So, after incessant finger-tapping and supposition about my whereabouts from various abandoned readers, I thought it was only fair that I write something here for a change.
Things have been quite busy recently. (Though the lack of updates on this weblog are mainly due to my own laziness.) Mark and I have spent the last few weeks re-writing Zoom, our sitcom that we wrote two scripts of for Absolutely and the BBC, for the radio after the development of it at BBC TV seemed to stagnate. Our script went into the PDG (Programme Development Group) at Radio 4 on Thursday and we now have to wait a month or so to see if anything comes of it. We don't hold out an enormous amount of hope for success as the commissioning process is basically a massive scrap between a large number of people for very few slots, and Absolutely's relationship with Radio 4 is still relatively new and untested, but I think the script is as pacy and packed full of jokes as we could have made it, and maybe that'll be enough.
Mark and I have also moved to a new agent, Claire King at Noel Gay. This was something of a massive step for us, but we just didn't feel we fitted in well at International Artistes anymore. Luckily our leaving was amicable, especially as the one paid job we're doing at the moment - writing for Saturday morning ITV show The Ministry of Mayhem - is still contractually through our old agent, and she still has to deal with the payment from that contract for us. Claire seems pretty good so far and is doing a good job getting us meetings with production companies who are interested in the work we've done before and the spec scripts we've written. And, most interestingly, she seems to be about to finally track down a tape of the Doritos advert I did in Holland four years ago that I've never seen.
Tomorrow Lucy, Barunka and I begin work with David Sant on our new show for this year's Edinburgh Fringe, The Elephant Woman, and I'll be filling up the next four or five week's rehearsing that on and off, as well as working on a script and taster tape for Channel 4's Comedy Lab with Simon Farnaby through Ealing Studios, and doing a five-night run of The Wicker Woman at the Komedia in Brighton the week of May 10th.
The problem is, the only one of these things that I'm getting paid for at the moment is the day's writing every other week on The Ministry of Mayhem which basically equates to a wage of £150 a week. Which wouldn't be so bad if I didn't have to pay my house insurance in May, and my tax bill which has yet to arrive, and my third of the budget of The Elephant Woman which currently stands at about sixteen thousand pounds. Which wouldn't be so bad if I had actually received any of the five grand or so I've supposedly earnt over the last five months and wasn't currently looking at my last thirty pounds in the world sitting in my wallet.
Basically, I'm broke, at the limit of my credit card, still meant to be paying off the loan I got to fund Edinburgh last year, and about to spend five weeks working on a show that I'm going to be paying for the priviledge of doing, and it's astonishingly depressing.
I should be sitting here enjoying the fact that I can type this entry while watching The Gift on Channel 4 because I got a wireless card for my iBook two months ago, but all I can think about is that that card cost about sixty quid and I don't have that money anymore. I'm worrying that I won't have the twenty quid to give to my cleaner next week. I'm worrying about how I'm going to pay for my new Travelcard on Wednesday so that I can continue to get to rehearsals.
It's not any fun at all.
Still - chin up and everything.