The Man In the Rubber Mask

by Robert Llewellyn

  When I have learned other people’s scripts there is usually a turn of phrase or a sentence structure which you recognise and you already have at your disposal. It’s therefore fairly easy to learn as you almost know it already, you only have to memorise it in order.

  With Kryten talk, this is never the case. Rob and Doug will never use a hackneyed turn of phrase, they always come up with new ways of saying something. This is one reason I love their scripts when I first read them, and hate their guts as I try and learn them. There were times as the third series wore on where a new and tortuous Kryten line would make us all laugh simply because it was so tortuous.

  The standing joke was that Rob and Doug would write me a five-page long explanatory speech, telling the rest of the crew how black holes work, or that time dilation would save us from the horrific fate overhanging us. This speech would be very long and very hard to learn, it would start with the word ‘Listen…’. Most importantly of all, at the end, Danny would smile, show his teeth and say, ‘I was with you until you said listen.’ This would, of course, bring the house down.

  In the rehearsal room were two old bunk beds18 which stood in for the beds in the officers’ quarters where a lot of the action in series 3 took place. On most mornings I would arrive, script in hand, still trying to do that killer speech on page seven. Donna DiStefano would be going through her props, Ed Bye would be pacing around working out his camera script. Chris Barrie would be on his mobile phone trying to fend off offers of work and see if he could fit in a four o’clock. It has taken me a while to find out what a four o’clock was. I know that during the war the gunners in British and American bombers used to point out enemy fighters to each other using the clock as a common reference. Hence, ‘The hun at five o’clock high chaps, give ’em hell.’ However, Chris Barrie’s four o’clock is a voiceover recording at four o’clock, in the afternoon, hopefully after rehearsals. Not quite so brave and dashing as the World War II gunners reference, but with a charm all of its own.

  On the top bunk there would be an inanimate lump, otherwise known as a sleeping Craig Charles; in the lower bunk would be a far more elegant body, stretched out, but likewise, fast asleep. This would be the graceful frame of Danny John-Jules.

  Everyone would work quietly, so as not to wake them until rehearsals began at ten o’clock. I have no idea what Danny and Craig did during the night in those days, but it clearly didn’t involve sleep. They made me feel so old, they did in fact call me granddad for a while when we each revealed our ages over lunch. Well, Hattie wouldn’t reveal hers, I politely didn’t ask, being a nice, middle-class, well-brought-up boy. However, such niceties didn’t hold Craig back, who immediately said, ‘Come on Hat, how old are you, man?’

  Hattie wasn’t having it, and her age remains a mystery to all of us to this day. When they found out how old I was, they were amazed.

  ‘I’ll be dead before I’m that age, man,’ said Craig. ‘I’ve peaked already man, I’m twenty-four and I’m burnt out.’

  When I gave him a lift home that night he was quite animated. Normally Craig fell asleep as soon as he closed the car door, this time there was no stopping him.

  ‘It’s amazing how old you are and you’re still going. I’m shagged, man,’ he said, ‘I started in this game when I was sixteen, doin’ poetry and that. I got married real young, I was on telly regularly by the time I was eighteen. I’ve got there too quick, man, now I’m shagged out, I’m burnt out, man, there’s nothing left, I’m a husk. It’s all over for me, man. I’ll never get to your age.’

  I was very worried for Craig, I have a weakness when I listen to other people, I always believe what I’m told. The next day I had foolishly expected Craig to be likewise subdued, but he was bouncing about like a spring chicken. Looking back on his speech now, years later, it does seem rather amusing. Craig has immense energy, and an annoyingly good memory. I say annoying for two reasons: one is that he can pick up the script, look at it a couple of times and then lose it, and he knows all his lines, knows all Danny’s lines and knows most of mine. The other thing he has a good memory for is conversations and statements. I could say something one year and then contradict it the next, as I am wont to do, and the only person who remembers what I said before is Craig.

  ‘That’s not what you said last year,’ he’ll say with a cheeky grin.

  ‘Isn’t it?’ I’ll say, wracking my brains trying to remember what I might have said.

