Author: albarclay

Brian and I bunnied down to the shop and blew way too much money on Christmas this morning. There’s a bird. There’s blinis. There’s veg. There’s salmon, prawns, scallops. There’s an unbelievable amount of cheese in the fridge now. Reblochon, vacherin, camembert, good cheddar and brie for the more traditionally minded. There’s wine – including Bandol and St Emilion. There’s a few magnums of prosecco. There’s the remains of the 96 beers, but sadly it’s down to half. We’ve been busy. There’s gammon. There’s saucisson. There’s Christmas things made of quorn. There’s a pudding and custard. There’s whisky. There are fucking quail’s eggs. Can’t have someone saying “where are the quail’s eggs?” There’s potatoes. I’ll have to get up early and peel those bastards, as I’m goose fat roasting them. We are only expecting about 6 to 8. We’ve catered for more to be safe.

We haven’t got a tree. I think I’ll probably borrow the fake one from Carol that I brought down in the van, unless I can shoot over to Battersea Park in the morning and see if I can pick one up there. Tomorrow will have to be about making the flat into Christmas. There’s a lot of work to be done. A lot. We will manage, despite me having a four o’clock show and Brian being in Sheffield tonight.

I have no clear idea who will be coming over but the doors are open. There’s going to be some complete strangers and some friends. One last time I’m shouting out. The tubes are open on Christmas Day! Multiculturalism at work for positive outcome… It’s an actor’s schedule, so doors at ten, turkey at 4. Everything else until we all fall down. The tubes are running. We hope for silly games, stories, laughter and fun. We’ll see how it pans out. But pm me if you know anyone stuck, or if you’re in London and fancy a change of scene. I live in Chelsea, darling. South West.

Apparently I was on Radio 4. According to Natalie “There was a bit of me doing stuff, then you doing your Scroogey bit, and then they’re talking about immersive shows.” The journalist recorded two entire shows, so who knows which of the many potential Scroogey bits they ran with. I know I deliberately threw some of the well known Dickens towards her mic, assuming that the beeb would like the classical text. But whatever they got, that’s {Achievement unlocked: Go on radio 4. 10 points.} Considering the hours I’ve spent listening – mostly while driving vans around – I’m chuffed. If only I could find the link to it. I’m also just pleased that this lovely show has gained traction. As I am pleased that my last two show day before Christmas is over. I’m pretty much spent. I was growly Scrooge for the second show. Two days off after tomorrow. Luxury. Although I’ll be experimenting with how much cheese and booze I am capable of shoving into my own face.

Ahh Christmas. You really are coming hard and fast now. Hmmmm. I only wrote that last sentence to take me over the word limit. This one is surplus to requirements. I’m exhausted so I’m trying to expedite the end of this blog. Which is unnecessary since I hit 500 words a few sentences ago and now I’m just exposing my own habit of occasionally fluffing sentences of no import into being purely in order to get myself to sleep quicker. Watch out. You’re all being duped. It’s a scam! Run while you still can! What the hell has this blurry photograph of candles got to do with the things I’ve been reading?

“Dear Al, I’ve wasted almost a year reading this weird story and it doesn’t seem to be going anywhere. I mean, it’s interesting occasionally, but it gets ranty. And sometimes it just flies off somewhere unexpected and stops making sense. Can we have some action please? Maybe a love interest? Or some fighting? Or maybe he could develop super powers? Also, it’s not realistic. Your protagonist is an actor from a major drama school who has been working gainfully for 15 years. Do you honestly expect me to believe that he has never, in all those years, had an audition even for any of the major regional theatres, let alone somewhere bigger? Nonsense. It’s not possible. He’d have jumped in the Thames by now if he hadn’t had the chances. Yours faithfully, Disgusted of Tunbridge Wells.”

Walking through Liverpool Street station tonight, a guy drops his phone. Everyone around him stops. It’s like he’s dropped a baby. The phone lands screen down. There is a moment. He goes to it, slowly. We all watch. He picks it up and turns it to himself. His whole demeanour is full of dread. Dread-full. “Are you alright?” his friend asks. “Are YOU alright.”

