The Man In the Rubber Mask (31 page)

‘I don't think I've ever had so much fun making you look stupid,' she said as she cut a swathe right across the top of my slowly balding head. ‘This is so weird.'

Twenty minutes later, with the remnants of a fifties bath mat on the floor around my feet, I looked like the dome-headed old fool I really am.

‘Oh my God,' I said, as my daughter held a mirror in front of me. ‘That is measurably tragic.'

I went through a box of old clothes my son had once left lying on the floor. It's one of the joys of parenthood; I grunt around the house picking up and sorting discarded clothes and shoving them in boxes, then return the box to the room of the original owner with tiresome pleading for something resembling order and tidiness.

I've never been able to fully explain to my wonderful son what function a chest of drawers could serve in his life, I know he's never used one. He's a free spirit, a creative soul and a young man who is able to express himself in the world. For him, the floor is the perfect storage area for anything and everything. In the box among the hoodies and tattered jeans was an old woollen ski hat. I pulled it on and set off for the
Dwarf
.

The first episode we recorded was
Trojan
, although when we recorded the episode it was entitled
Slow Rescue
.

As we were rehearsing and blocking out the scenes we had to record, we became increasingly aware of the soon-to-be-arriving audience. When I'd first walked around the set there were no audience seats in place, but when we arrived for the first full day's rehearsals, the seating banks were being fitted, a massive truck was parked outside the cargo doors and a forklift truck was trundling in and out, carting piles of lightweight aluminium flooring ready fitted with fold-down seats. How did I know so much about this temporary mass seating system used to such effect at the London 2012 Olympics? Because I'd done a voice-over about it for a Discovery series called
How It's Made
. You see? I'm a mine of highly useful technical information.

It wasn't as if we didn't know we were going to record in front of an audience, of course we did. But there is a huge difference between saying ‘Oh darling, we have to have a live audience,' when you're in a meeting, and actually recording the show with one watching. I was becoming increasingly anxious about the whole thing.

So, we rehearse and josh about and Craig sets fire to my script and we start to get some of the scenes ‘off the page'. That's actors' speak for being in a mentally confident position of knowing your lines. I say we, I mean of course Chris and Craig. They were already able to run a scene without gripping onto their script. Danny was close to being in that position while I was still wandering around running my lines again and again, while hoping no one will notice and everyone will remain under the illusion that I am some kind of actor. All too soon for me it was time to get ready for the first audience recording; the seats were in, the lights were up, the cameras were ready.

We did a long camera rehearsal in costume but not in make-up, this is so the lighting cameraman can adjust everything and get some idea of what we'll look like on the night. Of course, the fact that my daughter had given me a shaved head meant there wasn't such a big jump from the bald headed old bloke with the metal suit on, and the true glory that is Kryten 2X4B-523P.

At the last minute I headed into the make-up department. Danny soon joined me for his wig fitting, followed by Chris and Craig for their slap-on H, hair enhancements and a bit of helpful powder. Okay, quite a lot more helpful powder than either of them needed back in 1989.

We run lines again and again but this is mixed in with general badinage and reflection on past
Red Dwarf
glories and behind-the-scenes hilarity. Most of this is re-enacted by Danny, who jumps around recreating certain well-worn stories from our past, me watching him in the mirror while trying to keep my rubber head motionless. Even though I've heard these stories countless times, I am still prone to bursting out laughing. This doesn't make the process of attaching the Kryten mask any easier, as you can imagine.

For the previous lord-knows-how-many series, Andrea Finch had done Kryten's make-up. On series 10, she was replaced by a very capable, and extremely pregnant, young woman called Liz Hart. It made the experience of having the make-up applied all the more intimate. I would try and sit in positions where my elbows didn't make jabbing contact with Liz's quite magnificent mummy bulge.

