In 1995 I played Pip in ‘Oliver 2: Let’s Twist Again’, written By Richard Curtis and directed by Paul Weilland. This was a three part spoof of Dickens’ Oliver Twist and was made for that year’s Comic Relief charity evening on BBC1.
I starred alongside a huge array of British talent like Diana Rigg, Jeremy Irons, Pauline Collins, Oliver Reed, Ron Moody, Michael Palin, Stephen Fry, Richard Briers, Kathy Burke,
Burn Your Phone was originally a radio play, written by Andrew Wallace, which I did for BBC Radio 4. I thought it would make a really gripping film, and as I was looking for something else to direct after Butter, I asked my friend and producer Dixie Linder to help me get it made. And so, in a relatively short time we were shooting it for BBC 2's Screen Two strand at Elstree Studios. It only took two days to shoot, because basically it's just me on the phone to lots of unseen people, but it was quite an intricate process getting the actors in an adjoining studio piped through to the earpiece in my ear and acting with them as well as concentrating on how to make the thing visually interesting when it was just my face for half an hour.
I think this was the first time that I realized that I liked directing myself because it really freed up my acting. As a director you have so many things to think about on a set that when it came down to the actual acting I felt really relaxed and free and I think my performance is better as a result. Also, as a director I am way, way more prepared than I ever am as an actor so I think that amount of preparation and thought for the other aspects of the film helps my acting too.
Burn Your Phone is about Andy, a telephone operator, who, during a normal day of answering calls begins to hear from someone who knows things that only Andy himself could know and eventually begins to threaten Andy's life.
The film was broadcast on New year's Eve 1996, and on that night as I was boarding a flight back to London from Prague (I had been filming For My Baby in Budapest) I walked on the plane to see about a hundred pictures of my face staring back at me from the TV listings on the back page of the complimentary newspapers that the passengers had all been given. It was rather alarming until I realized what was going on
The BBC asked me to go to Hong Kong with a bunch of travel agents and report back for their Travel Show.
This was one of the first of these sort of celeb game shows I had ever done and I remember being very nervous. Also these shows are always quite scary because you feel you have to spend the entire week leading up to them committing to memory every morcel of every newspaper as though you are studying for your finals at university.
I was also very excited because Dolce and Gabbana had sent me a suit to wear.
I had worked with Paul Merton at various benefits and shows when he was doing his stand up act and I was doing Victor and Barry. He is really nice and very funny.
