it seems their parents have them in training months before the play opens, tantalising them with magazine pictures of sweets and Cadbury’s Creme Eggs, waking them up at 3.am to force porridge down their necks and reciting hate poems against the evil, sugar-hording bad man. So when me and my agent Bernie Shimshelwitz showed up in Tiananmen Square pretending to lock up a child from the show along with enough pick-n-mix to keep Woolies in business, the natives did not react like their counterparts in Weston Super-Mare. In short all hell broke loose; I was given a crash course in Sumo by a 7-year-old girl with bingo wings, the Child Catcher’s cart was ripped to pieces it’s bounty looted (and not just the Bounties either) and at the other end of the rope pictured is Bernie Shimshelwitz himself desperately trying to flee the scene with the only CurlyWurly left in the Orient.

Ah, your English sense of humour!

Poindexter in the Harrison Banks I.T department has been looking at the blog ‘hits’ and he reckons that there are now as many folk reading the blog in the US of A as there are in good old Blighty, as well as Canadians, Ozzies, a surprising number of Swedes and loads more. That’s fantastic news, and wherever you sit reading this nonsense I would love to hear from you; where are you? whaddya do? are there any HB favourites you want resurrecting?

Or maybe you could just say ‘Hello’ let me know I’m not alone…

email@harrisonbanks.co.uk

HB

I thought it said 'Prom' Queen

Having moaned about the dating agency I’m with recently. I really thought they’d redeemed themselves when they sent me the photo above of a girl named Belle. You have to admit she looks stunningly beautiful. More than that though, she looks peaceful, deep, serene, spiritual and wholesome. She was also listed as an actress so, although out of my depth in the looks department, at least we’d have plenty to talk about. It all seemed too good to be true…and it was. Now I’m no prude, and far be it from me to judge how anyone should want to earn a living, but when I read more of the blurb that the agency sent me and I found out that the picture was actually a still from Belle Chedder’s latest movie “The Invisible Men”, well I baulked and regretfully added Belle to the ‘Not on your Nelly’ pile.

Two MacPints of lager please

I’m not convinced that the new dating agency I’ve joined is up to the task of finding me a suitable partner. I mean it’s not as if I’m asking for the world, my wish list only had three things on it. 1. Well Read. 2. Good fun. 3. Likes eating out. I know Ron here ticks all the boxes but the truth is we’re both Ladies men. We did have a good laugh though.

I’ve been royally stitched up by Vodafone. I’ve been unhappy with my current tariff for a while now (one free text a month!) When I called up to cancel my contract the girl at the other end sweet talked me into staying with them by offering me the new Nokia C23 for free, apparently the phone was high end design and Nokia’s most retro phone to date. I mean there’s retro and there’s retro but when this bugger turned up on Monday I wasn’t best pleased. I formulated a solid plan to ditch it down the local curry house and claim on the insurance but Ranjeev and the boys found it in the bog and thought they were doing me a favour by bringing it back. Honestly, it hasn’t even got any games on it and you should see the size of the charger!

Taking the pith

With the New Year upon us it’s time for my annual detox and get fit campaign. This year, as well as taking a month off the fags, the condensed milk and the Pernod, I went out and spent an entire royalties payment from Harbour Lights (I played a Frenchman in Speedos looking for a Bureau de Change) on a juicer/smoothie maker with a built in pomegranate pip pulper. I’ve been using this bugger for exactly 3 weeks now and I have never been more detoxed, in fact if I were to belch in your direction it would probably add about a fortnight to your life. However, there are 3 drawbacks with this new fangled machine that I need to warn you about before you go spending your hard-earned Giros on one for yourself; 1 - there are simply not enough greengrocers in any one county in England to provide you with enough fruit for the recipes given (the picture above is of me driving home from Aldi on Saturday (from where I have since been banned) with enough ingredients for one Lemon Entry and two Banana Chowders). 2- You cannot make any plans in the mornings because breakfast can take upwards of three and a half hours. That’s an hour and a half peeling, prepping, juicing and drinking plus two hours for ...….......3 – The shits. My bog pan has been a reservoir of rusty water since New Years Day and no amount of health benefits could possibly make up for the stench. Watch out for my Superjuicer 3000 on e-bay come February the first, and bidders beware….

