Ricky loves slapstick and worked quite a bit into the pilot. In one scene, I’m supposed to scale a bookshelf, much like I used to scale the supermarket shelves, and well—my mountaineering skills aren’t that effective, shall we say.
I was halfway up the shelf and struggling when a banshee screech erupted behind me, followed by a scream of: “I’m going to burst, I’m going to burst!” It was Ricky’s, er, “distinctive laugh,” something I soon got to know very well. It starts with two short high-pitched coughing sonic waves immediately followed by an extended screech that quickly reaches a frequency that makes dogs pass out and causes bats to fly into one another.
Ricky ruined a lot of takes that way, but every time I heard those two initial sonic pulses, it was Mahler to my ears; it inspired me to push that little bit extrab to get him laughing again. Inevitably he’d set everyone else off, as well. It made for a joyful shoot; we all wished we were shooting the entire series right there and then.
I knew things were going really well when Ricky wrote the following statement on his blog: “Had one of the best day’s filming on anything ever.” He also overinflated my ego somewhat when he wrote: “Warwick Davis is officially one of the funniest people in the world.” Now that’s a quote that will go on my gravestone (or the front of this book).
Throughout, Ricky and Stephen made good use of my natural ability to fall over almost anything. Once they were happy that I’d said everything they’d written in the way they wanted, they started playing around and let me try a few ideas of my own – which I feel was important, considering I was playing a warped version of myself.
Ricky and Stephen pretty much hired the Extras production crew and as we’d done in Extras, we worked short days, from about 8 a.m. to 4 p.m.—at the latest. It was wonderful. And it was a real delight to be free of masks, giant heads, and sweltering costumes and to be the lead with so much dialogue. One day, while filming on an unused airfield, we came across a basketball court. At lunchtime, I teamed up with Peter (another little actor who makes an appearance in Life’s Too Short) and had a two-on-two basketball match against Ricky and Stephen (who is 6-foot -7). They won, but only just.
In one scene, where my character visits Ricky and Stephen at their office, we ended up improvising for about twenty minutes straight, and again I had that weird feeling of “How did I get here?” “Is this real?” “Am I about to wake up on the set of Prince Valiant II?” To have that much fun while working and getting paid for it, well, it doesn’t get any better.
Actually it did. While we were working on the pilot, Ricky arrived on the set with Sesame Street sensation Elmo (along with Kevin Clash, his “owner”). We filmed a little skitc where Ricky describes me as his “weird friend” and sits me on one knee and Elmo on the other.
Even more important, however, I got to meet the legend that is Karl Pilkington.
Ricky first encountered Karl when he was the producer of Ricky’s XFM radio show in London back in 2002. Karl is . . . well, how does one begin to describe Karl? Ricky calls him “an idiot with a head like an effing orange.”
Karl, a Mancunian and a frustrated dancer, has a truly unique take on the world, brought about in part by his unusual upbringing, in which his mum shaved his cat (just the front half, mind you) and kept a litter tray in the cupboard under the stairs for Karl’s use (not the cat’s). One of his friends kept a horse indoors, and Karl’s dad once put a misbehaving child in a bin.
Karl’s observations of life, the universe, and everything quickly became a feature of the show and eventually, as I am sure Ricky would agree, ended up becoming the main attraction. Some of his famous quotes include:
“Why didn’t evolution make a giraffe good at carpentry so it could build a ladder?”
“You know how they say people have six senses? There’s loads more than that. [The ability to feel someone looking at you], that’s been around since man and dinosaur were knockin’ about.”
“Does the brain control you or are you controlling the brain? I don’t know if I’m in charge of mine.”
“The Elephant Man would never have gotten up and gone, ‘Oh, God. Look at me hair today.’”
For those of you who have yet to experience the joy of Pilkington, I suggest you look up the Ricky Gervais Show podcasts (in 2006, these were awarded the Guinness World Record for most downloaded podcast).
Since then Ricky adopted Karl (or made him his pet, I’m not sure which is more appropriate) and has badgered him into writing books, appearing on TV shows (the radio shows were turned into animations and were broadcast on Channel 4 in the UK and HBO in the United States) and movies, and recently sent him around the world in a TV series called An Idiot Abroad.d
I’d asked Ricky and Stephen to introduce me to Karl when I first met them on the set of Extras. Karl had since mentioned me in one of his podcasts, as he has a childlike fascination for all things unusual. He’d said: “The first time I see him, I’d be a little like, ‘What should I say, what shouldn’t I say?’ Whereas once you get to know him I’m sure he’d be a lovely little fella.”
Ricky asked me to appear with Karl as part of a filmed and unscripted bonus feature for his stand-up DVD, Science. Ricky didn’t want me to speak to Karl before we met but this was quickly sabotaged when the unmistakable orange-shaped head peered around the door while I was waiting in a side room.
“Awight,” Karl said, blinking, his mouth hanging open (his trademark expression).
