New side hustle.
It’s been a while since I’ve written a blog. Sorry. I never explicitly said how often I’d be posting but I think that the expectation was more often than this. To those very kind souls amongst you who took out a paid subscription I am now giving you the moral permission to cancel. I mean, obviously, I’d rather you didn’t but if you want to... listen, if you can look yourself in the mirror and tell yourself that it’s ok to stop paying for what has been, in the last few weeks, very little content then go ahead - cancel.
It has, I hope, been just a brief pause.
The fact is that I’ve been doing some very important work that I’m not allowed to tell you about. Interestingly, it’s been in a field I haven’t done much work in before but I’ve enjoyed it. That’s all I’ll say.
Ok, I’m working for the government. I’ll leave it there.
Lot of early mornings, foreign travel, slowly stirring espressos in European cafes, senses finely tuned to everything going on around me.
Ok, I’m an assassin. But that’s all I can say.
They say that when someone is about to die, their whole life flashes before them. That I don’t know. But in the seconds before you take someone else’s life I can tell you that your mind is very clear. Almost meditative. It’s just a pure focus on the job at hand. And it is a job. Nothing more, nothing less. A job.
I really shouldn’t be writing about this. It’s pretty much the number one thing I shouldn’t be doing but look, I set up a substack, it’s been a while since I’ve posted and I needed a subject to write about so here we are - me telling you about the covert killings I’ve been carrying out across Europe, North Africa and on one occasion at Whipsnade Zoo, on behalf of the British government.
Whipsnade was a really tough job actually. Ended up disguising myself as a lion. I’ve spent much of the last two decades worrying that my three years at drama school gave me no transferrable skills but I can tell you the term we spent pretending to be animals really came in handy that day.
Do I feel bad about my new job? Frankly, no. Actors and writers, people in my position, freelancers, have to find a way to make ends meet somehow. Rates have hardly gone up in thirty years, in some cases they’ve gone down. Much of the slots on TV that used to go to comedy are now filled by reality TV or documentaries. When a new comedy is made, there’s a pressure to give roles to big name actors so parts for people such as myself are few and far between. Making any kind of living in theatre is near impossible and things like voice over which used to fill in the gaps for jobbing actors such as myself no longer pay anything like what they used to. We all have to make choices, do what’s right for us and it was inevitable that some of us would end up crawling through safari parks, dressed as lions, then pouncing on vacationing Chinese agents and squeezing the life from them with recently learnt death clench moves. I needed work and I’m sorry but I refuse to retrain as a teacher.
Don’t tell anyone about that Chinese agent thing by the way. I’ve signed an NDA.
It’s been pleasant to spend some of the last few weeks away from the British weather, I can tell you. Spent a few days in March holed up in a riad in Marrakech awaiting instructions. If you do get the chance to visit Morocco in March I can’t recommend it highly enough - sunny but not too hot just yet, beautiful architecture, an enchanting culture, although I will say this - if someone asks you, at short notice, to take out a Saudi terrorist financier with a head shot in the middle of the Medina, make sure you have a good vantage point, preferably high up, and an easy escape to a secure location.
I’m not sure how long I’ll be doing this for. Had an audition for a KFC advert with a nice buyout fee last week and it felt like it went well so if I end up getting that then I may be able to knock the state funded killings on the head for a while.
In the meantime, I’m dashing over to Budapest tomorrow morning on an early flight from City Airport. No idea what’s in store. Been told there’s a room and an envelope for me at the Marriott.