The Man In the Rubber Mask (28 page)

For the next few years I didn't see the rest of the cast that often, although we did all gather together to record the cast commentary tracks for the DVDs. The shows had been out on VHS tapes for years, but in the early noughties, the entire smegload was released on DVD, eventually resulting in the big fat boxed set.

Spending all day sitting together in a small audio studio watching telly was enormous fun. It reminded me how much I enjoyed being with the rest of the cast, the long and rich history we had together, the in-jokes, the constant banter and the hysterical laughter which would suddenly explode. One of the things that surprised us all was the amount of
Red Dwarf
we had completely forgotten; no surprise in my case but even Craig would occasionally pipe up and say, ‘I don't remember doing that!'

It is a very peculiar feeling watching yourself on telly and having no recall of that moment. Generally when I watch an old episode of
Red Dwarf
I not only remember the actual recording but also events in my life around that time, the visual stimulus of seeing Kryten's absurd head knobbing about causes connections in my fetid brain matter and events come swirling back. Judy being pregnant, or the period when we moved into our house just before we recorded series 5, or the day I took my old Land Rover to the garage when the exhaust had fallen off. Weird unconnected memories from fifteen or even twenty years earlier come bobbing back over the calm waters of the distant past.

So when I watch a scene I don't recall it's quite disturbing: Kryten walking along a corridor in
Red Dwarf
with Mr Rimmer and Mr Lister. Nothing. It's like I'm watching it for the first time. How could I not remember anything about it? Every now and then as we recorded the cast commentary the sound engineer would speak to us over our headphones, ‘Doug has asked if you can try and stop saying “I don't remember doing this”, especially you, Robert.'

Thanks, yeah, okay.

However, I think we all had the overriding sense that we were commenting on something we had done; we all used to be in this bizarre sitcom back in the twentieth century. Things had moved on,
Red Dwarf
was no more, held in great affection by millions but just a memory and a DVD boxed set.

My oh my, how wrong we were.

 

 

 

 

I would suggest that by the time I did the final day's filming on the final episode of
Scrapheap Challenge
in the summer of 2007, the very idea that I would ever do another series of
Red Dwarf
only existed in another time dimension. One inhabited with a far better-looking version of me, a man of much greater intellect and charisma, a man who had eyebrows and the ability to see into the future with his psychic powers.

Scrapheap
had by that time filled my working life for 10 years. I have no idea how many machines I witnessed being built, it is in the many hundreds; nor how many team members I met, must be in the thousands; nor how many hours first Cathy Rogers and then Lisa (no relation) Rogers and I sat in rain, sun, mist or drizzle talking about them. How many amazing judges I spoke with, people who were leaders in their fields and who all took an immense interest in what was going on. Too many to recall without notes.

In the ten years from 1998 until 2007 I met the most astonishing engineers, scientists, mechanics and mad-cap bodgers, or in the US, kludgers. Some brilliant, some bizarre, some just a little bit frightening but all incredibly inventive and enthusiastic. It was through working on this series that I became more and more interested in engineering, in large energy projects and more directly in alternative-fuelled vehicles. While I was working on the series in California in 2001 I had my first ride in a hybrid car, the Toyota Prius. I didn't know what it was and I wasn't interested when I was given a lift in one.

This first-generation Prius belonged to a member of the production crew. To me it was just a dull, faceless and rather dusty car. It was only as we pulled away from a set of lights on Sunset Boulevard late at night that I realised something was different about this entirely unremarkable looking vehicle. It pulled away silently. It felt like it was being towed by a wire, there was no engine noise.

‘How did you do that?' I asked incredulously. The woman driving the car just said, ‘It's a hybrid.'

I didn't know what that meant, ‘A hybrid? A hybrid what?' Half man, half machine? It wasn't an explanation that meant anything. When she dropped me off outside my apartment in West Hollywood I didn't ‘invite her in for coffee', I asked her to ‘pop her hood', which is a far more respectable request for a middle-aged married man to make to a young female researcher. I soon surmised that under the bonnet, as we Olde Englanders would have it, was a petrol engine and an electric motor working in spiritual harmony.

That was a pivotal moment for me, it may seem unremarkable and dull to most normal people but for some reason that wonderful technological achievement got my imagination working overtime. From that moment on, my whole life and world had moved away from being an actor toward being a kind of weird advocate of engineering education and specifically alternative-fuelled vehicles and renewable energy.