Cat on a hot tan poof

Mystery has long surrounded the events that led Montecore the tiger (pictured centre) to have a swipe at handler Roy Horn (pictured right. Your right) According to Roy’s onstage partner Siegfried Farnon (pictured left of centre and right of Roy) Roy had slipped on some tanning lotion and hit the deck like a sack of shit. Thinking that a concussed Roy was a cub in danger Montecore attempted to drag Roy from the stage and bring him round by bashing his bonce in. Reports state that on the way to the hospital a blathering Roy mustered up enough juice to whisper: “Don’t kill the cat.” A magnanimous gesture that earned Roy nish praise from animal lovers worldwide. In actual fact the true events that took place (according to my agent Bernie Shimshelwitz) were very different. What Horn actually screamed on the way to hospital was “Don’t kill the cat…Stab it right up…Just get it dead.” Not surprisingly the real reason Montecore the tiger took a pop at Roy Horn was because he thought he was a proper dick. End of.

Baa stards

Happy New Year etc. Sorry to have abandoned my post for a while, but British bleedin' Telecom have been playing silly beggars with my broadband connection. What with so many folk hitting the blog every day I asked BT for more bandwidth. Some nerd in their IT department bamboozled me with his techno speak but I did hear him say I could count on the equivalent of a load of extra RAM on the line before I could say Heath Robinson. Imagine my lack of surprise when I looked out of the window...

Rea ended...nearly

I don't know what's happened to the Season of Goodwill, but I've just been cut up on the M4 by Chris Rea of all people. I don't know where he was headed, but he was driving like a right nutter.

A bum deal

I’ve taken on some unlikely roles in my many years in the business, but rarely have I stooped lower than when my agent, Bernie Shimshelwitz, persuaded me to play Andy Garcia’s arse double in the, straight to DVD bargain bin, debacle ‘Things To Do In Devon Then Instead’. Now Garcia has a famously hirsute chest and back (see here) but, strangely, this does not extend to his backside which resembles Grant Mitchell having his way with Gail Porter. Enter Harrison Banks then for the not so hilarious “Quick-pull-up-your-pants-my-grandson’s-home” scene. Now I’m quite proud of my bum, which has been likened to two boiled eggs in a mohair sock, but I could’ve done without the constant sniggering of the crew and a director who kept insisting I was coiffeured between takes because “There’s just no way Mr Garcia would have a centre parting.”
More humiliation followed at the wrap party when I had to drop me cords and take a bow before Andy even recognised me.
What goes around comes around though as I was the only cast member to get a decent review.

In sickness and in Elf

What a torrid weekend I had. I got a call from my agent Bernie Shimshelwitz last week telling me he’d landed me a sweet little acting job for the festive season. Chief elf in Santa’s grotto in BHS Thurrock wasn’t as high profile as I would’ve liked but a job’s a job and I’ll be honest if I’m ever going to be able to afford the ‘race & chase’ Scalextric that my dear old Nan wants for Christmas I’ll need every penny I can lay my hands on. I was due to start on Saturday so to celebrate being back in the game I decided to take Bernie out on Friday night for the all you can eat Indian buffet down at Balti Towers. I don’t know what happened but I’m guessing I must’ve downed a moody bhuna because my stomach was all over the place when I clocked into Santa’s grotto on Saturday morning. 80 screaming kids, a tight elf costume and a rancid gut is certainly an unholy trinity and unfortunately things took a turn for the worse 10 minutes in. I’d just sat a little lad named Clive on Santa’s knee, he wanted a Nitendo Wii for Christmas what he got was something very different. Without warning I let out a mighty, rasping guff; the odour of which was so unforgivable that I instantly vomited all over the back of Santa’s noggin. The smell of chunder set off a chain reaction of gagging and bawking throughout Santa’s grotto, the sight of Santa picking chunks of turkey bhuna out of his beard was too much for little Clive who had wet his pants in confusion and fear, not quite the wee he had expected. I took the rest of the day off.

