The Man In the Rubber Mask (13 page)

‘It's not real, Robert, it's a set,' said Chris Squelch, the man who lifted cameras about and drove the huge control truck. ‘For a movie called
The Crying Game
.'

If you've seen the film, you'll know what the greenhouse looks like, it's where Stephen Rea holds the British soldier (played by Forest Whitaker) hostage at the beginning of the film. When I saw the movie a year or so later, the early part of the film didn't really work for me because I knew the greenhouse wasn't in Ireland, it was on a scrubby bit of old garden in Middlesex, and it wasn't a real greenhouse. It was made of balsa wood and polystyrene. The other reason I didn't really like the beginning part of that film is because Forest Whitaker is an American actor, who is, let's face it, a little on the tubby side. He was supposed to be a British soldier from Tottenham, it was one of those awful bits of casting which British film-makers do every now and then to try and guarantee a film will work in America. It's so stupid, there must be at least twenty-five or thirty really good black British actors who actually look like soldiers who would have done the part much more successfully. Luckily, it didn't ruin what I thought was a brilliant film.

Anyway, I couldn't hang around on the set having fun looking at fake greenhouses. This was
Red Dwarf
, I had to head for the make-up van.

The make-up van was warm and inviting, Andrea was in fine fettle. ‘Good evening, Robert,' she said as I pulled open the door, ‘happy to be wearing the mask all night, in the cold, splashing about in freezing water?'

‘That's comedy,' I said and took my seat.

Two and a half hours later, I returned to the set in full Kryten. We recorded a lot of sequences for
Terraform
that night, most of the events are lost under a film of exhaustion (luvvvie-ometer warning buzzer) but at about three-thirty in the morning we had to get into a punt on the lake and paddle through sheets of flame bubbling out of the water.

That's just the sort of thing that happens on
Red Dwarf
. You'll suddenly realise that you're covered in rubber and plastic, sitting in a leaking punt on a lake, with Craig Charles and Danny John-Jules, both of whom are in high spirits, and you can't swim.

‘You can't swim! You really are a wimp aren't you, man?' said Craig, giving me a friendly hug.

‘I've tried to learn,' I said hopelessly. ‘But it's true, I can't swim.'

‘Come on, Dan, let's chuck him in, that'll teach him,' said Craig, jostling me toward the lake.

‘Yeah, guy, that's a really good idea,' said Danny without paying much attention. Peter Wragg appeared dressed in a skin-diver's suit. He was joined by Chris Squelch from the camera crew, who is also a very experienced skin-diver. They sank into the muddy freezing water and held the punt steady as the Boys from the
Dwarf
stumbled aboard.

‘Now listen everybody,' said Peter Wragg, over the side of the boat. ‘All around the lake we've got submerged butane gas bottles. The gas bubbles up and is ignited by a fire lighter. They're quite safe, but don't go too near them.'

‘Okay Wraggy, man,' said Craig.

We started paddling out into the lake, and immediately, somehow, Craig was steering straight for a twenty-foot high sheet of flame.

‘You heard what the man said,' Danny hissed as the flames started to lick the front of the boat. Danny was sitting at the front and was obviously feeling the heat. We could hear the shouts from Rob, Doug and Juliet from the bank, but their cries of warning fell on deaf ears. Craig was looking for a light for his cigarette and there, in front of him, was the biggest light he'd ever seen. That lake looked like a Kuwaiti oil field, flickering sheets of yellow flame tonguing the velvet night. As the boat floated serenely past the roaring pillar of flame, Craig popped a cigarette in his mouth and leaned over. He leaned over a long way. The boat was at its maximum tilt. I knew I was going to die. I was going to drown in a lake in Shepperton while making a British comedy programme. I was going to die because Craig Charles wanted a light. Then he sat back and exhaled a plume of smoke.

