My Tellybox Debut

My first acting gig didn't go well. One balmy afternoon in the summer of 1992, my grandmother's purse had been relieved of its contents by a seven year old boy with a lust for sugar. I scuttled into a nearby shop and re-upped on fruit salad-flavoured chewing gum, Vienna wafers and raspberry gum drops, and whatever else I was into at the time. Knowing that I was unlikely to evade my granny when the time came to return home, I looked at my stash and considered hoofing the lot before I got home, but it was nearly tea-time and I didn't fancy spoiling my dinner, greedy git that I was. I resolved instead to swagger through the front door with the insouciance of a naked emperor and hoped that dazzling nana with this preternatural confidence would distract her from the sweets bursting out both sides of my shorts. What follows is a transcript of my audition:

"Where have you been son?"
"Out."
"Where did you get those sweets?"
"A shop."
"And where did you get the money?"
"…Um…err…I found it. On the…um…err...street."

I decided not to impart this anecdote to Tennent's when they coaxed me out of a self-imposed retirement from the acting profession. Everyone deserves a second chance, and all that. I was asked to appear as an extra in their new tellybox advert and document the experience. Here's a tale of how I got on.

Tennent's have made a good habit of knocking out irreverent ads, and continue along this vein by conjuring a Victorian-era re-imagining of a T in the Park conceived by Hugh Tennent, founder of Tennent's Lager. You may remember some adverts from last year documenting (with a liberal application of artistic licence) Tennent's trip to Bavaria, an event which reportedly inspired the creation of Tennent's Lager, as well as his first encounter with two Glasgow football teams, "the blue chaps and the green chaps". And now the follow-up has facilitated the beginning of my flourishing acting career.

I quickly discovered upon reaching the set that being an actor is as much about anticipation as it is the act itself. That's a fancy way of saying that I did a lot of waiting. Of the eleven hours that we spent at the shoot, located in a public park so plush that it had its own outdoor gym (like a playground for muscly adults), only two or three hours involved actual filming. So, for most of the time, you wander around surveying some pretty odd sights, most of which look like various scenes from the entire first series of Ricky Gervais's Extras. Extras, or 'background artists' as we are referred to, are dressed in a peculiar fashion mash-up of chirpy Dickensian threads and steampunk-meets-2000AD.

I spent some downtime playing the 'who'd win in a fight' game, and I'm convinced that Fagin would take Judge Dredd, if only because he'd hide behind many, many light-fingered orphans in the melee. The costume department had kitted me out in a long orange overcoat, light grey tweed trousers, a plain white shirt and braces, adding a thick-set moustache for that authentic Victorian touch. Some hairspray was also used.

The first of two shoots took place in a nearby forest, where an array of dimly-lit paper lanterns and sunset-yellow lightbulbs hung precariously overhead. Our main task as extras was to saunter around the two 'principles', Hugh Tennent and his pal Barnes. You'd be surprised at how nerve-wracking it is to walk in a straight line and 'act natural', a difficult thing to do when dressed like Oliver Twist's deadbeat dad lost on the set of A Midsummer Night's Dream.

We moved to another location later that evening, another forest scene with a clearing that revealed a set of white canvas teepees surrounded by an elegant assembly of vintage objects: a weathered drummer-boy snare; a black and gold military wool jacket draped over the back of an oakwood rocking chair; oil lamps encased in flame-blackened glass and Goan prayer mats, among (many) other things.

After what felt like several scores of takes, the shoot was wrapped p at 11pm. A horde of washed-out Victorian partygoers and comic book heroes trudged up the hill to the van that would whisk them back to their homes. I, meanwhile, went to a more familiar place to dwell on my time on the shoot: the pub.

You can see the finished result here (of the advert that is, not a night at the boozer).