Latest / The Christian Reeve Podcast / Facing Arthritis With Elberace (Gay Elvis) | The Christian Reeve Podcast #350

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Facing Arthritis With Elberace (Gay Elvis) | The Christian Reeve Podcast #350 · The Christian Reeve Podcast

• 0:00
  Hello and welcome to another episode of Christian Reef
• 0:02
  Podcast. Today's guest is El Barache AKA
• 0:07
  Gay Elvis. Welcome back to the show.
• 0:09
  How you doing? Good, thank you.
• 0:11
  I like the way you say El Barache.
• 0:13
  It's fab. It's only El Barache.
• 0:17
  El Barache I don't know, man. I'd I say, do you know, you
• 0:21
  don't matter of times I've done like an intro and then someone's
• 0:25
  like really politely, like, you got my name wrong.
• 0:28
  And I'm like, yeah. Yeah.
• 0:33
  There was a lot. Sometimes I ask people ahead of
• 0:35
  time and I'm like, how do you say that?
• 0:37
  Other times I just go for it. But I suppose it depends how
• 0:41
  brave I am. Really.
• 0:41
  Yeah. I'm lucky.
• 0:42
  The new haircut, by the way, as well.
• 0:45
  Thanks, man. Yeah, I appreciate that.
• 0:48
  Yeah. Really, you must feel a bit
• 0:50
  naked and it's, you know, a bit like Samson having his hair cut
• 0:55
  off, you know, like. I don't feel any different.
• 0:57
  Everyone has asked me that. No, everyone asked me that
• 1:00
  question. And I'm to be honest, I suppose
• 1:02
  it feels different. I don't know.
• 1:05
  The only thing I think that you physically notice is like the
• 1:08
  way you carry yourself a little bit because obviously if you
• 1:10
  have longer hair, it's weighted. So there's that, but nothing's
• 1:18
  really changed. I think maybe I'm dressing a bit
• 1:21
  smarter now because you can't you kind of roll with, with what
• 1:26
  you've got and obviously like I don't have money to go get nice
• 1:28
  clothes and stuff. Pretty much everything I own is
• 1:31
  either second hand like given to me or like you know, like 1
• 1:36
  Christmas I got this or something.
• 1:37
  You know, it's kind of that deal.
• 1:39
  But I make the best with what I have.
• 1:41
  And I figured kind of like it they do in the wrestling
• 1:46
  industry, like whenever you have like a change, like you go, you
• 1:49
  lean into it. You can you.
• 1:51
  But like, I'm not any different, you know what I mean?
• 1:54
  It's just I think the only thing that's really different now is
• 1:59
  this is like my last kind of hurrah on trying to do acting
• 2:06
  because I was always told you're too niche.
• 2:10
  You know, your look is too out there.
• 2:12
  Like it's difficult to place you.
• 2:13
  And I'm like, look, I'm not a casting director, but like I
• 2:17
  could I could have a go. Do you know what I mean?
• 2:19
  Like vampire, I don't know, something from Bridgeton Viking.
• 2:25
  Like, come on, man. Like you lean into what The
• 2:27
  thing is, you know, and it was always Oh, whoa, you know, we
• 2:32
  can't we put a new forward for these commercials, but your your
• 2:35
  hair's too long or you look like you're a heavy metal guy or
• 2:38
  something. And it's like.
• 2:40
  Yeah, I mean, I, we'll come on to that as we talk because
• 2:47
  there's some stuff around that that I'm going to go on to when
• 2:53
  we talk about arthritis and the effects of that on on, on people
• 2:58
  and certainly on performers. You know, my my story is it's
• 3:09
  very sudden and it's been it's been a very sudden thing for me
• 3:14
  and, and how I'm trying to strategize and find value and
• 3:19
  ways out of that with a progressive degenerate disease
• 3:26
  that often gets unless you have it just get sidelined.
• 3:31
  You know, people just think, oh, you've got stiff joints.
• 3:34
  Do you know what I mean? So, so, so casting is
• 3:37
  interesting. You're talking about casting and
• 3:39
  stuff. So there might be some stuff
• 3:41
  later on, Christian, that you think, Yeah, actually that
• 3:46
  actually might make some sense to you in terms of as a
• 3:50
  performer, because performing, performing is a performing.
• 3:54
  You know, the performing gene is are very hungry.
• 4:01
  You're living the life of hunger with it.
• 4:04
  You know you're constantly searching and constantly hungry
• 4:08
  and find. Someone who gets me.
• 4:14
  Like, like though it's, it's a, it's a very hungry kind of
• 4:18
  thing. And as a performer, you have to
• 4:21
  be so self-sufficient. And you know, there's, I don't
• 4:25
  know any other profession where people are think they know, you
• 4:31
  know, like think they know and you know.
• 4:34
  Everyone's got the. I wouldn't.
• 4:35
  Dream. I wouldn't dream telling a
• 4:37
  dentist what he should be doing with his career or how many
• 4:41
  teeth did you fill today then or what you did a root filling, you
• 4:45
  know, and you constantly have such.
• 4:46
  Have you, have you not meant, have you not made GP yet?
• 4:49
  Yeah. Maybe you should consider a
• 4:51
  different career. Yeah, yeah.
• 4:53
  Or, or I had a years ago, I was in a taxi and a taxi driver said
• 4:57
  to me, I was, I was having to do some looping on a film that I've
• 5:01
  been in. And it was about a year later
• 5:04
  and I had to, I couldn't remember the scripts or the
• 5:07
  character, you know, and I'm in the back of the cab just going
• 5:10
  over it or it's just a very small bit of looping I had to
• 5:12
  do. And the cab job went, what's
• 5:16
  that you're looking at, mate? I said, oh, it's a script,
• 5:19
  you're an actor. Then I said, I said, yeah, I am.
• 5:21
  I'm a performer. Oh, you want to do what my mate
• 5:24
  does? You want to do what my mate
• 5:26
  does. You want to get yourself on
• 5:29
  EastEnders. My mate's on EastEnders and I'm
• 5:32
  like, I'm like, I said, well, I'd love the job on EastEnders.
• 5:35
  I said I'd love, I'd love regular work like that.
• 5:37
  I said, I said what does he do? Well, if you watch when they're
• 5:42
  in the market, he's on the third Barrow from the back and I'm
• 5:46
  like, right, OK, so is he an actor or an extra?
• 5:51
  I said there's, I said neither's less than the other.
• 5:56
  Acting is you go to college for that and, and he's going on
• 6:01
  anyway. And I, I thought, oh God, how
• 6:04
  many times do you have to hear this conversation?
• 6:07
  And, and it's very insulting. And as I got out the car just as
• 6:11
  the door was closing, he went. Don't worry mate, you'll get
• 6:14
  your lucky break. Amen, Well, Amen.
• 6:18
  Well. I walked to this passenger
• 6:19
  window and knocked on the window.
• 6:22
  I said, wind the window down a second.
• 6:23
  I said, what You mean my break? I said what you mean my break.
• 6:29
  I said an actor's career is a series of breaks.
• 6:33
  It's a series of breaks. I said.
• 6:35
  Getting a casting is a lucky break getting, I said.
• 6:39
  I said, what are you judging me about?
• 6:41
  And are you judging me on the fact that you don't recognise
• 6:43
  me, that I've not been in a big film or something like that?
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  I said acting's a job. It's, it's and you're
• 6:51
  constantly, constantly having to explain yourself to people what
• 6:56
  you've done. I just find it tedious really.
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  You know, it's an insecure job and not everybody breaks through
• 7:05
  a particular time, but as long as you're in the game, you are
• 7:11
  what it. Is, I mean, you, you've kind of
• 7:13
  hit on something pretty big for me, to be honest.
• 7:16
  I spoke about this on the podcast recently and someone
• 7:19
  came at me and if you're watching, listening, it was
• 7:23
  cool. I understand why you were
• 7:25
  annoyed. So I said, you know, so it's the
• 7:29
  question every actor hates, you know, what have you been in?
• 7:33
  What would I know you from? And I said it undermines
• 7:36
  everything you've done up to this point.
• 7:38
  And their point was, well, you know, it's quite funny actually.