“Hi,” I replied. “I’m not supposed to talk to you yet. Ricky wants it to all be fresh for when we’re on camera.”
“Oh no, what’s he planning now?”
It turned out Ricky hadn’t told Karl what we were up to. We sat together in silence while we waited for Ricky, which was very surreal but that was nothing compared to the interview. Ricky set it up so that I had to practically sit in Karl’s lap, which made the orange-headed one very uncomfortable.
At one point I showed Karl the first edition of this book. He turned straight to the picture section and, on seeing the stills from Return of the Ewok, he exclaimed: “Who put you in goal!?” He’d assumed I was a keen footballer as a child and that these shots were from my time on the school football team.
At the end of the video, I asked if I could squeeze Karl’s head, which is something Ricky likes to do because of its unusual roundness. Ricky got very excited and started screaming with laughter, almost falling out of his chair as I reached up and clamped my hands on Karl’s head, giving it a good squeeze. Karl doesn’t like this at all (understandable really, I suppose) and leapt up, sending me tumbling to the floor while exclaiming in his strong Mancunian accent: “This is like something out of Twin Peaks!”e
Once I’d ticked off my lifetime’s ambition of meeting Karl, I had to endure an agonizing five weeks’ wait to hear if the pilot was good enough to earn us a full series commission.
Eventually Ricky, Stephen, and I returned to the BBC to meet Mark Freeland as well as the commissioning editor and the head of entertainment.
“This is like walking into the headmaster’s office,” I said as we were quietly ushered in. Even Ricky and Stephen seemed a little out of sorts, not quite as jolly as normal.
We left thirty minutes later, and I was none the wiser. As far as I could tell, they’d thanked us for coming and we’d had a general chitchat before the commissioning editor said: “Great, well, that’s it then, there you go.” Then we all stood up and shook hands.
Had Life’s Too Short been commissioned or not? I’d expected popping champagne corks and high-kicking Russian dancing on tabletops but now I was quietly walking back through the hallowed halls of the BBC with Ricky and Stephen, an unlikely looking trinity that attracted stares from everyone we passed.
“Right then, Warwick,” Ricky said casually, “Stephen and I will get on with the writing and we’ll be in touch.”
We said good-bye. It sank in five minutes later, when I was in the BBC parking lot, about to open my car door. “Blimey,�
�� I whispered. My dream had come true. I’d be acting without masks, makeup, or prosthetics. I was going to star in my own sitcom on the BBC and HBO in the States. I balled my fist and leapt, punching the air.
“Yes!”
“Does my nose look big in this?”
The Great Tick of Ústi. It was bigger than it looks in this photo.
Comedy is a very serious business . . .
. . . unless you’re working with Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant.
Warwick Davis’s new HBO comedy series, take 1.
a No, we don’t live in a little house. I’ve had bits of the kitchen customized but that’s all!
b A good title for the second series, perhaps?
c It’s on YouTube, so go ahead and Google it. I’ll wait right here.
d Karl thought the series was going to be called The Seven Wonders of Karl Pilkington. He wasn’t very happy when he found out the real title.
e There is in fact a remarkably similar scene in Twin Peaks, known as “Audrey’s Dance,” a dream sequence that involves two armchairs and a dancing little person speaking backward.
Chapter Twenty-Three
My Wonderful World
Celebrity Scissorhands: Despite all the training, I still managed to shave one of my own eyebrows off in a bizarre accident.
My nifty “scissor” work!
Harrison gives a thumbs-up. He obviously didn’t have his hair cut by Steve Strange.
Annabelle, a.k.a. “Tweeny Todd.”
I was back in Peterborough, fresh from the commissioning meeting at the BBC, and I was full of the joys of spring. Life couldn’t be better.
I’d just popped into a newsagent for a pint of milk and a paper and was on my way back to the car, whistling as I walked. I was approaching a white van when a bag half-full of chips came flying out of the passenger window and landed at my feet.
I’ve got a big “thing” about littering. If I could, I’d make it a custodial offense. And this litterer would receive the maximum penalty. As it was I was powerless. I fumed, insensible at this outrage. This was intolerable!
With no thought for the consequences, I scooped up the chip wrapper and lobbed it back toward the van. As soon as it had left my hand I knew that it was about the best possible throw I could have made – but I was already regretting it, like lobbing a rock-hard snowball across a crowded playground straight toward a distant target that then turns out to be the school bully, who (obviously) gets it full on the nose.
As it approached the van the chip packet opened up and I saw a flash of ketchup just as a round, fat head appeared at the window. The chips hit him on the nose and the packet exploded inside the van, depositing sauce-covered chips all over the seats.
A string of four-letter words erupted from the now furious fathead. He looked left, then right.
Then down.
“There’s a bin just there! Use it!” I said firmly.
Fathead looked at me, outrage giving way to confusion. What were the rules about beating up little people? Could he get away with it?
I took off down the road, praying that he wasn’t a psychopath, before diving gratefully into the safety of my car and leaving him to wipe the sauce off his face.
