simon lipson

Been doing all sorts of nonsense recently, the icing on my particular cake being an audition to be the principal prankster in a new TV series on Sky 1.  It went well and I got a call-back.  Here's the problem: I loathe prank shows.  Show me a hidden camera (ok, don't then) and I'll run for cover.  I didn't want the job and determined not to take it under any circumstances - other, perhaps, than the circumstance suggested by my agent - a shitload of money.  



So, duly short-listed, I attended the second audition which entailed standing in a London street and accosting innocent shoppers.  My aims: to make them pose for a photo with me, hug me at length and accept a wrapped present.  What could be funnier?  Well, my impending knee replacement for a start; nausea, 16 hour traffic jams, death, Joe Pasqali...anything, actually.  It was vile, albeit almost every victim fell for my charms.  I don't hug my wife unless I absolutely have to, but here I was hugging complete, and often odorous, strangers.  A couple of late middle-aged women actually seemed to enjoy it (I think I pulled a pensioner - I got her number anyway) and even the younger men, muscles tensing, generally let me get on with it.  Halfway through I was ready to eliminate myself from the process, but professionalism got the better of me.  In the end, even a shitload of dosh wouldn't have persuaded me to prostitute myself for such a grim spectacle.  On the upside, they didn't offer me the job, my evident distaste for the task probably being patent.

What else?  I wandered into a Reading multiplex last week to kill time before my gig in a hamlet so remote, I can neither remember its name nor how I got there.  It went rather well, in fact, but I'm here to discuss Bridesmaids.  It started fantastically well, Kirsten Wiig and her co-stars striking the perfect balance between wit and believability.  If it strayed too often into farce and and gross-out territory (one scene was a scatalogical nightmare) I still laughed out loud several times in that Reading concrete box, something I rarely do in cinemas (in Reading or anywhere else).  I like my romcoms to focus on the 'com' and Bridesmaids didn't disappoint.  The characters and realtionships were real, the tone true.  I like to think I've struck the same note in my two romcom novels, A Song For Europe (available at Amazon Kindle - click my 'writing' tab if you fancy) and Standing Up, which is now being developed as a TV comedy/drama, but which I am intending to make available in novel form on Amazon.  

First blog for ages.  That wasn't too bad, was it?