• 7:42
  You wouldn't you don't if if a chef, if you ask the chef or
• 7:45
  chef favorite meal to make, you know, they wouldn't get their
• 7:48
  knickers in A twist. So what's your fucking problem
• 7:50
  kind of thing? And I was like, all right, I see
• 7:51
  where he's coming from. But at the same time, what I'm
• 7:55
  saying is true as well. Like most people when they ask
• 7:58
  you that question, they're not going to go and actually check
• 8:01
  out yourself. I'd say like naughty point 1%
• 8:04
  will actually go in and look at like the body of work that I've
• 8:07
  done over the last seven years of acting right.
• 8:10
  But most people, and again, there's different categories to
• 8:15
  this. There's people who are just
• 8:16
  purely ignorant and just don't know and they mean well, maybe
• 8:19
  like that cab driver, I'm sure he meant well, you know, then
• 8:22
  there's people that are deliberately rude.
• 8:24
  And this is kind of more what I'm driving at.
• 8:27
  It's the status thing, especially these days.
• 8:29
  You know, how many followers do you have?
• 8:32
  I'm sure you've had this with with the gig circuit as well.
• 8:34
  Every now and again, like, because I know I have where that
• 8:37
  someone from America reached out to me the other day that I know
• 8:40
  for a friend and they were like, oh, could you help me get a gig?
• 8:45
  Like, can you tell me like etcetera.
• 8:47
  And I was like, listen, buddy, I'm the wrong person to ask
• 8:49
  because when I asked for gigs, they're like, can you get 50
• 8:52
  people on a random Tuesday? And I'm like, no, I can't.
• 8:56
  No, I, I'm lucky if I have one friend turn up.
• 8:59
  You know, that's the reality of, of trying to do and, and I can't
• 9:04
  tell you how many amazing musicians I've seen recently
• 9:09
  where like that. This is no one there.
• 9:12
  And they might be big online, but there's no one there, you
• 9:15
  know? And I don't know what to make of
• 9:17
  that. I don't know what that means.
• 9:19
  But I see them and I see how talented they are.
• 9:22
  And, you know, if I had a record label, I'd sign them.
• 9:25
  Now, if this was 20 years ago, they'd be huge.
• 9:28
  Like I, I don't know what to make of modern society,
• 9:32
  especially when it comes to this, this question, this idea
• 9:36
  of status and what makes a performer because there's far
• 9:41
  more quote UN quote, like I'm not going to say unsuccessful
• 9:46
  because I don't, I think if you're making a living, you are
• 9:48
  a success. But there's plenty of people
• 9:51
  like myself not making any money working, you know, broke and
• 9:57
  struggling on minimum wage. And then there's a greater
• 10:00
  majority who are in paid work, but just, you know, whatever,
• 10:05
  haven't got their big break. But like, not all of us are
• 10:07
  looking for that either, you know?
• 10:09
  So there's different. Levels to this, I think it I
• 10:12
  think it's about knowing who you are and knowing what you want.
• 10:16
  I mean, I have a friend of mine I went to drama school with Tom
• 10:21
  and Tom, he's a good actor, but success isn't based on being a
• 10:29
  good actor. Nope at all.
• 10:33
  And it's not and, and, and Tom was really struggling, really,
• 10:43
  really struggling, you know, doing Pamela above a pub with
• 10:47
  one person there opening a packet of crisps, you know,
• 10:50
  during the a big soliloquy and stuff like that.
• 10:54
  And but Tom is an actor and it's about his creativity.
• 11:03
  It's not about fame and fortune and this and the other.
• 11:07
  Anyway, Tom took a job understudying, I think it was
• 11:12
  Rowan Atkinson in Oliver. And again, you know, you get
• 11:16
  told as an actor, never take understudy work.
• 11:18
  You'll never do anything else. Everybody hates you.
• 11:21
  You're turning up every night getting ready.
• 11:23
  You never get to go on stage. And if you do, you get it wrong.
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  And you know, we all know in big shows, generally there's not
• 11:30
  huge amount of rehearsal for understudies.
• 11:32
  You watch. It's a really difficult job to
• 11:35
  do. I wouldn't want to do it, but
• 11:38
  Tom loves my ignorance. But.
• 11:41
  I see it. What?
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  What do you actually do? What is an understanding?
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  Still, you're in insurance to to do you know so.
• 11:47
  Like if Rowan Atkinson, like, I don't know, he had, he tripped,
• 11:50
  fell, God forbid. If he was off sick or he got
• 11:52
  sick, Tom would go on instead of him as an understudy.
• 11:55
  That's what I thought it was, but I wasn't.
• 11:56
  So an understudy is a result. You know, generally people
• 12:00
  aren't going to pull out of a show.
• 12:02
  They they're going to have to have something really serious on
• 12:05
  them, especially the leading star of the show.
• 12:08
  And Tom was understudying him. But Tom took that job, I think
• 12:13
  for a couple of reasons. One was financial and two was
• 12:18
  because Tom is an artist, he's an actor and he applies himself
• 12:23
  professionally to things that he does.
• 12:25
  And the job come up anyway. He he did that show.
• 12:28
  I mean he was he was impoverished Tom and if he's
• 12:33
  watching this sorry Tom telling your biographer he he when the
• 12:38
  show when they did they did an understudy run of the shows.
• 12:42
  People came in this project. So it was on an afternoon it's
• 12:45
  closed. It's just you can invite friends
• 12:47
  in and this and there happens to be an agent there who happened
• 12:51
  to have worked for a big agency setting up on his own saw Tom
• 12:55
  took TomTom finished the understudy run and divine
• 12:59
  Providence. What would happen is up in at
• 13:02
  the Lowry Theatre in Manchester, they're doing a production of
• 13:06
  Oliver and the lead falls Sick, who's doing Fagin, which is the
• 13:12
  part that Tom's understudied. So they whisked Tom up there and
• 13:16
  he stepped in and did finish the run as a lead in a show.
• 13:22
  You know, provincial theatre, but main theatre playing Fagin.
• 13:26
  So he then comes back to London and that then lifts him up at a
• 13:31
  level. The agent is getting him in to
• 13:34
  see things. Anyway he goes for an audition
• 13:36
  for it. Use was a George Fadeau play
• 13:39
  called A Flea in Her Ear. It was a farce from early 1900s,
• 13:45
  but they did an updated version of it called One Man 2 Governors
• 13:48
  with James Corden in and Tom's brilliant physical theatre.
• 13:52
  And it was a very small part and it was physical theatre.
• 13:56
  And he played an old waiter that had one or two little scenes
• 14:02
  that, you know, in a grabby old, you know, 2 suits kind of thing
• 14:05
  that fell over and fell down stairs and this, that and the
• 14:08
  other, all the reviews pulled him out.
• 14:11
  Every single review you looked in a standard, they'd be
• 14:14
  reviewing it. Same Tom Eddon, brilliant
• 14:17
  physical comedy. So the writers started to make
• 14:20
  his part a little bit bigger. So, you know, there was more of
• 14:23
  him sort of walking past and falling down and this and that
• 14:27
  and he was hilarious in it with such a small part.
• 14:30
  The run finished, you know, the cars change, they take it to
• 14:34
  Broadway. Tom goes to Broadway with it.
• 14:37
  Suddenly he's the toaster Broadway.
• 14:40
  He's on the he's nominated and on the list for a Tony Award for
• 14:47
  Best Supporting actor. Do you know what I mean?
• 14:52
  Then he comes back to London. He didn't get it.
• 14:54
  He didn't win it. He won the Drama Desk Award.
• 14:57
  He came back to London. He's been working in, oh, he's
• 15:00
  West End all the time. Then last year he was up for his
• 15:04
  best supporting actor for an Olivier Award for Waiting for
• 15:09
  Godot, and now he's in Paddington.
• 15:12
  I'm going to go and see him in it next week.
• 15:14
  But the The thing is, is that story Tom essentially is the
• 15:19
  same person. He's the same person and he is
• 15:25
  working because he's an actor, not because of he want obviously
• 15:31
  finances, but he works because Tom is a true actor.
• 15:37
  He, it's his, it's what he is and it's what he does.
• 15:40
  And he's no different. I'd go and meet him for lunch
• 15:43
  and he's totally the same as he ever was and he's do you know
• 15:48
  what I mean? And that's, that's the truth of
• 15:51
  acting. And anyone can get a break at
• 15:53
  that kind of thing happened at any time, any time at all.
