The Man In the Rubber Mask (30 page)

Easy-peasy.

So we get in the small submersible set that had been built up on a raised platform. This allowed the special effects chaps to get underneath and control the massive, heavy, thick, solid tentacly things made of thick, heavy solid rubbery stuff. Easy peasy.

All we had to do was wrestle with the tentacles in a very confined space, with some splashy water. The tentacles looked very convincing, they looked quite dangerous, little fear-acting required, they scared the bejeezus out of me as they thrashed around the tiny space we were in.

Craig and I took a right battering. It's fine for him, he's tough, he does all his own stunts. I'm a wet liberal pacifist, that's essentially a politically correct term for out-and-out limp-wristed coward.

I slammed around in that stoutly built box with very little physical restraint as the out-of-control tentacles thrashed about in chaos. It seemed to go on for hours. A number of different camera angles and only one camera meant we needed to perform the battle again and again.

I'm making it sound less fun than it was, actually it was brilliant, but we did get quite badly bashed about. I smashed part of the set with my head, it's amazing how little protection a rubber head gives you. Craig got seven bells knocked out of him, but then he does that fighty stuff with gusto and never complained. Danny's hair got very slightly messed up and that was a tragedy.

We then started working with Sophie Winkleman who, apart from being just ever-so-slightly gorgeous, is frighteningly clever and quite posh. The cast of
Red Dwarf
don't really do poshness, we don't quite know how to handle it, but to give Sophie her due, she didn't seem to hold it against us.

As former
Red Dwarf
science officer Katerina Bartikovsky, she was meant to be clipped, efficient and slightly frightening, which she did with panache.

I'd seen some of the very funny sketches Sophie wrote for the Harry Enfield and Paul Whitehouse show: the sketches where Harry plays a louche trustafarian who runs a shop in Notting Hill that sells tiny cushions for £450. Women come into the chintzy emporium (called ‘I Saw You Coming') with their husband's credit card and fall for every half-baked sales technique the poshly pouting Harry throws at them. When they can't remember their husband's credit card PIN, Harry obliges, assuring them he does. Top stuff, and if you've ever walked around the posher parts of Notting Hill near where the Camerons live, it's frighteningly accurate.

While we were working with Sophie, we heard she was getting married. How lovely! I think we all pictured a nice wedding ceremony in some outer London suburb, maybe even a Rolls-Royce her dad hired for the day. In fact, she was due to marry Lord Frederick Windsor at Hampton Court Palace, I think the fleet of Rolls-Royces came from Buckingham Palace and I have to say, we weren't overly shocked when none of us received an invite.

The final scenes were shot in the studio where we met our creator, brilliantly played by Richard O'Callaghan. He's effectively playing Doug, the creator of
Red Dwarf
the TV series based on the lives and adventures of the
Red Dwarf
crew – come on, keep up. The Creator had written the last episode of
Red Dwarf
, the episode where we all die.

The chase sequence through the night-time market was an amazing experience. Everyone who could be corralled into action gathered in the studio that night. A few extras, friends of friends, anyone hanging about was dressed by the ever-resourceful Howard Burden. If you'd seen the set in daylight it would have looked like a bunch of students in cloaks with weird hats standing next to some tables, but at night, it looked like a futuristic
Blade Runner
marketplace. We had to run out of a building and through the market being chased by the Creator who was determined to kill us.

On the second take, some plastic bins filled with paper were placed in our way, my job was to kick one out of the way to add a bit of drama to the chase. When I was a kid, I could walk up to a stationary football with the determined intention of kicking it. I would invariably miss. I am utterly useless at sport.

However, on the night shoot, I suddenly gained incredible skill in the kicking arena. I kicked the bin with enormous force and it flew away, as I continued to run, following Craig through the parting crowds, we heard a loud bang, actually more of an explosion. I thought it was part of the scene, a special effect, it sounded very realistic and I was very impressed. Once we had passed the camera and stopped, we discovered that the bin I had kicked with such skill had hit a big light stand, sending it toppling to the ground. On impact the bulb exploded, casting the whole set darkness.