‘Paddle on, dudes,' he said to me and Danny, who by now were both useless with laughter and fatigue. We eventually started paddling, around in circles. We were hopeless at making that boat go straight. It seemed naturally attracted to the flames.

‘We're heading for the flames again, guy,' wailed Dan from the front.

‘Go to the left, Dan,' I said from the middle.

‘Get it together guys,' said Craig from the back, he was now laying sprawled out in the soaking rear section.

‘Try and paddle toward the camera light,' shouted Rob Grant from the bank. This caused more hoots of laughter, we were so tired and dizzy, paddling through a lake that seemed to be on fire, and we had to aim for a tiny red light on a camera three hundred feet away.

Somehow Juliet and the crew managed to get some usable shots out of this sequence, but I don't know how. We were all out of control with hysterical laughter for most of the time we were in the boat. I completely forgot that I couldn't swim. I was having a great time paddling around this lake, occasionally seeing Peter Wragg's worried face as he swam through the murk keeping an eye on us.

I think we had a day off after that night shoot. It was certainly getting light as I fell in the back of the
Red Dwarf
company car and was whisked back into London before the morning rush.

The following week we started rehearsals proper and we got to know our new director, Juliet May. I suppose she had her work cut out, handling the Boys from the
Dwarf
, but she did so very well. This isn't to say we were being overly sexist, there have been accusations in the past that we are a very sexist group of men and I dispute that. We are a fairly honest group, and if someone has airs and graces they seem to bite the dust fairly quickly, but we all got on well with Juliet.

The first scene on the first day was set in the cockpit of
Starbug
. We sat in our positions with our scripts, Craig took hold of the newly devised
Starbug
steering column and it came away in his hand.

‘I hardly touched it!' he said with offended innocence.

‘That lasted a long time, guy,' said Danny flatly. For some reason this became the motto of series 5. Whenever something didn't quite work, we'd all say, ‘That lasted a long time, guy.'

As usual, the schedule was gruelling, the make-up horrendous and the scripts were killers to learn. Those issues apart, the big difference for me during this series was my frequent visits to Rob and Doug's office after work. They would tell me excitedly how everything was going in Los Angeles.

‘Looks like it's all going ahead, Bobby,' said Rob. ‘There's this bloke called Linwood Boomer who's producing it. He's supposed to have written a script, and as soon as we get it, we'll let you see a copy.'

The notion of being in Los Angeles was so far removed, I couldn't really picture it. I had been there on two occasions before, once on holiday and once trying to sell scripts. I'd had a great time on both occasions, but I couldn't see myself living there. This was mainly due to the fact that I still had three episodes of
Red Dwarf
to learn and perform. Los Angeles was a long way off.

On the daily journey between Islington, where I was living at the time, and Shepperton, I would listen to a tape of my lines on the car stereo. I would record it the night before, impersonating Craig, Chris, Danny and Hattie and then leave a blank space for where my line was meant to be. Many are the times I've been driving around Shepherds Bush, or around the Hammersmith roundabout, mouthing Kryten's lines, and I've suddenly seen a bus driver or a cabby looking at me as if I'm some sort of nut. I seem to have an involuntary head twitch when I do Kryten's speeches, which I imagine looks quite odd.

‘See that bloke in front?' says a cab driver. ‘Look at him, he's havin' a fit. Bloody nutter shouldn't be allowed on the road. I'll tell you who I had in here once. That coloured geezer,
²⁸
the scouse one, Craig Charles, that's the one. Fuck me he was funny. I tell you who I had in here once as well, some bloke who said he was the actor inside Kryten in that Red whatsit space thing, the series, what's it called, red summat. I tell you what, he didn't look nuffin' like him. Lying toe rag. Oh yeah, I get all sorts in here.'

I pull to a halt in the Shepperton car park, next to Chris Barrie. ‘Good morning, Chrisethony,'

‘Good morning-ony, Bobethonython. And how are we this morning-ithon?'

‘Very deeply well, Mister Barrothion sir, and theyself?'

