Monday - day off, supposedly

Not the most exciting of days (you don't have to read on - I know that's not the most inspiring start to a blog - let's face it, there are far more interesting posts from this blog that you may be happier to spend your time reading?)

OK, now we're alone, this is how to make a million pounds in a week with very little effort.
Joking, of course. I just thought that if you'd carried on past that start you deserved a little bit of excitement. If anyone does know how to make a million pounds in a week with very little effort and your name is Abramovich then please do pass it on? Thanks.

I was supposed to be at home today on my day off from the tour but instead I have been sitting in a tiny recording studio all day recording things for the blind. Makes me sound like some sort of saint, doesn't it? I'm not. I got paid for it. Not a lot but enough to persuade me to give up time at home with my wife. I wonder if I will look back on those days and regret the avarice? Then again, touring is more expensive than you'd think. It's certainly more expensive than Equity or our producers think. We get £192 a week to live off on tour which I know is as much as some people have to keep a family but we have to travel, find somewhere to stay for the week and eat. It soon goes. Most actors eat in to their pay in order to have a few of the luxuries of life - like beer! Well, I do anyway.

We are fortunate this week really as we are in Newcastle but are only doing shows from Tuesday to Saturday. Normally touring includes the Monday so you only really get Sunday at home. Many people don't bother to go home as you are so tired on the Sunday from the travel that you are very little use to anyone. I do like to get home if I can. I'm even planning to get home from Aberdeen before travelling on to Birmingham, later in the tour. We shall see how that goes. You will if you keep reading this bollocks!

I'm surprised how quickly you can get to Newcastle by train. It's under 3 hours from London. Who would have thought it. That's the advertised time. If tomorrows post is all about me rushing to the theatre just in time to go on at about half past nine having been on a train for six hours then you will know that things have not turned out as advertised.

In the meantime I am looking forward to dinner with my wife, my daughter and her husband and one other important guest; a lovely bottle of Fluerie. You see, with that picture I have made it worth reading to the end through all that guff. xx

Finally, a thank you to the lovely Pam, my Leeds landlady, who offered to leave a key under the gnome for me if I got stuck in the snow on Saturday night - and no, that is not a euphemism!

Final blog from Leeds

And so, despite the snow and the length of the drive, I made it back home to Tunbridge Wells by 2.30 am last night. My little car did very well

considering that this was how I found it in the morning. Let's face it. Mazdas with back wheel drive do not like snowy conditions.

But I'm home and happy to be. I've done my admin with zeal and a happy countenance - yeah, whatever. And now I thought I would complete my reports of my first proper week on tour? The lovely Leeds.

There is no doubt that the north, or maybe just Leeds, is far more friendly than the south. I spent the time between shows yesterday sitting in a fairly rough pub, packed with men who had been drinking all afternoon. I was supping on a diet Pepsi. The man opposite me on my table had been there since 12.30. I knew this because I had been to the same pub before the matinee to watch the Chelsea v Everton Game. Now I was back hoping to watch Man United thrash Crawley Town.
Unfortunately the pub was showing Rugby League. Castleford, I think? I knew there wasn't another pub in the area that might show the football so I plucked up courage to ask the barman if one of the screens could be switched to ITV and the Man U match?

Now, you may think that this was foolhardy. A Leeds United supporters pub full of drunken men who all, to a man, would hate Man U and anyone who supported them! So what do you think happened?

That's right, the barman said, "No problem, mate!" and swithced a screen in front of a table of engrossed Rugby League watchers. He explained to them that I wanted to watch the footie and they all made "Oh aye" noises and made room for me at the table. "fancy a pint, mate?" the aforementioned man at my table asked. "No thanks," I said, "I'm working tonight." "What a bastard!" he replied and returned to his pint.

Those of you living in the north will no doubt be completely non-plussed by my even bothering to mention such a trivial story. Southerners will be shamefacedly looking at their laps and wondering if they could relocate. Then they will look at my poor little snow covered car, thinking of the possibility of a similar situation in July and decide to stick with their lot.

