INCREDIBLE!!
I'VE INVENTED MOVING PICTURES.....
Well, in fact I've managed to snatch a copy of the infamous Royal Bank of Scotland TV ad with me acting as a miserable no-hope record store owner.... (OK, so I wasn't acting, I was having a VERY BAD DAY)....and I've managed to stick it on my blog....amazing!



The story went thusly....
On their first scouting visit, the ad producers said they were looking for an independent record store for the second run of "One Day..." ads for the RBoS "One Account".
They liked the look of the shop, and asked me to come up with a few "One day...." test takes of my own to camera.
I came up with some genuine positive stuff, like " One day, I'll finish renovating my flat, sell the shop and bugger off to Brasil.....".
I also did a version without the bugger.
They were very pleased and said they'd like me to be in the shoot proper.
After a few weeks, I got a call to say they'd be there the next day.
Great, I thought.
I expect the production company thought " Great!" too.
Little did they know.
The phrase " Many a slip twixt cup and lip " springs to mind.
The night before the shoot, as so often happens, I "accidentally" went on a bit of a bender. The worst of my hangovers, combined as they are with my seven lots of medication which all say "Do not combine with Alcohol" regularly end up rather twisted. The next morning, I was struggling with just such a hanging over.
And feeling good and twisted.
Then to add insult to self inflicted injury, Jonno, my over-paid, over-egoed, under-capable and overally under-whelming builder arrives at the shop. We have a par-for-the -course full on slanging match about the work barely in progress, and as he leaves I'm bellowing "You f***ing useless f***ing c*nt" at full wack after him, just as the TV crew pass him in the doorway and enter the shop.
As they do so, I see one of the crew motioning in my direction to the producer and mouthing silently, pleadingly "It's not him is it?".
The other guy despairingly confirms that indeed it is. Him.
Oh, the horror.
So it all went downhill from there, really.
I'm stuck there scowling like Bluto, in a filthy black mood.
Like the bullied GI who shoots himself in "Full Metal Jacket".
I call it "looking through the pigface".
I can barely grunt at the crew.
I refuse to look at the camera.
The idea of saying "One day anything ..." is outside my reality.
One day.... I'd rather rip the head off something.
They coax anything they can out of me.
That's not much.
The best line I can muster is " One day I'll be really happy..." but I spit the word "happy" venemously across the room.
You just know it's never gonna happen.....because the guy saying it knows it's never gonna happen.
It's just not on this guy's menu.

In the final cut, as seen on national TV, just in case you had any remaining doubts about this poor bastard's future, we cut to a shot of me monotonously labelling great piles of dirty old records, like I know I'm obviously going to do every day until I die, miserable, hopeless, resigned to my ignominious fate....
After the shoot, I knew it all went so badly that they couldn't possibly use any of the footage.
Well, perhaps in a commercial for psychoanalysis.
So I was amazed when people started telling me they'd seen me on TV.
It was fun at first....people saying they'd been sat at home stoned in front of the telly when they could swear I'd just been in an advert, and their missus saying don't be daft, your off your face, what on earth would he be doing in a bank advert?
Complete strangers would come up to me at half seven in the morning at car boots and ask " Are you happy yet then??" and I'd have no idea what they were talking about. ( Half seven in the morning is never good for me ....)
Old mates rang me up from all over asking me to confirm it was me...
Yes, if it looks like me and it sounds like me and it's miserable like me....it's really me.
Fame, like so many things, wears off after a bit, and I soon wished I'd never done it.
But it did raise the profile of my failing shop slightly.
And it's good to have a laugh now'n'again, eh?

Thanks to Andrew at visit4info.com for the ad.