Another Blow to my vanity
An old acquaintance sent me this photo that he had discovered among the effects of someone who directed me once back when I was doing my postgraduate year at Manchester.
Having got my degree from Oxford and being willing to avoid the Real World(TM) for another twelve months I let my father persuade me to apply to do a year’s postgraduate course in acting. There were two university courses (IIRC) back then. One was at Bristol which I flubbed the audition for quite magnificently. One was at Manchester who wrote back saying that they weren’t running the Acting course that year but they did have another course in Television Production… So of course I ended up doing a course I was neither suited for nor capable of exploiting. Eventually I had to go off and try to make a living out of acting a year later than my contemporaries. I often wonder if that had an effect.
Anyway, hanging around the Drama Department (who were officially in charge of my course) caused me to long for doing the thing I was actually good at and so I ended up with a part in their end of the year production, a weird bit of near-future dystopia, a musical called CUPID’S CHILDREN. All about the corporate sector taking over prostitution. I got to play a lecherous and corrupt judge and I went right over the top.
And the photo shows me at the time at the height of me being… the person I was then.
My thoughts on looking at this bit of history were two fold:
- I wasn’t bad looking back then. I wish I’d had more confidence in myself when it came to GURRLS.
- Look at that expression. If that’s not a brooding, entitled, vain piece of teenage angst stretching over into my 20s I don’t know what it is. I really want to kick my young self in the backside.
I wonder that people put up with me, I really do.
Asleep in Room3b 