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As an addendum I thought I ought to share my photos of the Grand Theatre visitors book that we all signed yesterday. It goes back to 1945 when it was started by being signed by Queen Mary. It has the autographs of nearly every person who has played the theatre since then. I spent a very happy half hour browsing through it and spotting old friends and theatre greats. You can't believe how excited I was to be able to add my name to such an incredible list! For any autograph collectors out there here are just a few.

Princess Margaret

Sarah Ferguson

Derek Fowlds & Prunella Scales

The Shadows

Richard Attenborough

Margaret Lockwood

Sybil Thorndike

Alistair Sim and George Cole

Robertson Hare

The Queen and Prince Philip

Flora Robson

Glen Byam Shaw and Vivien Leigh

Anna Neagle and Peter Cushing

Margot Fonteyn

Laurence Olivier

Spike

Alec Guinness

The Mighty Boosh

I wonder what you'd get on ebay for this lot?

Bllody Hell! It's snowing!!

I'm supposed yo be driving home tonight and just look at the weather?! This came out of the blue. But that is typical of touring. You completely lose touch with what's going on in the outside world. Our sound like some old lag!supposed yo be driving home tonight and just look at the weather?! This came out of the blue. But that is typical of touring. You completely lose touch with what's going on in the outside world. Our sound like some old lag!

My problem is, I have a little Mazda MX5 and it hates snow. Before Christmas I was stuck in London for 5 days. 

Please, please stop snowing. We have 2 shows today and then I am aiming to drive down to Tunbridge Wells from Leeds - about a 4 hour drive. If there is snow I just won't make it.

Now, to start with, I have to see if I can even get my car out of the side street I am staying in at the moment?

Wish me luck. Next post could be interesting but won't be until tomorrow where I will be in the bosom of my family home xx

ILKLEY MOOR WITH A HAT ON

Have you ever been to Ilkley? No!? I have. I went today.

This was a company trip, organised by yours reasonably truthful. We met up at Leeds Station at 12.45 (actors on tour always start the day late - I had been up since 9.00 but I still had to rush in the end - and boarded the 12.02 to Ilkley, £4.90 return. Enough with the detail. 

It was a great day, eight of us in all including two small children. Children are good on a trip. They stop people from being too serious and make it impossible for actors to become too obsessed with themselves, a tendency we all share, sadly. Our journey on the train was consequently full of cries of "Look, a cow!" and "Weee, were going through a tunnel". 

Simon Williams (Sam from hereon) turns out to be even more of a clown with children present than I am, and that's saying something. He had bought them little presents and had pockets of balloons that magically appeared in children's pocket and their coat hoods throughout the day. Brilliant!

On arriving in Ilkley we popped in to the Tourist Centre and got a map that showed the direction to the moor and, most importantly, the whereabouts of the famous Cow and Calf Pub, our primary destination. It was a brisk one and a half mile walk up steep hills, mostly with a child on the shoulders, and excused the 2 pints of Timothy Taylors Gold Best and Lancashire Hotpot. I thought I would be driven out of a Yorkshire pub for ordering Lancashire Hotpot but, as with most things in Yorkshire, my choice created no animosity.

Lunch over we headed up the hill to the top of the moor and a traipse through bogs and across rocks. I stepped in to a stream at one point and when we got back to the station Sam disappeared for five minutes and returned with a fresh pair of rather classy socks for me. Sweet man.

Train back to Leeds and a couple of hours spare before we have to do the show.

The phrase, "We are lucky people to be doing this job" was uttered on several occasions. Damn right.

The only downside to days like this is the fact that you would really love to be doing it with your family. But it was fun to be with my new theatrical family and especially their children.

