Timothy Lea - Confessions of a Film Extra

I cross the threshold and am greeted by the odour of boiled cabbage and rising damp that always spells out home – or, more appropriately, smells out home. The hall looks the same except for a large barometer hanging between the moose head and the tin hat and gas mask. Dad was an air-raid warden during the last war and does not like people to forget the fact. He and Mum live in the past, poor old sods. It was only recently that they took the strips of sticky paper off the kitchen windows.

I tap the barometer and the glass and both hands fall off.

‘Oh, bleeding marvellous,’ hollers Dad. ‘You haven’t been in the house two minutes and you’ve smashed a priceless work of art.’

‘Come off it, Dad. I only tapped it!’

‘Well, don’t tap it! It’s not there to be tapped.’

‘Everybody taps barometers, Dad. It’s like touching things when they’ve got a “wet paint” sign on them.’

‘That’s not the point. That had been there for two weeks without anything happening to it.’

‘I can believe that. The needle was jammed at set-fair. That’s why I tapped it.’

‘You leave things alone that don’t belong to you. You just leave things –’

Where this typically turgid argument would have led us, I will never know because Mum suddenly pops out of the front room all of a twitter.

‘He’s on,’ she says. ‘Come on! He’s on.’ She sees me and waves her hand. ‘Oh, hello Timmy dear. You’re just in time. Come on.’ And she doubles back into the room. I am a spot choked because I always reckon on Mum coming across with some of the human warmth that Dad so obviously lacks. His milk of human kindness has to be reconstituted with draught bitter.

‘What’s up, Dad?’ I ask. ‘Has Mum got a crush on the bloke introducing Blue Peter ?’

‘No, it’s Jason. I thought you knew.’

‘Jason? Jason who?’

‘Jason Noggett! Didn’t you know that your nephew was appearing with Miss Mealie?’

‘I didn’t even know Miss Mealie was appearing. What’s it all about, Dad?’

Dad waves his hands in exasperation. ‘Come and watch. Your mother will tell you.’

But Mother is clearly not going to tell anybody anything, except to belt up. She is perched on the edge of her seat and bombarding her cakehole with Maltesers.

‘Mum –’

‘Sssh!’

‘What –?’

‘Sssh! Do be quiet!!’

Cut to the quick by this lack of parental interest, I adjust my peepers to the tellyvision set and listen to the disgusting tinkle, tinkle of ‘Baa Baa Blacksheep’ being picked out on a xylophone. As the sound fades, so a pretty female face fills the screen and a set of perfect gnashers split into a welcoming smile.

‘Hello boys and girls,’ says a voice of such cloying sweetness that I expect to see syrup leaking out of the volume control, ‘are you ready for the music?’ She pauses and nods, and to my disgust I find myself nodding back. ‘That’s good, because when it stops I’ll be back here to introduce my little friends on Kiddichat. The programme where our panel of mini-viewers answer questions from you children at home. So, from me, Miss Mealie, it’s: enjoy the music and see you in a minute.’ She gives a sickening wave and fades out to make way for a bird in a ballet costume who does a little dance to the Dambusters ’ March , or some such popular melody. I wait hopefully for her to catch her toe in a crack between the floorboards, but it is not one of my lucky afternoons.

‘Jason is on this lot?’ I ask.

‘Sssh,’ says Mum.

‘Have you got a pin Mum, my leg just fell off?’

‘Ssh!!’

When Miss Mealie reappears, Mum nearly topples off her chair, she is leaning forward so far. ‘There he is,’ she squeals. ‘There he is!’

I look over Miss Mealie’s shoulder and it is indeed possible to recognise Sidney’s first-born with his fingers stuck up his bracket in characteristic fashion. He is sitting at a table with three other kids.

‘Our little Jason, a telly star,’ breathes Mum as if something with a halo round its bonce has started tapping on the window.

‘What is it, Mum, a nose-picking contest?’

‘That’s enough from you,’ snaps Mum and I have not heard her voice so sharp since she caught Dad snogging with Ada Figgins in the Gents at The Highwayman on New Year’s Eve. There can’t be many blokes who have seen the new year in with a lavatory brush shoved down the front of their trousers.

‘Why do they make them wear those stupid shirts?’ I say conversationally. I would have done better to keep my trap shut.

‘I sat up till three o’clock in the morning crocheting that,’ sniffs Mum. ‘Rosie said that the producer thought it was “absolutely super”.’

‘I’m sorry Mum, I –

‘How many times have you been on telly, then, clevershanks?’ says Mum accusingly.

‘He nearly made Police Five a couple of times, though,’ sneers Dad.

It is disgusting isn’t it? Rounding on their own flesh and blood because my mug has never had six hundred and twenty-five lines running through it. The way some people go on about the telly you would think it was some kind of new religion. Certainly not the old one because the only time you see Dad move fast is to turn off the Epilogue . It is as if being exposed to a back to front collar for longer than five seconds was going to kill him.

I should tell them both to get stuffed but I am too fascinated by the prospect of seeing what the infant Jason gets up to.

‘Did you like the dance, Benedict?’ says Miss Mealie engagingly.

Benedict must have been doing something else at the time because he gazes vacantly into the camera as if concentrating on a spot in the middle of it.

‘How about you, Imogen? Imogen!’ The name has to be repeated because Imogen seems totally engrossed in twisting the arm of the small boy next to her. He bursts into tears.

‘Chinese burn,’ says Imogen proudly.

‘Come on, Eric,’ pipes Miss Mealie. ‘You wouldn’t want the fairy to see you cry, would you? Fairies only like brave boys.’

‘They’re keeping the camera off him,’ hisses Ma, incensed. ‘I don’t know what they’ve got against the child. It’s always the same.’

‘Probably waiting ’til he gets his finger out of his conk,’ I say. Mum is so worked up she does not pay any attention to me.

‘He’s the life and soul of the whole programme,’ she chokes. ‘Everybody only watches to see him. There! Look at that.’

Jason has now succeeded in getting both his fingers stuck up his snoz and the camera quickly whips back to Miss Mealie.

‘Is that all he does?’ I say innocently.

‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ snarls Mum. ‘It’s not surprising, is it? Nobody talking to the child. Ooh! I wish I could get my hands on that woman. She’s not as innocent as she looks, you know. Rosie’s heard a few things about her. Oh, yes. I don’t know why she has the little chap on the programme if she’s only going to humiliate him.’

I tune out Mum’s drone and stare at Miss Mealie with fresh interest. She looks the kind of bird who is so simperingly awful that you want to shout ‘knickers!’ into her lughole, but maybe I am doing her an injustice. Perhaps she is a bit of a raver on the quiet.

Eric stops crying when Miss M., quickly shoves a sweet in his miserable little cakehole and at last the camera settles on Noggett junior. The child star has now got his digits out of his hooter and Mum coos with ecstasy.

‘Oh, isn’t he lovely?’

I turn away and look at Dad who winces and shakes his head. I have a feeling that he finds the whole spectacle as nauseating as I do.

‘So, now I can see that Jason is ready to answer our first question. You liked the dancing didn’t you, Jason?’