Lounge filming
Location: Farnborough, Hampshire
Bodies present: Mike Varty, Ian Lindsay, Sue Element, Mark Stalker, Henry Burrows

Jimmy eats his dinner and argues with Scanner

Tonight we started on our penultimate interior location; the lounge. Following last time's preparation, we were off to an easy start, with Mike as Scanner entering the room and sitting down to read one of his comics. Once he had taken his place on a bean-bag at the far side of the lounge that was it for the evening- no more movements required in this scene.

Ian - not getting enough sleep?

The night was a challenging one for the actors' memories with plenty of long lines and not much action. Ian as Jimmy spent much of the time with a plate of spaghetti shapes to eat and a can of beer (or was it really water?) to drink. Mark was once again on microphone duties, facing a mysterious humming noise problem which seemed to be solved by standing away from the television, although that didn't always cure it.

Because of the number of long lines to be learnt, there were several rehearsals for each scene. The strange thing was, though, that everyone was fine in practise, but kept forgetting their lines when the camera was recording! In fact at times it degraded to just one single line per take, following by people cracking up with laughter. And on the takes when it was going well either the smoke alarm in the kitchen would go beep beep or my stomach would rumble! But, as always, we got there in the end.

Sue spent most of the evening off-camera, but managed to get a few minutes of screen-time towards the end. By the time we packed up for the night, Mike's leg was numb from sitting in the same position for hours and he was fed up with the comic which he probably knew off by heart after reading it in almost every shot.

Another out-take...