The Man In the Rubber Mask

by Robert Llewellyn

  Grown men and women go there every weekend to be cowboys and cowgirls. Laredo was a short street of very authentic-looking wooden buildings at the edge of a green Kentish field. I’ve been to some weird places through work, but again, this one is in the top ten.

  We arrived very early as usual. I got a quick bite of a bacon sandwich before heading into the make-up bus. When a TV show or film is shooting on location, a wide variety of specially converted vehicles are needed to accommodate costume, make-up, catering and all the ancilliary needs of the industry.

  The make-up bus was just that, a double-decker bus with the make-up chairs, mirrors and lights in the upper deck. Very nice.

  I sat down and went through the now very familiar rigmarole of having a full-head prosthetic mask applied. The rest of the cast arrived and the banter started.

  ‘I feel rough, man,’ said Craig, rubbing his face. ‘Didn’t get to bed ’till five this morning.’

  ‘Did you see what Madonna said?’ said Danny. ‘Man oh man she is earning serious money doing her tour, they pay her in bullion, big blocks of gold. She won’t accept cash, to Madonna, that’s just litter!’

  ‘Indeed, Danielski,’ said Chris. ‘Probably earns enough to buy my 1952 Bentley R type, which, as I’m sure you are aware, has the 4.6 litre straight-6 engine and a beautiful walnut veneer dash and is, without question, a classic vehicle.’

  And so it went on. There was, however, in this particular luxury make-up facility, one small problem. When Andrea is applying glue to the mask around my eyes, it’s a very delicate operation. She has a very steady hand and always advises me to keep my wobbly head very still. In a concrete and brick building that is no great challenge. On the upper deck of a bus with people getting on and off all the time, careful, delicate movement is a bit more of a challenge.

  ‘Try not to wobble the bus!’ shouted Andrea, as she held a glue brush less than a millimetre from my eyeball.

  It was hopeless. After a few moments, the bus rocked alarmingly and as Andrea moved her hand away from my semi-glued eyeball, this violent retreat resulted in an accidental muscle spasm resulting in the glue brush being stuck up my nose.

  The phrase ‘stick it up your nose’ is in common usage and has no glue-based connotations; well, it didn’t until that moment. As I’ve already implied, the glue used on Kryten’s mask is very strong and very quick-drying. The glue brush stuck to my nostril hairs in a flash. Andrea started laughing. I don’t blame her. She let go of the brush and let it dangle. I could see in the mirror why this might be funny. Kryten suddenly had a long, wooden bogie hanging from his rubber proboscis, but let me assure you it didn’t feel funny.

  ‘Oh my God, I’ve stuck a glue brush to Robert’s freaky nose hairs,’ she said. Obviously this was a sight everyone wanted to see, the rest of the cast gathered around.

  ‘Eeeuw, that looks sick,’ said Craig. ‘Let me pull it out, Bobby, man.’

  ‘Go on then,’ I said.

  ‘This is going to make your eyes water,’ said Craig, who quickly wrenched out the glue brush, and with it, a sizeable clump of male nasal hair. Yes, it did made my eyes water, never a good thing in a prosthetic mask.

  Once we’d all been suitably attired, by the indefatigable Howard Burden in the costume department, we wandered onto the set. It was cold and damp, everyone was wrapped up in Puffa jackets. Rob and Doug were stood on the porch of the town barbers smoking. Rob in particular was very happy, he fancies himself as a bit of a cowboy.

  We were introduced to the four horses, the idea was to get a shot of all four of us riding into the town as a part of a trailer for the new series.

  ‘We don’t want to spend long on this shot,’ said Andy De Emmony. ‘Just ride past the camera and we’re done.’

  It’s that easy. Get four grown men up in the saddle of four very well-trained stunt horses and get them to ride past the camera.

  So we mounted our steeds. I want to point out here and now that we had a wide range of horse riding skills between us. I’d grown up riding horses, I’d been pony trekking for weeks as a kid, I’d looked after horses on a neighbouring farm when I was a teenager, I’d ridden small ponies and thundering hunters. I knew a bit about them. That is, I knew they could be very dangerous and falling off them really hurt. Danny had also ridden a bit, he has a natural physical grace and excellent balance and he also knew how dangerous they could be.