• 16:00
  So I always say don't give up on your dream.
• 16:05
  If you're if, if it's your ambition that you're giving up
• 16:08
  on, that's a different thing. But if you're truly an actor and
• 16:11
  a performer, and this is again, go back to my osteoarthritis.
• 16:15
  This is what I'm struggling with is what's being taken away from
• 16:19
  me in terms of who I am. And you know how I've lived my
• 16:26
  life, sacrifices I've made and my creativity.
• 16:29
  That's not something you can take and compartmentalise.
• 16:34
  It's a part of your spirit and who you are.
• 16:37
  So I'd say to you, don't give up acting.
• 16:40
  Maybe look at your ambition. Maybe look at your ambition and
• 16:45
  think, OK, don't let your ambitions be a source and a root
• 16:49
  of pain for you. Let them be a driving force for
• 16:53
  sure. Have your ambitions, but you've
• 16:56
  got to. You've got to keep plodding
• 16:58
  along and doing what you do because that's part of who you
• 17:01
  are. Wise word, when was the last
• 17:03
  time you were on stage? So I haven't performed since a
• 17:07
  year and a half ago, 2024. Yeah, I know because what we're
• 17:12
  doing is arthritis. I just thought it was an
• 17:14
  interesting subject because. Just curious about that journey
• 17:18
  from from that. Yeah, I've never, I've never
• 17:20
  been in a position in my life when you know.
• 17:23
  How old are you? You don't mind me asking?
• 17:27
  32 I'm about to. Turn.
• 17:28
  OK, so you're young. So you're young.
• 17:31
  No marriage perspective. Well, you know I don't.
• 17:34
  Feel it anymore? Let's put it that way.
• 17:36
  I I noticed though when I look at a 40 year old now I think
• 17:39
  they're young. I'm 58.
• 17:42
  Wow, you look great for your age.
• 17:43
  Oh. Thank you.
• 17:45
  So, but you get to a stage in life where you suddenly go.
• 17:51
  So you know, 65 is when you're starting to go.
• 17:56
  That's, that's when they say roughly the you start the early
• 17:58
  stages of old age. So I'm at the back end of late
• 18:06
  middle age, middle age. And you take, you know, like you
• 18:14
  go through life and then suddenly you get something and
• 18:17
  you think, this is the first thing I've had that's never
• 18:20
  going to go away. And what happened with me
• 18:24
  Christian was so I mean, you've seen videos of me performing my
• 18:29
  gay Elvis act and it's very high energy.
• 18:32
  And I used to come on stage and people used to go, my God,
• 18:34
  you've got really good cardio. I used to think, I mean, at 56 I
• 18:38
  was doing that. And I'm thinking, I'm like, you
• 18:41
  know, I'm running upstairs 3 at a time.
• 18:44
  This and the other two days before we went into the first
• 18:46
  lockdown. So I'm a hairdresser as well.
• 18:49
  I work freelance as a hairdresser and I have my own
• 18:52
  little little space. And people were coming in to get
• 18:55
  their hair done just before we went into the first lockdown and
• 18:59
  it was 2 days before. And I just done my last client
• 19:02
  and I was sweeping up and I got a pain in my right knee and I
• 19:08
  spent the whole of the first lockdown with a swollen knee
• 19:11
  that I couldn't walk on. And I went through.
• 19:15
  Obviously I couldn't get appointments for the NHS and
• 19:17
  stuff. And then when we came out the
• 19:19
  lockdowns, I went to hospitals and stuff like that.
• 19:23
  So in January 2022, I had meniscus surgery on my right
• 19:29
  knee. So that's to clear up the
• 19:31
  cartilage on the right knee. And then I got back to
• 19:36
  performing and I was doing it. But the other thing as well with
• 19:39
  those lockdowns is they came at really weird times.
• 19:42
  I think everybody lost, lost, lost something.
• 19:46
  We all lost. We all lost something.
• 19:49
  When you look at a life, you know, if I live to be 100 and
• 19:55
  you look at, say, five years, which really the pandemic for me
• 19:59
  has affected you, you think that's actually quite a large
• 20:02
  percentage of time, you know, and in industries that work on
• 20:07
  momentum and reputation. It's devastating.
• 20:15
  And then just for me specifically, this is my loss in
• 20:18
  it, is that I had just gone through my midlife crisis and
• 20:24
  then coming out of that and you're thinking, right, OK, and
• 20:27
  you're just getting going. And then suddenly you get these
• 20:29
  lockdowns which suddenly stop everything.
• 20:34
  So you're suddenly like, shit. And then there's a lot of people
• 20:38
  in their 50s that they're saying they're having a second midlife
• 20:40
  crisis because of the lockdowns. Because you've gone through your
• 20:45
  midlife crisis, you've adjusted to where your life is at.
• 20:50
  I mean, I, I have to say I've, for me, this stage of my life is
• 20:54
  the hardest stage of my life I've ever gone through.
• 20:57
  It really, really is a very difficult stage of your life
• 21:01
  when suddenly physically things are being taken away from you.
• 21:07
  It, it really, really is a difficult stage of life.
• 21:10
  But so, and especially as well for women.
• 21:15
  I mean, you think of women that may have gone through the
• 21:17
  menopause and they're just getting their life round and
• 21:21
  then suddenly you've got this time when you can't do anything,
• 21:24
  suddenly it's like stop. And I think, you know, when
• 21:27
  you're younger, a year is a long, long time.
• 21:31
  But when you get older, the years get go very, very quickly
• 21:35
  and the degeneration in your body happens very quickly.
• 21:41
  And so, you know, I was 2-3 years ago, the person running up
• 21:46
  three stairs at a time, really energetic.
• 21:50
  And So what happened was I was performing and sort of thinking,
• 21:59
  yeah, OK, physically I'm not rebounding so quick, but that's
• 22:03
  fine. You know, I just space out my
• 22:05
  bookings and stuff. I was on stage at Southampton
• 22:08
  Pride and I mean 18,000 people in the audience and I'm giving
• 22:15
  it what I've got. And when I came off someone was
• 22:18
  videoing me and they showed me the video.
• 22:21
  They were laughing. They said look, when you come
• 22:23
  off the stage you're limping. And I got home and within the
• 22:28
  next two days my knee was so swollen I could, I couldn't wait
• 22:33
  there. So I'm calling my doctor and
• 22:37
  trying to get help with that. And of course I get referred to
• 22:41
  the MSK clip. This has taken weeks.
• 22:43
  And then they can't, they're offering me a phone
• 22:46
  conversation. So I said no, no, no, no, no, I
• 22:48
  don't want that. I went and had injections in my
• 22:50
  knee and ultra sound guided. And he, he showed me, he said
• 22:56
  you've got a really bad injury in there and bad arthritis and
• 23:00
  then looked at my other knee and said, yeah, you're going to have
• 23:02
  problems with the other knee as well.
• 23:04
  So I did, I wasn't able to carry on performing a bit and then
• 23:10
  boom, both knees went. And since then I spent oh few
• 23:18
  1000 lbs on injections I've spent.
• 23:21
  I've been put forward for knee replacement surgery but
• 23:24
  apparently they won't do knee replacement surgery till you're
• 23:27
  65. Why?
• 23:28
  Because they don't last forever. There's a there's a 10 to 20
• 23:32
  year shelf life on them. So the idea is if you do them at
• 23:35
  65, you'll still be able to walk when you're 80.
• 23:39
  I'm like, well first of all, I don't intend living that long
• 23:42
  and second, well I don't. And secondly, if I've got to sit
• 23:47
  around, I'd rather be sitting around when I'm 80 with my
• 23:50
  memories than snailing around and not being able to do what I
• 23:57
  can do now. And So what happened was it,
• 24:03
  it's impacted my so I can't work as a hairdresser.
• 24:06
  I can do one client. I can't stand for hours.
• 24:11
  I can't perform. I can't, I can't go on stage and
• 24:15
  perform. It's, it's really devastating
• 24:17
  because you know, with my, with my gay Elvis act.
