The Man In the Rubber Mask

by Robert Llewellyn

  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.

  When we were playing the low, or bad version of ourselves, we all got different costumes and make-up. Chris was in a kinky stockings-and-suspenders, whip-me fantasy, something he felt very at home in. Craig was dressed as a disgusting diseased pirate cowboy and Dan had grown monster sabre teeth. I, as irony control dictated, had an even hotter costume than normal.

  My costume of series 3, 4 and 5 was fairly respectably boiling, but my low Kryten suit succeeded in raising the human body temperature to previously unrecorded highs. I have never sweated so much, not in a Turkish bath, a sauna or the Australian outback. The low Kryten was very easy to play, however, he was a bad-tempered old git, which is exactly what I was inside.

  Alternatively the highs, or good version of the Red Dwarf crew, were very comfortable to play. We wore loose-fitting golden robes and we moved about gracefully. Portraying the untimely and unkind death of high Kryten was one of the few times I suffered any discomfort at the hands of the great and good Peter Wragg.

  ‘We’re going to wire you up with some body impacts,’ said Peter during a busy day’s recording. ‘Danny’s got blood bags, but as you’re a robot, you’ve got sparks.’

  ‘Right, Peter,’ I said, ‘I’m with you, and uh, how big are these sparks?’

  Peter gestured a sort of fair-sized spark that wasn’t too big, but bigger than a very small spark.

  ‘It’s quite a spark, you’ll feel it, but it won’t hurt you.’

  ‘Fine, fine,’ I said, nodding in a butch, confident way. Peter and the special effects team wired me up, we started the scene. When Danny’s blood bag body hits went off, the camera crew, sound crew and special effects team were all covered in blood. This was Terminator 2 meets The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. There was blood everywhere. Danny of course, being the trooper he is, gave good death. Then my body hits went off. Big sparks, shooting five, maybe six feet out in front of me. Bop, bop, bop, on the chest area, bop, bop, on the stomach, and the one on the leg. Bop! Sudden pain, the one on the leg was attached to my long golden robe, some
how it had come loose and was facing sideways instead of front ways. The spark hit my thigh, just below the family downstairs water works department of the lower, front-mounted groinal socket tummy banana.

  It wasn’t that bad, but as usual Peter Wragg was on the case. He takes his explosions and body hits very seriously.

  ‘Yes, the spark went off sideways and hit your leg, Robert,’ he said, examining the microscopic burn on my thigh. ‘But it looked very good.’

  Next, due to the fact that he was wearing hippie sandals, Danny got his toe burned by a fizzing atomic grenade, which the high Cat and Kryten took to be a beautiful glowing orb. Kaboom.

  Then we had to shoot a sequence where the normal Lister was on the run in a storeroom, trying to escape the low Red Dwarf crew. He stood next to a big case, which the low Kryten was to come out of, manic and violent.

  Inside the case, the special effects team had marked out two punch holes where I should aim my fists. I couldn’t see Craig, but the idea was I would punch through the holes, strangle him a bit, throw him down then burst through myself, do a bit of comedy twitching and storm off.

  Take one, I punch through the wall with all my might. I was wearing huge motorbike gloves with studs on them. I hit something hard and solid. It hurt like hell. It was the back of Craig’s head, he went flying forwards into some barrels and whacked his forehead.

  ‘Hey, I’m okay, man,’ said Craig, rubbing both sides of his head at once. This time the crew joined in, ‘He does all his own stunts.’

  My hand was still hurting as we went for take two, this time the whole wall came out and I more or less fell on Craig. That time we both did our own stunts. Third take, I did hit Craig on the back of the head, but I managed to strangle him as well, and by this time Craig was so bashed about he wasn’t too bothered.

  At the end of that day we were all a mass of bruises and minor burns, except Chris. Actually, I think he secretly wanted to get on his motorbike and ride home in his kinky low Rimmer outfit. But maybe that’s just me projecting.

  As the weeks wore on, the prospect of going to Los Angeles and recording a pilot version of Red Dwarf for NBC Television seemed to become more and more likely. On quite a few occasions I would meet up with Rob and Doug and find out what was going on. They gave me a copy of the script they’d received from America. I read it, it seemed very good, very like the Red Dwarf I knew already. It seemed very close in its structure and gags to the very first show made in Britain. It was on different-shaped paper though and it had the legend ‘by Linwood Boomer’ on the cover. I had a vision of Linwood Boomer, a short, tubby, fast-talking man with thick glasses. It was such a great name. However, right up to the recording of the last episode, nothing was that clear. Then, I got a phone call from my agent. Universal Television had made an offer. Shit, I thought, these guys are serious.

  The final episode we recorded, Back to Reality, was one of the most enjoyable for me. For a start we got to work with Timothy Spall, a long-time hero of mine. Not only that, but I got to wear loads of different costumes, including the legendary Jake Bullet from Cybernautics.

  I had to work opposite Dwayne Dibbley who is the funniest and saddest person anyone has ever had to look at. When Danny puts Dwayne’s teeth in, I check my watch and give myself ten minutes clear. Dwayne makes me laugh out of control until I can’t breathe. It was very hard for even Kryten to keep a straight face when Dwayne claimed to be the Duke of Dork.

  ‘They can swivel on this mid digit until they squeal like pigs on a honeymoon.’ One of my favourite lines. The human brain, a massively complex system of neural networks, nerve clusters and grey squidgy stuff. An amazing ability to think, remember, record and create. When I am in Red Dwarf I have to remember a large number of lines. I get angry at home when I can’t remember them. My brain revolts against the deluge of information I am trying to force into it. Then a line like that comes along ‘And if those pen pushers at City Hall don’t like it, they can swivel on this mid digit until they squeal like pigs on a honeymoon.’

