Actor and Writer

In his role in loco-parentis my writer/editor Grandfather set about draining my soul of all blood and replenishing it with ink in order to stop me from making the fatal mistake of becoming an actor. In this he failed, but all the thrust and parry of our many discussions in his study did sharpen my blue pencil allowing me to hone the dullest hopeful prayer into a pointed epistle, and in so doing become a not half bad (s)wordsmith.

This has served me well all my life and never more so than earlier this year when, as part of the Bath Comedy Festival, I was given ‘carte-blanche’ to prosecute the City Council for its many myopic misdemeanours in ‘The Case of Bath versus Bellotti’ in the Guildhalls of Court.

Councillor Bellotti was then the Chair of Bath City Council and was therefore the buck-stop, almost pitiful chained to an officer of the law. Whereas I, resplendent in wig and gown, and surrounded by mounds of manila in pink ribbon, strode the old courtroom floor billowing wrath and innuendo in equal measure delivering a highly polished script of all my aggrieved annoyances of the past thirty years at the Council’s blundering, inept and disjointed thinking, its solipsist behaviour, and general usury to the ratepayers and shopkeepers it all the while pretends to sustain.

Imagine it dear reader. A monumental task all too poorly remunerated, until the joyous delight of the moment he was found by the audience to be “guilty on all seven counts!” and was sent down by the judge. Yes, it’s a grand life being an actor, especially when one has the chance to distill one’s own vitriol.