• 24:22
  So just as all this happened, I got endorsed by Elvis Presley
• 24:26
  Enterprises. I've not been able to do
• 24:28
  anything with that. And it's also the perception of
• 24:32
  I, I was at a festival. I won't mention it because I
• 24:35
  fell out with them quite bad. They all you know about
• 24:40
  disability and this that and the other didn't recognise mine,
• 24:44
  wouldn't recognise mine at all. And it caused a lot of problems
• 24:49
  because so many people have arthritis that it gets looked
• 24:54
  over as as a condition and it's it's incredibly painful.
• 25:05
  It's incredibly painful. I mean, I have, I have to go and
• 25:09
  have fluid drained off my knees and injections, right?
• 25:16
  You know, from one side right through to the other side of the
• 25:19
  knee. And it's what's incredible to me
• 25:21
  is how quickly it's happened. I now have it in my shoulders
• 25:26
  and I have it in my hands. So this is all within the last
• 25:29
  couple of years. I can't open things with this
• 25:31
  hand. This joint here is completely
• 25:33
  going. This one is starting to go.
• 25:37
  My shoulders are going. So I can't, like I can do that,
• 25:41
  but if I do it a couple of times it will be really painful.
• 25:45
  I've had to go through. I've just been through a DWP
• 25:50
  assessment. I have been classed as limited
• 25:54
  capacity for work. I'm 58.
• 25:57
  What do they think? Just out of curiosity, because
• 26:00
  DWP is, well, you know, they've always got something interesting
• 26:04
  to say, haven't they? So what's what's their
• 26:06
  assessment if? You're well, their assessment is
• 26:08
  that their assessment is that I don't have to look for work.
• 26:11
  I'm not expected to work, but I don't want to live my life on
• 26:14
  benefits. But it's the, it's, it's the the
• 26:19
  speed at which that happens. The when you work creatively as
• 26:27
  we do, you know, we live hand to mouth.
• 26:31
  I don't have loads of savings. I've always done hairdressing as
• 26:37
  like a fall back as a support to my creativity.
• 26:43
  So when it when it started to dawn on me, I mean, even now, I
• 26:48
  still, I still think and I'm still hopeful that I am going to
• 26:53
  be able to perform because because my performing for me,
• 26:58
  it's like I'm producer, I'm manager, I'm Booker, I do
• 27:02
  costume, I'm creative. You know, I see you on your
• 27:06
  social media with your videos you're putting up, You know,
• 27:09
  they take time to do all that is gone.
• 27:14
  It's like my entire life I feel has been ripped away from me and
• 27:20
  a fundamental part of who I am. It's not just about, you know, I
• 27:26
  don't love being in front of audience.
• 27:28
  It's a creative process. It's, you know, it's all the
• 27:32
  sacrifices I've made as a performer to think to myself, I
• 27:37
  don't have children, for instance, Think to myself,
• 27:39
  right, OK, I can go and do that and be a bit frugal for the next
• 27:45
  couple of months. Yeah, it may not be a well
• 27:48
  paying job but I can go and do that because I want to.
• 27:52
  So I've made loads of sacrifices when you suddenly lose it and
• 27:56
  you are then left stats in those sacrifices that you've made.
• 28:01
  I have no pension, I have no money, I've made no provisions
• 28:06
  whatsoever. And I always thought, oh,
• 28:09
  hairdressing, I can always fall back on that, but I can't now
• 28:12
  because my legs have gone my door.
• 28:15
  One thing I need to ask you just real quick, you mentioned
• 28:19
  injections. So we had one question from a
• 28:23
  viewer. Shout out to Vilma.
• 28:25
  Vilma. Hello Filma.
• 28:26
  You asked a question on the last one.
• 28:28
  We love Filma. Big time, she mentioned.
• 28:32
  Have you had, I hope I'm pronouncing this correctly.
• 28:36
  Hyaluronic injections, Yeah. I've had.
• 28:40
  I've had so I've got stage this is how quickly this has
• 28:44
  happened. I've got stage 4 arthritis in
• 28:48
  both my knees. So that's severe arthritis.
• 28:51
  That's that's when you need knee replacements.
• 28:54
  That's how quick so I've had. So the timeline wise this is
• 29:00
  over obviously as you mentioned it was over a course of a couple
• 29:03
  of years. But do you know, do you know in
• 29:06
  general how long it would take to get to Stage 4 versus your
• 29:11
  own? I don't.
• 29:12
  I've obviously had arthritis for years and not really been, you
• 29:17
  know, as you get older, things do stiffen up.
• 29:20
  So, you know, like, like, you know, yeah, OK, getting down on
• 29:23
  the floor and stuff like that. But you've seen me performing,
• 29:28
  so, you know, I mean, I'm bouncing around all over the
• 29:33
  place to go from that overnight. I mean, I couldn't even get in
• 29:38
  the bath. I couldn't lift my, I couldn't
• 29:40
  get my leg up, but I couldn't bend my knees.
• 29:43
  And so to answer Wilma's question, so the first
• 29:48
  injections I had when I first went, I had steroid cortisone
• 29:56
  because that just calms it down. But you can't keep having that.
• 29:59
  I've had hyloneuronic acid. I've also had plasma plate
• 30:04
  injections. Plasma plate is when they take a
• 30:07
  load of my blood, spin it, draw out the plasma and reinject it
• 30:11
  back into the joint. So the problem is as well with
• 30:18
  arthritis is you get flare ups. You get what you call arthritic
• 30:21
  flare up. See, my life has changed so much
• 30:26
  to like last year. So I lost my home.
• 30:30
  I lost my home since I've lost since the last one of these.
• 30:35
  We did, yeah, I lost my home as well.
• 30:39
  I, I wasn't in, I was ahead of myself.
• 30:44
  I got rid of it before I, I, I needed to and I had to go and
• 30:49
  live with my mother for six months because of the condition.
• 30:54
  I managed to and suddenly I had, I was getting some hate crime so
• 31:00
  I was on police high vulnerability.
• 31:02
  So I managed. I was, I was in Greenwich and I
• 31:07
  noticed this place. This is where I am now.
• 31:09
  I've got a lovely flat and I noticed it and my mum has
• 31:13
  arthritis. She's quite disabled with it and
• 31:15
  I thought well I'll have a look there, you know, maybe that
• 31:18
  might be somewhere mum could move.
• 31:20
  Anyway when I got home and googled it, it was over 55
• 31:23
  thousands. I thought well fuck her, I'm
• 31:25
  going to apply for it myself. And that's what I did and
• 31:28
  they've been brilliant. So I within 5 weeks, because of
• 31:35
  my arthritis, because of the hate crime, I got placed on high
• 31:44
  priority. So that was at the beginning of
• 31:47
  November. 2 weeks later, I was asked if I wanted to come in and
• 31:50
  see a flat. I didn't get that one because I
• 31:53
  was only 5th on the priority list.
• 31:56
  And then in the beginning of February, I came in and saw this
• 32:00
  flat and got this flat. So I've been really lucky.
• 32:04
  I've been really, really lucky because there's no way that I
• 32:08
  would be able to because I can't earn, I'm hardly earning
• 32:10
  anything. So it's incredible how I've,
• 32:13
  I've my, I've heard people over the years saying, Oh yeah, I've
• 32:16
  got arthritis and I just thought it's creaky joints.
• 32:20
  It's incredible. I have days when I can't walk, I
• 32:23
  have days when I can't. Like when I was so last year
• 32:28
  when I was living down at my mum's, I would come up one day a
• 32:31
  week and do some hairdressing clients.
• 32:33
  I needed to try to earn some money and it would kill me.
• 32:38
  And one day I'm coming up on the train and I looked at the
• 32:41
  weather on my phone and it said snow.
• 32:45
  And it suddenly dawned on me, how am I going to walk in the
• 32:49
  snow? Like I'll never be able to walk
• 32:53
  on a beach again. I'll never be able to walk in
• 32:55
  the woods again. I have to walk down stairs
• 32:58
  backwards. It's incredible.
• 33:00
  It's incredible how quickly things turn.
• 33:03
  I saw a few days ago there was, there's a woman who posted she,
• 33:09
  I guess she was in her mid 20s and she'd become wheelchair
• 33:13
  bound. And it happened within the space
• 33:15
  of a few years. And she was talking about just
• 33:19
  how much I'd like her life had changed.
• 33:22
  And you know, everything in between that and what she missed
• 33:25
  and trying to adjust to that. I remember it's the same thing
• 33:28
  you always see in the comments section.