This may seem strange, but I’ve come pretty close to having a punch-up on more than one occasion. Size need not be a barrier to anything, and that includes violence.
Not long after the chip-bag incident, I was at a Keane concert at the Manchester Arena. My taste in music is either very mainstream (Keane) or very weird (John Hopkins). I love anything out of the ordinary and a bit bizarre, especially if it doesn’t sound like music at all. Keane was a band that Sam, Annabelle, Harrison, and I enjoyed together and so I’d booked seats. Problem was, the bloke seated in front of us decided to stand for the entire show.
I wouldn’t have minded, but there was a standing area at the front for those who wanted to dance and run around. We’d been to see Coldplay at the O2 and everything there had been great, people had pretty much stayed sitting and we’d been able to see no problem.
The guy in front of us, however, was determined to dance and “sing” along (I use that term extremely loosely) to every tune, and to drink himself senseless. Now, this would be all well and good in a field at Glastonbury or down at the front in the standing area, but not here. As he danced and drank during Keane’s set I was presented with alternate views of his head and bottom.
“Right, that’s it,” I said, “I give up. Let’s go.”
Sam agreed. But, as we were about to leave, I couldn’t help myself. I leaned over and tapped Dancing Boy on the shoulder. He turned and looked for the source of the tapping.
“Down here!”
He looked down, clearly perplexed.
“Next time,” I told him, “book your ticket for the standing area, then we’ll be able to see the show. I might as well have sat at home looking at a picture of your arse while listening to my Keane album.”
His mouth fell open in disbelief. I could see I was obviously not going to get a response, so I shrugged and left.
I felt him make a grab for my shoulder as I turned away but decided to ignore him.
I caught up with Sam and the kids in the deserted foyer when someone shouted “Oi!”
I turned and was surprised to see that Dancing Boy had chased after us. I told him again that we couldn’t see, and that he’d ruined it for us.
He then surprised me by getting down on his knees. A wave of alcohol-tainted breath washed over me.
“Your sort,” he said, prodding me drunkenly in the shoulder with his finger, “shouldn’t come to the conshert.”
Now it was my turn to display an open mouth of disbelief. Was he picking a fight with me?
“Everything all right here?” a steward said, walking rapidly toward us.
I was about to say everything was fine and we were off when the drunk bloke said, “Thish man ashaulted me.”
I looked at the steward, who was already trying not to grin.
“Come on,” I said, “what do you think really happened?”
The steward let us go and helped the gentleman back to his sheat.
Fortunately, incidents like this are few and far between. I have a wonderful life. I’ve been so lucky. I actually believe I have a height advantage over everyone else. Being short has helped me achieve so much and has brought me much joy.
Many people can’t help but trip over their tongues when they meet me – the words “big” and “little” are two of the most common words in the English language and we have, according to my dictionary, over seventy words that also mean big and little. Lots of people start talking to me because they kind of know that I’m an actor. They know they’ve seen me somewhere which, more often than not, leads them to ask the question:
“Weren’t you in Time Bandits?”a
For the most part people are wonderful and we usually have a great chat. I was in a London café just after visiting the publisher of this book when a man in a very smart business suit came up to have a chat about the Stilton Cheese Rolling Championship and we whiled away a very pleasant few minutes sharing cheese-related anecdotes over a Cheddar toastie.
I think today people are far more aware of little people, thanks in part to the work of organizations like the Little People of America (LPA)b as well as television and film, not to mention the Internet, so usually it’s not too much of a shock for people when they see me rolling down the street on my Razor (this makes it easier for me to keep up with tall people and to get from A to B once I’ve parked my car).
I’m proud to say my own kids are also adventurous individuals whose experience of being little is proving at least as wonderful as my own. To have brought them into this world is by far the greatest privilege that Sam and I could have asked for – something I have to remind myself of after I’ve discovered Harrison’s dismantled my iPhone or while Annabelle’s screaming the house down with her friends.
The LPA, founded by legendary li
ttle actor Billy Barty (who coined the phrase “little people” and who played High Aldwin, the village wizard in Willow), is a brilliant nonprofit organization that provides support and information to little people under four-foot-ten and their families. There are more than 6,000 members worldwide and their annual convention, which can attract up to 3,000 people, is quite a sight to behold. They’ve gone from strength to strength in recent years and in 2009 I attended the LPA’s annual convention in New York to take part in an actors’ workshop.
It was being held in a huge Brooklyn hotel where for once the average-sized guests were in the minority. The staff there had very kindly provided some great little touches like steps to use at reception, so we didn’t have to stand back from the desk to be seen. Neither did we have to yell to get attention. It was a real pleasure to be able to lean on the desk, have a pleasant chat with the concierge, and just check in without having to stare at all the many years’ accumulation of chewing gum stuck to the underside of the desk like I usually do.
Size Matters Not: The Extraordinary Life and Career of Warwick Davis Page 27