If you accidentally knock over a lamp at home, it might cost a couple of quid, your mum gets cross and you have to get out the dustpan and brush, but if you knock over a massive film light, well, let's just say there may have been a substantial insurance claim.

The finale of this scene was a recreation of the replicant death scene from
Blade Runner
, when Harrison Ford shoots the replicant woman in the back and she crashes through panes of glass in a slow-mo. It's okay, it's not meant to be an actual woman, it's a replicant so it's okay for hero Harrison to shoot her in the back. He doesn't enjoy it, he's all conflicted and troubled which, apparently, so many ladies have informed me, makes him even more sexy. Ultra-violent but troubled, that's the way to attract the ladies, chaps. Hey ho.

For many hours, the special effects team hung huge sheets of sugar glass into a makeshift frame, there was going to be no rehearsal for this shot. It was to be a one-take wonder.

Craig's family arrived on the set as we were getting ready to shoot the sequence, there was much jollity and everyone was excited to see the crashing death sequence.

The special effects crew explained what was going to happen, how we needed to keep going as we crashed through the sheets of sugar glass and dived on the crash mat the other side. None of us knew if they would break easily, we'd used sugar glass bottles in the past, when you bust one over your head, although it shatters and won't cut you, they are quite hard and they can hurt. Massive sheets of the stuff were a complete unknown, and we didn't have enough spare sheets to have a practice run.

Everybody was under strict instructions to move carefully, the area of the studio where the sugar glass was hanging was cordoned off, you couldn't even breath heavily on this stuff it was that delicate.

When everything was ready, Doug called action and we just ran, I was right next to Craig who was headbutting his way through the sheets, I was of course slightly chicken and used my protected Kryten arm to break the glass. It was tougher than we expected and very dramatic, shattering in clouds of shards as we barged through. One by one we collapsed on the fake snow-covered crash mat and lay very still. There was silence, we were waiting for Doug to shout ‘cut'.

There was a long pause, I started to worry that the whole thing had gone wrong or it looked rubbish, but suddenly I heard Doug shout ‘Cut!' and then he said ‘Fantastic!' which, believe me, is unusual for Doug. We all gathered around a massive monitor screen a few moments later and watched the sequence in super slow motion. I was almost of a mind to explain to Craig that the Red camera was capable of shooting at seventy frames a second allowing this sort of incredibly smooth slow-mo action, but I thought better of it. The sequence did look amazing, although as always I was disappointed that I hadn't charged through the plate glass using my big rubber head as a battering ram.

When the final shot was in the can – how dated that term is now – when the final shot was backed up onto remote servers, the make-up was stripped off, the set started to be dismantled and the weary actors wandered off, it was anyone's guess how the show was going to be received.

It certainly got a lot of attention from the press and a few weeks later we all gathered at the offices of UKTV in the centre of London to do a load of interviews. As Chris, Danny and I walked up the street towards the office we noticed a lot of paparazzi hanging around in the street outside. Oh yes, it's celebrity time, loads of attention from the tabloid press, welcome to the modern world.

We soon learned, however, that they weren't hanging around to see us. They were hanging around a hotel next door, a hotel where the BBC was holding a press conference for a new series of
Doctor Who
. Hey ho, not a problem,
Red Dwarf
exists in a universe of its own.

Unusually for us, there was big press launch where the shows were first seen by a lot of people in a posh preview theatre. Again it was just Chris, Danny and I from the cast as Craig was filming Coronation Street and couldn't make it. It was a great shame and we all missed him, but watching the finished shows when for a large proportion of the time we had no idea what they would look like was quite a revelation.

All we had seen for many sequences were huge green screens which we were told would be finished to look like we were in massive
Red Dwarf
storage areas. When we saw it, there we were, standing in massive
Red Dwarf
storage areas, it was seamless, it looked amazing. Shots of Craig walking along a corridor looked totally convincing, even though he'd actually been walking along a raised walkway with nothing around him but vast expanses of green cloth.

A big surprise for all of us was seeing the scene where Lister drives off in the Smart car
Starbug
with Kochanski. Only Craig and Chloë were present on that day so we hadn't seen any of that sequence.