• 33:30
  And it's true. The world is just not designed
• 33:33
  for people with disabilities in mind.
• 33:36
  You know, occasionally you'll get like, oh, we've got an
• 33:39
  accessible toilet or a lift or a ramp or something, you know, But
• 33:44
  on the whole, it's largely ignored.
• 33:48
  And as you said, something like snow, which normally you just be
• 33:52
  like, oh, I'll put my wallies on.
• 33:53
  I'll just be a bit careful. But now that's like, you've got
• 33:56
  to plan that out. And that was something she said.
• 33:58
  She said that like everything in her life now has to be
• 34:02
  meticulously. Planned.
• 34:03
  Yeah, I understand. I'm sorry.
• 34:05
  When I'm out, I'm constantly. So the last couple of months was
• 34:11
  this roundabout. Towards the end of November, the
• 34:14
  weather started to turn cold nightmare for me.
• 34:18
  I can go outside for about 5 minutes and then I'm in
• 34:21
  incredible pain because what happens with arthritis is
• 34:26
  certainly with the knees. So you have 3 tendons that meet
• 34:30
  just above the kneecap and go over the knee and then go down
• 34:34
  the legs. So you've got the pain in the
• 34:37
  joint, the bone on bone, which is quite bearable.
• 34:42
  It's not pleasant, but it's bearable.
• 34:44
  But the problem with it is it's the tendons because they're your
• 34:48
  body's doing something completely different.
• 34:51
  So my, when I touch my legs, my tendons are really painful.
• 34:57
  So when I go out in the cold, they tighten.
• 35:01
  And what that does then is they pull on the kneecap and then,
• 35:06
  you know, I so then you come in and your knees are swollen.
• 35:10
  You get like, so I've constantly got a bad back because the
• 35:16
  tendons, you know, the ankle joints connected to the, the,
• 35:20
  the, the, the, the, the, you know, it's all connected.
• 35:22
  So, so my back is constantly stiff at the moment here.
• 35:27
  I'm in so much pain on my neck. I had to get a military.
• 35:31
  I had to have a military last night.
• 35:33
  I had it a military massage, a guy out of the military who does
• 35:37
  massage come round and absolutely pummeled me to try to
• 35:41
  get some movement in there. It's it's constant.
• 35:45
  It's constant. So you've got the bone on bone,
• 35:48
  which is one thing, but it's all the other stuff around it which
• 35:52
  is horrendously painful. See, like, like going upstairs
• 35:58
  isn't quite so painful for me, but coming downstairs is
• 36:02
  incredibly painful after. If I'm walking, any little,
• 36:05
  little slope hurts my knees really badly.
• 36:10
  I mean, last week a friend of mine said should we go for a
• 36:12
  coffee? And I've been indoors for a few
• 36:14
  days. And I said, yeah, OK.
• 36:16
  And it was cold. And we sat and had a coffee and
• 36:19
  I said to her, I don't think I'm going to be able to get back
• 36:21
  home. And I was yelping in pain with
• 36:24
  my knees, yelping in pain with my knees.
• 36:27
  Once I've got in and I warm up, it goes.
• 36:31
  But it's, it's what I think really the reason why I said to
• 36:35
  you, I thought this would be an interesting subject to talk
• 36:42
  about isn't so much the arthritis.
• 36:46
  It's about how things change so quickly and how do you find
• 36:52
  anything within that and how to make the most of every moment.
• 36:57
  Because I've been to some really dark places with this.
• 37:02
  I've been to some incredibly dark places with this where I
• 37:08
  don't want to live, simple as that.
• 37:11
  I've got I, I lost, I lost all value for my of my life of what
• 37:18
  I am. I lost all value of it because
• 37:22
  it's like I say, it's not just performing creativity and who
• 37:28
  you are goes you suddenly become my day becomes my day was
• 37:33
  becoming. I mean, I'm, I'm, I've got pain
• 37:35
  at the moment, but I'm not in as bad a place as I can be.
• 37:39
  But you know, some days you get up and you think, well, what,
• 37:44
  what is today? Can I go over the road and get a
• 37:49
  pint of milk? Can I get in the shower?
• 37:52
  Can I do my washing? What am I going to?
• 37:54
  What am I going to do? You know, a year and a half ago
• 37:57
  I'm on stage in front of 18,000 people doing what I love doing,
• 38:01
  sharing, making way for myself and suddenly I'm on benefits and
• 38:09
  I'm classed as somebody that can't work.
• 38:13
  How do you deal with that? And that's what that's why I
• 38:16
  said to you, I, I think it's an interesting subject for a
• 38:20
  podcast because when you're suffering, you are the only
• 38:25
  person who knows you're suffering.
• 38:27
  You know, I, I had a friend of mine phone me up and she's very
• 38:31
  good friend of mine. She's very, very lovely.
• 38:33
  And I love it a bit. But my very close friend who
• 38:37
  sometimes comes and gets shopping for me or calls and
• 38:40
  just pops in to see me had gone away for a week.
• 38:47
  And so my another friend of mine called me up and she said how
• 38:49
  are you doing? I said, well, I'm OK.
• 38:50
  I said I've been indoors all week on my own.
• 38:52
  I've not seen anyone. I said I'm bored to death and
• 38:56
  I'm I feel really low. And she was like, oh, your knees
• 39:00
  bad. I suggest that they're really
• 39:02
  bad. And she said to me as the
• 39:06
  conversation went on and she meant it nicely.
• 39:10
  She said, well, why don't I pop over to Greenwich and I'll meet
• 39:15
  you down by the river and we'll go for a walk along the river.
• 39:17
  That'll make you feel good. And I'm like, what part of it
• 39:21
  are you not getting? What part of it are you not
• 39:26
  understanding? You know, that's a constant
• 39:31
  thing. That's a constant, constant
• 39:34
  thing of constantly having to remind people I can't go to Hub
• 39:41
  because I can't stand up. And so I don't, I don't want to
• 39:45
  sound like a woe is me because I have, I am, I have worked my way
• 39:50
  through it. I am working my way through it.
• 39:53
  But I just felt it was something that needed to be shared because
• 39:56
  people have things in their lives that happen and things
• 39:59
  suddenly change and that can be very painful and incredibly
• 40:04
  lonely and you lose fundamental parts of yourself within that.
• 40:11
  I don't know who I am. I do not know who I am.
• 40:15
  All of my life I've been a performer and a hairdresser.
• 40:19
  I don't know who I am. I don't know.
• 40:22
  People keep saying to me, well, you'd be a really good
• 40:24
  counsellor. And I'm like, right, I'm 58.
• 40:26
  That takes five years to train in.
• 40:31
  So I'll be what, 63 to start a new career.
• 40:35
  I how do you find anything? And I got so low.
• 40:40
  I was, I was offloading onto clients.
• 40:45
  You know, people had asked me how I am and suddenly I'd be
• 40:49
  like this offloading would come out and then I'd had a stretch
• 40:59
  of about four months of a lot of pain.
• 41:02
  And I live right in the centre of Greenwich.
• 41:05
  I mean, I'm a stone's throw from Greenwich Park.
• 41:07
  I couldn't get to the park, couldn't go anywhere and I'm sat
• 41:10
  in my flat and I have to say just a quick shout out to Anchor
• 41:14
  Housing over 50 fives. Absolutely amazing what I get
• 41:18
  here and the support I get is incredible.
• 41:21
  It's given me faith in in that these things exist for people.
• 41:27
  A friend of mine, my very close friend, came over to see me one
• 41:30
  afternoon and I was really low and I must have offloaded.
• 41:34
  I don't remember the conversation.
• 41:35
  And she very rarely does this. And she phoned me at 11:00 at
• 41:38
  night and she said I'm worried about you.
• 41:40
  I think you're going to do something stupid.
• 41:43
  She said I really, really do. She said I'm really worried
• 41:46
  about you. And I went to bed and I thought
• 41:51
  to myself, I don't want to do that to my close friends.
• 41:54
  I don't want them to be worried about me.
• 41:57
  I don't I, I don't want them to worry about me.
• 41:59
  I have to find a way to find some value in where I'm at.
• 42:06
  I've got to find a way of finding some peace in this.
• 42:10
  Because in reality, the truth is the speed at which this has come
• 42:16
  on with me. My mother's 88.
• 42:19
  She's disabled with arthritis. I've got it genetically.
