Screen Break
Why I am not now in Hollywood by a swimming pool taking drugs
By Martin "Mr TV" Kelner on May 24, 2011 - 3:55:08 PM
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The story of how I nearly co-produced a television programme for Gary
Wilmot.. From a Guardian Screen Break column of around two years ago....
Do you ever lie awake at
night and find yourself wondering what happened to Gary Wilmot?
I am guessing not, in which respect you
differ from me.
I cannot say my
sleep is regularly disturbed, but I do definitely wonder.
You see, back in the early
1980s, a TV producer friend and I had an idea for a TV programme involving
willing members of the public, called The People Show.
This, remember, was long before Big
Brother or any of the so-called reality formats.
My associate was a psychology graduate, so many of the tasks
we proposed for what we chose to call "ordinary people" had an interesting
psychological dimension.
To our
surprise, Central TV, a big player at the time, got rather excited, and called
us up to Nottingham for a meeting.
Turned out they were to
produce a big-budget Saturday night entertainment show for the ITV network and
had, they told us with great pride, secured the services of Gary Wilmot as
host.
They claimed to be very
interested in our format, so, though we did not altogether see ours as a Gary
Wilmot kind of show, we feigned enthusiasm, and waited for their people to get
in touch with our people and arrange for the transfer of huge suitcases full of
money.
This, as those of you who
have been following this column over the intervening years will be aware, never
happened.
Every time we tried to
call our contact at Central TV (on the hour, every hour, roughly) he was "in a
meeting."
Eventually a Gary Wilmot
Saturday night show did appear, but as it bore as much resemblance to our original
format as prawn cocktail Hula-Hoops to Coquilles Saint Jacques Parisienne, we
stood our lawyers down.
I had forgotten just why Gary
was such a hot property, until I watched Good Arrows, a mockumentary about a
darts player (an oche-umentary, if you will), on ITV4 on Saturday night.
Wilmot crops up in a clip
from an old Bullseye programme being watched by Andy "Arrows" Samson, the hero
of the film, who worships at the shrine of Jim Bowen.
The good natured casually racist banter between Bowen and Wilmot
fair takes the breath away given it was only twenty years ago or so (Gary says
he has been in Torquay "for a respray."
"On the beach, topping up the old tan, ho, ho," says Bowen). A good
looking, non-threatening black man, capable of joshing along in prime time like
that must have been a producer's wet dream back then.
The Wilmot scene was not the
only jaw-dropping moment in Good Arrows, as you might expect from a dark comedy
co-written, and directed, by Irvine "Trainspotting" Welsh.
There were drug references -
particularly to an unlikely narcotic called jenkem, which is nothing more or
less than fermented human waste products - and just as Edinburgh was not
universally overjoyed at the picture of the city that emerged from
Trainspotting, Welsh, I suspect, is in no immediate danger of being granted the
freedom of Merthyr Tydfil.
Merthyr is "Arrows" Samson's
home town, where the locals, when not getting high on their own movements, seem
to like nothing better than a quick bunk-up in the back of a motor
vehicle.
I only hope they can take
a joke.
There were some good ones in
Good Arrows - "She's got the mind of a child, poor thing," Samson says of
Gwynneth, whom he employs to polish his trophies, "She's been like that since
she was a kid" - but also some weak ones, although I hesitate to say so.
I saw the film at a preview screening,
also attended by Welsh, who wrote a newspaper piece referring to some of the
audience as "the usual cynical bastards, the faint praise brigade."
And there was I, sitting at the back,
trying to be inconspicuous.
Oh, what the heck.
The joke about "Arrows" thinking
himself a celebrity, but failing to be recognised, was overplayed, and the sly
looks to camera from Samson's wife/manager, Big Sheila, were straight out of The
Office.
Against that, Jonathan
Owen was utterly believable as "Arrows," the epitome of every dumb,
good-natured, manipulated sportsman you have ever seen, and Katy Brand, who
played Big Sheila a little more broadly, is clearly a talent.
Her Big Ass Show may be hit-and-miss,
but the female squaddie character she does is hilarious.
Praise to ITV4, too, scoring
a bullseye, or at least an outer, with its first comedy commission, part of a
weekend of darts on the channel, including a documentary on Phil Taylor, and
hours of coverage of the PDC players' championships from the Circus Tavern,
Purfleet.
Either the channel is
trying to grab some of the tungsten fairy dust that has worked such magic for
Sky Sports and the BBC of late, or has found there are not enough episodes of
Randall and Hopkirk Deceased and Police, Camera, Action to fill its schedules.
The good news on Gary Wilmot,
by the way, for those of you still worried, is that he has just finished a
successful run as Smee in Peter Pan in Manchester.
There is a tendency to think those who have disappeared from
our screens are in a showbiz care home somewhere or swigging paint thinner
under Brighton pier, but Gary is still working hard, and might even be prepared
to have a look at any old TV proposals you have hanging around.
