Greetings faithful Quest followers!
This week I will be replacing the names of the friends contacted with characters from Reservoir Dogs. This is so that I can't get sued. Quentin Tarantino may of course take offence, but I think I'm safe as we are not as yet Facebook friends.
Mr Blue sings in a band called Sleeper Effect and I urge you to go out and discover them right now. As a young Cornish lad I once harboured my own dreams of musical greatness and formed a band called Void. Somewhere out there is a VHS copy of our one and only gig. It's slightly ruined by a lanky knob head with a red guitar who keeps asking for a cigarette between songs and grinning. I can only apologise.
Music's loss was theatre's gain and so I embarked on a career as an out of work actor instead.
Finding a job that you can do between acting work is a very tricky deal. It needs to be flexible enough that you can go to auditions at a moment's notice and will take you back after your two week's playing Rookery Nook at the Chesterfield Pomegranate has come to an unexpected close.
I was very fortunate that I found an actor friendly job in a Bond Street chocolate shop by the name of Charbonnel et Walker - scourge of the Microsoft spell checker. I have the dubious distinction of having worked there for 12 years off and on. Well, more on than off if I'm honest. Mr White is an actor who has weathered the storms of this job with me. He is nothing short of a God send. Mr White is a proper actor, which means that even if we haven't seen each other in months he can be relied upon for a good bit of actory banter and the inevitable moan about one's agent. Sean Penn said changing agents is like changing deck chairs on the Titanic. Then again he's probably never been sent to audition for a Conflict Management Workshop at a German army barracks on Christmas Eve.
I then contacted Mr Pink, who is also an actor and he reminded me of the famous quote about acting "It's a marathon, not a sprint". It's probably more accurate to say "It's a marathon, but instead of trainers you have to wear orthopaedic shoes made out of degradation and shorts woven from missed opportunities. Mr Pink might well disagree with this analysis but then he works more than I do.
Mrs Orange (Yeah, see what I did there?) represents a water shed moment in the Quest because she is the first family member I have contacted. This is a slightly weird relationship as we did not grow up with each other. In fact I only met her a few years ago. She had just graduated drama school and was already doing far better than I was. Despite this, I've decided to like her enormously. She recently suffered a Green Day related injury and is currently nursing a broken foot. This proves my theory that listening to any Green Day album made after Insomniac can only be bad for your health.
After contacting three actors it was perhaps fitting that Mr Brown is my old A' Level drama teacher. I was a little hesitant telling him that I was not, as yet, a Hollywood super star. But it turned out he already knew this. He then paid me the nicest compliment I've had in a very long time. I won't tell you what it is but it reminded me that success while lovely and very important is less important than talent. So maybe I made the right choice after all.
See you next week.
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