That was, until I got the call.

‘Darling, I've just heard from the
Red Dwarf
people,' said my agent Maureen. She's very dry, she doesn't get excited about showbiz shenanigans because she deals with them day in, day out. ‘Apparently they want to make a new mini series.'

‘What, of
Red Dwarf
?' I asked.

‘Yes darling, a three-part special for UKTV.'

‘What now? After all these years?'

‘Yes, plus they want to do something they're calling
Red Dwarf
unplugged.'

‘Oh Lordy, what does that mean?' I asked, immediately full of dread.

‘I think they expect you to improvise a live show, in a theatre, in front of an audience darling.'

‘A what? A live show?
Red Dwarf
? In costume, covered in rubber, in a theatre? Has the world gone mad?'

‘The world went mad a long time ago dear,' said Maureen flatly. ‘What shall I say to them?'

So I talked to Craig and Danny and Chris and eventually to Doug.

Red Dwarf Back to Earth
was going to be on Dave, which for those of you outside the UK media bubble isn't a chap, it's a cable and satellite TV channel and a very successful one. Dave showed
Red Dwarf
repeats on a regular basis and had decided to commission a brand new three-part mini-series plus a special called
Red Dwarf Unplugged
.

Doug explained that the three-parter was entitled Back to Earth. It was to be made on a very minimal budget and I wasn't allowed to say anything about it on Twitter. Doug was going to direct the shows and I wasn't allowed to say anything about that on Twitter. Every description of the way we would work, or the storyline that Doug explained to me always ended with the firm request, ‘Don't say anything on Twitter, Bobby.'

So I didn't say anything on Twitter. I was very good. I kept schtum. I feel it's important at this point to remind you that the last time we'd recorded a series of
Red Dwarf
, back in 1998, there was not only no such thing as Twitter or Facebook, there was barely the internet. I know I had a dial-up modem at home, I would occasionally sit in front of my hefty laptop and ‘dial into the web'. Three-quarters of an hour later, I'd be online, an hour after that I may have been able to download two or even three emails. By the time
Back to Earth
came to be, things had moved on. I had web pages, blogs and nearly twenty thousand followers on Twitter.

I'd joined Twitter in early 2007 when I was working in Los Angeles. During that period I went to some kind of tech party thing, I can barely remember the circumstances, but someone I met there asked me what my Twitter handle was. I thought they were being rude, assuming a Twitter handle was some kind of euphemism for gentlemen's downstairs equipment. Once the cleanliness of the term had been established and the basic rudiments of what Twitter was all about had been explained, an enthusiastic young man signed me up for Twitter. He asked me what I wanted my Twitter handle to be.

At that time the crew on
Scrapheap
had taken to calling me Bobby-Llew due to the fact that my current co-host was called Bobbi Sue Luther. They found it amusing that she was Bobbi Sue and I was Bobby-Llew. Well, none of them knew how to say Llewellyn, so when someone suggested I call myself bobbyllew it all seemed perfectly fine. From that day, for maybe a year and a half, my Twitter account remained resolutely dormant, one tweet, a classic from the era, read, ‘What is this?'

The next time I checked, maybe in late 2008, I noticed I had over five thousand followers. I felt guilty, these poor five thousand people were waiting for me to say something. It was just rude to ignore them. So I typed ‘Hello' and it's been downhill ever since. So, Doug begged me not to say anything on Twitter.

We were all sworn to secrecy. UKTV wanted to make the announcement on a specific day, it was all explained to us in great detail.

Not long after we'd all had this explained to us in great detail, Craig did an interview on Radio Abergavenny or somewhere and when asked if we were ever going to make new episodes of
Red Dwarf
he said, ‘Yeah, we're making a new series very soon la, but it's all a bit hush-hush at the moment.'

He said this live on-air. I'd say it was twenty or maybe even thirty seconds after the words left his mouth that the first tweet hit my mentions column. Within a minute I'd received maybe seven hundred tweets asking me if it was true. I still didn't say anything, I didn't even tweet ‘no comment'. I let it be.

I checked later that day and estimate (it's very hard to count tweets) that the questions were now in the many thousands.

‘Hey @bobbyllew, just heard new
Red Dwarf
!!! Is it true???'