Let me get my slippers. Ahhh. Good. And my pipe. Mmmmmmm. Yes. Here we are. My voice is tired so I don’t need to shout for an hour to make it sound right. It’s already scratchy. Ahem:

“I remember a time when these mobile whaddya callums were for posing wasteful ponces. Back when I was a young whippersnapper, you made a plan in advance with time structures, and you stuck to it. We’ll start at the nob at 7 but at 9 we’ll move to The Turk’s Head to pick up Sid and his gang. We’ll leave there at 10 so we can beat the queue into Washington Heights. If you miss us at shites we’ll go back to Tanya’s room at St. Pat’s for a late night wind down at maybe 1.”

I’m part of the problem. I write my blog on my phone now. But “Are YOU alright?” Ugh. It’s just a phone. But it’s an access to this online identity that we manicure and monitor so obsessively. How much of our actual identity is getting wrapped up in our digital identity? All of this information we put online – it’s not us any more than it’s ours. It’s a front and we own none of it. Our photos and our words have already been signed over to bastards like Wasserberg. We’ve already agreed in the terms and conditions, that nobody in the history of humanity ever read completely, but yet still somehow are legally binding. They could put anything in them. They probably do.

Also, since I’ve got my pipe and slippers on, these fucking algorithms that push us all into bubbles? I love getting into conversations with people who don’t see the world like I do. We all expand our horizons by doing so. If we take our whole understanding from the things we are fed by algorithms that want to tell us what they think we want to hear – no wonder everyone is wondering how a white supremacist took the leadership of one of the biggest economies in the world. These algorithms are not feeding us any voices that differ from ours. So we entrench in our perspective because we feel supported. The same mechanism that is designed to sell us things is having the side-effect of making us multiple islands of self-righteous fundamentalist bigots.

We conflate our online identity with our real one. But they are entirely different. This phone is a portal to lots of comforting stories – fed to me based on previous interests. It is not me at all. Me is a mess of synapses and muscles and hormones and organs and blood. I don’t fully know what I believe even if multiple algorithms insist they know me backwards. None of us know at heart, because we are arbitrary creatures – blown by the wind. And we can change our mind. Whenever we fancy.

This is my opinion tonight. I’m putting this cobweb of words out into the ether. I might disagree with myself tomorrow. I might not. These words are not me. They’re just my words. But how are we going to stop this trend towards confirmation bias that has been kicked off by marketing algorithms? Are we really all going to divide into tribes again? Leave that shit for football, surely…

When I was in the third year at Guildhall I worked with an amazing director, Jo Blatchley. I’d already done Scenes From a Marriage with him in the second year and he had helped me unblock myself a great deal, despite my uptight upbringing. He is an extraordinary man that expects commitment and attack from his actors. If you’re a coward (as many actors are) you get nothing from him. He wants you as an individual and as a company to go deep together.

I was playing a city trader in the 1980’s, trading dollar/mark and wishing I was on cable. My character secretly wanted to be a saucier. His biggest scene involved him sitting at Ascot railway station in his disheveled tailcoat, hoovering up cocaine on the platform and guiltily admitting that he wanted to make sauces. I went as method as I could, which was expected by Jo. I had no understanding of cocaine quantities come performance though. My method didn’t extend that far. I was pure as the driven snow when I graduated. Depressing to contemplate really 

I put my method into the sauces. I bought loads of books on sauces. I cooked all the sauces I could learn. I immersed myself in sauces. When I said “I make sauces” on stage, fuck it was true. I also made sense of all the FX trading, to the extent that some 5 years later Jo asked me to come to LAMDA where he was doing the same show with the third years, and explain why these small numerical fluctuations can carry such emotional weight. Every number quoted carries an opinion about that number and the broker that gives it. And the detail is very close. He didn’t ask me to make sauces. But I probably would’ve been better placed doing that.

Gravy is one of my big sauces now. I make a mean gravy, partly thanks to my mum, and partly thanks to Tony Marchant (the writer), Jo Blatchley and part of my incomprehensibly lovely year group at Guildhall. The traders in that show (in the studio dammit – all my best parts were) consisted of (in no particular order) Dean Ashton (who I still see frequently), Dan Ireson (now Tristan’s agent and we’re due a pint), Chris Fry (going great guns and we are long overdue a pint), Kesty Morrison (musician in Bristol, legend, I miss her. Pint catch-up required) and muggins (Scrooge! Already had a pint or two thanks.)

So this evening it was somewhat guiltily that I filled an empty bottle with Natalie Coleman’s gravy to take home. But she cooks it for a few days. Which I usually don’t have time for. I do that with soup but rarely gravy. I reckon if I get enough of her glorious sauce I can use it as a base for my gravy and blow everyone’s mind with the übergravy. It’ll take on a personality of its own…

I’ve not had time to stop lately with this show and sickness. The cold house has no tree. I suspect there’ll be catshit in my bed when I get home. But I’ll make a mean gravy for Christmas in a freezing stark house.