Charge of the Light Brigade

My celebrity star has, admittedly, been on the wane somewhat recently, so with no panto tights to fill and no switching on the lights in Leighton Buzzard town centre to look forward to, my agent, Bernie Shimshelwitz asked me to be the celebrity guest to switch on his very own Christmas lights spectacular (pictured). It’s good that the Jewish community are happy to join in the fun this time of year and the Shimshelwitz’s even invited Rabbi Burns along for the switch on. When I flicked the switch and the skies around Sidcup lit up with Bernie’s home made Aurora Borealis one could not help but feel some yuletide joy. This joy was soon replaced by dread when a newsflash revealed that a power surge in the Kent area was causing mayhem. Apparently Bernie’s Heath Robinson wiring had caused the lights to flicker at the local children’s hospital and the medication time alarm system was blaring out at 4,000 decibels. The epileptics were freaking out due to the flickering lights, police units from all over the county were sent to break up the ‘rave’ and now they were looking for someone to blame. As I looked around me I saw that Bernie had legged it, Mrs S was in tears and our resident holy man was like a Rabbi in the headlights. It was left to me then to explain the disaster to the chief constable. Fortunately he recognised me from an episode of the Bill I did in 1994 and, after explaining to me the correct way to present my helmet when ‘at ease’, he let me off with a caution. Happy Christmas, Harrison.

Don't believe everything you're told

You can't teach an old dog new tricks? That's precisely what Paul Daniels has been doing for the last 20 years.

Strictly Cum Dancing

In an effort to keep my mind off chinning cigs I decided to join my local Biodanza class. For those of you in the not know Biodanza is a dance fusion that aims to reconnect you with life and sexual being. Basically it’s like dirty dancing for the over 40’s. The first lesson didn’t exactly go well, I was paired up with Diane from Pinner, a right munter, breath like Iams and a face like a farmer’s arse. Our first routine was ominously called ‘The anal splice’ which involved me frenetically rubbing up against Diane’s bottom whilst we stumbled around the dance floor like two Bedouin wrestlers. If I’d have known this frottage was going to create so much friction I never would’ve worn my wide groove corduroys as, unbeknown to Diane, a small fire broke out in her rump region and the next thing I knew she was being foamed down by the appointed fire officer. Luckily the panic that spread through the rest of the dancers allowed me to attend to my lazy lob, I was reminded of Kings of Leon's ‘Sex on fire’ but not in a good way. I stopped off at Superdrug on the way home and bought some nicotine patches and a tube of Germolene.

The Needle and the Damage Done

I’ve been trying to give up smoking recently. First I tried the cold turkey approach, but the mayonnaise was making me fat. Next my agent, Bernie Shimshelwitz, booked me a course of acupuncture at the ‘A Friend In Knead’ massage and beauty parlour. I’d been there before for a head massage (see here) so I wasn’t expecting much. Just as well cos when Mr Bleedin’ Miagi had finished with me I looked like that geezer from Hellraiser. He left a pin sticking out from behind my ear the idea being that, every time I fancied a smoke, I was to give it a tweak and the craving would be replaced by a feeling of calm and fulfilment. Not quite what I experienced when, on my moped on the way home from the first session, I sneezed into my crash helmet and stabbed myself in the jaw at the same time, which sent me skidding, knee-cap first, into a belisha beacon. Once I’d scraped my Honda C50 off the zebra crossing I hobbled straight into Fourbuoys for 10 Camel Lights.
Bernie’s next trick was to sneak up on me while I dozed in my hospital bed and cover me in those nicotine elastoplast things. He calls them my acupuncture repair kit. His heart’s in the right place I s’pose.

What's on your iPod #10

This week I have been mostly listening to Viva Les Crepes by Claude Plamondon. Pancake ballads are not my usual iPod choice to accompany my busy lifestyle, but who could resist the Gallic charm of ‘You Look Like You Could Do With A Crepe’, the honkytonk wit of ‘Annie Batter’s Waffle Brothel’ or the up tempo ‘Roll Pancake Roll’
Claude made the pancake/pop world crossover before anyone else and remains, in his own words, an old school tosser from the flour power generation.

