Mick Jagger was like a sulky teenager, Jerry Hall was auditioning for AbFab and the only booze was a half bottle of plonk wrapped in clingfilm… ADRIAN EDMONDSON relives a VERY awkward dinner date with the king of rock’n’roll

To be blunt, I do not take pleasure in being recognised on the street, it makes me uncomfortable. I discover it awkward, and it is usually such a one-sided transaction.

And when you get sucked into believing you are ‘well-known’, you might be immediately dissatisfied as a result of, in fact, most individuals do not know who you might be.

Within the early Eighties I do a charity gala at London’s Victoria Palace Theatre and The Police — the band, not the rozzers — are on the identical invoice.

It is throughout a time once I’ve allowed my hair to return to its pure blond, and once I come to depart the theatre after the present the stage door swings open to an alarming shriek of pleasure, and a daunting surge ahead.

A big throng of teenage women see my shock of blond hair because the door opens and mistake me, nevertheless briefly (cease laughing), for Sting or Stewart Copeland or Andy Summers. All of them have blond hair. All of us have blond hair. Then they see my silly glasses and spotty face and the surge recedes as if from a medieval leper ringing a bell, the gang opens just like the Crimson Sea and I stroll the gauntlet of disappointment.

I can hear them tutting. To be misrecognised is nearly extra embarrassing than being recognised. It is as if I’ve damaged their belief.

Conversely, if you combine with the extremely well-known you generally get the flexibility to go incognito. It is like sporting an invisibility cloak.

By the late Nineties [my wife] Jennifer’s [Saunders] present Completely Fabulous is in its pomp and plans are afoot to remake it in America for an American viewers.

The British model is already highly regarded in America, so why anybody thinks it is a good concept is past practically everybody concerned, however Jerry Corridor will get wind of it, and as our youngsters go to the identical faculty she buttonholes Jennifer on the faculty gate and declares her curiosity in enjoying Patsy. Jennifer is non-committal however Jerry invitations us spherical to dinner to ‘speak additional’ about it.

I wish to go, and I do not wish to go. It should contain assembly Mick Jagger. I cherished Mick Jagger as a teen. I cherished the Rolling Stones. Gimme Shelter was the primary album I ever purchased — the best way I selected to outline myself in school.

To be trustworthy, I finished listening after Exile On Principal Avenue, however I do know the early albums inside out — they have been a big a part of my early teenage revolt. So far as I am involved, now that Presley is lifeless, Mick is the King of Rock’n’Roll, and I worry this is perhaps a tough customary to reside as much as. I’m not improper.

On the Jagger/Corridor home Jerry opens the door dressed as Patsy from AbFab. She’s mainly auditioning, so it is awkward from the beginning. She tells us Mick is upstairs having his eyebrows dyed as a result of he is about to go on tour, and we sit making stuttering small speak till a Filipino maid calls us for dinner.

We sit down in a dingy basement eating space and Mick deigns to hitch us. His eyebrows look fabulous, if barely incongruous on his wrinkly outdated face. I do not assume he is seen AbFab however he appears conscious that Jennifer is a author or one thing, and that Jerry needs to impress her, although it is apparent he’d relatively be some place else, that it is a responsibility, and his behaviour borders on sulky teenager. I actually take pleasure in this about him — that is the surly revolutionary I hoped for.

He thinks I am Jennifer’s supervisor and calls me Andrew. Jerry corrects him, saying my title is Adam. I roll with it —maybe that is going to be extra enjoyable if I haven’t got to elucidate myself.

The maid serves what seems to be like a faculty dinner. And at this level Mick notices there is no such thing as a wine on the desk. Now, you do not get to be a knight of the realm with out understanding some primary ceremonial dinner etiquette so he says he does not drink wine however asks Jennifer if she would love some. Jennifer, a eager imbiber, says ‘sure’, and Jerry seems to be nervous and leaves the room. She comes again a few minutes later with a bottle of plonk; it is half full and has a wrap of clingfilm across the high.

‘Does wine like kinda go off?’ she asks.

It turns into evident that that is the one bottle of wine within the King of Rock’n’Roll’s home. The person was a byword for debauchery within the Sixties however there is no such thing as a booze. We guarantee Jerry that good wine has a shelf lifetime of a whole lot of years and eagerly drink a glass every of cooking sherry. And that’s the finish of the ‘wine’. And kind of the tip of the night. And the tip of my absolute hero worship. Come on, Mick, there are requirements.

Jerry does not get the half. Appearing is a tricky enterprise.

However what’s an actor? What do they do? And why would Jerry wish to be one? Extra to the purpose, why would I wish to be one? In truth, am I being one in The Younger Ones? Or am I being a comic? Is there a distinction?

I’ve some shared traits with my Younger Ones character Vyvyan — I’m the person who tried to drive his bike up the steps at a scholar social gathering — however Vyvyan will not be precisely me. There is a photograph of me on set, clearly taken between takes or in rehearsal, during which I am dressed as Vyvyan with the spiky hair and the spots and the celebs on my brow — however I’ve received my glasses on. It instantly makes me not Vyvyan, so one thing’s happening.

Appearing is mendacity. And the most effective performing is essentially the most convincing type of mendacity. In case you can lie actually, rather well, they offer you a small statuette of a unadorned man holding a sword.

Konstantin Stanislavski, born in Russia in 1863, is the daddy of contemporary ‘technique’ performing. Some others — notably Lee Strasberg and Sanford Meisner — refined the method, however all of them had the identical intent: they wished actors to realize a type of actuality, an emotional authenticity. Reality is the phrase they like to make use of.