If that boy at Guildhall could see me now, eh!! Ebenezer Scrooge to rapturous applause. Freezing bed full of catshit.

I can call it method. I never wanted to be caught in the “posh” casting bracket. I think I ran a bit too much interference on that though – but that’s my way, making things harder for myself on purpose. It’ll be worth it in the end, he says with the desperation of an addict.

And maybe Pickle won’t have shat my bed yet. I just need to remember to buy litter tomorrow.

Edit: she didn’t… Yet. Phew.

I went food shopping today. That’s it. You can all go home. Thanks for coming. Blog over. Smashed it.

Even shopping took me long enough. I was trying to sleep off my cold. But I had my mother’s ghost telling me “Feed a cold to starve a fever.” And no food in the house. Plus my blog from the other day where I said I was going to go shopping. So I schlepped to Tesco and filled the fridge with stuff. Veg onions milk butter meats bread cereal cheese pasta rice pies etc etc. This makes a change. Recently it’s literally just been a can of sardines in the fridge, staring at me, despite no bread. Now I’ve got bread. Toast is possible. Sardines on toast. And onions. Even tomato. And peppers. Which is a perfectly viable – even luxurious – meal. Even without the sardines. Bruschetta!

I ate lots today, starting with a can of Heinz ravioli, which you can judge me about but 0.79p and familiar. Plus everything tastes like nothing right now. It’s a probably a good time to eat old leather shoes, as even my shoes would be mildly piquant and no more, to my taste buds. I hear my own words back in my ears, despite the ringing. My throat is full of death. I’m leaking like a stuck faucet. I’m finding out lots about snots. I’m sick. Sick as the proverbial dog. Which certainly wasn’t bouncing around seeking approval in which ever proverb it came from. It was fucked. I suspect it was dead.

How the hell will I do 2 shows tomorrow? No doubt I’ll find out. Pharmacopoeia. The wonders of science and adrenaline. I timed it perfectly this evening. Ten minutes before I went on stage *ping*. CAFFEINE PLUS OBSCURE PERKY DECONGESTANTS YAY SCROOGE HUMBUG. But now it’s worn off. Completely.

I’m on a packed tube and I’m hosepiping snot into my moustache and reeking of olbas to the extent that everyone is standing in the doorway rather than going near the only 2 empty seats in the carriage – my neighbors.

I’m not helping myself by having had a couple of pints this evening. But if you go into the deep ocean you have to decompress. And it’s important I sleep well tonight. Plus when have you ever known me to be anything other than retrograde to whatever is good for me?

Lunch matinee, then just … the wrong amount of time to get out of costume and experience the world as Al before pre show kicks in again. I prefer it when I only have a 45 minute turnaround. Then I stay warm, which is relevant vocally and physically. This matinee is annoyingly early compared to the Saturday ones. But because it’s extra we get compensated. Worth it when it comes to the boiler fund. I’ve got enough for a plumber that isn’t taking the piss. I’ve put it aside. Now it’s about finding someone who’s free on Friday who isn’t charging emergency rates (fat chance). Looks like Christmas will be cold. I’ll make some more calls tomorrow in the hopes…

Everybody on Carol is sick. I have olbas oil on tissues stashed all over the stage. This evening I even put it in my beard. Which was an interesting experiment. Not one that I will necessarily duplicate because owch. But after fifteen minutes I was glad of it.

What do you lose with this bug? Well. Coordination for certain. Jack and I are thoroughly physically incompetent today. We did the shutters in the wrong order. We got thoroughly confused getting them back. It was a disaster. An unmitigated disaster. We got them wrong, put them back wrong. Wrong wrong wrong. Horribly wrong. This shutter job that we are so efficient in? Disaster. It put me in mind of this glorious video from Bernard Cribbins. But we got it done in the end.

Vocally this week will be a challenge. Right now it’s only one show per day, which should’ve been fine if I hadn’t been recording a sci-fi short story in the daytime, full of cold. As it is, the podcast gets growly Al, which kind of works for the story. As a test of my new home studio for long-form audio it’s come across pretty well despite tired voice and sickness. It’s about someone technologically recidivist versus progress. I’ll be editing and sending tonight when I get home most likely. If I don’t hate it I might link you. But I’ll probably hate it so don’t hold your breath.