By the by, it was brought home to me today that we are very impatient, we Southerners. When we arrived at the station we asked a bus driver if there was a taxi rank where we could get taxis to take us to the pub. He told is it was a lovely stroll, even with kids and somewhat misty weather. "Or", he said, "You could cathc a bus? There will be one going that way in about 25 minutes. You could go and have a cup of tea and then catch that?". 25 minutes! We didn't even consider the option. Sad really. Then again it left us with the option of walking which was grand. Grand? Ark at me? Reet Northern!

we make our way up the hill to lunch

The Cow and her Calf - the rocks the pub is named after

Lunch is here

Sam demonstrates Angry Birds

The Cow and Calf pub

The Cow & Calf is not what you'd call a 'local'

Edwardian graffitti vandals

Sam shows us his large gap

I've just stepped in a stream

a wet foot

 So that was today. I'm ready to post now that I am back in wifi land. We have since done our evening performance which was fun. Bill delivered a speech during my scene that was mostly gibberish. I resisted the temptation to improvise - it took all my effort to resist. I don't trust myself to keep it up! We shall see? xx

Young men and war

Yesterday I saw the King's Speech. My brother sent me a message about our dad and it reminded me of something he once told me.

I was about 17 at the time and we both sang in the church choir together. I didn't have much time for church by then but kept up the pretence because I enjoyed the singing and spending time with my dad. The stroll to church was a twenty minute period that only the two of us shared and has always been precious to me.

One morning, I believe it was November 11th and therefore would have inspired the conversation, we were talking about the outbreak of the Second World War. And he described himself as a 17 year old.
Now normally when dad's say things like "when I was your age" to their children they deservedly lose them straight away. I was a strange 17 year old. Still very idealistic and quite naive. And I had this hidden passion and determination to become an actor, even though I didn't have the faintest idea how and was merrily going along the route of becoming a lawyer, like my dad.
My father's description of himself as a 17 year old was so poignant enthralling. Idealistic, determined, in love with the idea of learning but without the real training or guidance to attain it. And above all, absolutely certain that right would win out in the end. He said he couldn't wait to jump in to uniform and go and teach old Adolf a lesson. He described walking through the docks area of south London and the sirens going off. But he strode on confidently to work. Nothing could touch him.

I don't think this lasted? He did apply for the RAF but apparently told the interview board that he didn't want to kill anyone. He eventually volunteered for the Dental Corp which, lets face it, is not the Marines. I don't think he fired a single shot in anger.

Now, the point of this story is that shortly after this I went to Oxford for an interview at what is now known as Oxford Brookes and I walked from the station, across the town, past all the gorgeous colleges, and up the hill to Headingly. It was a beautiful sunny day and I remember feeling like my dad. Nowhere near the same circumstances, of course, but I was full of the confidence, romanticism, determination and just bloody thrill of being a young man about to burst out on the world. I walked past the halls of residence and thought, "I'm going to be there in September". I hadn't even had the interview but I just knew.

If I could have seen myself six months later having got falling down drunk because a girl I fancied had ignored me (or so I thought - she told me years later she was playing it cool and had been hurt that I had left the party and seemed to be ignoring her - typical!) throwing up in the downstairs loo of said Halls of Residence and mumbling the words "help me mum"; if I could have seen the idiot I was to be until my wife slowly sorted me out, I doubt I would even have made it in to the interview room.

There are things we are better off just not knowing.

More thoughts

 

I had planned to write a stand-up routine whilst on the road and perhaps try it out at some late night open mic spots but this blog is all I've written so far.

I can claim to have done stand -up before as I performed at the Comic Strip Club with Rik Mayall, Alexis Sayle et al in the early 80's. We did character based comedy and there were several of us so it was more like doing sketches in the middle of a stand-up show. Then again, a lot of the routines were really sketches. Rik and Ade as the Dangerous brothers and Nigel Planner and Peter Richardson as the unfunny brothers. I even remember Mark Arden and Steve Frost doing a sketch. It had the great lines "I made a citizens arrest yesterday" "What's a citizens arrest?" "well it's very like a police arrest but you don't get that searing pain in the bollocks".
My idea was to dress as a politician and treat the whole thing as a political rally for the coalition coalition party. A coalition of all parties. In other words, a dictatorship. Democracy for the people, with the people, by the people - and my party have always been willing and ready to buy the people.
I might work on it? The main drive behind it was to give myself something to aim for that would frighten me. You see, there are very few things that I do these days that really frighten me. Professionally that is. Does that sound conceited? It isn't supposed to. It's just honest. Most people in any job will get to a point after they have been doing it for 30 years where everything is a repeat of something they have coped with before and it just gets easier. I'm not scared of audiences and going on stage, and television and radio are just fun. If you go wrong you just do it again until you get it right.