• 42:22
  I know that I'm looking at disability and pain.
• 42:29
  I think within five years I'll need mobility to get around
• 42:34
  mobility buggies and stuff. And how do I deal with that and
• 42:40
  what do I do and how do I find some value in my life?
• 42:47
  And I, so I decided to put myself in for counselling, which
• 42:50
  I'm having. And then at Christmas I had a
• 42:55
  friend of mine and he, he's not an actor and he's, he's been
• 43:02
  doing extra work and he got himself a job on an extra job.
• 43:07
  He's got no actor training at all.
• 43:09
  This is what I love. I love people who just wander
• 43:11
  into things. They make you sick, don't they?
• 43:13
  You think I've done all this training and you just go
• 43:18
  waltzing in And he was working as an extra and got talking to
• 43:23
  somebody and they needed a guitarist for something.
• 43:27
  He happens to play the guitar and he's got a role, not an
• 43:32
  extra, but a role, a character role in the new Danny Boyle film
• 43:36
  of. Course he has.
• 43:38
  Yeah, I mean, don't you just want to slit your throat?
• 43:42
  There was a guy a few years ago that I met and I shit, you know,
• 43:45
  he's the same age as me. He's better looking than me.
• 43:50
  He got, yeah, I've been trying to do acting for like 7 years.
• 43:53
  This guy got fucking modelling contract, bunch of commercials
• 43:58
  and like we met each other on on an extras thing and like within
• 44:02
  a few months he got that and he, he was like, oh, I'll just give
• 44:05
  it a punt. Yeah, that's life, isn't it?
• 44:10
  Well, it's karma. I think it's to do with that,
• 44:13
  you know, I'm Buddhist. I think it's to do with that
• 44:15
  karma. Well if that's the case I must
• 44:17
  have really shit karma then. No, not shit karma.
• 44:20
  No, it doesn't. It doesn't have to be shit
• 44:22
  karma. It's there for you to transform.
• 44:24
  It's there for you to transform. Like for instance, so when I
• 44:29
  came to see this flat, I came in here and I thought, Oh my God,
• 44:33
  it's like an old people's home. I have to tell you, Christian,
• 44:37
  I, my flat is lovely. Anybody that comes in it says,
• 44:40
  Oh my God, it's lovely. I'm really looked after.
• 44:42
  My rent is very low. It includes my heating, my hot
• 44:45
  water. I'm totally looked after
• 44:47
  anything I need. I don't pay for maintenance or
• 44:52
  anything or massive gardens. It's I'm really falling on my
• 44:55
  feet for years and years and years, I've bumped into people
• 44:59
  or met people and talked to them and they've told me something
• 45:03
  and I've walked away and thought, how do you get that?
• 45:05
  And now I'm one of those people that's saying to people, oh,
• 45:10
  like, you know, and they're going, how did you get that?
• 45:13
  So don't give up and don't, don't give up.
• 45:17
  No, don't give up. And So what I did when I heard
• 45:22
  this about my friend Paul, who got this Danny Boyle thing, it
• 45:26
  was on Christmas Day. In All in all seriousness, like,
• 45:28
  like, Congrats to him. That's that's cool that he got
• 45:31
  that. Now you know what I mean?
• 45:31
  Like I'm even though it sounds like I'm bitter and jealous, I
• 45:34
  promise you I'm not. It's so hard to get
• 45:37
  opportunities in any creative sphere.
• 45:39
  So whenever I hear someone has gotten it, I'm like, that's.
• 45:42
  Awesome. Well, you're a better person
• 45:44
  than me. You're a better person than me
• 45:46
  because immediately I start thinking about myself, of
• 45:50
  course. Why not me?
• 45:51
  Why not me? And I get really angry and.
• 45:54
  And really, you know, like, you know, and at first I'm like,
• 45:58
  he's got no training. I've got training, you know, why
• 46:01
  does this not happen to me? But I talk to myself, you know?
• 46:08
  So you're 32. You probably look at a 22 year
• 46:11
  old who's quite young. Yeah, Yeah.
• 46:13
  Yeah, I mean, I'm. Eating more retirement.
• 46:14
  And I'm like, so when you're 42, when you're 42, you'll look back
• 46:19
  at a 32 year old, just very young.
• 46:21
  And when you're 52, you'll do the same.
• 46:24
  Probably. You know, I, if I dated anyone
• 46:28
  in their 40s, I would feel inappropriate doing it.
• 46:32
  That's just my thing. I'm not saying it is
• 46:33
  inappropriate at all. I don't believe that at all.
• 46:37
  But but for me, I think, well, it's a bit too young.
• 46:40
  You know, like I'm pushing 60 and I'm dating someone a lot
• 46:44
  younger than me. You know, my nephew's 40 and I
• 46:46
  see him, you know, he's a youngster.
• 46:50
  And So what it did was I sat there and I thought, what am I
• 46:55
  going to do? And I thought I've got a window
• 47:00
  of time when I can still do things even if I've got pain
• 47:07
  while I'm doing it, because there is going to come a time
• 47:11
  when I'm not going to be able to do hardly anything.
• 47:14
  I know that. And it's arthritis is in my
• 47:18
  family and my great, great grandmother was crippled with
• 47:21
  it. My mum is, and my mum was wasn't
• 47:25
  as bad as I am at my age. And the speed at which this is
• 47:29
  coming on. I mean, this time last year I
• 47:31
  wasn't having shoulder problems, you know, and, and now my
• 47:34
  shoulders are really, really, they're catching up with my
• 47:37
  legs. And so I thought, do I want to
• 47:43
  get to that stage and look back at where I'm at now and see it
• 47:49
  as wasted, or am I going to try to squeeze something out of
• 47:56
  this? What am I going to do?
• 47:59
  And so I do have 1 El Barachi gig booked that even if I've got
• 48:07
  to sit down, I'm going to do it. I want to close the door on my
• 48:13
  terms. So I'm going to do that.
• 48:16
  I'm doing the recording with the guy that I do music with.
• 48:19
  We're going to do at least one more thing.
• 48:22
  And then I thought to myself, I thought maybe I should put
• 48:26
  myself back out acting. So I contacted somebody that I
• 48:30
  worked with years ago, ATV director, and I haven't spoken
• 48:35
  to a friend. She, she'd actually inquired
• 48:38
  about something to do with El Barache and it put me back in
• 48:41
  touch with her. Lovely, lovely director,
• 48:44
  brilliant director and a very nice person.
• 48:50
  And I got on very well with her when I worked with her 20 odd
• 48:52
  years ago. So I said to her, I said, can I
• 48:56
  have a chat with you? I said I, I said I'm not coming
• 48:59
  to you because I'm asking you for work, but I want to know, do
• 49:03
  you think it's a waste of time? And she was amazing.
• 49:06
  So This is why I say never give up.
• 49:09
  She said to me you can go into acting anytime.
• 49:12
  This is true. She said it doesn't matter if
• 49:15
  you've had a break from it. 15 years since I lost was putting
• 49:19
  myself out for acting work but I have still been performing 15
• 49:24
  years and. There was a guy I met a few
• 49:27
  years ago, his name's Gaston, he's a Newcastle based actor.
• 49:33
  He's fantastic guy, great guy. And we were sitting there
• 49:36
  reflecting on this film that didn't go anywhere anyway, but
• 49:41
  like we, we'd auditioned for it and it's funny how nothing
• 49:45
  changes in my life, nothing was going anywhere.
• 49:48
  And I was kind of lamenting about it and he said, And I
• 49:53
  think this is perfect because it lines up with what you're
• 49:56
  saying, He says. For every year that you move out
• 49:58
  of contention for one role, you move in contention for another.
• 50:03
  Absolutely. Now going back to what you were
• 50:07
  saying earlier about niche casting and blah blah blah.
• 50:13
  See, I was told that when I left drama school because being quite
• 50:18
  a camp gay man, all anybody wanted me to do is go, you know,
• 50:22
  like I was on Heartbeat and I played this really camp gay
• 50:26
  character and all that type stuff.
• 50:27
  And I don't mind doing that. It's not really challenging for
• 50:30
  me. But when I spoke to Rebecca,
• 50:34
  this director, she said to me, and no one's ever said this to
• 50:37
  me before, she said, you're in a really good casting window.