Right now I’m heading home with Mel. Just a few days ago we were looking so happy and I took a selfie at Kings Cross as my blog photo. This is us tonight. I deliberately only took one. But we are both exhausted.

Bed soon. No ordering takeaway!!!! I have a cornucopia of medicinal delights though. Lemsip and Actifed. Mmm zzzz

We took over a grand on the bar tonight with 75 audience. We have over 1.6k in donations so far for Centre Point. People love this show. This evening we had a whole load of immersive theatre makers in the audience who are playing with tech. They’ve got a humongous budget. 3 mil. They’re using VR. Crucially they all seemed bloody marvelous humans. It could’ve been that, on a day when I’ve wanted to die for most of the show and to sleep once it was over, I’ve accidentally made a connection with a large group of makers who have budget and are working in the same arena and where I could add narratively to their work, since narrative is my obsession and it seems to be what they’re missing. I’ve got someone’s number. We shall see …

Meanwhile I’ve got home. God it’s shit being sick. I’ve just got to hope that my body fights this hard. Doctor Theatre is still my friend even after a few years of running this show. The show is unpredictable enough that I still get my adrenaline fix and become momentarily augmented as it bombards me. But then the show ends and like with any other addiction there’s the crash.

I slugged home through cobwebs, and shared out the remaining takeaway overspill in the fridge with Brian and Mel. Tomorrow I’ll be hitting the shop and being organised regarding food. Pies. Things that require no care or creativity. Today I knew I had leftovers. Tomorrow I don’t.

Christ at the end of this week there’ll be Christmas in this flat. I haven’t cared for my home in the way I might usually have. Lots to do. Including buying the damn food.

I hate being cold. It saps the will. It doesn’t have to, but it can. I’ve let it. I’ve fallen into some bad habits in the first week or two of this run. First of all I’ve been drinking too much, which cuts the morning. Second I’ve not taken the time to go shopping. My normal food shop is done on the way home, but since I’m heading home after the shops are shut right now, I’m not buying food to cook. This coming week I’m going to make sure I do some shopping. Otherwise I get home to my cold flat starving, and throw open the fridge to a bag of mouldy cheese and carrots that have been there so long they have opinions about TV shows. Before long I’m online throwing loads of money down the internet into the hands of an Indian restaurant in Battersea that’s open until 2 on a Tuesday. Then I’m up waiting for my defrosted rat tandoori when I could’ve been cooking fresh. The food comes. It’s expensive, it’s unhealthy. I eat it guiltily, and feel down on myself for being so indulgent. And then I wonder why I’m low, when it’s a cycle of my own making.

This morning was beautiful sunshine. I didn’t leave the house. I ignored lots of messages. I just stayed in until evening, cocooned in a duvet, reading, playing games and consuming other people’s stories. Partly a necessary relief as the show is costly in terms of spirit. But now we are in the run, it’s noticeably easier on that front.

I needed the vocal rest, and just … to not think about Scrooge for a day. I’m trying to save up for a plumber. From now on I’m going to make that my priority until the system is flushed. That means getting method on Scrooge. Gruel! No extra coals in the fire! Humbug! Clever shopping in supermarkets, lots of healthy cheap food, being a bit more organised, and not spanking my evenings and my paychecks in the bar after the show goes down. Theoretically it should be easy. Practically?

Well, it’s Monday evening. I haven’t seen Emma for a while. Maze Grill is walking distance from my home and half price with the keyring. Despite everything I’ve just written, I find myself sitting in the window with a close friend. I’ve been dying to spend time with her recently. We’ve both been having tricky times and there’s tremendous fellowship. “Oh don’t worry, I’ll get yours,” says my mouth, knowing that every penny is worth it. She’d be happy with a cup of tea and a cuddle. But I want something’s flesh and I want to get her dinner too. I have a rump steak. Not a sirloin or a rib-eye, mind you. Economy…. Although frankly it was huge and I paid a tenner for it. I didn’t think to take a photo until I’d already eaten half of it.

She is a vegetarian. There’s not much she can eat in Maze, but we both come out full and happy and it didn’t break the bank. Although bank breaking, I am finally learning, is about gradual attrition rather than big stupid gestures. If I cycled into work every day like I did at The Arts last year it would be cheaper and I wouldn’t get so drunk after the show. Maybe that’s the solution. I own the gloves. I can wrap up warm and if it’s not pouring it’ll be another way of kick-starting the journey that, hopefully, leads to a working boiler before Christmas. Let’s see where that goes, shall we?