  I only had to read that line once and I knew it. I never forgot it. I can still remember it now. What mechanism takes place in the human brain which allows a joke to stay in there, and an explanation for time dilation to go in one eye and out of the other, never to leave so much as a skid mark on its way through the toilet pan of my mind?

  I’ll never know, but it’s certainly one reason why comedy actors love jokes. They’re much easier to remember. Although I have to admit I am terrible at remembering traditional jokes, I’ve never been able to do them. I start out well, but then it all falls to bits.

  ‘This bloke walks into a pub, oh no, no he doesn’t, he’s already in the pub, or is it a café? Look, never mind that, there’s a man in some form of public environment, could be an office, let me think, oh no, then the punchline won’t work.’

  I can go on like that for hours, then I forget the punchline, or I give it out too early. There was a moment in series 5 where Rob and Doug used my rather odd line-learning technique in the show. It was during the final sequence of The Inquisitor, when Craig and I had frozen John Docherty, who was playing the Inquisitor, and I was having to remember what I do next, a confusing condition only experienced when time dilation is an issue.

  When we were rehearsing, and I was on the edge of actually knowing my lines, the floor manager followed us around with a script. When I stumbled I would say very fast, ‘Don’t tell me, don’t tell me, I know it, I know it.’ Then I would go quiet for a moment as my brain’s memory banks sorted through a load of old rubbish, then I would say, ‘What’s the line?’

  In the scene, I ask Craig what I say next, then before he gets a chance to answer I say, ‘Don’t tell me, don’t tell me, I know it, I know it.’

  I think it’s safe to say, however, that this is the only time I’ve had a direct influence on a Red Dwarf script.

  Come the pre-recording day for Back to Reality Timothy Spall had a problem. He walked into the make-up room, smelt the rubber mask, apologised, and left. He came back a while later and explained that the year before he’d done a Christmas film with Dawn French, I think, where he played a pig. I’d never seen it but he told me he had to wear a full-face prosthetic mask day after day for three weeks. He found it very difficult to wear, in fact he hated it, and had vowed never to wear one again, no matter what. He was the only person I’ve worked with who truly understood what it was like. Everyone who sees me in it is sympathetic, but Tim Spall knew what it was all about.

  The final recording was great fun. We’d had to pre-record quite a bit, so there wasn’t so much to do when the audience were in. This is great for us as we finish early, not so much fun for the live audience who don’t get to see a great deal.

  There was a party that night, but it wasn’t like the normal end-of-run parties, wrap parties they’re called in the trade. I can’t say wrap party though, it doesn’t sound right coming from my mouth.

  ‘Are you going to the wrap party, Craig?’ I just couldn’t do it, I’m not hip enough.

  The reason the party was a bit of a flop was that we all knew we had to be up at the crack of dawn the next day. We hadn’t actually finished. We had one more tough day in the studio Pick-ups, it was called. Picking up all the bits we’d failed to get during the seven previous weeks. This isn’t surprising as Red Dwarf is a fiendishly difficult show to make. I have had this fact underlined after working on other shows, which are so simple and easy in comparison.

  That last day in the studio was a real killer. It seemed all the hardest parts of the series had to be done again, and some bits we’d never done had to be made for the first time. The studio was hot, I was hotter, and the day seemed to go on and on. Everyone was tired and towards the last shot of the last take of the last day I reached my last corpuscle of patience. We were all standing in the Starbug cockpit waiting to make an entrance into the rear section. We seemed to be waiting for ages, the normal hectic banter between us had fallen to the odd phrase of encour
agement.

  ‘You’ll be okay, man, one scene to go.’

  ‘Let’s hold it together, guys.’

  Suddenly I shouted, ‘Oh for fuck’s sake, let’s get on with it!’

  Of course, with hindsight, it’s clear how little this helps the situation. Every member of the crew was working hard, tired as they were, and were equally desperate to get the job done. But my eyes were really painful. They were tired before I had come into the studio, then to have to get up so early and have that much eye-irritating glue stuck so near your eyes can only be experienced to be understood. I don’t recommend it to anyone. As regards knowing what wearing prosthetics is like, George Orwell was right. Ignorance is strength.

  We got the last shot done. We were cleared. Everyone clapped and whooped, we’d done it, we’d made series 5. The studio turned into a luvvie circus, everyone hugging and back-patting and congratulating everyone else. Then Craig had an idea, he got Rocket, the head camera man, to line a camera up onto my face, then Craig got hold of my Kryten nose and started to pull, very slowly. Everyone was watching the monitors, Kryten’s nose stretched and stretched, his whole face became a pink cone growing out of mine. I had been so hot most of the glue on my face was completely gone, the mask stayed there out of force of habit.

  Eventually the rubber gave way with a thwack and Kryten’s face was removed. I’m embarrassed about what happened next because I’m a man and men aren’t supposed to, it proves I’m a sissy and a wet wimp and a complete and utter luvvie. I burst into tears. Craig put his arms around me and lead me out of the studio. In the corridor Chris gave me a big hug, as did Dan, and all I could do was blub.

  In my dressing room, Craig kept his arm around me until the sobbing subsided and turned into laughter. The worst thing was, I knew why I was crying and I couldn’t tell anyone. At that moment it felt like I had just been through a war with those three men, they had stuck by me, hour after hour, through all the smoke and explosions and screaming and laughs, the bad tempers, the hours of waiting and learning lines and standing in the queue in the canteen. All that time I knew that for some reason I had been chosen to go to America and make Red Dwarf there, and I hadn’t told them. I felt like I’d cheated them, I felt like a heel.