• 50:42
  I thought, wow, I've I've gone into a good casting window, She
• 50:48
  said you're in a really good casting window.
• 50:51
  There's loads of stuff. I said to I can't do theatre
• 50:53
  because I wouldn't be regular. I said, but I wouldn't mind.
• 50:56
  I don't. I'm good at the person that gets
• 50:59
  a little bit of a comeuppance or the nosy neighbor, little bit
• 51:03
  quirky, little bit comedy, you know, you know, bit of a wig in
• 51:08
  a comedy piece, something like that.
• 51:10
  I'm good at the person. Those kind of slightly comedy
• 51:14
  kind of things, you know, And she said to me, she said there's
• 51:19
  loads of stuff comes up for people on TV in your age back.
• 51:24
  It should. The thing is, so I hadn't
• 51:25
  thought about this, She said most actors that that are your
• 51:29
  age have been doing it for so long, they don't take those
• 51:33
  parts. But if you're happy to have one
• 51:36
  scene or two scenes or stuff like that, that's brilliant for
• 51:40
  me. That's absolutely brilliant for
• 51:43
  me. So who did thought you could go
• 51:47
  from being the niche casting to suddenly like, no, actually
• 51:54
  you're quite. She said I'd cast you and it
• 51:57
  just so turns out, and I'm not going to say who, why or what,
• 52:02
  but I really sensed with her that she wanted to help me and
• 52:06
  she's given me some really good contacts and use my name.
• 52:09
  There you go casting past thing. And one of the things that I
• 52:16
  really noticed with there is I said to her, I said, The thing
• 52:21
  is, is I don't I, I'm not really worried about getting work as an
• 52:25
  actor. I said when I left drama school,
• 52:30
  you know, my drama training was good, but the third year, the
• 52:33
  professional preparation was terrible.
• 52:34
  We were just told, you know, in my day you had a black and white
• 52:38
  10 by 8 and you sent it off to casting people.
• 52:40
  I was like an incendiary bomb going off.
• 52:43
  And she said to me, she said, she said as a director, she
• 52:47
  said, I hate it when I just get a general letter.
• 52:50
  So I like it if I can tell someone knows who I am, knows my
• 52:54
  work. And because I said to her, I
• 52:58
  said, I said it's not for me. It's not about getting the work.
• 53:02
  It's about my identity. It's about me getting up in the
• 53:07
  morning and thinking I'm an actor.
• 53:13
  I wonder if there's been a casting coming today that's
• 53:16
  suitable for me. It's because what I've had taken
• 53:21
  away from me with the arthritis is a huge part of my identity.
• 53:28
  I don't know who I am. I can't spend my life sat on the
• 53:31
  sofa. I'm just not that.
• 53:35
  I'm energetic. That doesn't go because I've got
• 53:37
  arthritis. The brain that's mulling all
• 53:41
  this stuff over doesn't go. The desire certainly doesn't go.
• 53:45
  It's like when you break up with somebody that you don't want to
• 53:48
  break up with, you know, and you are heartbroken.
• 53:53
  And so, so that's what I'm going to do.
• 53:58
  I'm going to put myself back out for acting.
• 54:00
  I've had to. A lot's changed since I was out
• 54:06
  there. I mean, I've got a massive hole
• 54:08
  in my CV. It's all digital now.
• 54:13
  Spotlights digital. I mean, it wasn't when I was a
• 54:16
  book. You know, I don't have an agent.
• 54:18
  But that's not the point. The point is being something,
• 54:24
  being something. If you give up acting, if you
• 54:28
  give up your thing, Christian, who are you and what are you?
• 54:31
  Don't, don't, I'd say to you don't.
• 54:33
  Don't give up on you'll come into your moment.
• 54:38
  If I've learned anything from today's show, it's the it's the
• 54:43
  same thing I always say. It's about the choices you have
• 54:47
  in life and I guess sometimes things that are taken away from
• 54:52
  you and, and how you adjust to them.
• 54:54
  I think it's really refreshing to hear where your head is at as
• 55:00
  far because like that you're doing exactly what I would do,
• 55:03
  which is work. Throw your, throw your head in
• 55:06
  someone else. See it more as a transition
• 55:09
  rather than like, what's the end?
• 55:11
  It's like, no, it's like, this was my life in one part, now
• 55:14
  this is my life in the next part.
• 55:17
  And like, one of the reasons I've always worked so hard,
• 55:21
  amongst other reasons is there's something powerful in creating
• 55:27
  and building. And as you say, it's, it's
• 55:30
  connected with identity. It's when you wake up in the
• 55:33
  morning, you say this is who I am.
• 55:35
  For me, I've been doing this a long, long, long time and I'm
• 55:42
  tired. I'm exhausted.
• 55:43
  I'm physically not in a good place, mentally not in a good
• 55:50
  place. It's I've sacrificed a lot.
• 55:52
  I've given everything I have. You know, like most of the time
• 55:56
  I don't eat properly. You know, if I'm lucky enough to
• 55:59
  to get to eat, that's how my life is.
• 56:04
  That's that's where it's at. Any time I get to do anything
• 56:08
  remotely creative, I'm grateful. Like the podcast, for example, I
• 56:14
  used to, I got, I've gone for every emotion that it it comes
• 56:17
  to when it comes to the podcast. But ultimately I always land on,
• 56:20
  I'm grateful because people such as yourself are willing to sit
• 56:24
  down with me and talk about life for a little bit.
• 56:26
  And, you know, I always learn something from it.
• 56:30
  I know my audience always gets something from it.
• 56:32
  I choose to be positive and keep trying because giving up to me
• 56:38
  sounds pointless. I've always said that like, as
• 56:41
  much as it might feel like what's the point, where do I do,
• 56:45
  where do I go, etcetera. At the end of the day, I don't
• 56:50
  see it as a viable option because, you know, as you
• 56:53
  pointed out, what do I do? Sit on this sofa the rest of my
• 56:56
  life? Is that what my life is?
• 56:58
  No, I choose not. I choose to get up, get through
• 57:03
  the pain and and try and make something of myself, whatever
• 57:07
  life may throw at me. And you know, I'm sorry to hear
• 57:13
  about your hardships. I'm sorry to hear that life has
• 57:15
  has dealt you this, but I can relate on some level.
• 57:20
  The last couple of years of my life is it just feels like being
• 57:24
  in a sinking ship and trying to stay afloat and just fighting
• 57:28
  constantly and and you know, people don't see that people and
• 57:31
  people always have a million answers and sometimes people
• 57:36
  would deliberately ignorant. Some people just don't get it
• 57:39
  and that's OK. You know it's.
• 57:41
  They've got their own stuff. Yeah, I mean, not everyone sees
• 57:45
  it, you know, like the the stuff I always hear is it's always the
• 57:49
  same share. It's why don't you get a nine to
• 57:51
  five? Why don't you go for an easier
• 57:53
  life? And it's like I've been there,
• 57:56
  done that, won the T-shirt. And you know what, like life
• 58:01
  isn't that simple. Even if I wanted to just go out
• 58:04
  and get like a nine to five now, it's not like they're handing
• 58:08
  them out like that. You know what I mean?
• 58:11
  Like you try finding a job right now.
• 58:13
  I'm, I'm grateful to just have any work.
• 58:17
  Do you know, for the jobs that I have, yeah, they suck and I
• 58:19
  don't want to do them, but I'm grateful to have them because
• 58:23
  it's hard times. It really is.
• 58:25
  And it's only getting harder. And you know, everyone's,
• 58:31
  everyone always has an opinion on your life.
• 58:33
  Everyone's always got something smart to say like, oh, this is
• 58:36
  what I would do. This is how I would live.
• 58:38
  You know, you shouldn't have done this, blah, blah, blah,
• 58:40
  blah, blah. But at the end of the day,
• 58:42
  they're not living your life. They don't see it through your
• 58:44
  eyes. They don't get it.
• 58:45
  They don't understand that feeling that we have when we're
• 58:49
  doing what we're doing. And when I say I speak from
• 58:51
  experience, I don't mean it in a pompous way, like, oh, I know
• 58:55
  everything. Like I come from the perspective
• 58:57
  of like Jesus Christ, my heart, my flatmate, like whenever he
• 59:01
  sneezes, it's like someone's dying.