Stand-up, on my own, in the back room of some pub, with 30 drunken people in the audience might be a bit more of a challenge? Although when you write it down it suddenly seems less scary. I'm not going to take up bungee jumping or skydiving. I'm not fucking mad!! Just after a bit of a frisson. I will keep you posted.

Look out for the Arena tour in 2012 x

PS lovely phone call from fellow actor today. Made me laugh a lot. He suggested I take up golf. Off to buy some ridiculous trousers in the morning.  Actually, he may have been suggesting I take up golf as opposed to acting. Can't blame him. He's been on stage with me so he knows what he's talking about xx

Thursday Leeds

Blimey, I've got a headache.

Still, I have had a lovely day here in Leeds. Not that the Leeds tourist trade was any great help with that. I had planned to spend a lovely day on the Steam trains but they don't run at this time of year. This was a great shame as the day was designed to entertain the two lovely children of Chris, from the show, who is here with his wife and aforementioned offspring. Never mind, I thought, there is a tropical centre in Roundhay Park which is near to where I am staying and that will be fun. Butterflies, lizards, tropical fish and strange flora. Closed for a clean up, apparently.

We ended up at the Royal Armoury Museum, an offshoot of The Tower of London. A lot of money has been spent on this facility, you can tell. Brand new building, swish display cabinets. TV screens all over the place demonstrating various details of the history of warfare.

Dull as dish water, obviously. We soon found ourselves looking for somewhere to have lunch. The canteen looked dull as well so I told the kids they only served Cat Poo sandwiches and Rabbit wee for drinks and we headed off to Pizza Express. This was very badly named it turned out. The waitress told us that lunch would take at least half an hour to arrive. Maybe the 'express' refers to the milk in the coffee?
We left and headed to the only other place where you could get food in the area - the Cat Poo Sandwich cafeteria - which turned out to be rather good! Rabbit wee is delicious, we all agreed.

Having fed the ducks on the canal with the remainder of lunch I bade my new young friends farewell and headed in to town and the comfort of a seat at screen 5 of VUE where I wept and laughed my way through The King's Speech. I don't think I cried a great deal at the predicament of the main characters but at the gloriously Britishness of it all. Anything stoic set around WWII always gets me. It deserves every award it has got (although I notice there has not been a best director gong) and many of the smaller roles were particularly well played. Tim Spall as Churchill was a joy. Helena Bonham Carter is the Queen Mum, I swear. I didn't know her personally but I'm sure she was like that?

And now, I am back in my dressing room waiting for the show to begin and trying to ignore a stinking headache. This blog business is a good distraction. Sounds like a good house over the tannoy and everyone is ready for the off. I will be on in two hours time. I'll say it again, 'This is the weirdest role I've ever had!'. Still, at least I'm not doing a musical about the Ipswich prostitute murders, eh?

Tomorrow it's a trip to Ilkley Moor. As the song suggests, I shan't be taking my hat

The late night ramble

I walked in to town today from my digs. It's only when you walk a route that you normally drive that you realise just how far it is. It took me well over an hour but it was a lovely day so I didn't mind. In fact I really enjoyed it. It reminded me of a day in Salisbury when I was walking to rehearsals and some Jehovah's witnesses asked me if I had heard the word of the Lord that day. I answered 'Yes, he called me this morning. Today's word is Aardvark.' It cheered me on through the rest of the week. Nothing like that happened this morning but a man cutting a hedge did stop his machine so that he could give me a cheery 'Morning!'. Bloody Northerners. So intrusive. No, I loved it.
Tonight I had to get back to my digs without a car. Should I splash out on a taxi? Not bloomin' likely. I got the number 2 bus. That's right, I got a bus. I haven't done that for years.
I went straight up the stairs and to my delight the front seats were free. Oh, the childish pleasure to sit at the front of the top deck of a bus and pretend to drive. I was completely unprepared for the large branch that crashed in to the window right in front of me in the dark. I jumped out of my skin. A pleasant drunk several seats behind me said, 'Why d'you think the front seats are empty?'. I laughed, but stayed there to show I wasn't a southern softy ..... which of course I am.
Back, safe, in my little room. This is when you wish you were at home. Time for sleep and dreams of going on a steam train in the morning. (I am actually going to do that. I had supper between shows with Chris from our cast and his wife and their two lovely children at a Japanese restaurant . The children asked me if I wanted to go on a steam train with them in the morning. Who could possibly turn down such an honour? Not me!!)
As we always said in panto 'Nighty, nighty' - then you answer 'Pyjamas, pyjamas'.
xx Mike