  ‘No, on January the twenty-third, you said completely the opposite.’ The annoying thing is he’ll be right.

  I have learned though that remembering lines is very much to do with trust. In the episode titled Timeslides, the one where Kryten got to do a bit of air guitar work in the dark room, I had to do a difficult speech, apologising to Rimmer for referring to his mother as an old trout.

  ‘I compared your mother to an aged blubbery fish…’ and on and on. Try as I might that week, this speech got the better of me. Hattie tried to help me remember it by breaking the speech into a list of first letters. That meant ‘…an aged blubbery fish, a simple minded scaly old piscine…’ became A B F A S M S O P.

  It was hopeless. I couldn’t remember a word of it. Nothing seemed to help, I was very downhearted about it and constantly lost my temper when trying to memorise it. If I stumbled in rehearsals I would bark out, ‘Don’t tell me, I know it I know it.’ And then promptly prove that I didn’t know anything.

  Come the night of the recording, Mike Agnew, the super hard-working production manager who fell asleep in the back of the bus, had provided an idiot board with this speech written on in capital letters. He tucked it away behind part of the set so the audience wouldn’t see it before the scene, the idea being that he would turn it around just before saying action.

  Under the pressure of the moment, no one remembered to turn the card around before we started recording the scene. There’s always nine hundred things going on at once, it’s hardly surprising. The first few exchanges between Kryten and Rimmer went very well. Chris had huge long speeches to do, twice, three times as much as me, and he sailed through them beautifully. As we approached my killer speech, I noticed out of the corner of my eye, Mike Agnew crawling across the floor, desperately trying to reach my cue card. I realised what was going on, but somehow didn’t panic and started the speech with ease. I managed to get through it, not word-perfect, but close enough. It was the first time I’d ever got past the first phrase. Meanwhile, Mike was in an agonising position by my feet, I had to step over him in order to do my exit. The thing is, it’s amazing what an audience can do for a performer when the pressure is on. The more hours I’d spent trying to learn this speech, the less I could remember. The more angry I got, the more hopeless it became. As soon as I relaxed, it was fine. A salutary lesson without doubt.

  I’ve often wondered if proper actors have been taught how to learn lines. By proper actors, I mean the ones who went to drama school. I didn’t go to drama school, I barely went to school at all. I was forever running away and skiving off to smoke cigarettes and practice swearing.

  I did try to go to drama school once, after I’d been performing for a bit, I thought I’d give it a go. I knew I could get a grant because I’d never been to university. I applied to get into the Central School of Speech and Drama, in St John’s Wood, London. I got a form and an explanatory booklet. I had to learn two bits of Shakespeare and one bit of contemporary. I borrowed the Complete Works of Shakespeare from a friend and found the passages. Bit of Hamlet, bit of Two Gentlemen of Verona. Neither of them made any sense to me at all, although I’d seen both plays and enjoyed them. I asked another friend what contemporary bit of theatre to do, I fancied doing something like a speech from the film Bullet starring Steve McQueen. I was told this wasn’t quite appropriate. In the end we settled on a speech from The Threepenny Opera by Berthold Brecht.

  I spent a couple of evenings trying to learn this stuff, then turned up at the school for my interview. I sat in a room full of men
who looked just like me. My height, my hair colour, my build. The only difference was they were all quite good at acting. I was eventually shown into a room where three people sat behind a table. They asked me to do my Shakespeare, I nodded calmly, stood up, shook my hands about in an actory sort of way. The three people looked expectant. I stood like a Shakespearean character and said… nothing. I couldn’t remember a thing.

  ‘Would you like a prompt?’ someone asked. I had no idea what a prompt was, but I nodded seriously.

  “What kind of man is this,” said a man who was sitting behind me.

  ‘Oh yeah, that’s it.’ I said. ‘I remember now, “What kind of man is this” … um … don’t tell me, I’ll get it in a bit.’

  Hopeless. They didn’t ask to see my other Shakespeare, but asked for a bit of the contemporary piece. They asked what I was going to do. I couldn’t remember what it was called.

  ‘It’s a sort of musical by this German bloke. It’s got songs in it, really famous songs.’