No matter how much noise, laughter and obscenity were flying around the make-up room, Liz just calmly carried on working. As usual with anyone stuck in a make-up chair for hours, the make-up artist and her victim get to know about each other in some detail. Liz was very skilled, very patient and had a few surprises for me when she told me her life story. I won't reveal anything here, she's writing about that herself and I hope to read her book one day. Believe me, it'll make
Fifty Shades of Grey
look like a toddler's nursery rhyme collection.

Next it was down a flight of stairs to the costume department, where I was fitted up in the full Kryten by the charming
Katarina Cappellazzi
, Howard Burden's new assistant. She learned to be very patient with us too; as you can imagine with a name like that, both Mr Barrie and myself had to keep repeating her name with as strong an Italian accent as we could manage, which, considering our prodigious vocal talents, was both technically accurate and very loud.

‘
Katarrrreeeena Cappellaaaaaaaaazzi.'

I should point out that
Katarina was born in England and doesn't have the vaguest trace of an Italian accent, but why let mere facts stop you expressing yourself
?

When everyone was ready, we heard from Helen Norman that the seating banks were chock-full and Doug was about to go in and make an announcement.

It's important to record that the only reason we recorded the show in front of an audience was because Craig, Chris, Danny, Doug and I insisted on it. It makes everything much harder and more expensive, it puts enormous pressure on the camera and sound crew, it's as if you are used to cooking over a pile of smouldering sticks and suddenly you're using a nuclear-powered pressure cooker. Everything is condensed and faster, the pressure to get the show done in under two hours is enormous.

We made our way through the dark tangle of wires and props at the back of the set and waited nervously. I have since confirmed with my fellow Dwarfers that we were all really nervous that night; we hadn't performed in
Red Dwarf
in front of an audience for fourteen years. It was a leap of faith, surely they would enjoy it, surely they would laugh like they used to? That's what we hoped, but there was no way of knowing.

When Doug appeared at the front of the set the noise was incredible. He made a short speech pleading with the audience not to post spoilers on Twitter and Facebook. He explained about the battle we'd been through to get a live audience and if the web were to be flooded with spoilers we'd never convince broadcasters to let us do it again. I am very pleased to report that all the wonderful audiences who attended the recordings were incredibly honourable and posted not a smeg stain of spoilerdom.

Our indefatigable warm-up artist Ray Peacock introduced us one by one in alphabetical order, which meant I went on last. I heard the rip-roaring cheer as Rimmer marched out into the light, looking, as Lister had once commented, ‘Like he was invading Poland.' I assume he performed the Rimmer salute to welcome the hordes. They went ape. He was followed by a scruffy but lovable Lister, another deafening roar of greeting. Next, Mister Cat emerged, resplendent in a glittering suit and Cuban-heeled boots. He did a few ridiculously energetic Cat dance moves, not bad for a bloke over fifty and of course this was greeted with screams, yelps, cheers and whistles. Finally, old Kryters hobbled toward the waiting crowd and I knew at once that these four lovable characters had been much missed. But then we had to record the actual show.

The first scene we recorded that night took place in the drive room when Cat and Lister discuss the weird facts Lister had learned from a book he'd found that, three million years earlier, had belonged to Peterson. It was all about the Moose causing road accidents in Sweden in the seventies. As usual, we had to shoot the scene a couple of times to get all the shots recorded. Standard practice.

Next was the scene in the sleeping quarters, Rimmer swatting for his Officers' exam. He wasn't doing well, particularly on the lateral thinking questions; the one about the Moose causing accidents had him stumped.

We ran through the scene, the audience loved it, they laughed and clapped, it was fast-paced with multiple entrances and exits, and we didn't trip over, I remembered my lines, Danny remembered his, Chris was brilliant, Craig was fantastic, and to top the whole thing off we got it in one take.

This is not usual, this was a fluke, doing a whole scene in one take with no pick-ups means everything worked, the actors, the cameras, the sound, the lights, the moves, the lines, the shots. A huge list of tasks, any one of which could have gone a bit wibbly-wobbly. When we gathered together to do the next scene, we knew, finally, the old Boys from the
Dwarf
were back. It was such a good start that we approached the next scene in high spirits, but the next scene, as they say in America, was a doozie.

