Little One and I met as usual for our dismal lunch at O’Neils on Euston Road.

Our usual banter often lacks a volume control. Today it was on the dynamics of bumsex and the frequency by which we’re both receiving pornographic text messages from people, the latter of which I’m putting down to the increasingly hot weather (either that or the council are putting something in the water). Aside from an impression of a confused very British man complaining about how long it was taking for his food to arrive (which made Little One snort J2O - a treat to see!), we also talked about voiceover work.

Now I’ve thought about this a lot before. You know that bit in Mrs Doubtfire when the stone faced old trout woman (who bit parted in both TNG’s ‘The Survivors’ and DS9’s ‘Dax’ as an entirely irrelevant piece of trivia. And no, I didn’t have to look that up. And yes, I know I am) asks Robin Williams if he has any skills, and he replies “Oh yes, I do voices”, and then he indeed does voices? And she doesn’t laugh one bit?

Well, that’s a bit like me. I do voices. Often. Some of them are even not rubbish. Some of them even make people laugh. I know my Hannibal Lecter, when done properly, makes Romana melt, whilst Little One has always been my greatest fan - she’s particularly fond of Abe Simpson. I guess that one’s quite esoteric.

It all started at school. Being a professional homosexual (not practising dah-leng, I’m oh-so fully qualified) I was a bit too mimsy to ever be good at sport. In fact I sucked at sport. Big time. I was always the lanky useless malco-ordinated kid forced to be in goal. Most of the time I was so dejected and weighed down by adolescent existential angst that I even let a few goals in out of tacit protest. Ha, that showed them… how to completely ostracise me for the best part of two years.

So anyway, anyone who’s been to an all-boys school knows you have to have your thing - your gimmick - your self-enforced quirk or talent that stops all the other kids from beating you up, calling you gay (though looking back I really can’t fathom why I, like everyone else, thought that this was akin to being prodded with Ann Widdecombe’s vibrator) or generally turning your life into a misery. Seriously, all boys’ schools are like prison, only the food’s worse and you get homework.

I’ve always had a healthy dose of self-consciousness about being made to perform. No one likes showing off (apart from Jim Davidson, and no one likes him), so naturally I was always shy about sharing my God-given gift and genius with the pubescent microcosm of the Hammersmith literati:

“Kryten! Do Kryten!” they’d shout.
“No,” I’d pout.
“Okay then. We’ll leave you alone.”
“Really? Great!”
“No, only joking. We’re going to hit you with this desk.”
“Sigh…” [does Kryten impression]
[Lukewarm applause]

It’s true. I learnt to whore myself to survive at such a tender age.

Lily Savage, East Finchley, yesterday

At university I learned to embrace the things one naturally hides at school, so most of my time was taken up embracing boys. But in my spare time I also embraced my knack for mimicking. Encouraged by a few friends and the right environment, I began to scribble down silly ideas - short scripts and sketches, stuff like that. I was particularly inspired by a story Ronni Ancona once told of her and (the not really very funny) Alastair McGowan devising quite original sketches simply from throwing the only decent impressions they could do at the time together, ending up with such things as Sean Connery and Audrey Hepburn running an antique’s shop. And it’s true. Bare pragmatic necessity is the mother of originality (consider for example Douglas Adam’s proposal of the Somebody Else’s Problem Field for those who couldn’t afford cloaking devices. Genius!)

Elmo, flatmate from Hell

Thus was born the ambition to one day write a sketch with Lily Savage and Elmo from Sesame Street sharing a flat in North London. I even got as far as writing a short script where Elmo accidentally mistakes Lily’s bottle of poppers for some shower gel, before I realised I was quite clearly a raving lunatic and suspended the project out of fear for myself and others around me.

I will put together a CD. The voiceover industry is apparently in recession and is harder than ever to get into, but that just appeals to my pig-headed and in-at-the-deep-end loving-those-metaphors fondness for big effing scary and seemingly pointless challenges. I might even attempt the Lily and Elmo sketch, but it is a little strange and I wouldn’t want to scare any potential agents too much. Little One and I have discussed the whole podcast idea much lately. If anything comes of it at this early stage will post them here.

Novel? Any more chapters? News?

Shut up.