Friday Night is Dog Night
Friday night was an unusual scenario for me for three reasons. Firstly, I was in two TV shows broadcasting on the same night, on the same channel (BBC1). The first show was the new Tom Basden comedy starring Katherine Parkinson and Jim Howick, Here We Go (formally Pandemonium). The second was long running Lee Mack comedy, Not Going Out.
So the second unusual, and I dare I say it, interesting thing about this particular Friday night is that both characters I played had dogs. My character in Here We Go was actually credited as “Dog Owner”, and my Not Going Out character was a tree surgeon named Tom Taylor.
Now let’s get on to the third thing. I’ve been cut from a few things over the years – it’s just the way it sometimes goes – but never have I experienced what I did for Here We Go. Originally I was actually “Man On Phone” as my dialogue with Katherine and Jim is actually via speakerphone before they return my dog to me. When the producers asked me to come and do some additional ADR (an archery commentator, a radio DJ) they nervously informed me that they’d actually re-recorded my dialogue as I didn’t sound nasty enough. In fact, it is now Ed Kear who effectively plays my voice in the episode. Oh well, that’s another story for the podcast! You should be able to hear me as the archery commentator in Episode 4.