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Sunday June 19
Scorcher: day two. Even though it was the hottest day of the year so far (with scant competition, let's be honest), I was driven to walk even further today. I did the usual journey from front door to Redhill, across the increasingly parched Wray Common, and perversely came to enjoy the t-shirt sticking to my back. (There comes a point in this heat when worrying about the perspiration dripping down your neck and into your eyebrows is futile. It is a coolant, after all. Don't fight it.) Having arrived at Victoria station half an hour later - I read my Dr Who script on the train - I then revived last year's Long Walk To Freedom, that is, ignore London's underground system and do the whole punt to Broadcasting House on foot, via the glorious St James's Park and the Mall. Yes, it was awash with tourists, but most of them were heading for Buckingham Palace where I suspect either a long, dark car with smoked-glass windows and a flag on the front was expected (how do the tourists know?) or some hot men in fancy uniforms were going to be marching up and down a bit. They say that if we dismantled the royal family the bottom would fall out of British tourism - not if we didn't tell the tourists! Anyway, I enjoyed stomping through the park with IOU by Freeez on my iPod, watching the ducks, swans, geese and waterfowl keep cool in the water, and I was lucky enough to see the resident pelicans. You've got to love the pelicans. In the middle of London? Come on! So, I was soaked to the skin and smelling "natural" by the time I got to work, having put in about an hour's walking in total. Bracing. I daresay it'll have put a little colour in my cheeks. I tan if I so much as walk past a travel agents. There's a little Mediterranean in me somewhere, I feel. Maybe that unnamed Portuguese-looking woman in the sepia photos we found among my granddad's effects! Who is she?!
My asthma is still getting a battering from the pollen (although I managed to sleep right through last night, which was a blessing). Samaritan that I am, I helped a woman carry her push-chair and weighty child up two flights of steps at Redhill, and, in the words of Capt Willard in Apocalypse Now, "it damn near wasted me." I actually needed a little sit down afterwards. Damn these lungs.
Caught up with the final ep of Dr Who- terrific. It packed a powerful emotional punch, along with some creditable action heroics, earthy dialogue, plenty of hysterical Daleks and lots of death. People die in Dr Who. For a family show, it is without mercy. And the regeneration into David Tennant was satisfying ("Mmmm . . . Barcelona!"). I shall look forward to the Tenth Doctor with barely concealed glee. It's been top telly.
Have joined the DVD rental outlet (it's the one you've probably heard of) and stacked up a handful of films we want to see. As a ceremonial gesture, we rented what may well be our last DVD from Blockbuster, the hugely disappointing Wonderland. It promised much, being the seedy story of porn star John Holmes's involvement in a drug-related massacre in 1981. Sadly, despite a good, offbeat cast including Josh Lucas and Tim Blake Nelson (Val Kilmer didn't have much to do), it was confusing, smug and without a moral compass. And I learned more in the final captions than I did from the preceding 90 minutes. Poor.
Monday June 20
Scorcher: day three (that is, if you discount the flash floods that hit North Yorkshire - how they must be enjoying the photos of beach babes in every newspaper and footage of sweltering Wimbledon crowds from their mud holes). I will be a Wimbledon widower for the next two weeks, not having much more than a passing interest in the tennis, but - after a cathartic downpour late morning - I'm glad to say it stayed fine for the opening day. We had considered going to watch it live this year, but apparently you have to queue from 3am in the morning for a Centre Court ticket and, having just checked, neither of us is clinically insane. The red button's not working on our Freeview, so the much-heralded choice of matches to watch has yet to materialise.
Another good deed today: a passed a young mum with a push-chair on the walk to Redhill and heard her tut, "Oh Sophie, what have you done with your other shoe?" As I crossed the next road I saw a small pink flip flop which had, miraculously, not been flattened by the traffic. I picked it up and went back to hand it to the by-now harassed mum. She thanked me kindly and I walked on. Sometimes it's best not to milk the glory of a thankless act.
A morning in town for a follow-up to last week's Harry Hill meeting, this time at the offices of Avalon, which, on today's experience, are precisely two and half hours away from my front door. I was 25 minutes late, something that pains me inside. If I can offer nothing else to the world of entertainment, I can usually offer professionalism. The meeting went well, except for the bacon sandwiches, which looked gorgeous but contained bread, and the coffee, which smelled gorgeous but contained coffee. I abstained.
