Madame Galina's Doings Diary

In Heaven It Is Always Autumn

I just quoted John Donne while looking out of the window.

But it’s August at the moment so can heaven please wait? Oh, and talking of looking out of the window, someone please put a stop to the man opposite. The way he stares into his window boxes really annoys me while I’m trying to write.

Anal, anal contemplate the blooms. And now shift gaze oh so definitely to the next spray. Contemplate contemplate. Analize on ad nauseum.

He doesn’t have a job, you see. And as Noelle Barker, head of vocal studies during my time at Guildhall, said: “You must learn the total concentration of contemplating flowers, for one example, to get you through the tough times when you’re not working.”

Ah, I knew there was a point to the man and the flowers: advice.

As a number of people e-mailed asking for more advice (see Advice, funny that) here we are with some. Wait…hang on: this is aimed at the Alex Warren actor toing and froing between the Hen And Chickens* and Edinburgh type bod: I’m not expecting ballet regular Tuck Owen to suddenly appear in full frou-frou giving the regulars at the Royal Vauxhall Tavern Italian fouettés and four-letter words.

Though of course she must feel free.

*Where I did Edinburgh previews of Ballet Who?! And NB it’s called The Hen And Chickens, pace Michael Nunn calling it The Chicken Shed.

I thought we’d cover networking today. It’s on the stocks because I shamelessly approached PR guru Faith Wilson at the general of Class/Elsinore/The Upper Room and told her she needed to know who I was so she could network on my behalf.

On Networking.

Take every opportunity, I say. But one thing before we go any further, and writ large: Never work a room after someone else’s show unless they’ve said it’s okay.

When you are introducing a fellow performer to networkees, do it properly. Don’t do a Sam. Sam’s an ex (because he’s a twat) pupil of mine. In the bar after a profit share he produced, directed and starred in, he introduced me to a TV producer.

“I’m stringing him along”, Sam whispered, leading me to the table, “giving him just enough of an impression that I’ll bite the pillow for him.”

Now that Sam’s nose, paunch and ego had outstripped his late-teen prettiness, I wouldn’t have thought...

“Everybody”, Sam trilled, “this is Iestyn my voice coach.”

I took him to one side as I was leaving.

“Sam, being your voice coach is way down my CV after my being the reigning Prima Ballerina, the man of choice for a semi-sentimental Sea Song, stalwart of the National Rural Touring Forum, Sex And The City slash Mapp And Lucia slash cleaning with Bicarbonate Of Soda aficionado.”

Try to emulate Diana Quick. She can slip a whole CV into one brisk sentence.

“This is Miranda Hart, who does a fabulous one woman show that gives me asthma laughing…”

“This is Lizzie Roper, you probably saw her on BBC1 in…”

When you ring someone for their contacts, be up front about it. I much preferred getting this text after my Whirlwind Guide to Ballet aired on Channel 4:

…“You jammy bastard. What can you do for me?”…

to being rung up by Sam.

“Hi, sweetie”.

“Hi, Sam”.

“You gorgeous?”

“Not for me to say.”

(I would have answered “yes” at any other time, but I knew what he was after).

“I hear you were just prime time. Talk me through that”.

“Oh, you know, it…”

“I googled”, Sam interrupted, as somebody other than himself was speaking, “and it was a Sceptre Production for Channel 4. Did they read your unsolicited script, or something?”

“No, they heard about me”.

“From that church hall thing you put on in Aldeburgh?”

Four years before, for Christ’s sake…

“No. From touring”.

“Suffolk, still?”

“Europe.”

NB: When you guess what is on somebody’s up to date CV, guess up, not down.

Or get punched.

“Oh, right. Yes”, Sam went on, “they’re telling me to get my arse over to Europe – and America. Not literally get my “arse” over there…I’m not needing to getting jobs that way yet.”

(See previous comment re nose, paunch and ego.)

“But to get to the point. I’m putting on a showcase lunchtime event at a just slightly off west-end venue. Do you know the Etcetera in Camden?”

Yep. From when I always say “no thank you” very politely to the dealers standing three deep outside on my way first to KFC for a Popcorn Wrap and then to Prowler for porn.

“Always stuff going on there”, I said.

