Being an actor…

Well this week I perform my play Smack-The Point of Yes in Glasgow at Peterson Parkhall. I am currently rehearsing the whole thing again. It is about a woman who stays in a difficult marriage and never takes drugs and how her alter-self does take drugs and how both their lives pan out, I play the two characters. Am bricking it in case I forget the words and the play has currently sold 100 tickets…

Meanwhile I get my first go at being an interviewer this weekend on Radio 4 show Loose Ends. I get to interview Mat Fraser who has recently penned and stars in a new show called Thalidomide-a Musical!
I am hoping I keep within the timeframe and don’t fuck up!
So I will be in London this weekend, I am staying in a fab apartment. I was down a few weeks ago staying in friends Lori’s flat in Piccadilly, her place was awesome, all wooden floors and Jacuzzi baths in each bathroom! The downside was in the main living room Lori had a huge white carpet. I mean A HUGE BRILLIANT WHITE carpet.

Well Monica and I decided to have dinner in the flat; I bought seafood and a big bottle of red wine. I don’t even drink most of the year, but I thought we should celebrate her new contract.

Whilst Monica was in the kitchen, I was in the living room playing music on my iPod; I leaned over to get the volume button and knocked a FULL glass of red wine all over the floor.
It splashed across the expanse of the white fluffy wool, splattered up the legs of the antique wooden chair; spread all over the yellow stripped fabric on said antique chair and managed to dot itself all over the pale cream wall.
I stood there horrified, I was frozen in the moment, and it looked like I had just stabbed someone. Monica came in with two big plates of food and screamed in horror “Janey, for fucksake, what happened did you slash your wrists? Do you have some shaky hand disease? How did you manage to fucking do that giant stain?”

If I had thrown the glass in an Olympic Wine Throwing Competition, I would have scored gold. We put our food aside, dropped to our knees and started scrubbing, dabbing, cleaning, soaking and sobbing as we tried to lift the dark burgundy blot that was now settling into the whitest carpet in London.

It was now midnight and I ran out, grabbed a cab and got him to run around London to find any late night supermarket that would sell ‘Vanish’ and all those other ‘Miracle Stain Remover’ stuff we see on TV.
Other comics were running round London looking for drugs, I was looking for carpet chemicals!
By 4am we had finished the clean up and the stain looked pale and blotty as opposed to dark and red.
By the end of my trip there, I had cleaned the carpet four times.
I decided that if the stain was still dark by the time I left, I would pay full price to get the whole thing professionally cleaned, as it turned out, by the Monday the carpet was fine and Lori came by to pick up the keys.
I explained the situation to her; she threw her hands up to her face, dropped her expensive handbag and bolted into the living room.
She ran to a stain under the side window, fell to her knees and shouted “Janey, it is still a bit visible here, for God’s sake, how will I get it out!”
“Lori, that is not my stain, mine is over here at the door” I pointed to the far end of the room at the door entry where I had accomplished my wine throwing talents.
“Oh yes, that’s right, that stain is where a flower vase fell last year, Janey, (she pointed to where the wine stain was) I cant see any stain over there, in fact the carpet looks very clean, can you do me a favour and get that flower stain out for me?”

So there we have it, I have become the oracle on fabric cleaning!