Home in time for lunch. Even though I have a piece on the New Yorker to write for Word (wouldn't it be funny if it was the other way around?) and a treatment for some other new programme to work up for Avalon, I gave myself the afternoon off and worked, indulgently, on a script for a ten-minute comedy-drama I have devised all by myself. There's no development money in it, and nobody has asked me to produce it, but I had a moment of inspiration and I think it could work and the best way to convince others of this fact is to write an episode. So I am. And I did.
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Wednesday June 22
Scorcher: day five. Big Day. The day I was in Dr Who! Early start, so that I could be at Moat Studios in Stockwell, South London, well before the stated 10am kick-off without rushing. It's tucked away in a council estate and is basically an unassuming blue garage door, but behind it, magic is made. To recap, Live 34 is the 75th audio episode of Dr Who made by Big Finish (funded by BBC Worldwide) who've been keeping the spirit alive in monthly CD form for six years now, also making a whole raft of Dr Who spin-offs like UNIT , Gallifrey and Excelis. Along with the ongoing novels and webcasts and conventions, Dr Who never really went away, despite going off-air in 1989. This episode is set in the future on an Earth Colony and takes the form of a radio broadcast. I play Drew Shahan (first name a happy coincidence), radio presenter and government stooge. I won't go into any more detail. For more info about the Big Finish universe, go here.
The audio adventures star either Colin Baker, Peter Davidson, Paul McGann or Sylvester McCoy. Mine starred the latter, a charming, miniature individual in real life in his sandals and shorts, sounding a little like the Doctor, albeit with less-rolled "r"s. Although the McCoy era was a little after my time, it was a thrill to meet him as a keen viewer of Vision On, Tiswas and Jigsaw, and his assistant Ace, played by Sophie Aldred, who in real life is an earth mother type who told me she once breast-fed her baby whilst recording an episode. The green room was genial, and although surrounded by proper ac-tors, they didn't treat me as some kind of interloper! (This despite the enormous, jealousy-inducing size of my part - great swathes of dialogue I had, due to the linking nature of Shahan.) The gentlemanly Bill Hoyland, who was playing the baddie, Premier Jaeger, had read my column in today's Guardian about appearing in Dr Who- it was well timed, and Big Finish deserve a plug for their admirable work on a shoestring.
Also in the cast Ann Bryson, familiar face from many TV comedies and former Philadelphia cheese girl was in it too! Met the writers, Andrew and James, who'd had their episode chosen from 650 unsolicited admissions (this was their first). I enjoyed all the actorly talk - Bill has landed a small part in the new Woody Allen film, Sylv (as they all call him) has just returned from a six-month tour of Arsenic And Old Lace- and the excitement of being called in to do my bit in a glass booth. (Each actor is in a separate booth.) Producer-director-big-cheese was Gary, who camply kept us all happy, even though his job is to make us repeat things until they're right. You have to admire the professionalism of the set-up - I was able to leave before 3pm, thanks to scenes being recorded out of sequence, and I imagine the whole thing would have been done by teatime. It's released in September. I may explode with excitement. I feel honoured to have played a small part in Who history and to have stolen some work from actors, just for one day. And Gary took my photo with the Doctor and Ace, which was ace.
As if that wasn't enough, we went to the theatre tonight in London's humid West End, to see Death Of A Salesman(a theatrical sort of day). Not exactly avid theatregoers (I'm still not entirely sure I like straining from the circle to hear what live actors are saying for three hours at a time), I was drawn to this production partly by a desire to see this famous American play and partly by Brian Dennehy, a screen actor with great presence (I loved him in Belly Of An Architect), who was Willy Loman. I knew he'd be good, and he was, physically deflating before our eyes and screeching with anger and frustration at the popped American dream. I was also impressed by the ingenuity of the set (something seasoned theatregoers would probably take in their stride), and the rest of the cast, not least Claire Higgins and Dougie Henshall, neither of whom blew the New York accent, although Henshall's occasionally descended into a Sean Penn impression. My favourite among the supporting cast was Howard Witt, as neighbour Charley, who apparently played the same part in the most recent US TV movie, which I've never seen and would now like to. The tickets cost £45 each. That's extortionate, and probably one of the reasons we don't go more often, although you are paying for the live sweat of actors who must pour out their hearts every night, and I suppose that comes at a price.
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