Month: June 2026

Semi staging this R&D today. We are sharing tomorrow (Tuesday 2nd June 2026) in the studio downstairs at The Other Palace at 2pm. I’ve definitely seen something down there, but what? And when? I will never remember.

Today was intensive. There’s been a rewrite and we basically only had today and a flash tomorrow morning to work out how we are going to present this piece to whoever cometh.

I really hope that there’s a further life for this project, for the simple reason that I like the people involved. Katia is fun and gets me. Guy similar… I haven’t seen Guy since what I think must have been my thirty first birthday and Tassos and I got swept into a big long night in Dalston that had no end and no beginning but the bottom of glass after glass and the loud sound of voices and bright lights in the dark and how did I get home or where did I sleep? Back then there was always so much going on, the shared houses, the parties. I’d wake in an unfamiliar room full of empty glasses on a sofa, I’d let myself out onto unknown streets with no mobile phone to map me home, just the local bus stop always there to offer a clue, and my hangover as motive.

Those two are writer and director, with myself and three other actors across two generations. It’s about love and ambition and money and life. It’s about the things we wanted against the things we have. It’s about the way we pretend.

It’s an unusual piece to come from the pen of Katia, whose last piece was political. This is a human comedy. She has written my character in a voice I know. There’s a healthy slice of my brother Rupert, a chunk of John Cleese and a few squeezes of Hugh Grant mixed up with all the Al Barclay. The others are distinct as well, and it feels like a good professional company of clever dedicated practitioners honouring a smart piece of text. And that is knackering because in a room like that you absolutely have to show up.

I’m trying to learn my lines for this lovely audition on Wednesday around this work. I tried for a Friday slot knowing I’d be flooded but no dice. So I’m just gonna be flooded right now and that’s ok cos it’s what I wanted.

I’m supposed to be inviting friends and family to the R&D at 2pm at The Other Palace, so there’s a home crowd and so we can examine it and know if it works for people that aren’t us. If you fit that brief just warn me by text so I can add your name to the list, or you might be turned away. I’ll have time to check my phone and would love some friendly faces.

A hot night in London and Boo is so thrilled to see me she won’t leave me alone. I just had the most comprehensive bath I’ve had for weeks and she was hanging out watching. I must be about a stone lighter now. I’ve been trying to embed lines and thoughts from all over the place while she rolls on me. The next few days need to be carefully partitioned in order to make sure I can keep myself in peaceful equilibrium. I’m happy I’m not drinking as I’m gonna be needing to get up earlier than I’m used to just to make sure there are enough hours in the day to do all the things.

Tonight though it is just about hitting the hay. I woke up in Brighton, brushed the cat forever, got on the train to more cats. A lot of my spare time was spent feeding things into Claude to the extent that it has a website all coded now. It won’t be perfect or complete, nothing ever is, and it will be very text heavy at the mo, but over time once it is live I can start to bulk it up and make it look sexy and try and make a calling card that in some way matches the mildly disobedient and deeply chaotic lifeform that I sometimes think of myself as inhabiting.

My injured foot has responded to the bath by peeling skin, but it doesn’t really hurt so I reckon it is just part of the healing process. The medic at Soul Revolution did a fine job with cleaning the thing. So prompt and so efficient. Who would have thought a festival was a good place to be injured.

I am feeling absolutely flooded at the moment. Can barely think from moment to moment. Not enough room in my head for it all and I keep saying yes to more. I’m still working on the basis that if it is physically possible to do the thing I’ll do the thing whatever the thing might be. There are some potential spanners in the works with filming stuff, but frankly I don’t think it’ll come in, the one that is asking for my heart and soul and my first born in exchange for a possible single day of filming. I’m on pencil for it but I reckon every actor that auditioned is on pencil for it. People do that all too often. It’s not ethical but I’ve learned not to put my life on hold. I’ll react when they give me an offer. Up until that moment it’s just noise.

I’ve put a load of bets on the world cup. I’ve put one outsider bet on for every group. It’ll keep me interested in the tournament but I’ll have to be careful. My hope is that most of them will clear the group stage, at which point I’ll cash them out but for a few. I often do this for the world cup as a way of ensuring that I have some sort of skin in the game, because we are all going to be bombarded by it no matter what. If you can’t beat ’em, join ’em, I say.