  ‘Kurt Weill?’ said one of the people behind the table helpfully.

  ‘Could have been,’ I said scratching my head.

  ‘Bertolt Brecht?’ said another.

  ‘That’s the fellow,’ I said pointing at them and clicking my fingers. ‘It’s a piece by Bertolt Brecht called Mack something.’

  ‘Mack the Knife?’

  ‘You know it don’t you?’ I said smiling.

  ‘Yes,’ said the man behind the table, ‘but I don’t think you do.’

  ‘Come and sit down and tell us a bit about yourself, Robert,’ said the woman who was sitting next to him. ‘Why do you want to become an actor?’

  ‘Oh, I don’t really want to be an actor, I’m just a show-off really, but I can get a grant for three years you see, so I thought I wouldn’t have to work.’

  The three people behind the table nodded gravely, but they didn’t give up.

  ‘Have you had any acting experience?’

  ‘Not really, not proper acting, I’ve done a lot of comedy and mime stuff. Street entertaining and cabaret.’

  ‘Have you done any fencing?’

  I thought this was a bit of an odd question, I thought they were talking about acting and suddenly he asks about fencing. The thing was I had done fencing.

  ‘Well yes,’ I said, ‘I did quite a lot of fencing on a farm I used to work on. Mostly wire mesh but some post and rail stuff.’

  I was thanked for my time and told to ask the next young hopeful to come in as I left. I thought I’d done pretty well, all things considered. They didn’t offer me a place, strangely enough. If they had I would have gone to college with Jemma Redgrave, not that it would have done me a lot of good.

  I have since discovered that proper actors don’t get lessons in how to remember lines, they just get a lot of practice, and like most things, the more you do it, the easier it becomes.

  The last episode of series three, The Last Day, we recorded was a favourite of mine, because for one fairly large section I wore an evening suit, which was far more comfortable than the normal Kryten uniform. Also, because it was the last episode of the series, there was a bit of a party atmosphere going around, and there was to be a party after the show.

  As the make-up came off for the last time, I breathed a huge sigh of relief. Never again would I have to sit still for five hours having someone dab my face with a sponge. Never again would my eyes be glued open and have bright lights shone in them. Never again would I sweat so much each day I wouldn’t have to take a pee. It was all over. Forever.

  As I walked from the BBC studios to the rooms we were having the last night party in, I was a deeply happy individual. I felt a great sense of achievement, I’d worn a full-face, full-head prosthetic mask for eighteen days and I hadn’t killed myself or anyone else.

  The party was great fun, I’d made friends with a lot of new people but I knew what would happen, as soon as we all went our separate ways, no matter what promises we’d make, we’d never see each other again.

  At one point Chris Barrie stood up in the corner of the room and did a short routine depicting a day on the Red Dwarf set which had everyone on the floor laughing. His impressions of Rob, Doug and Ed were amazing in their observation. His Craig Charles was breathtaking. ‘Hey man, I do me own stunts, just stuff a load of explosives down me jock strap, no problem man.’

  He did a wonderfully funny impression of Peter Wragg, the special effects and model wizard, his Danny John-Jules was magnificent, and watching the people’s faces who are being impersonated is fascinating. They stare with slack jaw, trying to work out who it is he’s doing. People very rarely recognise themselves, but everyone else does immediately. Chris only had to pull a face and we all knew who he was being. He didn’t do a Robert Llewellyn at the party, I would have to wait for that dubious privilege.

  The next morning it was the long, and even for me, slightly hung-over coach ride back to Acton. Once in the car park we bid our farewells and that was an end to it. I had great fun doing the series, but they had made three and the general feeling going around was that this was the last one.

  I can never really enjoy something I’m in. I used to love staying in posh hotels, having your own bit of soap and your own bathroom. It’s a telling fact that after you’ve stayed in posh hotels a lot, the thrill wears off. Does this mean that if you were sent out into space, which would be so amazing, after the hundredth trip you’d be bored? I think it’s possible. Still the producer at this time. Under one of these beds was written in felt-tip pen, ‘Norman Lovett was here for quite a while.’

