31/10/06
Big And Daft (part two)(first part) -
Categories:
Ten years ago today that Big And Daft started. You should always try and start a relationship on a day like Halloween or something, cos then you have no problem remembering anniversaries...little free tip for you there...
Right, this is going to get complicated now. This is part two of the Big And Daft story, but it is only the first part of part two as I am currently sitting in Cafe Nero in Edinburgh (I'm playing the Uni this evening) and I'm fucked if I am going to spend more than two quid on updating this blog. So, just put up with it for now and when I get back home I might edit it so that it's less jumbled.
I probably won't.
So, where were we?
Oh yes, about to deal with the positive (for the moment) fall out from our first fringe.
Right, well not too long after we had signed up with dear old Auntie BBC, we did a gig at Madame Jo Jo's in Soho. It was memorable for two reasons;
First up because Jon fell off the stage. I am certain that to this day I haven't seen anything as funny as that in my life. In fact, to clarify, the reason it was so funny is because I didn't actually see it. Nobody did. If you've ever been into Madame Jo Jo's you'll know (if it is still the same) that on the left of the stage (from where you normal people are sitting) there is a little ledge that runs along in front of one of the wings (side of stage). As most Big And Daft sketches ended with a blackout (nowt wrong with that - you can fuck off) you had to know where you were going in the dark. The last we saw was Jon walking towards the wings. Then a blackout. Then a bang. Then lights up. No Jon. And the stage at Madame Jo Jo's is pretty fucking high up too.
The second reason the night was memorable is because we signed with Real Talent management that evening. Well, I say signed. There was never a contract. "Handshake" agreements were to be prevalent at our time with the company.
With the passage of time, I think I can probably see the experience of being with Real Talent far clearer now. At the time there was far too much emotion mixed with ill-feeling and disappointment. Don't get too excited about hearing juicy gossip on here because that won't happen until the "Big And Daft (part three)" post, which will be later in the week after the second part of 'part two' (you following this?). It won't even be gossip. It'll just be me telling you what happened from my point of view. Legal minefield probably but as long as I keep putting 'allegedly' and 'in my opinion' then I reckon I'll get away with it. Plus I never fucking signed anything to say I wouldn't...
But back to part two (first part) of the B.A.D story - still all positive at this stage. We are talking the year 2000.
We'd been given a sponsorship deal by VVL for our video rights, and we'd had a few quid off the BBC, so were feeling far more confident in doing a bigger show than the year before at the fringe, whilst retaining the same show premise.
We played three brothers, all with different mothers but the same father. They had to live together for a period of three years (three shows) in order to receive their inheritance money. But, here's the thing, they all had conflicting personalities. My mum was a "thief" (changed from "whore" in year one), Jon's mum a "teacher" and Rob's mum a "simpleton". You can probably gauge from that what the characters we played were like. Pretty much, as I said in the last post, extensions of ourselves.
We agreed to set the show in space. This was because it was such an obvious thing to do, such a basic idea, and probably the first one that any A Level drama group would have come up with. For some reason we found that appealing. I designed a fucking kick-ass poster (possibly the best ever poster on the fringe...no actually, that was my nudey one from my show this year, but close though...) and we enlisted Norman Lovett to do the opening voice over as "Holly" from Red Dwarf - I had done it in 1999 - and set to work on the show. About half way through rehearsals we got a call asking us to do a TV show on UKPlay...
Shit my money is running out on this computer.
Oh well...you'll have to wait for the rest.
Comments:
No Comments for this post yet...
This post has 63 feedbacks awaiting moderation...
RSS Feed