Free The Man In the Rubber Mask by Robert Llewellyn

mates? A poom poom wagon is a car that you get a bit of poom poom in,’ said Craig making various gestures with his arms and central torso area which indicated sexual intercourse.
    ‘Oh, right, with you,’ I say, trying to be hip. Failing miserably.
    ‘A Bentley, man,’ says Danny. ‘That is serious executive poom poom material.’
    The concept of executive poom poom was clearly beyond anything Craig would tolerate. ‘Danny, you really are totally out of order man.’
    ‘I must say, Dan,’ said Chris jocularly, ‘I have never seen the Bentley in terms of it’s poom poom-ness, but now you mention it, you may well have a point.’
    ‘I’m tellin’ you, guy, you could get some serious poom poom if you cruise around in that motor, you know what I’m saying. A Bentley.’
    Conversations not unlike these, in fact horrifyingly like these, would pass the miles between Manchester and London like syrup of figs help you pass solids. Most of the time the talk would take place around Rob and/or Doug, and it is only now looking back that it becomes clear how one of the interesting developments in Red Dwarf has taken place in the years I have been involved with it.
    Slowly but surely we have each either grown like our characters, or our characters have grown something like us. This is not to say that Chris Barrie is a git like Rimmer, far from it, but there are elements of Chris in the character. It’s also, I hasten to add, not to say I am like a mechanoid, with nothing down there except plastic underpants and a trade mark. But I do tend to do a lot of laundry and washing-up at home. Craig and Danny also have many traits of their characters and it is my humble opinion that as Rob and Doug got to know us better, and listened to us talking on the coach, more and more of our own personalities, neuroses and character traits started being incorporated into the script.
    At something like three in the morning, the coach would pull up in the car park of the Acton rehearsal rooms. What a place to be at three in the morning. Very low glamour rating. We would fall out of the bus and climb into a veritable fleet of waiting taxis lined up in the road.
    I would hit my pillow at about four, still peeling bits of rubber from my chin and neck, but as I slipped into Slumbertown, I would glow with happiness. It was another five days without the mask, and one whole day off.
    The following week I arrived as usual at Acton, we read the script through, I was feeling more at home, I had more to do in the episode, and things were generally looking up. Irony warning signal on low. The episode we were recording was called Polymorph , a deadly creature which could turn into anything. It slowly became clear during the course of the day that at some time it was going to turn into a snake.
    Donna DiStefano, our long-suffering assistant floor manager, asked me discreetly if I was scared of snakes. I told her I wasn’t, I was a bit scared of really big spiders, but snakes were fine. She nodded and smiled. Why didn’t I realise at the time? Why didn’t I see that the reason Donna smiled that day was because she knew something I didn’t.
    The week’s rehearsals went well. Craig and I were enjoying a scene we did together when the Polymorph turned into a pair of boxer shorts, which Craig put on, which then started to shrink, which meant I had to try and pull them off, while still having a vacuum cleaner hose attached to my groinal socket, at which point Rimmer comes in and says, ‘You’ll bonk anything, won’t you, Lister?’
    It was a very funny moment, and took my attention from the snake section, for which in rehearsal I used an old scarf.
    Off we go to Manchester, on the coach, tra la la. The next day is a long and gruelling time in the studio, shooting all the Polymorph changes, the rabbit which wouldn’t hop, the ball which wouldn’t roll, the shami kebab which wouldn’t wriggle. In the end they all did. The following day we start camera