BLOG POST # 200! Lilo and Stitches

Since Peter Kay made it famous a few years back with his beer ads, bombing has become a thriving competitive sport, and this week I was asked to be amongst the judges for the regional finals sponsored by the Pig Farmers Union. The pre-competition favourite was local girl Tanya Hide (seen here in mid flight) who was really up for the cup. Sadly on her third and final attempt to score a 20 foot splashback and an entry slap rating of 6.0, Tanya misjudged the springboard tension and landed on a lilo in the shallow end. The lilo punctured on impact and shot up in the air giving the lifeguard on duty a nasty gash below the Speedos. Tanya was inconsolable “My dreams are in tatters and my arse is on fire.” And to complete a disastrous day the lifeguard, I’m told, is suing the Leisure Centre and the Pig Farmers Union for IBH (inflatable bodily harm). Stroll on.

Ooh...Ahh....Arrrgghhh.

My agent Bernie Shimshelwitz’s annual charity fireworks extravaganza was a bit of a let down this year. Instead of the usual plethora of breath taking fireworks Bernie had gone all in with one huge firework ominously called ‘END OF DAYS.’ Bernie had apparently got it for a steal off John McCain’s campaign manager and was well excited at the prospect of its cataclysmic contents. Once lit it became apparent that the gathering crowd were not about to witness the end of days but rather a series of random wisps of smoke followed by one rapid fire of rockets that managed to decimate the marquee and destroy Mrs S’s signature dessert (tiramisu.) I spent most of the night talking to egghead historian David Starkey who told me that he always found it a shame that no-one ever remembered Guy Fawkes’ younger brother Toni. Apparently he was in charge of the plotter’s hairdos and was killed when his GHD’s blew up. Gutted.

Don't mention the whore...

Dear old Andrew Sachs has been in the news a fair bit lately, and by now everyone knows that he has a granddaughter by the name of Georgina. Well, I was lucky enough to share the stage with Manuel back in the day when his wife had just given birth to their daughter. I remember like it was yesterday him in his dressing room in nothing more than a bathrobe he’d nicked from his B & B in Sidcup, showing us piccies of his firstborn. Her name? Why Kay of course.
“What have you called her Andrew?”
“Kay.”
“What have you called her?”
“Kay”
And so on. He couldn’t take a joke even back then.

Get a life Poindexter

My nephew, Robin, is something of a creative genius. His bolshy parents even got him into a spods kindergarten called 'Nippas Wiv Aptitude'. He’s ten now and I bought him a Lego hotrod kit for his birthday last week. I was horrified when he came bounding up to me ten minutes after opening it proclaiming “Uncle Harrison I now have the little friend I’ve always wanted. Thanks to you.”
He was also given some new underpants for his birthday which, together with his new toy, inspired him to begin writing his fourth book “Time for a History of Briefs” – I ask you.

Lord of the Rings

I fear that the global credit crunch may affect the opening ceremony for the London 2012 Olympic games. I was in Woolworth’s this morning and I’m fairly sure I saw Sebastian Coe buying a couple of Catherine Wheels, a Status Quo CD and four quid’s worth of Pic n Mix. Don’t hold your breath.

Something's gotta give

My agent, Bernie Shimshelwitz, has got a heart of gold, but I’m not so sure about his ears. I spent an hour on the phone to him the other night complaining about the terrible case of constipation I’ve been suffering from. I don’t know if it was a dodgy line or he was only half listening, but he sent me the book pictured above the next morning.
It’s not the first time he’s bought me the wrong book, of course (see here).

Credit Crunch Spares No-one

Top of the despots

Take the bins out will you Harrison?

Fuck that!

Divide & Conker

After losing last years celebrity conker final to Joe Pasquale (he properly mugged me off, it wasn’t even his conker.) I decided to harden up my conker this year by snidely placing it in the pocket of the trousers that hard man Ross Kemp wore whilst filming his double BAFTA award winning documess ‘On Gangs.’ Let’s see what Pasquale makes of that.

Where whales blow and men chunder

These days you hear so many Brits harping on about how great Australia is and how they long to live there etc. Well, I think it’s time to bring a bit of balance to the subject. I was there in the mid 90s touring a show (see here) and I had a shitty time. For a start it was freezing cold, I was nipped on the arse by a Kafkaesque roach the size of a Jack Russel while using the ‘dunnie’ and literally no-one seemed to hear me when I told them I was allergic to prawns. I was hoping the whale watching trip I’d booked would salvage the whole trip somehow, but, as you can see, I waited three and a half hours for one of the buggers to finally show itself and at the precise moment it did our stage manager Scooter lost his breakfast of, wait for it, prawns over the side.
I was glad to get on a BA 747 home to Blighty and Bargain Hunt, but Scooter was in love with the place and stayed on. Last I heard he’d opened a successful chain of tanning salons for pasty ex-pats called TanPom “50% off, no strings attached”. Each to their own.