Not so much because of the story or the scripts, the costumes, make-up, wigs, hair weaves and teeth extensions, that was all regular stuff. This one was a killer because of the set. The
Quantum Twister
is a supremely advanced Space Corps ship we stumble across, abandoned in deep space. Rimmer is of course most impressed, it's the pride of the Space Corps, manned by heroic officers who are all ripped and pipped and ready to defend our way of life.

The set was fantastic, it looked great, the captain's chair on its special plinth with hundreds of special buttons was a dream for Rimmer. However, it was a bit of a nightmare for the camera crew and Doug. It's all about getting the angles, getting the shots of each of us and making it look like we're all in the same space. There was just something about the layout that made this incredibly hard. We spent literally hours rehearsing on the set; Danny and I at our front consoles, Craig sitting to one side on the phone waiting for his call to be put through, Chris obviously lording it in his special big Captain's chair. It's where Chris should always be, he needs one of those in his house.

During camera rehearsal we had to deliver our lines, then step back to allow the camera to take our place, then move back into position for the next line. The scene was also quite long and the set was at the far end of the studio, not directly in front of the audience. This meant getting audience feedback, our bread and butter when we're recording, was slightly delayed and distant.

However, the performance of the wonderful Mark Dexter as Rimmer's brother Howard was a treat to behold, that young man is a natural. We did it, we got it in the can, the audience were fantastic and they'd clearly enjoyed it. It was such a relief to get the first episode done even though we knew there were pick-ups, scenes we didn't have time to record when the audience were present, they clearly understood the story, loved the jokes, laughed in the right places. After fourteen years off, after countless false starts and heartbreaking let-downs, it really did feel like the show was back. But no sooner had the dust settled on the first episode, we were deep into rehearsals on the second episode,
Fathers and Suns
.

At the read-through we first met Rebecca Blackstone who played the newly rebooted ship's computer, Pree. She is not only a rather beautiful young lady but also endowed with prodigious piles of talent. She had an incredible range of voices and as you may remember, an uncanny ability to keep her eyes open. I'm sure an avid viewer might be able to catch her blinking as she tells the crew how doomed they are, but I never saw her so much as flicker.

We were shooting this episode in the week before Christmas. It was mercifully cold which may sound a bit odd, but when we did the long day's pre-shoot, that meant I was in the Kryten costume from seven in the morning until around seven at night. As usual in this sorry tale I have no wish to go into detail, but let's just say it all gets a little moist and clammy under the pristine Kryten exterior. Knowing it was bloody freezing outside meant I could go out of the studio for the odd break and cool down and it actually made a difference. I would stand outside the studio, balance my lukewarm milky tea on a car bonnet, rest my script next to it and try and actually learn my lines.

A new aspect of my experience in rubber soon came to the fore. Due to far too many hours in front of crude early computer screens, my once perfect 20/20 vision has gone down the pan, I need my specs or all I can see is the odd blob of colour and light. I certainly can't read a script without my glasses.

I have a tatty collection of old specs including a pair that have bendy side bits. I can expand them and ease them over Kryten's ears, and that allows me to see the print on the page. It must look very weird but the rest of the cast and crew got used to it very quickly.

So I'm outside, steam escaping from my neck hole, script on the bonnet of a car, glasses on and a plastic cup of lukewarm milky tea with a straw in it. The glamour. The lovely members of crew who supplied my tea around the clock (I told them I was happy to make my own but they got in there too quickly) soon learned that I wanted my tea vaguely warm, bit of milk, bit of sugar, virtually undrinkable in normal life. I said, ‘Just make a shit cup of tea, that'll be perfect.' From then on it became known as ‘shit tea'. Reece, a wonderful young chap who looked after us very well, would approach with a tray, ‘Coffee for you, Chris, and a cup of shit tea for Robert.'