  Chris hadn’t, I believe, ever sat on a horse before. He was naturally a little nervous, complaining that there didn’t appear to be any steering wheel or indicators and, in particular, no brake pedal.

  Craig loudly announced that he’d once sat on a donkey on Blackpool beach when he was a toddler, and knew how to control one of these beasts. Craig is blessed with a missing fear gene.

  ‘I wonder how fast this baby will go?’ he said, as his mount skittered around in an energetic circle.

  ‘Let’s not find out, Craigy,’ said Chris, as his horse did some mild reary-type stunts. It was too late. Craig used his cowboy hat to encourage his steed to let rip, and let rip it did. The rest of the horses, well-trained as I said, clearly thought they’d heard someone shout ‘Action!’ Being well-trained, they naturally assumed the scene required them to run full pelt out of Dodge. Well, Laredo, and into the big field that surrounded the fake cowboy town.

  We thundered along, members of the crew throwing themselves out of the way as a grinning Craig Charles whooped and holler’d as his horse led the pack.

  Danny and I stood in the stirrups and leaned forward to aid our balance, I have to say galloping on a horse when you’re wearing a full-head prosthetic with limited vision and hearing is quite an experience. I did glance at Chris briefly as we charged across the field, he didn’t look happy. He didn’t know about standing in the stirrups and looked like a rag doll being tormented by a spoilt kid.

  ‘How d’you stop this bloody thing?’ he cried, as we headed toward the open gate at the far end of the field. Thankfully one of the crew had the forethought to quickly close the gate otherwise we might have galloped all the way to Maidstone.

  We did eventually do the shot of all of us trotting past the camera. What should have taken three minutes took an hour and the shot was only every used once in a trailer.

  The horses were then ridden by proper riders; stunt riders who knew how to handle them. Well, that’s what I was told.

  When the Four Gunmen of the Apocalypse confront the drunken sherriff Kryten outside the saloon bar, they had to fire guns to blow Kryten’s hat off and shatter his whisky bottle. We had learned that these stunt horses were very used to gunfire, they wouldn’t panic, it was all fine.

  So, the Gunmen of the Apocalypse approach, we do the lines then they open up with their multiple six shooters. The horses totally freaked out. They panicked, reared up, bucked and ran off in all directions. Excellent stuff.

  Then there were the doves.

  Ahh yes, the wonderful doves of peace. The doves were representing the antidote to the computer virus that had infected Starbug’s navicomp. It all made sense in the read-through, but when we were standing in a cold field in Kent holding two real doves that were meant to fly out of my hands, it was very easy to lose the plot.

  I released the doves and with the most elegant and energy-efficient hop, they gently landed at my feet. They didn’t take to the wing and flap away, they barely opened their wings, they just hopped off Kryten’s rubber gloves and plop, landed.

  ‘Throw them a bit,’ suggested Andy De Emmony. So, in the next take I gently tried to launch them without it seeming like I was actually throwing them. This time they did flap their wings, but it was very half-hearted. One and a half flaps and they landed at my feet again. They were very tame, they didn’t mind being held at all. In fact, they would have happily sat on my hands all day.

  Eventually I threw both of them with some vigour and they slowed down the shot in the edit so you do see the doves make a half-hearted attempt at flying. I think I could have done
better with a big cloak.

  On the last night of recording series 6, there was a party in the old orangery of Shepperton House. We’d all brought along our best clothes and scrubbed up for the knees-up. Everyone who’d worked on the series was there. Sadly not Jenny Agutter, but pretty much everyone else.

  Chris did his round of impersonations, all of them brilliant. He got everyone spot on, managing to weave all the different characterisations into a kind of story. Within a couple of words or simply the way he pulled a face, Chris could capture someone instantly. About halfway through, he started doing what I took to be an impression of Cliff Richard as a sort of jumpy, apologetic, slightly lispy, middle-class tosser. He twitched around on the floor saying, ‘Sorry, it’s all my fault, sorry, sorry.’