Flare Do's

With panic and fear gripping the worlds financial markets, I decided to do my bit and inject some confidence back into the City by buying up as many Socks and Flares that I could lay my hands on. I've just had a call from Henry Paulson telling me he'd just checked his Nadsaq and I've single handedly sent the value of towelling socks through the roof. I'm just happy to help.

I've blown it...

I swung by my ex-lodger and 'reformed' drug dealer Malcom Powder's squat yesterday to bury the hatchet (see here) and to show him the brand new leaf blower I got in the 364 day sale at B & Q. He was not impressed.

You wooden believe it

It's not all glitz and glamour in the showbiz game you know. I tried to grab five minutes to eat my 'La Dolce Ryvita' diet slice in the Channel 4 canteen this lunch time. As you can see though every single seat was taken by the cast of Hollyoakes.

Hold on Nan.

What a day I had yesterday. My Doctor (Doctor Hook) prescribed me some tablets for my athletes foot. The tablets had worked like a treat apart for the side affect of memory loss. I’d been walking around in a dream like trance all day (itch free) when my dear old Nan called in a right old state. Her Fiat Yugo had broken down round the back of Lidl and she needed me to come and sort it out. Knowing that the car park at Lidl becomes ‘Dogging Central’ after 9pm I set off at pace. The tablets had obviously affected my memory because it took me a good 2 hours to drive to the car park which is only a 20 minute walk from my flat (18 minutes on pogo stick.) As luck would have it the Doggers were only just warming up and I got Nan on her way before the cock started flying. As I pulled out of the car park I suddenly remembered that I was supposed to be heading up to Norfolk for a whittling weekend at my agent Bernie Shimshelwitz’s country retreat. I called Bernie and explained that the tablets were playing high havoc with my memory system, he told me that if I didn’t get there by 11 he’d have to give Nick Berry the futon. I floored it. (125mph through South Mims) and cleared the M25 in record time and hit the country lanes at break neck. It was then I noticed the car behind me was right up my arse, flashing its headlights and making me well nervous. I was using some of my best driving moves but the driver behind me was taking risks, bouncing off the grass verges and keeping up with me every step of the way (we both got a good 2 foot of airtime at one point.) At this stage I was convinced that my pursuer was determined to follow me to the gates of hell. Then the tablets started to wear off and in a moment of clarity I remembered I had my Nan on tow. Yikes!

Click, click & Drag.

Whoever coined the phrase* ‘The camera never lies’ wouldn’t have bothered if they’d seen this photo of me taken at recent shoot for a ‘Man about Town’ feature for ‘Crash Mat’ magazine (a biannual publication for retired stuntmen.) I thought the shoot went really well but when the proofs came back it was obvious that something had gone tits up. Turns out the camera they used is known in the trade as the ‘Billy Bullshitter’ which would explain why its lens grew every time it took a picture of me. I don’t even smoke.

* It was actually my agent Bernie Shimshelwitz that coined the phrase ‘To coin a phrase.’ He earns a royalty every time someone uses one or coins a new one. He’s ‘raking it in.’ (That’s another £5.65 in the Shimshelwitz hedge fund.)

Pooper Trooper

Occasionally most aspiring actors have to resort to ‘extra’ work to make ends meet. Here’s a picture of me back in the 80s between scenes on Return of the Jedi. Unfortunately for me and 299 other storm troopers, it wasn’t just the Jedi that made an unwelcome return. The one woman catering van they had in, 'Beverley Grills', served up Chilli con Carne, though what the carne was it was con I’m yet to figure out. Anyway, suffice to say the bog in my hotel room found itself on the dark side for three days straight and I wasn’t able to get off it in time to deliver the one line I’d practically begged George for – “I’ve been watching Han Solo and Ewoks around the clock Lord Vader”. That could have made me that line. A line fit for a king, but I was stuck on the throne. Typical.