‘Deep wellness is mine,' said Chris.

There have been times when Chris and I are speaking when we both lose track of what we're talking about and we just scream noises at each other along corridors.

‘Bobethoooooooonithonithonython,' screams Chris.

‘Aaahahahahhhahhahthon,' I reply, twitching out of control. I forget now how this odd mode of speech emerged.

‘Has anyone ever told you, you're cracked?' says Craig as he fiddles with a bazookoid gun. A toggle switch goes flying and lands with a clatter behind him. We all look at each other, waiting to see who's going to say something first, then in unison we all bellow, ‘That lasted a long time, guy!'

The time when we are at our most unruly, the time when the four of us, who are, at a glance, four fully grown adult males, become utter schoolchildren, is when we are in the
Starbug
cockpit during rehearsals. Somehow it's a bit like being in the classroom. Craig and Danny have been forced to sit in front because they are the bad boys. Chris and I, the swots of the class, are allowed to sit behind, but we are also often in trouble with teacher. The conversation in
Starbug
can be quite mind-numbing, a mixture of Danny's showbiz facts, ‘Prince is a seriously rich geezer, guy.'

My liberal wishy-washyness. ‘Oh, I quite like Prince actually.'

Craig's piercing insights; ‘You like Prince Robert man?' says Craig. ‘So you like black culture do you?'

‘Oh yes,' I reply, ‘Actually, I think I must have been black in a former life. Probably some sort of African Prince I would think.'

Danny explodes with laughs, possibly at something I've said, possibly at some memory of a Richard Prior line from a video he saw the night before.

‘Prince of Tossers,' says Craig who, bored with the liberal, turns on the school prefect. ‘Chris man, how many cars have you got now?'

‘Ah, let me see,' says Chris, sitting back comfortably and looking up into the roof. ‘Well, there's the Bentley, the E-type…'

‘The E-type!' screams Danny. ‘That is a serious poom poom wagon, man.'

‘It certainly is, Danielski,' says Chris, ‘Then I have the 1934 London taxi.'

‘That's handy,' says Craig cheekily.

‘It's a classic vehicle, Craig,' says Chris. ‘Then there's the Range Rover, that's just a run about, then there's the other Bentley.'

‘The other Bentley!' screams Danny who laughs richly. ‘Imagine saying that, man. This is my Bentley, and this … is my other Bentley. That has serious poom poom potential, guy.'

Poom poom, executive poom poom, woofer, major woofer, bankable woofer. These are all terms I was, by now,
au fait
with. I would understand when someone said, ‘That gag on page seven, bag it and bin it, guy, it's a ready-made cheque which I will pay into my already swollen National Woofminster Bank account.'

That means, roughly translated: the joke on page seven is very funny, so funny in fact that I know I will get a laugh, it will be simple to achieve a laugh, and I will store that laugh in an imaginary laughter bank, to call on in future when I do a joke which goes down the pan.

It's odd how certain words or phrases from the script can conjure up a whole experience or memory as well. For me, the word ‘strawberry' will never be the same again. I always remember trying to learn the replicator speech from
Demons and Angels
. I did learn it, but that was only the half of it.

Somehow, this scene was a real pig to do, and when we originally shot it, in front of an audience, something went wrong and we had to do the whole thing again at a later date.

I had to use tongs to pick up strawberries, place them on the replicator and press a load of buttons. We would then get a good strawberry and a bad strawberry, as we would later get a good
Red Dwarf
and a bad one.

For some reason talking and holding tongs and remembering all the moves pushed me to the limit. I seemed to be forever picking up strawberries and moving them about. Craig seemed to be forever watching me with great interest, then eating the bad strawberry, which was full of maggots.

‘Hey, I'll eat me own maggots, man!' It was all a bit gross. I think
Demons and Angels
was another inspired bit of writing on the boys' behalf, but it was the hardest of the series for all of us.