  Chapter 5

  I didn’t see the warning light, I didn’t hear the klaxon. In the huge irony control room in the sky, men in white coats were running about with clipboards making notes.

  ‘Looks like 8289-27663-RL is going through an irony warp,’ says an operative who starts punching in data. I didn’t hear them, I didn’t know that 8289-27663-RL was me.

  On 5 November 1990, less than a year since I had the last mask removed, I was sitting in a make-up chair in a location make-up lorry, parked next to a huge disused pumping station just below a flyover in west London. I was having a new mask stuck on.

  When I say a new mask, I mean this was a completely new mask. Many people don’t realise that each time Kryten appears on the screen, it’s actually a new mask. I can only wear them once, they’re like paper knickers, wear once and throw them away. When they’re removed, they’re ripped to bits, quite often by me, so my make-up chair is surrounded by sweaty bits of Kryten’s head. Sad really.

  In the intervening year I’d been to see a skin allergist,19 and found out that I am allergic to nothing except exhaustion. The reason my face was so sore the year before was because it had a rubber mask stuck all over it all day. ‘What d’you expect?’ said the doctor.

  I had been to have my head re-cast. I went back to the BBC special effects department in Acton, where I met Andrea Pennell. She was the new head make-up person on Red Dwarf IV. She watched as they made another mould of my head and then she and Peter Wragg pointed at the cast with pens and rulers and measuring tapes. They tapped it, drew lines on it and talked for ages about feather edges and splits, about foam compounds and cooking times. I nodded in my special ‘I understand all about foam’ type of way, when in reality I was thinking about kinky sex.

  For the fourth series I had two new make-up women, Andrea and Fiona Kemp. I say they were my make-up women, of course they weren’t. They were independent women who controlled their own destiny. Not only that, they also did Chris and Craig’s make-up, so there was very little exclusivity about the arrangement. They did spend more time with me though, and it is a well-known fact in the entertainment industry that make-up women know everything about their artists and everything about the production company and everything about everything really. Quite a lot of male performers marry their make-up women. I don’t want to list some of the more contemporary make-up women–male performer liaisons. I’d just like t
o state now, unequivocally, that I have never had sexual congress with a make-up woman.

  After a few long sessions, even the tongue of a seasoned non-gossiper starts to wiggle a bit, and if they’re like me, I am blurting everything out before my arse hits the chair. I walk in the door in the morning and before they can say ‘Good morning, Robert’ I’m off.

  ‘I’m really depressed about my life, I feel old and fat. I don’t think my girlfriend fancies me anymore. I don’t think my mum ever really loved me, I’m very confused about my life and sexuality, I don’t know what to do about my career, I quite fancy the woman who’s doing the vision mixing, what d’you know about her? No I shouldn’t. I’m in a regular, ongoing-type relationship which I’m really happy in, at least I think I’m happy…’. This is before I take my coat off.

  ‘Are you warm enough, Robert?’ asked Andrea on that first morning in the make-up truck. Andrea always goes for the simple to solve problems first. If you’re cold, she gets the fire on, if you’re depressed about the state of the universe, she needs a couple of hours to sort it out.

  Fiona was a very patient woman too, she had a small baby boy who she had to leave at the crack of dawn to stand by my rubber head and sniff glue for three or four hours a day. Fiona did have a tendency to lose glue brushes though. The glue they use to attach Kryten’s head to me is some sort of medical, heavy-duty skin-ripper stuff, which dries very quickly and was used in Vietnam for sticking GIs stomachs together to ‘get them heli-vacced the hell outta here!’ Kaboom, rat-at-at-tat. ‘I love the smell of napalm, it’s the smell of victory…’ Sorry.

  Fiona would stand by me for minutes at a time, looking all over the place for the missing glue brush, which was invariably stuck to my back or the arm of the chair or something.

  It was very early in the morning that first day, and bitterly cold. Everyone on the crew was wearing those big quilted jackets that film crew-type people always wear on location. I was boiling. Once you cover every inch of your head in rubber, you’re warm, full stop. Chris, Craig and Danny were all standing around shivering, I think this was one of the two or three times in four years where I almost felt more sorry for them than I did for myself.