I’m on a DVD which comes out this week, as a sort of Stuart Maconie talking head. I don’t say much but I laugh at my friend Nev’s jokes. Please don’t buy it solely on my account; as an extra, they’ve included a Doctor Who story.
I don’t think I’ll ever be able to watch it. I look too fat and have this weird nerdy voice which isn’t, I hope, what I normally sound like. Although probably I do.
But it was a lifetime ambition, to have a go at being Paul Ross. Now that box has been ticked, you’re safe, I won’t turn up again.
Related memory. Towards the end of my stint running the Erasure Information Service – of which only many happy memories remain – we organised a fan club show, where I ticked another lifetime ambition box and got to be on stage with my heroes. Unfortunately they wouldn’t let me sing or play the keyboards so I had to interview them, in my capacity as being the only person I felt fulfilled the necessary and sufficient criteria of being me. I don’t remember much about that evening – I was ver, ver drunk, and suffering from a stress-related log-jam, and probably still in that very strange mental place I was occupying for much of 2002 – but I do remember being on stage, feeling oddly nonchalant about the experience of being up there in front of 2000 people.
The interview was recorded, it was released on DVD. My lifetime ambition, preserved for posterity. Have I ever watched it? I think I’ve managed all of about three seconds.
Weird thing is, it’s the same guy who’s on the Doctor Who DVD this week. He’s got a lot fatter and balder. But he still has the same weird nerdy voice.