Me on the bus in my Dell Boy coat..... this time next year ......

waiting in the dressing room

Not really!

So, the ridiculous problem of getting online. Why is it so difficult? Do I really have to get a dongle? I don't object to the price, it's the name I can't stand. It embarrasses me. Doesn't it you?
The Grand Theatre, Leeds does not have wifi. Well, of course not. Why would they want to be able to connect mobiles and laptops to the internet from anywhere in the theatre? Shall I bother answering that question?
If this goes on, with every theatre in the UK feeling that not only is it OK to have seating that was put in in the 19th century but it's also OK to completely ignore the march of technology then I am going to have to withstand the embarrassment and invest in a dongle (you can surely feel me shudder at the use of the word?).

I sit back stage on a lovely sunny afternoon listening to my fellow thespians slogging their guts out on stage and I have no other choice but to write my blog and post it later when I get back to civilization.

We all had a very interesting chat earlier about the playing of comedy on stage. The quandary is do you pick up the cues and keep the pace of the play up, a crucial thing in the playing of farce and comedy, or do you wait and see if there is a laugh that might come if you don't stamp on it by plowing on?
I think it should always be possible to leave a tiny breath to see if the audience is going to laugh. You don't want to talk over one. It will put the audience off and if you do it too often then they will actually stop laughing. But, at the same time, you can't leave great big hiatus everywhere. Again you will lose the audience. It's a subtle thing. The secret is, I believe, that you get a move on between laughs. This buys you the time to allow the tiny intakes of breath that are enough of a gap after what you believe to be funny lines to judge whether there will be a laugh or not. Thus endeth the lecture. I am available for a lecture tour in the summer.
Interval. Time for a shave and a sh.... shy look at my lines.
Mike x

WEDNESDAY 16TH FEB

SITTING AND WAITING TO GO ON - SHALL I SHAVE NOW? - MOST DEMANDING!

As Michael Jackson pointed out, another day has dawn and I'm still all alone, though we're far apart, you are in my heart. He also wrote, I'm starting with the man in the mirror. Did he have mystic powers and the ability to pre-describe my life? Actually, he also wrote it don't matter if you're black or white, which is not only awful grammar but clearly bollocks. If history shows us one thing ....

Good morning.

Show went very well last night. An even more enthusiastic crowd of about 900 than on the first night. The Grand is truly spectacular! Here, this should prove it?

Yes, that is me preparing for the show and my inevitable standing ovation. Thankfully the audience don't see me from the back and thus are spared the ever thinning pate. Is it called a tonsia? Is that how you spell it? Who the hell am I asking questions of? Apologies, fictitious listener/viewer/reader.

It is a glorious day today here in Leeds. Yes, your eyes do not deceive you, the words 'glorious day' and 'Leeds' in the same sentence when referring to the weather. You may quote me.

Typically we have two shows. I've been for a walk, well, stroll this morning and am now ready to head off in to town from my digs. I am sharing this house with my lovely, Emmerdale obsessed landlady, Pam. She has a complete rogues gallery of signed Emmerdale publicity cards in the kitchen form people who have stayed here. I know several of the people but I'm not going to tell her that. There is also a Polish couple who seem to be living here permanently and a chap called Kyle who has just moved in but, again, is in for the long haul. They all seem shocked that I was only here for a week. Not even that. Monday to Saturday. I'm definitely driving home Saturday night after the shows.