I woke up with a weight on my chest. I was having horrible dreams, and – unusually – my lucidity wasn’t kicking in. Then I spent the whole morning with a feeling of impending doom. A few hours after waking I discovered that it was not unfounded. Today was a dark day for some of the people I love. I’m using all my positivity to bring people together for Christmas and to think about family and kindness, but reality has been conspiring to bring darkness into the lives of some of my close friends.

Today has been the darkest day I’ve felt for ages. When I got into work I said that it felt like there was going to be a nuke. Turns out it was less general but just as unutterably hateful. Sorry to be vague. I know how that sort of behaviour feels like fishing on social media. Suffice it to say that something unutterably horrible has occurred in the family life of a close friend. It’s in the news but I don’t feel it’s my job to speak of it. Their happiness affects mine though. And it’s thrown me out emotionally. I’ve been volatile all day. And I’m pissed off about it.

I don’t like that I woke up so tense and then found out that something had actually happened. My grandmother would gladly tell me that she was “psychic”. That’s a word that means something different to everyone that says it. But we can easily fall into confirmation bias. We want to. Coincidence is rife, but we love to feel like it’s not random. Like we have a hand on the tiller. Do we? We work hard if we work hard and not if we don’t. None of my loved ones had control over their exit. All of them very much wanted to.

I had a shit sleep, woke up in a cloud, and then a shit day unfolded.

I’m extremely sensitive. I pick up on what I call energy with people. I once flatly asked someone to get out of my flat because his energy was so dark. He was just an insecure man using learnt techniques to behave socially. But it was so unrelatable and false that I found myself reacting almost allergically to him. I’ve had similar reactions to sociopath lovers of people I care deeply about. But the convergence between my feeling of impending doom today and this shitawful thing in the life of my friend… I really hope it’s just coincidence. Ugh. Poor poor family.

I’m glad to be home. I wish I wasn’t home alone and I wish the boiler was power-flushed. I’d like my home to be an uncomplicated destination, and I know that the fact it’s not warm is making it less desirable. I want to get it sorted out by Christmas so I can have lots of people round. Which reminds me: Anyone you know who might be sitting alone at home on Christmas – send them my way. I’m pretty central, and I am actively looking for international waifs and strays. I’d gladly meet them before to normalise me, but they’re just as welcome to show up on the day if they feel brave.

Meantime I’m off to sleep…

Jack Whitam strode into the room, through a wardrobe full of smoke. Without full use of his limbs while he corporealised. Into a cold room with a table and loads of people looking at him. Playing the ghost of Marley. He strode into it twice today, brilliantly both times. It is his job, after all. As he came through the wardrobe, I stood behind him, hidden round the corner with a smoke machine… He’s the ghost of Jacob Marley. Plus ASM. I’m Ebenezer Scrooge. Plus ASM.

Let me talk you through my show. I’ve done it twice today so I should know. As the audience comes in, I’m warming up. Literally. It’s fucking freezing. My feet are like blocks of ice and I’m wearing shoes without socks. The floors and air are icy cold. I’m warming my vocal folds before I have to work so that I don’t damage them when the show kicks off. Lots of muscular stuff. Good old Kate Godfrey. Tongue. Soft palate. Connecting sound with breath. And warming. I might take a bit of time checking out the audience through the mirror. “Shit there’s a ten year old.” “That family looks lovely.” “They’re hammered. Interesting.” Then my show opens. I’m fanning a smoke machine that doesn’t work very well. I’m fanning it to stop the thermostat from cutting it off at a crucial moment. Then I’m switching on some LED lights in a wardrobe, and filling it with smoke if the machine works. Then Jack goes on through the wardrobe. I head round back, listen to the audience with Jack so I know what I’m in for, head for my entrance, make sure someone is there to close the door behind me, and hit a high energy scene, that’s the closest to panto that we get. Once I’m through that door I’m on stage for the rest of the night. There’s no rest. Over the years now, thousands of people have attempted to teach Ebenezer about Christmas. They’ve taught me obscure Christmas games – this evening I learnt “The Chocolate Game.” Everyone in the family rolls a die. If you roll a six, you put on a hat and gloves and eat from a big bar of chocolate with a knife and fork until someone else rolls a six. This is from a reality TV producer from Doncaster. She swears it’s brilliant…

So yes, I start with lots of humbug and Dickens quotes while I’m trying to get all the ghosts out of my parlour. Then I’m taken back into my past and I go fourth wall for a bit.

