All in a day's work
I work predominantly in TV and getting your face on the box is usually a given because the producers don't want to spend money on extras and the like.

A good example of this is Charlie Brooker's Screenwipe which is essentially a tour of production company Endemol's offices and the staff therein. And it was at this very company that my tale begins.

I landed my second proper job in telly as a researcher for a kids Brainiac type show on Discovery called "Crash Test Danny". During my interview for the position, the series producer asked me if I wouldn't mind appearing occasionally as an assistant to the anthropomorphic title star, holding objects in experiments when required. No problem I replied.

On my first day I was handed some school physics textbooks and told to make a list of potential topics we could use for educational sketches in the show.

This took about ten minutes. It was the first day of production and all my superiors were busying themselves with "important stuff" so I started to write a few sketches for the show to give myself an idea of how it could work.

It became obvious that more characters than a mute dummy would be required to sustain interest so I introduced dinner ladies, grannies, builders, anyone that could help a scientific concept come alive comedically. I also felt that the original assistant they had considered would be far better as a regular character played by a proper actor to create a Laurel and Hardy type dynamic, so I worked this up as well.

The bosses loved the sketches and asked me to co-write the whole series. I'd inadvertently landed my first writing job. They were keen to keep the budget down so all the subsidiary characters I had written became the assistant (now called The Professor) dressed up.

When Discovery Channel asked who would be playing this role, the executives told them(for budgetary reasons no doubt) that they had ME in mind. The director took them a few shots of me in a tweed jacket pulling stupid faces and I got the part. By now, The Professor appeared in every sketch bar one. I had inadvertently landed my first acting job.

It turned out to be my last however, but Discovery played the show twice a day every day for well over a year so I couldn't have done such a bad job. Well, three in fact: researcher, writer and performer. All for the price of one. Bargain.

Length: 13 episodes but no second series. Smell my cheese.
(kingnutter, Fri 12 Jun 2009, 14:54, 1 reply)

Very nice!
You even have a wikipedia page!
( Agnostic Antichrist Baltimora, Fri 12 Jun 2009, 14:58, closed)