Busy, busy, busy

Well, it's been a week since my last post and I imagine there was a feeling that I had lost interest. Far from it. In fact I was busy. That's right. Busy. In the world of acting (the one I inhabit, rather than the one Sir Ian McKellen inhabits) being busy is GOOD.

How you make yourself busy is only partly important. I've knocked up a list of ways you can be busy. All of them are good, but some are better than others; the closer to the top of the list the better.

1. Paid acting work

2. Audition/casting

3. Voluntary acting (ideally for someone influential or important - or maybe even as a favour for a friend)

4. Any paid work

5. Social engagements with important people - agents, producers, anyone who might employ you for anything at all

6. Social engagements with friends (sorry, I am a mercenary)

7. Romantic time with the other half (she has been awfully overlooked in this list, but I hope she understands I am only doing the earlier things to try to get money to buy her pretty things - or at least to let her spend her hard-earned money on herself, rather than on keeping me alive)

8. DIY/self improvement

9. Other

There is a further list that goes with the paid non-acting work that runs all the way from sweet taster at Willie Wonka's factory all the way down to chugging, but I thought a tiny bit of brevity might be a welcome relief in this post.

So my last week has been spent mainly in the bottom half of the list. Some 7, a couple of nights of 6, a touch of 8, in the form of running an attempting (failing) to do pull ups on the underside of the stairs, and a whole load of 9. But it's all good, busy stuff.

And if that sounds pathetic, I have been moving closer to getting myself some 4. Having signed up to a couple of temp agencies I have been applying for various jobs with limited success.

I came close to getting a temp job as a Post Room Assistant for some unspecified office. Duties include distributing mail, sorting out deliveries, occasional reception work - nothing I imagine is totally out of my range. I should say I'm not being patronising to post room workers, I have worked as an intern in for a PR team and have had some first-hand experience of the post room. Most of the duties listed are things that I was responsible for at the time, my only shortcoming being that I have never operated a franking machine. Difficult I'm sure, but there was going to be a three day training period, during which I hope they would cover it relatively comprehensively.

Anyway, I was contacted by the recruitment agency to ask if I could come and be interviewed by them to assess my suitability. I managed to find a gap in my diary, between some 8 and some 9, put on my best smart-casual outfit (something I would wear to a fancy dinner - grey gabardine slacks, grey shirt, Clarks shoes and a blue cardigan. I looked dead dapper) and headed into central London.

Sat in the reception room, I was greeted by Karen (lovely, homely, South African), who led me to her office, which she shares with her colleague Lynn (bit more glamorous, bit older, Australian). Interview went swimmingly, as I detailed how perfect I would be for the job and in fact for any other jobs they might have. Then Karen handed me over to Lynn for another interview so that she could 'get to know' me.

Lynn opened with a shrewd question: 'If you had this post room job for the next six weeks and then someone offered you a part in a huge Hollywood movie what would you do?' Now I would like to refer the reader to the list near the top of this enormous post. I think you'll find Post Room Assistant comes under 4, and 'part in a huge Hollywood movie' sits at the top end of 1. The real answer is quite obvious, and I hope Lynn knew it before she asked me. I would politely tell the company I was working at that I was leaving, and if they had any complaints they could take them up with Steven Spielberg. My actual answer was 'If I had made a commitment to work as a Post Room Assistant then I would have to stick with it.'

Now it turned out Lynn knew this was a good question because she 'has a friend' in the business. She then enquired as to my private life. I told her my wife supports me using her nurse's salary. This then led on to a discussion on the topic of the NHS. Now I don't want to get all political on your asses, but I like the NHS. Free healthcare is one of the things that make me feel patriotic. It may not be amazingly run, there may be issues with it and the tabloids may attack it, often with some justification, but that is part of the democratic process of perfecting the service. We can't expect something on that scale to be right all the time, and we need to keep our eye on it to make sure standards remain high.

Lynn, it turns out, has a different opinion on the subject. She thinks the NHS is: first, negligent; second, poorly conceived; third, terrifying. Again she 'has a friend' who saw an invalid man go unfed. I don't believe she offered to feed the man, or even mentioned it to a nurse, though she did tell the person who delivered the food, whose job is not to see the food is eaten. Effectively she stood by and watched a sick man fail to eat, but at least she told her friend Lynn, so they could agree that the system was effed.

Lynn then basically went on to launch a diatribe against the NHS, citing foreign nurses as a problem, finishing up by claiming (actual word-for-word quotation) 'I would rather die in a car crash than go to hospital.'

Please don't judge me. 

My response was basically to take a big breath, affect a worried smile and say something along the lines of 'Wow. Err, yeah, I suppose. God, yeah. Um.'

In my defence, I was trying to impress these people, and prove that I could fit in quickly and well in any environment, even an ill-informed, racist, reactionary one. What if it was the EDL who wanted a Post Room Assistant? They probably wouldn't want a lefty liberal franking their post. I needed to appear available to work for whoever, even people I don't respect or like.

And there it is, I'm afraid. The list is just the first step on the way to a total disintegration of your scruples. Before I was an actor I believed that I would draw the line at working for people whose politics I strongly disagree with, but apparently now I will change my own beliefs in order to make the idiots who may want to employ me feel more comfortable.

Thankfully I didn't get the job. Apparently they went with someone with more post room experience. And I have taken that as a sign that next time around I will stick to my guns. If I'm going to get rejected anyway I think I will at least tell the idiots what I think of them.

And, by the way, don't think Karen is a saint either. On the way out she told me next time I had to wear 'something smart - a dark suit and white shirt'. I take this as a personal slight on my outfit, and see it as a sign that this agency and I are not suited. I will go back to the bottom of the list for now and stay busy with scruples.