Free The Man In the Rubber Mask by Robert Llewellyn Page B

woof, you know what I’m saying.’
    Someone else would try and say something, but Danny was still in full flow.
    ‘Shrinkin’ boxer shorts, man. A classic woof, I’m tellin’ you, that’ll go down in history, guy.’
    By the time of the third episode rehearsals I had got into my stride. I had started to remember everyone’s name: John Pomphrey, the lighting man; Rocket, the head cameraman; Ron Tufnell, one of the cameramen who had also worked on The Cornerhouse with me; Mel Bibby, the man who designed the sets and props; Keith Mayes, the sound engineer; Howard Burden, the costume man.
    During the technical run-through all these people and more would be standing around going through their scripts as we went through the episode. Ed Bye would stand where the camera was going to be and point at whoever was in the shot. This was a great help to us as we would then know where the camera we were playing to was going to be.
    I was getting used to the lunches in the BBC canteen, I was less impressed when I saw a famous person, I was getting blasé. One day, when Stephen Fry and Hugh Laurie and all the Blackadder people were involved in a big benefit concert called the Pretty Policeman’s Ball, Ed Asner, the actor who portrayed Lou Grant in the series of the same name, walked past me. I was impressed with him because he was old and American and a proper actor. Jerry Hall walked past me next, I was impressed with her because she’s famous and knows Mick Jagger biblically. Someone else walked past me who I didn’t know and I was still impressed because I am very bad at recognising famous people so it could have been anyone.
    The one episode in series three when I had a lot of mates in the cast was Backwards . Tony Hawks and Arthur Smith were both old troopers from the comedy circuit. Well, not that old, about the same age as me. Arthur and I had done one of the most unpleasant gigs of our careers together, in a dungeon down a narrow alley in Edinburgh. It was during the festival, in 1987 I think, and we had both been talked into doing a spot at a youth club. I was trying out material for a new stand-up set, and I’m a cheap show-off, so I was happy to do it. Arthur had a new suit and wanted to try that out. The youth club was very rough, most of the youth were in their twenties, very drunk and looked like the sort of people a crusty would avoid because they looked a bit wild and unwashed.
    There was a stage, and on the stage were four students doing some sort of weird piece of theatre. They were being showered by beer mats and spit, but I thought, I’m a professional. I was wearing a suit and tie and the piece involved me doing a striptease down to a super revealing Lycra body suit, which, if I hit it right, could theoretically be very funny.
    I went up onto the stage and the booing and hissing was very loud, the beer mats started to fly, and then a beer glass. I took hold of the mic stand and shouted, ‘Thank you very much, and good night.’ It was the shortest show I have ever done. I fled the place before Arthur went on.
    About two hours later I turned up at the Assembly Rooms bar and saw Arthur standing in another suit, holding a plastic carrier bag. I asked him what had happened.
    ‘I was doing quite well, all things considered, they’d stopped throwing glasses and bottles, and I was beginning to get a few laughs, then a bloke walked up to me and poured a pint of piss over my head.’
    It became a favourite anecdote of the festival. That’s why I say old trooper, or maybe it should be nutter. How many of us would continue in a line of work after being abused like that by a customer?
    Backwards , in which Arthur played the barman, became an immensely complicated episode. The script had worked out all the difficult areas of reverse logic, the only bit which confused us all was the fight sequence, where we had to work out when Craig’s injuries disappeared, and how he would feel slowly worse until he reached the