The shows were broadcast over Easter of 2009. The audience figures, which we heard about a few days later, were nothing short of extraordinary. More than four million people tuned in to see the first episode. On Dave, I mean, I don't want to show off too much, I know it's not that important in the grand scheme of things, but four million. Blimey! Okay, in the UK if four million people watched that meant around fifty-six million people didn't watch, but still. Come on. The small rouge one rocks!

As for critical acclaim, there's no point trying to avoid the fact that some people clearly didn't like the way it looked. There were many complaints about the shows containing too much CGI. Many people said they preferred the wobbly sets and the model shots we had used in early series. That said, though, I think most people enjoyed it. I have met many people who loved it and were thrilled to see the show back on the small screen. What they, and indeed we, didn't know at the time was this was just the start, the small rouge one was definitely coming back.

 

I felt my mouth scream out a swear word involuntarily, I really didn't want to swear, but I had lost all self-control. The reason behind the swearing was essentially down to my right inner ear. I only discovered this after the event, but sometimes, apparently, your inner ear gets a bit rusty as the years pass and this can lead to feelings of dizziness and disorientation. I suppose, to be fair to my trusty old right inner ear, there were some rather violent inputs that could cause such disturbance.

I was in the middle of recording a new series of
How Do They Do It?
for Channel 5, once again a dream job for me. I went all over the place seeing how things were made, and if the things happened to be big diggers, high explosives, absurdly fast cars or in the case of the swearing, a Red Bull acrobatic aircraft, I'd have a go in them.

I met the pilot of the very small Red Bull plane on a very small airfield on the Isle of Wight. He was a charming and very experienced pilot from Zimbabwe, and he had that particular clipped, slightly Afrikaans accent. He was about the same age as me, had entered many aerobatic competitions and had a long and faultless career as a pilot.

Now I'm not totally stupid, I'd seen what the Red Bull guys do in their tiny and very powerful planes but the director assured me that wasn't their intention, they just wanted some footage of me inside the plane as it flew. The pilot would explain how the whole thing worked as we pootled along.

When I climbed into the incredibly small cockpit decked out with little cameras like I use on
Carpool
, the pilot checked my seat belt and told me not to touch the controls that were right in front of me. I was sitting in the front seat, he was sitting right behind me, and I mean, right behind. His legs were either side of me, that's how small this plane was. Then the director asked me not to swear. I looked at him slightly confused,
How Do They Do It?
was an early evening show, popular with lads 'n' dads as the TV executives described it. I had never come close to swearing on camera, why did I need to be told now?

We took off, and the acceleration was breathtaking. How can a spinny propeller thing pull you along that fast? Incredible. We flew level with the ground for a few hundred feet. I say level, I could tell we were level because we were no more than ten feet off the ground.

The pilot asked, ‘Are you okay, Robert?' over the headphones, his thick Zimbabwean accent clear above the noisy engine. I said, ‘Yeah, it's brilliant.' Which it was. You see, I love flying, I've been in two-seater Microlights, hedge hopping, I've flown sideways in helicopters just above the ground in the Mojave Desert, I've been in sail planes above Sydney, Australia, all those experiences were wonderful and memorable. I didn't know I was about to experience something rather more extreme.

We went from flying straight and level with the ground to flying vertically upward in less than a scream, the most violent movement my body has ever experienced. I can't remember much about it as I immediately blacked out. When I came too I couldn't see, well I could see red, nothing else, just red. Bit weird. I was also screaming very rude words in a torrent of total terror.

Then my stomach hit the roof of my mouth as we levelled out and I discovered another thing to my cost. I don't get flight sick. Apparently that stomach-hitting-roof-of-mouth thing makes most people vomit instantly, not me dammit.

‘Do you feel sick?' asked the pilot. I was rapidly going off this guy.

‘No,' I said, ‘but–'

Before I could say anything the sky went profoundly swirly and then a load of green field-looking things went very swirly, we were spinning and diving towards the Isle of Wight and I was screaming out more uncontrollable swear words.