I sit on a stool and quote verbatim at great length the bit of Dickens that shows us that Scrooge liked Arabian Nights and Robinson Crusoe as a kid. My sister dies, I remember how to dance and fuck up a proposal to a ghostly memory. Then I have to welcome a load of people to a feast, and they teach me stuff like the Chocolate Game. What I’ve learnt is that virtually everyone has something unusual in their family Christmas. I’m trying to build a web that connects all sides of the audience every show. By the time I’m at this part of the show I’m already on the home stretch. The bulk of my emotional journey is in Christmas Past and once that’s done it’s mostly just playing with the individuals that are there. Then I have to do a bit of improv, play some accordion, play a game, and then switch the atmosphere from fun to silence on a ninepin. If that works out the rest is gravy. I get very sad, understand my mortality for the first time, make a vow, and undergo a total human revolution. Then I run out in the rain and almost get hit by a bus. Then I talk too much and eventually bow.

People love it. It’s a beautiful show. Obviously. You don’t come back four years running to do something negligible. I’m so happy to be back in the nightie. It’s feeling like a huge part of my year now. Every year I fear it’ll be the last. Every year it comes back. I love this gig. And this year it’s been beautiful. And the team is just perfect. It’s such a happy show. Here’s Mel and I heading home after perhaps a little too much wine… I fear I’m getting better at drunk-writing. I’d never be a theatre critic, but I suspect that that’s the number one skill in their profession…

Standing on the stage of The Globe I shared a little bit of my knowledge and showed a little bit of my heart to 16 very rich lawyers from Folkestone. We weren’t supposed to be on the stage, but it was the perfect storm. All the volunteer ushers were gone, and a school trip had just been allowed on before us. “Stuff it,” I thought. “Nobody’s watching.” I ended up quietly speaking a little bit of Jacques to them from the well foot polished bit of stage known as the “Mark Rylance spot.” It was lovely. For me anyway. They seemed happy too.

Then we went back to a room full of wine where I had to be convivial for money and have none of the wine. One of them had been to The Globe recently for a show. She’d seen Daniel Kramer’s Romeo and Juliet, the opening show of last season where Emma Rice significantly achieved gender parity in employment on and off stage in a Shakespeare theatre, and continued actively challenging the traditions of the space and the board. She had already been resigned by this time.

“This perverse show vandalises Shakespeare,” said Billington in The Guardian. Lots of one and two star reviews. Lots of people huffing and puffing about it. “What did you think,” I asked the guest, keeping my question as neutral as possible. At one of these events a while ago, during Emma Rice’s first season, a man at a similar event asked me “What do you think of THAT WOMAN.” Being polite to someone you’d like to kick in the nadgers, that takes work. But these people today were fab:

“It wasn’t what I expected. But my kids loved it. And suddenly I realised I loved it too. Afterwards I was talking to lots of people who made me feel like I shouldn’t have loved it for some reason. I mean yes, I was surprised by all the music and everything. But it was just great fun. The kids still remember it. They’re doing it at school now and it’s helped them.” Can’t say fairer than that. That sounds like a win.

These guys didn’t get all the sound and lights for their show. They got muggins in his glasses and bobble hat speaking quietly because he’s on daytime vocal rest. And it was a lovely way to spend a shivery morning.

I’m curious to know what comes in Michelle Terry’s tenure as the new artistic director. She seems by all accounts to be a goodie. She was at RADA with some friends of mine. I expect finding a replacement for Emma Rice was a minefield after the way in which she got resigned. It couldn’t be a man (Flashback: “What do you think of THAT WOMAN?”) But which female artistic director would be willing to step into the shitstorm of opinions. Also, since the prevailing wind seems to be that The Globe will return to natural light low-fi stagings, how do you find an artistic director who will not feel they have to compromise their vision to placate the board?

A neat solution is to employ an actor manager – loved by her peers but not widely known. Like Rylance was. An actor is always going to be focusing on the human interaction. You can do that on a bare stage more effectively than you can on a merry-go-round. And her lack of profile effectively bypasses the shitstorm. Let’s see what comes. I think The Globe will be a beautiful human heartfilled theatre with her at the helm.