My room is a small box room at the top of the house. Suit you sir. It has a single bed, chest of drawers, a sink, a TV and a chair. It's only £10 a night which means I have funds left over for my charity work. Well, the pub, at least. Damn fine Leeds Pale Ale.


And so the church clock strikes through my open skylight and I notice that the day is racing on. 11.00 am. I'm off in to town before heading to the wifi less theatre. If they had it I could blog from there. You will have to make do with daytime missives and the possibility of the odd drunken late night ramble. Oooh I'm such a tease!

Have a nice day, ya'll x

STILL WAITING, BUT SEEM TO HAVE CHEERED UP SOMEWHAT - THANK HEAVENS

THE TOUR BEGINS!

For some reason, the people who are putting on Yes Prime Minister - The Tour 2011 have asked me if I would be interested in writing a blog? Why not, I thought? I am spending twenty weeks touring the country and have loads of hours to kill so I might as well write a diary of the whole thing, if only to keep myself amused.

So this is it!

My name, for those of you who have just stumbled across this site and not followed one of my propmpts from twitter or facebook or smoke trailing sign writing plane, is Michael Fenton Stevens. I am touring the UK playing Simon Chester in Yes Prime Minister. Now, this play stars Richard McCabe and Simon Williams (strange fact no.1 - neither of them answer to their official names - Richard is Bill and Simon is Sam - very confusing) so you can tell that my part in the production is not the largest, nor is the most important. In fact, it is the strangest part I have ever been asked to do. I do not appear in the play until Act 2 Scene 2 which is 10 minutes from the end of the play. I'm on stage for about 7 minutes and my character is a television interviewer so the whole thing is filmed on stage with cameras and broadcast to the audience through large monitors in the auditorium. They have the option of watching us on stage but it seems that most of the audience watch the tele. It's a bit like have a screen in a pub; you just can't ignore it. Consequently my performance is mostly watched on tele and, as I have a mic on, I find it is possible to do a tele performance.

There is a big difference between a television performance and a theatre performance. I do most of my professional work on tele and radio, and have not done an enormous amount of theatre, even though I really enjoy it. It's just the way my career has gone. I suppose I'm lucky to have done all forms of acting as often actors do one and not the others. Never the twain shall meet! But it is very weird to come on at the end of a play and do a bit of tele. No sooner have I gone off than we are taking the curtain call and I get a good response from the audience, I believe, because they have only just seen me. If I did my scene at the end of Act 1 they may well think 'who the fuck is that?'. Some may well still be thinking that but if they are they have have obviously nodded off and have been woken suddenly by the warm applause and cheers of appreciation - or possibly gratitude that it's over - you never can be sure. All actors who are greeted at the curtain call by joyous yelps should always bear in mind that it may be the anticipation of standing up and walking about that has inspired the audience. I always think that anyway.


So, we have been in Brighton for the last 2 weeks. That is where we opened the show. But it didn't feel like we had started the tour as I was stilll living at home. Hoorah! I was even there for my recent birthday (please, no flowers; just money). Now we are really off and running. Yesterday we all clambered aboard trains and into cars and made our way North to Leeds. The Grand Theatre does what it says on the tin. Very grand. It was sunny all the way here and then started to pour as we hit the M62 corridor, so that lived up to expectations. The show went very well last night. I even got three seperate laughs in a row without saying a thing. Tele acting you see? You just have to move your eyes and the audience see it. Great beer after the show (Timothy Taylor and Leeds Brewery). And today I have been to lovely Harrogate and Betty's for tea.

Amazingly you always forget how friendly people are in the north. You know it's true, but with time away you think it must just be a memory that has been enhanced by absence and time. But it's bloody true. I had five 'mornings' just walking up the road from my digs this morning so it was not only friendly but accurate.

I will try to post some photos and other things as I go along. But this is really for me, even though the management think it is publicity.

Now, time to head off to the theatre for tonights show. Cheers! Mike x