Stanislavski was eager on actors discovering one thing inside their private lives or the folks they knew that resonated with what the character was going via. Meisner went the entire hog and instructed you must deal with the opposite actors round you as actual — and that you do not do one thing ‘because the character’, you ‘are’ the character.

After all, you then need to ask your self why you are in a room with a movie crew and one of many partitions lacking. Or standing on a stage with a thousand folks trying on, consuming Maltesers and coughing. It is all about completely different ranges of deception, and loads of it’s about deceiving your self.

There is a well-known story about Dustin Hoffman and Laurence Olivier on the set of Marathon Man which supposedly demonstrates the conflict of performing kinds. Hoffman’s enjoying a scene during which his character has had no sleep for 3 days and he decides to not go to mattress for 72 hours in order that he can play the reality of the scene.

Olivier arrives in make-up, spots a tired-looking Hoffman, and asks why he seems to be so tough. Hoffman explains, and Olivier says: ‘Expensive boy, why not attempt performing?’

It could be good if my life fell into neat compartments, but it surely simply will not. Life after comedy is frankly a whole bloody mess: Chernobyl; the presenting jobs; The Bonzos, The Dangerous Shepherds, and The Fool Bastards; forays into actuality TV; Hell’s Kitchen (who would have thought the ultimate could be between Krystle Carrington from Dynasty and Vyvyan from The Younger Ones); Celeb MasterChef (winner 2013 — take that, Janet Avenue-Porter and Les Dennis); Comedian Reduction does Fame Academy.

I am a person with no focus.

However one factor all this floundering round does is confuse folks — and that is most likely the most effective factor I can do — as a result of now they do not know what I’m in any respect, which is marginally higher than simply being an ex-comedian.

There’s various ‘me’ in that livid checklist above, and ‘me’ may be very completely different to Vyvyan or Eddie Hitler; ‘me’ has began to look much less like a berserker, and extra like . . . a human being?

I slowly change into what some folks name a ‘jobbing actor’: forty-six episodes of Holby, enjoying a physician who wears his coronary heart on his sleeve (which as any physician is aware of is the improper place for it to be); Miss Austin Regrets, a interval drama during which I play Jane Austen’s brother, whereas Greta Scacchi performs my different sister Cassandra; Struggle & Peace, during which Greta is now my spouse — is that this incest?

Even Star Wars — although I uncover this has roots in my comedic previous.

M y first thought when my agent calls to say they’re providing me the half is: Think about what Fred and Bert would assume! Fred and Bert are my grandsons they usually’ve received the High Trumps model of Star Wars — think about if I all of a sudden turned up within the subsequent pack of playing cards. (I do really change into a collectible buying and selling card.)

It seems I have been employed for the same cause. The director, Rian Johnson, was a fan of Backside in his scholar days. He tells me he first turned conscious of Backside as a ebook of scripts, relatively than as a TV programme, and shot one of many episodes as a movie whereas at movie faculty. He is mainly finished what I did with The Goon Present scripts, solely with higher gear and precise actors. However we’re each getting one thing else out of this expertise.

Filming schedules within the trendy period usually do not enable the time to go down the complete Meisner route. A good friend who labored with Keanu Reeves within the Nineties says he locations a towel over his head in between set-ups to maintain the surface world at bay, which clearly works for Keanu, however sounds a bit unsociable.

I develop a way that works for me: I simply be taught my traces to loss of life.

You’ll have seen me in Hyde Park doing my four-mile stomp across the perimeter with pages of script in hand, chuntering on the bushes. Fortunately, the park is so stuffed with nutters I do not look too eccentric.

I repeat them again and again. By the point I say them in entrance of digital camera I am going to have stated them a minimal of 500 instances. The traces go on a bizarre journey of their very own: they begin off being an train in memorising; then, as a type of muscle reminiscence begins to work in my mouth, they change into nearly meaningless; then the which means slowly drifts again, however by this level the ideas and the phrases are not two separate processes and it hopefully feels like I am really pondering them.

On the set of A Spy Amongst Buddies, Damian Lewis remarks that I flip up ‘digital camera prepared’, however that is not fairly the purpose: I wish to be so fully ready that I can spend my time without work digital camera having fun and swapping tales — which is what the filming day is generally about, for my part. Keanu does not know what he is lacking.

Although my line-learning technique fails once I do Star Wars. It is onerous to be taught your traces to loss of life once they will not let you know what they’re.

My friendship with Rian does not open the safety degree that will allow me to learn the entire script. The manufacturing is obsessive about secrecy. I am allowed a quick learn of a few of my traces, in a locked room with a manufacturing assistant trying on, every week earlier than filming, however I am not allowed to take a script residence. And once I present as much as movie every day I am given the related scene with all the opposite characters’ traces redacted.

It is solely at rehearsal on set that I discover out what the others are saying. It is hilarious.

Think about my shock once I flip up on the premiere and discover I’ve the primary line within the movie. This is perhaps why many of the minor characters in Star Wars appear so ‘spaced out’ — they actually do not know what’s occurring.

• Tailored from Berserker! by Adrian Edmondson (Pan Macmillan, £22) to be revealed on September 28. © Adrian Edmondson 2023. To order a replica for £19.80 (supply legitimate till September 25, 2023; UK P&P free on orders over £25) go to mailshop.co.uk/books or name 020 3176 2937.