I spoke to Doug. ‘I think just possibly there's a chance people are quite interested,' I said. I explained to Doug that I was about to head off to America to attend a load of meetings and record a few episodes of
Carpool
, the online talk show I record inside a Toyota Prius. I was also attending an event called Dragon*Con in Atlanta, Georgia, listed as ‘The Biggest Science Fiction Fan Convention
…
In the WORLD!'

A few days later, I was informed that I'd been invited to do an interview on KCTS television in Seattle, Washington State. KCTS is one of the PBS stations in America with a long tradition of showing
Red Dwarf
. I had visited Seattle with Craig in the nineties when we'd taken part in pledge drives and huge
Red Dwarf
events in that glorious city.
Pledge drives are an unusual, and it seems uniquely North American, tradition where regular viewers and supporters of PBS television channels give financial support to the local station during a pledge drive. The channel uses ‘celebrities' who are popular on the channel to raise the profile of the event. Craig and I spent most of the evening baffled but we joined in as best we could
.

I do love Seattle, there's no point trying to cover it up. I am a lefty liberal and I love Seattle. Okay, pigeonhole me, I won't complain. It's usually dull, cold, wet and I feel completely at home there. A few adjustments to the travel logistics and it was all sorted. I was told by Doug to announce the new series while I was there.

I flew to America with my son Louis, we stayed in a lovely old downtown hotel in Seattle, went for walks in the rain (it always rains in Seattle) did a lot of sleeping, visited various skate parks and the original Starbucks, then, after a couple of days, made our way to the KCTS studios.

I talked about the new series we were going to make during an interview in front of an invited audience, I mentioned that we hadn't made any
Red Dwarf
for ten years and I couldn't remember how to do it. It was all very jolly.

As the interview was broadcast live, the news spread with extreme rapidity. I started getting text messages as we walked out of the studio. Obviously, there had been discussions back in the UK. I was being asked not to say anything. I laughed nervously. It was just a bit late. The Twitterverse went ballistic.

I then visited a wonderful man called Leo Laporte in his studio in Petaluma, a small town about sixty miles north of San Francisco. Leo had been an inspiration to me and had convinced me to start making Carpool as an online series. We are the same age and both have a traditional TV background, only he now runs a multi-million-dollar-a-year podcast company called TWIT which stands for This Week in Tech. It's nerdgasm city, listening to TWIT is what keeps me in the loop, baby, pushing the tech envelope. You can easily find it online and if you're the least bit interested in techie things, social media things and all related topics. I highly recommend it.

After leaving San Francisco we flew to Atlanta and I was immediately overwhelmed by the sheer scale of the Dragon*Con event. As I waited at the airport we were herded toward a large group of actor-y types, some of whom I recognised from various sci-fi shows. I'm not talking Leonard Nimoy or Sigourney Weaver, I'm talking about that bloke, you know, the one with the funny head in
Battlestar Galactica
.

We were conveyed to the hotel in a large bus and I was given an all-areas pass and a key to my suite. I had a suite, baby. Yeah. Luxury, with a fourteen-year-old son who was determined to try every caustic caffeinated ultra-high-sugar energy drink on the US market, something he was never allowed to have back in Blighty.

‘I want to see how long I can stay awake, Dad,' he said to me with glee, just as I was trying to get to sleep. He had a kind of camp bed at the other end of the huge suite we were in. He moved the furniture in the night and made himself a little corner nest. I have no idea how he did it without waking me up, but when I climbed out of bed the following morning I couldn't believe my eyes, everything in the room had moved! My son was out for the count, the one, and I say this with caution, the one advantage of ultra-high caffeine ‘energy boost' drinks is once they wear off, even my son, who has never done the sleeping thing easily, just hit the deck.

On the first day of the convention proper I found my signing table, I was situated right next to Micky Dolenz. For those of you not old enough to know about Micky, he's a legend. He used to be in the Monkees, a sixties American version of the Beatles. Micky Dolenz was a massive star in his time, girls screamed when he walked down the street, girls had pictures of him on their bedroom walls. I'm talking proper famous. He was very charming but he looked a bit bored as he signed pictures for a huge queue of middle-aged women who clearly still loved him.

I sat behind my table a little forlorn. This was such a massive event, there were so many TV stars sitting behind tables in this huge cavernous hall, some of whom you'd all know, some of whom I'd put money on you never having heard of even if you'd seen the show they were in. But they all had a queue of people waiting to meet them. I, on the other hand, had not a soul.