Comedy Skit: Born To Play This Part

9:02p.m., Tue 12 Jan 2010

Sometimes, usually when I'm wide awake at night, plagued by insomnia, I'll wring a limp comic sketch out of something that tickled me and lodged inside my brain. What follows was inspired by Sir Patrick Stewart (a fellow Town fan but undeniably a massive lush) being interview by Robert Llewellyn in his excellent Carpool vodcast.

We join an episode of "Inside The Actor's Studio" somewhere at a mid-point. A honey-voiced female interviewer is posing the questions to a Shakespearian actor who replies in a cut-glass English accent, every word purposefully and deliberately enunciated, in that way that only Shakespearian actors can.

FEMALE INTERVIEWER:
It has become the role that defines your career as an actor. Inevitably, it's the role you'll be remembered for.

MALE ACTOR:
Yes, yes - much to my chagrin, given the broad range of work in my canon...

FEMALE INTERVIEWER:
Could you just talk a little about how you came to play that role?

MALE ACTOR:
Well, When I first took on the role it frightened me, I'll be honest.

My agent rang me... it was 1981, 82, something like that. He said to me: "Laurence... I have a script... there's a part... you were BORN to play this part, Laurence, you really were". And I didn't think anything of it, because agents say these things all the time.

But he faxed the script to me. And when I first read it.... oh! the words! the words just jumped off the script... this character was alive! It was thrilling. It resonated with me SO strongly, I can't begin to explain, but it was a character with strength, a tremendous... power, but also subtle vulnerabilities. I knew instantly I absolutely HAD to play this character. I DEVOURED that script, absolutely devoured it! Every word! I imbued myself with this complex, fascinating character. I could feel myself becoming him. I could feel his personality flowing through my veins, flooding my synapses. I was... engulfed!

And I barely practised. Usually, I'll read a script and I'll practise the lines, I'll develop a physicality, I'll sit in front of the mirror and test a range of facial expressions, it's an enormous amount of work ... but this role. I knew it. I. KNEW. IT. It was me. I absorbed it and I was absorbed in it....

And I stood on the stage for my audition, stood in that petrifying spotlight. A voice, the director's voice from the darkness asking me to deliver the lines. I paused for a moment, not knowing what to do, and then.... BANG! like a bolt of lightning! And it simply came pouring out of me...

<ACTOR ADOPTS THE VOICE OF A PATOIS-SPEAKING BLACK MAN FROM CHICAGO>

I ain't gittin' on no plane, ya crazy foo'!

Nobody drives mah van but me!

Quit your jibba-jabba!