We did quite a lot more wibbly-wobbly flying and that's when we discovered the inner ear thing. If he banked hard to the left I was happy as Larry, looking down at the green fields far below. He did many hard tight turns to the left, no problem for me. If he tipped a little bit to the right I started effing and jeffing like it was going out of fashion. Apparently my right inner ear just sent me into a head-spin, it doesn't really make sense now but it all seemed perfectly plausible at the time.

So here's a tip, if you are ever unlucky enough to find yourself in the cockpit of a Red Bull aerobatic plane and the pilot asks you if you feel sick, scream ‘Yes!' as loud as you can and then tell him you are going to turn your head and be sick all over him. That'll make him fly steady.

When we did eventually land and I managed to clamber out of the tiny cockpit I hugged the pilot long enough to make him uncomfortable with the whole man-on-man thing. I was so grateful to be alive and standing on the ground I couldn't stop, I was very emotional.

When the director looked at the footage a few days later he was in despair. There wasn't anything but swear words. Editors will sometimes apply a sound-killing bleep over an offensive word, in this instance they had to bleep the whole thing and pixilate my mouth because it was very easy to lip read what I was saying.

So that's one of the many things I did between
Back to Earth
and
Red Dwarf X
. I could tell you about the lifeboat in Cornwall, that was fun. Or the military assault craft in the Baltic when I spent a week with the Royal Marines on board
HMS Bulwark
. Or I could mention the launch and incredible success of
Carpool
, my online sort-of-chat-show-but-not series. If you haven't seen it, dig it out on YouTube or iTunes, most of the
Dwarfers
are on there.

But this is a story about the small rouge one and the adventures of a bunch of now late-middle-aged space bums. Once again, when we were told about the new series, the description ended with the pointed comment, pointed as it was in my direction by Doug.

‘Bobby, don't say anything on Twitter.'

I didn't say a word, not one tweet, even though I was constantly being asked if there was going to be a new series. My tweet stream was crystal clear, not a trace of smeg in the flow. I assume we had all been told the same, do not announce anything until it's officially announced by UKTV and Dave.

Craig was working on
Coronation Street
; I'd driven him to work in an episode of
Carpool
and they actually let him in through the gates so I knew he really did work there. During the period between us being told the cold hard facts of the new series and the announcement date, Craig was interviewed on a radio show in Manchester.

‘So, Craig, lots of rumours about a new series of
Red Dwarf
, have you got anything you can tell us?' says the jocular morning show host.

‘No way, man, I'm not allowed to say anything about the new
Red Dwarf
series we're making, I got in trouble last time, I'm keeping quiet man.'

My tweet stream went ballistic. Hey ho.

So in December 2011 we all gathered in a conference room at the side of K stage in Shepperton Studios. Outside there was a lot of commotion, a lot of horses and a lot of Cossacks. We discovered this was because the final scenes of Anna Karenina starring Keira Knightley were being filmed on the back lot.

Okay, quick pointless actor's anecdote and then I really will get down to
Red Dwarf X
.

I visit my agent's office about twice a year. I'm on the phone to them all the time, emails fly about like gnats around your privates but I don't often actually go into the office. My wonderful agent Maureen is part of a large management group called United Agents and they represent really properly famous and actually talented actors, including Keira Knightley.

One time when I dropped in for a meeting with Maureen, I walked past an office belonging to another agent. I wasn't gawping or perving about to see who was in, honestly, I stared because something unusual caught my eye. There, sitting on a chair in a glass-partitioned office with her back to me was a woman with a quite inconceivably long neck. I only ever saw the back of her head so when I saw Maureen further down the corridor I gestured in big, pathetic actor-y mime talk, pointing very obviously and silently saying ‘is that Keira Knightley?' I was quickly ushered into her office and told to behave. It was Keira Knightley by the way but I wasn't allowed to go and stare.

So then, first day on
Red Dwarf X
and there's a load of horses and men dressed as Cossacks and loads of people in Puffa jackets carrying clipboards and in amongst this throng, trotting away from me on a beautiful horse, is a woman with an inconceivably long neck. It was Keira Knightly.

