Sorry for the delay in giving you the answer but I forgot!

So, remember this post? When asked you what you thought of this man?

Well personally I think he’s rather attractive. I certainly wouldn’t kick him out of bed other than to make coffee and/or fetch sandwiches.

Well his secret is that he used to be a she! I’ve seen quite a few post-op female-to-male transexuals but personally I think this is the most successful!

He used be an German olympian!

For more info on the lovely Balian Buschbaum (or Yvonne Buschbaum as she used to be!) take a peeky at his Wiki page or just google him!

I’d still do him!

It’s good when actors can laugh at themselves. I’ve been in a number amateur and professional theatre groups and I’ve loved every minute of it. Sadly in any amateur group there is always a couple prima donnas who think they not only deserve the leading roles but should have also have a dressing room of their own, often with a star attached. These are the ones, male and female, who get angry if someone cocks up during a rehearsal. If someone makes a mistake, forgets a line or laughs at an inopportune moment they are tutting and mumbling about who should have got the part. Of course when they forget a line or make a mistake it’s the pressure of the role darling!

During a rehearsal for a performance of ‘An Inspector Calls’ in which I was playing Gerald Croft my on-stage fiancée, Shelia Birling, had the following line “He knows you know! And I hate to think what else he knows that we don’t know he knows yet!” She found this hysterical and would begin to giggle every time she said it. Nothing could stop her! Janet, the lady playing the Birlings maid, a role she didn’t want but took anyway, was furious! At one point, as the line approached, backstage we all heard her mutter in a stage whisper louder than her own stage voice “Do you think she’ll fuck it up this time!” Well we never actually got to the line at that point because Ann (Mrs Bilring), Terry (Mr. Birling), Jayne (Shelia Birling), Simon (Eric Birling) and myself fell about laughing. Of course this didn’t go down well so we took a break and came back to it later.

Thankfully most of the gags, gaffs, goofs and corpsing took place during rehearsals and once it was out of our system then the actual performances usually went on without a hitch. Unfortunately An Inspector Calls must have been cursed.

The set had been built to resemble a typical wealthy family dining room in 1912 and our set builders we’re fantastic at designing and building sets so it look extremely realistic. Leading from backstage into the dining room were a pair of huge doors which the director had insisted were both opened when we entered the room. This was fine other than once we’d let go of the doors they slammed shut and made the whole set wobble. Mr. Director wasn’t happy about this so David was ordered to find a successful way of making the doors shut quickly, without banging, without using anything that wouldn’t have been available in 1912. In the end it was decided that as we stepped through the door we should turn, grab the door handles, and close the door firmly but gently.

Cue opening night. Ann, as Mrs Birling, flings open the doors and storms in to give her line. As she turns and grabs the door handles they both come off in her hand! I’m stood getting a drink at the time (flat ginger ale as whisky) so I turn my back to audience and try not to piss myself. Jayne pretends to wipe her mouth with a serviette. The others look around wondering what she’s going to do. She calmly and strongly walks across the stages, slams the handles on the dining table and says “Arthur I’m sick of telling you to sort these bloody door handles out!” turning to me she continues, “Gerald maybe you could do it at some point as I can’t trust that drunk of a son of mine!” She then gave the line she’d actually come in to for.

Only certain members of the audience actually realised what had happened and there was a small titter racing from the front to the back and that would have been the end of it. If it wasn’t for Jayne! A very few short minutes later she picked up one of the door handles, thinking it was a salt shaker. Not knowing what to do she just shook it over her dinner, tutted and exclaimed it to be empty, slammed it on the table and carried on as normal.

During the interval Janet reprimanded us all for our on-stage conduct even though we all thought we’d done quite well. Ann got a round of applause and lots of “well done’s” and the director appeared pleased with how things had gone so far although we could see him chomping at the bit with David on stage behind the curtain trying to reattach the door handles.

Now with theatre the sad thing is that these bloopers often don’t get caught on tape. You only have the image I’ve created to get an idea of the mistakes made and how funny they are (well I think they are). Although you can still make your own mind up you can’t see it or see how funny I think it is. You can’t rewind to the funniest bits or skip the rubbish.

Thankfully, with film, you can capture those moments that make you giggle. In celebration of that (and the main reason for this post in the first place) here is something I was sent this morning that I find quite funny.

I sometimes wonder if my life would be massively different if I made choices other than those I’d actually opted for.

It’s not that I’m unhappy with who I am now, far from it in fact, but through-out the years I’ve had many and various opportunities that I’ve turned down. I’ve been a part of things that I either got bored with or decided were’t going very far or I’ve stopped being part of something because something else came up that attracted me more.

I was once part of a stand-up comedy duo. A friend and I wrote our own routines, made our own props and became our own managers. I was the stooge and she was the straight-man, well straight-woman. We had a few gigs in various comedy clubs and actually did quite well even if I do say so myself. In the end my priorities changed and we called it a day. How far would we have got if we’d stayed together? Would we be on the big comedy circuit right now? I doubt it. There are too many good comedy acts out there, as good as we may have been I don’t think we’d have been one of them.

I met Jo through a radio station I used to work for. Jo used to do the mid-morning show on a Monday to Friday and I would do evenings from 8pm to 12am. Sometimes I’d engineer for Jo as she wasn’t fantastic at working the desk and couldn’t cue up an advert for love or money. In the end we got offered our own show on Saturday and Sunday mornings. We had a lot of fun and in part it was this that lead to our stand-up stuff but the radio station was changing and neither of us liked where it was going. Jo had her daytime show taken off her when the station was sold to one of the major media companies and her slot was given over to the new station manager. My slot was changed from 7-10pm and Jo & I lost our Sunday. Jo was the best interviewer the station had and taking her away from the mid-morning show, our 3rd most popular show, was stupid. Jo left soon after and no one could blame her. I haven’t spoken to her in fourteen years. I wonder what she’s up to now.

I used to play rugby for the school. If I’d have carried it on would I be some hulking great rugby player now or would I be sat next to Martin Johnson as a pundit talking about the game we’d just watched. At my mothers house, tucked away at the back of a cupboard I have a medal for playing for playing for the school. I wonder if it’s worth wearing it when Brad and I get married, you know how service men wear their uniform and medals. Maybe I should turn up in rugby gear.

There are many other things I’ve done that I could have done differently and many other opportunities that maybe shouldn’t have been ignored but I am quite happy where I am thank you. Look at what I’ve got! How could I not be happy?