“It’s tomorrow at one thirty. I would have invited you before, of course…”

But you hadn’t heard I’d been on TV then.

“It’s taken me forabsolutelyever to find your number. Ransacked everything. You know how it is.”

I don’t: never having blitzed my bed-sit while not looking for someone’s number in my mobile even though I know that’s where it is.

“So, listen. I’ll put you down for a freebie, plus one. I’m sure you’re best buddies now with the Sceptre crowd, and one of them would jump at the chance for a spot of lunch and loveying with you.”

Oh, he was good.

“I’ll bring my mate Trevor”, I said.

“Is he from television?”

“Architecture.”

“What?”

“Trevor’s an architect. Own company – that’s why he could work round coming to the play at lunchtime.”

“Iestyn – I don’t want to build houses.”

Going back to what I said about coming to the point, don’t be an Anke.

Anke’s a Marlene Dietrich tribute act. She’s slightly unusual in that she’s female. When we had been on the same bill at Club Kabaret a couple of times, she asked for my number. And rang me. This is what she said:

“Hello darling, it’s Anke. Lovely to hear your voice. Didn’t the audience adore you whenever it was we performed together?”

How could you tell when most of them were in toilet cubicles snorting off their plastic?

“And I was amazed that I got asked to do all those encores.”

She didn’t get asked. The DJ was getting head in the back of his booth again and he let her backing CD run on. And on. And on. And on. Tattoo’d Jewess Burlesque stripper Marissa eventually flapped out of the dressing-room and pressed “stop” during the second verse of Where Have All The Flowers Gone?

“And I was still a bit under the weather, you know.”

She had been sent home the week before because the rash clearly visible through her fishnets looked like small-pox.

“But I have to pay the rent, and my landlord is saying he will put it up again.”

That’s one way of paying it.

“So I’ll be scrabbling around for every last penny down the backs of chairs, the sofa, old handbags, the rubber round the door of the washing machine. Do you know my friend, who does the lesbian act ranting in the braces wearing nothing on top? She says she’s started going round the rubber in the launderettes round…where does she live again? Can’t remember. Maybe Ladbroke Grove. Anyway, all round wherever it is that she lives and she gets the odd pound coin, you’d be surprised. One time she even got a couple of pfennigs. The managers now throw her out when they see who it is. She’s a bit conspicuous on the crutches, isn’t she?”

She broke her leg in four places when she fell out of a penis with Prince Albert birthday cake, through a table and off the stage while ranting lesbianically topless at a surprise fetish party.

“But at least she can look back and have no regrets about the launderettes because she made hay while the sun was shining. How are you, darling?”

I said I was very well, and waited.

“Because I notice that you are performing at the Popcorn Club. Shall I send my publicity to them? Maybe you have a number for them? Could I say you recommended me?”

“I got it through a mutual friend, so I don’t know the booker, so it would mean nothing to him being told I sent you, but send the stuff in”, was the most tactful way to put it.

You must be careful about recommending and letting people use your name.

But bless Anke she always tried to give something back.

“And in return, I can give you the number for the cruise liner I’ve just been on. It’s only the sales department, but they can put you through – you’d be perfect for what I just did. It was across to Zeebrugge and back”.

To Calais it’s a beer run, to Holland dope, to Belgium it’s a bore.

Doing what, I wondered.

“And they wanted…”

Sorry, can I just flag up how wary you have to be of people that say “they”. That’s twice now, counting Sam before. To avoid the albeit rudimentary forensic examination, Lizzie Borden took off the dress that she had 99.999999% certainly been wearing when she made parent steak tartare and said it was because “they” told her to. Why would “they?” Mr. and Mrs. Borden were found looking like someone had used them as get-your-hands-dirty art, but “they” were worried about how presentable Lizzie looked?

Anyway, Anke’s on this ferry…

“And we were in the bar to add to the atmosphere, you see, all being look-y-likeys. There was a Humphrey Bogart, a Frank Sinatra, a Marilyn Monroe…and I thought you could go next time.”

“As what?”

“As look-y-likey Margot Fonteyn.”

Of, of course. All fifteen stone of me.

People would think Margot had never died.

Posted by iestyn at August 21, 2007 09:20 AM