  Everyone in the room was roaring with laughter, Craig gave me a hug and I can honestly say it was a good few seconds before I realised who this was meant to be. I stared around the crowd with my mouth open, everyone was pointing at me and laughing. The twitchy, lispy Cliff Richard impression was meant to be me. I didn’t recognise it at all but it was painfully and embarrassingly obvious that everyone else did. Hey ho.

  Just before leaving that night, I told Rob, Doug and Ed that Judy was pregnant. I’d discussed it with Judy, and as by that time she was already fairly obviously pregnant and everyone in her family knew, she said it was okay to announce it.

  It was one of those brief moments that I recall very clearly. They were all really thrilled for me and told me to give their love and congratulations to Judy. I don’t know why I was surprised by their reaction, it was very genuine and heartfelt, even Rob Grant gave me a hug and didn’t say anything nasty.

  I then told Craig, he gave me a big hug and shouted in my ear, ‘Didn’t know you had it in you, man, thought you only fired blanks!’

  Chapter 9

  At one-thirty in the morning on 17 October 1993 I drove Judy to the Ronkswood Hospital just outside Worcester, about forty-five miles from where we live. The reason we had to travel so far in the middle of the night in a rattling Land Rover was because this particular hospital had a built-in birthing pool.

  If you don’t know what a birthing pool is, there’s not much to explain. It’s a big bath, like a hot tub, except it’s specifically designed to give birth in. It was Judy’s intention to give birth to her first child under water.

  I won’t go into the details, a birth is a birth; long, messy and ultimately life-changing and amazing. We arrived at the hospital at two in the morning, at three the following afternoon, I watched my son Louis emerge into the world deep in a massive pool of very warm water. The experience was beyond description.

  The impact of a young baby on our lives was fairly immense. We coped. He’s still around and he’s a lovely big chap now, so we can’t have done everything wrong, but it was an enormous upheaval.

  I was incredibly busy around the time of Louis’ birth; I was in the latter stages of rewriting a stage play called Punchbag that was due to open at the Hampstead Theatre in London. I attended rehearsals as regularly as I could, which wasn’t often enough. I didn’t do much sleeping for the first year of Louis’ life.

  The two male actors, Eamonn Walker (the Lord of War in the Nicholas Cage movie of the same name, and many other roles) and Andy Serkis (yes, the Gollum/King Kong chap) were both amazing. The two female roles played by Sophie Heyman and my long-time friend, Buffy Davis (she plays Jolene in the Archers) were also magnificent. Danny John-Jules helped with the choreography. Watching Danny work out moves and block the routines with the actors was a real treat. That man knows how to move.

  On the last day of rehearsals, I watched a run-through with baby Louis in his little carrycot thing. It was all looking good. We stayed on stage for notes, I made a couple of last-minute changes and then we retired to the backstage area when the theatre started to fill with eager audience members. I would have been talking and joshing with the cast for a full ten minutes before I remembered Louis. Where was he?

  I went to the wings and glanced out onto the stage, he was right in the middle, fast asleep in his little cot. He looked like part of the set. Eamonn, now fully kitted up in his self-defence teacher’s costume walked proudly onto the set, tutted, picked Louis up and carried him off. No one in the audience said anything, they must have assumed this was a subtle message about male strength and tender care.

  During this period, I was constantly in meetings with Rob, Doug and Ed about Red Dwarf and another TV series they’d had commissioned called iCamcorder which they wanted me to present for them.

  The iCamcorder idea was very much Rob’s baby, a six-part TV series designed to encourage people to use their newly acquired video cameras in a slightly more creative way. This was at a time when what was effectively a TV camera that had been blisteringly expensive was becoming more and more affordable.

  These large, cumbersome devices were pathetically crude and low res by today’s standards, with fewer features than a current mobile phone you get for free, but it was a bit of a breakthrough at the time.

  However, through all this I could tell during my many meetings with Rob and Doug that not all was well in the Grant Naylor universe.

  I was never party to any information, Rob and Doug always kept a healthy distance from us, but I was busy writing in their London office one day when I saw a phalanx of lawyers enter the Grant Naylor inner sanctum.