I was on my way to a nice contemplative Buddhist meeting when I got a text from a guy I know across town which … changed the dynamic. There are some fairly extreme personalities in my life. I suppose it goes with the territory. “Need help,” the text read. I’m a sucker for that.

Before long I’m slogging across town. I’ve got time in the days now we’re open. Eventually I ring his doorbell. There’s a pause. The curtain twitches. Then the door opens and he’s looking behind me as he hustles me in. His cats are going mental. They’ve picked up on his energy. He ushers me into a darkened room. He’s barefoot in a tracksuit at 2pm. Cigarette butts are in mugs and there’s a mostly finished bottle of Jack on the table. No mixers. Is that a credit card and white powder? All the lights are off and sun is low already. This is not a happy man’s flat.

He’s fretting, restless, moving from place to place. His phone is constantly buzzing. He jumps every time it does. “Are you okay?” I ask him. It’s clear that he’s not. He shows me a huge pile of grammatically fucked text messages coming in one after the other. I spend a while trying to make sense of them.

I’ve never slept with a hooker. I can’t really handle the theory of it. A big part of my kick is my partner’s enjoyment. I suspect that I’d not be able to trick myself into believing that it was anything other than a transaction. Today is the first time I’ve really thought about how the oldest profession works.

My friend had got himself messed up on booze and whatever else he could find, and then paid for something he couldn’t afford. That much I understand. I get drunk and wake up to an empty bank account and a receipt for a £350 accordion, or I impulse buy 96 cans of Kronenburg when I can’t get my heating system flushed. My friend has overbought and underpaid a professional for services. I think it’s likely he was upsold, but that’s standard business practice. He is now bound to pay a balance of £700, which is a bit worse than “any cakes, any muffins?” It’s been three days. And she is getting very anxious.

If you do some work, you send an invoice with a term on it. There’s probably a union, and there are things in place to make sure you get your filthy lucre. Reputation stands on payment. People get blacklisted for not paying.

If you let someone have sex with you for money and they don’t pay, then that’s a broken social contract, but there’s no union, there are no checks and balances, reputation is already negligible. What can you do?

Phone your friend and get him to make repeated threats, it seems. While I’m making a nice cup of tea, his phone rings and he jumps. He answers. The panic is heavy in his voice. The caller basically threatens to come round and break his hands with a hammer. This is three days after the bill has been incurred, and already we are in hammertime. I guess that with no recourse, she feels it is necessary to escalate quickly.

So what to do? What to do? I’m unpicking the situation. He’s spoken to the local police. They’re anxious to escalate this. My years as a jobbing actor are in my mind too. I think he’s incurred a debt in good faith and should pay it and chalk it up to experience. The amount is not impossible to him. She shouldn’t be threatening violence though – categorically not. Particularly so quickly.

He’s really jumpy – actively scared. He doesn’t want to go outside. I suggest we go for a walk, hoping that the last rays of the sun will help shift him to positive thinking. I even offer to carry a hammer in case of unexpected violence, but the idea of that makes him even more jumpy. For the first time I notice how skinny my friend is. I focus on making him okay, knowing that I’ll have to go to work in a few hours.

A few hours later things feel a little more manageable. We made a small payment, a balance is still outstanding. Hammers are not in the equation at least until Sunday. I point out to him that she texted “I know where you work” which is a nonsense. We’re self employed. He’s not in work right now. She’s making herself as threatening as possible because she wants the money she’s worked for – she needs to make the rent and she doesn’t want to feel used. She provided a service. If I was on the game, sex would be a conditional transaction. If I let you buy me and then you didn’t pay me, that would be tantamount to rape. She feels used and he feels manipulated – even extorted. Problem is, if he pays, he’s worried it’ll start actual extortion.

Over the course of today I’ve learnt a little more about my standpoint on such things. Legality didn’t factor in my thinking. I pragmatically wanted my friend to be okay and for the right thing to be done. It seems that was more about completing the transaction and organising a payment plan, than involving the police and further isolating someone already having to sell their body to make rent. But also today was about making bloody certain that my friend didn’t have his hands broken for a ridiculously stupid sordid drunken idiocy.

I located a hammer in his kitchen. I’d have got stuck in if someone had come to the door. It’s probably for the best all round that nobody did. I have to be Scrooge for the rest of the month. And I’m not a fighter. Lately I’ve not been a lover either. I’m glad I can sublimate my urges while I wait, so I don’t have to worry about hammers. What a mess. What a stupid stupid avoidable mess.