Twice now I've seen the back of her head, I've never seen her face, not that I'm obsessed, I'm not stalking her or anything. I've just been quite close to her twice and never seen her. In a way it's a metaphor for my entire life, I've been close to stardom, fame, glamour, an exclusive lifestyle, immense wealth and contact with the rich and powerful, but this life has always had its back to me and is moving away fast on a massive white horse.

That, ladies and gentlemen, is a classic actor's anecdote, long, pointless, overly dramatised and we learn absolutely nothing from the telling of it.

So, moving on, K stage in Shepperton, inside the conference room, day one. ‘Okay, listen up people,' said Jim Imber, the first assistant director, a man who exuded confidence and the ability to get the job done. ‘We're going to read through the scripts now, afterwards we'll have a meeting to discuss what we need to do, everyone ready?'

I was as ready as I'd ever be, which is to say, woefully underprepared. There were a lot of people present, some we knew well, some we'd never met before. I'd only been sent three scripts before the first read-through and I'd read them avidly, but now, sitting in this room with all these people, I returned to my default setting for such experiences, that of not having a clue what was happening or what was expected of me.

I love it when I receive
Red Dwarf
scripts through the post as I had done a few days before the read-through. They plop through the letter box and everything else has to wait; the chickens go hungry, the dog is busting for a wee and hassling me, but I'm reading scripts and they all have to wait. They were funny, punchy, classic
Red Dwarf
. I loved them, but then I'm just a secret fan-boy covered in rubber, what would I know? As usual the only things that filled me with dread were the long Kryten speeches, and there in the second script I read was the mother of all speeches. It was a classic chunk of Kryten exposition, a wonderfully verbose and intricate explanation of the Erroneous Reasoning Research Academy or ERRA, for short.

Days later, I carried the script as I walked the dog through the autumn mist that covered the Cotswolds; I tried to remember the first three lines. I repeated them over and over again, glancing at the script as I walked. I got up to the first line then went totally blank. Memory's not improved then, I said to myself.

I have become very adept at either writing a short paragraph introducing something, or simply making it up on the spot and delivering it to camera. I must have done it thousands of times on shows like
Scrapheap
and
How Do They Do It?
. I did it while I was driving on
Carpool
, I've done hundreds this year for the
Fully Charged
series. I'm a bit like a goldfish, I have a really good, really efficient ultra-short-term memory. If I have longer than five seconds from the moment I drop the piece of paper to the moment the director says action, I have problems.

I carried on walking, the dog took no notice of my struggle; she was too busy sniffing for rabbits. She's quite old, slightly deaf and a bit blind, rabbits cavort right in front of her; they point and laugh their little rabbit laughs. They hop about with impunity, confident they are in no danger. I didn't notice them either, I was engrossed in deep space.

I knew the coming ten weeks were going to be a challenge. Not only were the scripts littered with killer Kryten speeches, but we were recording this series in front of an audience. That takes the whole rubber-covered experience into a brand new hall of terror, well it does for me anyway. If it's just the cast and crew in a closed set, me fluffing my lines just requires an apology and some mild jocular teasing from my fellow performers, if I fluff a line in front of an audience, the audience tends to notice.

Not only that, they love it when we smeg up, they are almost willing us to fail. The Smeg Ups and Smeg Outs have been hugely popular and we've produced bucket loads of them over the years, I have, as some of you may know, been a prime contributor to this humiliating but popular art form. So, after fourteen years of not performing covered in rubber in front of an enthusiastic audience, I knew I had to raise my game.

The other thing I had to do was lose my hair. I haven't got that much left anyway but I've learned the advantage of shaving it off. Back in the eighties when I started working on
Red Dwarf
I still had a proper head of hair, like thick and dark. Twenty-four years of
Red Dwarf
, children,
Scrapheap Challenge
and general domestic and financial stress has cruelly manifested itself in my once luscious locks. I now have a paltry grey covering that resembles a threadbare fifties bath mat. I sat down in the kitchen the night before I set off for Shepperton and rubber glory, and handed my daughter the hair clippers.