  I didn’t know who they were, but they clearly weren’t actors or producers, they were too well dressed, they all had briefcases and they didn’t stop to chat to anyone.

  It was only much later that I discovered that Rob had, as I was told, decided he didn’t want to be involved in Red Dwarf any more.

  Danny, Chris, Craig and I have talked about this a great deal and all came to the same conclusion: we feel like the children in a divorce. One parent left and we don’t really know why. I don’t think we ever will.

  Hence the real reason there was a long gap between series 6 and 7. The popular myth around at the time was we couldn’t make series 7 because Craig got in a bit of bother.

  In my muddled brain I always connect Craig and the shocking rape allegations made against him, and iCamcorder the TV series, as the two things happened around the same time.

  There is no other connection between them except that when I was filming in west London, I went to visit Craig after work. He was held on remand for three and a half months in Wandsworth prison. I’m not going to go into any detail about this event, it was very distressing for everyone who knows and loves Craig, and the fact that he was found not guilty on all charges in a High Court in front of a jury is enough for me.

  He was incredibly stoical through the entire nightmare, visiting him in prison wasn’t pleasant, but we did laugh a great deal. His sense of humour never left him.

  The one observation I want to make is the ethnic make-up of the remand prisoners. When someone is accused of a crime, they are arrested, charged and then either bailed out or held on remand if the charge is serious enough or they are deemed a danger to the public.

  When I sat down for a cup of tea in the visitors’ room I became aware that 99 per cent of the remand prisoners were black. There was literally one white man. A very posh white man, wearing a pinstripe suit (remand prisoners are allowed to wear their own clothes).

  This posh banker type was being visited by his family; a mother and two children who would not look out of place at a private school garden party.

  Every other remand prisoner was black. Okay, now without question some of the men being held there looked well dodgy, without question the fact that they were being held in prison was a great relief to the rest of us, you really wouldn’t want to meet some of those blokes in a brightly lit supermarket, let alone the clichéd dark alley. But all of them?

  Afro-Caribbean people make up about 1.2 per cent of the UK total population. Okay, Wandsworth prison is in west London where the percentage is much higher, but it’s not 99 per cent, maybe more like 5 per
cent.

  I have witnessed at first hand examples of overt and aggressive racism in the British police force, but being the wet liberal I am, I assumed this didn’t include the judicial system, wet liberal lawyers, judges, probation officers, etc. What I saw in Wandsworth prison was a brutal rebuttal of that limply held view. The British judicial system, in 1994, was very racist. In the years since then, I fondly hope this has improved a little, but I fear it is a vain hope. I know with some certainty that not all those men needed to be held on remand, many, like Craig, would have been found not guilty.

  The only time I’ve ever been in a car that got pulled over by the police, not for any traffic infringement, just because the car ‘raised suspicion’, was when I was being given a lift by Danny. He was used to it. ‘Chill out, guy, this happens all the time,’ he said, as I started getting huffy and indignant on his behalf.

  The police officer was perfectly charming, asked to see Danny’s licence and proof of ownership, which by habit he kept with him. He then recognised Danny and was really chuffed. The officer loved Red Dwarf, he shook both our hands and happily waved us on our way. As the cast of Red Dwarf have been known to say: ‘E-e-e-e-e-e-e-e-extraordinary’.

  Anyway, moving on.

  I spent the summer of 1994 shooting the iCamcorder series, which was a wonderful experience, and it’s one of those fairly obscure TV shows that keep reappearing in my life.

  Far more recently I was in an episode of a children’s TV series called M.I. High, which featured Danny John-Jules as a school janitor and top secret agent. I played the prime minister who was actually a robot, there you go, typecasting again. Anyway, the director, a lovely young chap called Toby Haynes, told me he had been allowed to stay up to watch iCamcorder when he was a schoolboy and it’s what inspired him to become a director. It made me feel very old, but in a good way.

  At the end of the shooting process I spent some time talking to Doug, who explained to me that Rob was no longer going to be involved in Red Dwarf and he was going to write series 7 with a large pool of new writers. He also implied that I could be one of those writers. This was a real challenge, an exciting one. But still, I approached the task with some trepidation.