• 59:04
  Jesus. I don't know if you can hear
• 59:05
  that. No, OK, I just, it's crazy.
• 59:09
  I love the guy to bits, but I'm like, anyway, I lost my train of
• 59:16
  thought. At the end of the day, it's you
• 59:20
  just I guess you have to drown out all those voices and, and
• 59:23
  listen to your voice. What, what, what does my mindset
• 59:26
  say? What does my mind say?
• 59:28
  I don't, I don't know what I'm going to do with acting.
• 59:31
  I, you know, like yourself. I'm trying to when I got my
• 59:36
  haircut, I was like, well, you know, I've not tried to get an
• 59:39
  agent with short hair. Let's see how that works because
• 59:42
  the whole time I've been doing acting professionally, I've had
• 59:45
  long hair. So, you know, I'm trying.
• 59:47
  So far I've had like 30 plus rejections this year.
• 59:51
  I've contacted over 130, I've emailed modeling agencies, I've
• 1:00:00
  tried to do extra stuff like I don't get nothing.
• 1:00:02
  I don't know. The vibe I get is, and it's the
• 1:00:05
  same in the music industry. It's the same wherever I go.
• 1:00:08
  And again, this is not a woe is me guys.
• 1:00:10
  I'm just saying my experience. My experience, it's the reality
• 1:00:14
  of it. My experience is people don't
• 1:00:16
  want me, they don't want to work with me, they don't, they're not
• 1:00:19
  interested in me, blah blah blah blah blah.
• 1:00:22
  So I'm left to just do my own thing and so be obscure and
• 1:00:29
  just, I don't know, figure it out.
• 1:00:32
  I don't know. And I don't really know.
• 1:00:35
  Yeah, I don't know what to make of that.
• 1:00:37
  Really. I don't.
• 1:00:38
  Know it's tough, it's tough, it's tough.
• 1:00:41
  It's really, really tough. And you know, part of it I can
• 1:00:46
  part of it I can relate to. You know, I have had some
• 1:00:49
  successes, but nothing comes easy to me.
• 1:00:53
  I have to get down and get dirty for it always.
• 1:00:57
  But being where I'm at now, I would say to you to cherish your
• 1:01:05
  creativity and what you have to look after that part of
• 1:01:09
  yourself. And I can.
• 1:01:12
  When you're saying what you're saying, then you know, no one
• 1:01:15
  seems to want to work with me. No one.
• 1:01:17
  I'm like, you know, I might just well be an obscurity.
• 1:01:20
  I am. It's not, it's not.
• 1:01:23
  See, here's the thing as well. I try to always look at things
• 1:01:26
  as objectively as I can, not how does something make me feel, but
• 1:01:30
  more what's the reality I'm faced with?
• 1:01:33
  Because very easy to sit and live in your own head and be
• 1:01:35
  like, oh, I'm not good enough, I'm rubbish.
• 1:01:38
  But that's not true. I I know that's not true.
• 1:01:40
  I know I've worked hard. I know I've gotten
• 1:01:43
  opportunities, I've achieved a lot over the years, you know,
• 1:01:46
  stuff I'm very proud of. I know I have something to offer
• 1:01:49
  and that makes it all the more frustrating and and difficult.
• 1:01:54
  And I know where you're driving at with this as well.
• 1:01:56
  See, the one thing I do agree with that people say to me that
• 1:02:00
  I needed to do more and I completely agree and I do it now
• 1:02:05
  is practicing gratitude. Like, hey, I get the opportunity
• 1:02:08
  to try, you know, I get the chance to try.
• 1:02:13
  I'm very grateful to be able to continue to try, you know,
• 1:02:18
  because if anything, what are we learning from today's show?
• 1:02:21
  Life can take your opportunity to try like that.
• 1:02:26
  Absolutely. Yeah, it it will, it will, it
• 1:02:29
  will throw curveballs that you're not prepared for.
• 1:02:32
  Yeah. And then absolutely.
• 1:02:35
  And then you've got to try and make these tough decisions.
• 1:02:37
  And I think one thing that we share is the sort of the
• 1:02:41
  tenacity and the the capacity to never give up no matter what
• 1:02:46
  life froze. You know, it's like, well, OK,
• 1:02:49
  well, what's next? You know, I'm not I refuse to
• 1:02:53
  give up. So what's next?
• 1:02:54
  What we going to do at what one my question was going to be
• 1:02:59
  like, what's your action plan for fighting this?
• 1:03:00
  But like, you've already got it. And I think it's incredible, to
• 1:03:04
  be honest. Yeah.
• 1:03:05
  I, I don't, I my thing is, is five or six years time when I'm
• 1:03:10
  when I'm unable to do anything or whatever that happened.
• 1:03:15
  So you don't know that yet to. Be.
• 1:03:17
  I don't know that it's it's a. Prediction.
• 1:03:19
  Yeah, but. It's.
• 1:03:21
  I know. What I do know is my wonderful
• 1:03:25
  gay Elvis, as I was doing it when we talked, when we did the
• 1:03:30
  first podcast. That is over.
• 1:03:35
  That is over. There's no way I can go on stage
• 1:03:41
  and do what I did. And it's not just on stage, it's
• 1:03:46
  the packing, the travelling, the on and off trains.
• 1:03:49
  When you're doing festivals, like I'm performing on big
• 1:03:52
  stages, I've got to get up like almost ladders to get onto the
• 1:03:57
  stage. Then there's wires everywhere
• 1:04:00
  and you know, and, and, and I've got to get in the costume and
• 1:04:04
  then I've got to get out of it and get home.
• 1:04:06
  And I have to think to myself, right, OK, do I have £600 spare?
• 1:04:12
  Because I'm probably going to need injections after this, do
• 1:04:15
  you know what I mean? So and then I can't even do what
• 1:04:21
  I was doing and am am I prepared to do it in a different way?
• 1:04:27
  And my USP with that act is the energy.
• 1:04:35
  It's the energy. It's the energy.
• 1:04:38
  I'm I'm not a singer, so I can't just stand and sing.
• 1:04:42
  No one's interested in me standing and singing some
• 1:04:45
  fucking Elvis songs, do you know what I mean?
• 1:04:48
  There's a million of them out there.
• 1:04:50
  What makes me different is it's gender fluid.
• 1:04:53
  It's funny, it's fast energy that's gone, and I'm grieving
• 1:05:02
  that loss. My next thing is, can I do it in
• 1:05:06
  a different way? What can I do with it?
• 1:05:10
  I could do, you know, my show's called a hunk of mincing love.
• 1:05:14
  I could do a hunk of mincing creaky love.
• 1:05:17
  I could make a joke and have an electric wheelchair and you know
• 1:05:22
  what I mean? I could do stuff like that, but
• 1:05:24
  do I want to? Like I say I've got 1 gig I'm
• 1:05:31
  doing, I'm going to see how it goes.
• 1:05:34
  But like I say. I've got an interesting idea.
• 1:05:39
  Well, go on. We threw the idea of
• 1:05:42
  understudies around earlier. We spoke about that.
• 1:05:45
  That was interesting. What if you started training a
• 1:05:47
  protege? Yeah, I, I, it's, people have
• 1:05:52
  said to me, what about doing something else?
• 1:05:54
  But ultimately. What if it was a brand?
• 1:05:59
  What if you instead of? Yeah, So a lot of people have
• 1:06:04
  said to me, why don't you take it online, like, like, you know,
• 1:06:07
  TikTok and all that, but I'm old.
• 1:06:10
  I don't understand all that. To do it, I'd need to do, I'd
• 1:06:13
  need to do it with somebody else.
• 1:06:15
  I'd need to have scheduling and I'd need someone to say, right,
• 1:06:19
  we're going to do this and this is what you need to be doing and
• 1:06:23
  posting and how you post and stuff like that, that.
• 1:06:26
  I've had so many people saying to me, you should take that
• 1:06:28
  online. You should take it as but I, I,
• 1:06:32
  I would do if I had someone to work with.
• 1:06:35
  I don't have anyone to work with on it in terms of working with
• 1:06:40
  somebody else. I know this may sound horrible,
• 1:06:44
  but I'm a performer. Do you know what I mean?
• 1:06:47
  It's not that I'm not interested and I do help.
• 1:06:50
  There's a, there is a guy that I that wanted to do an Elvis act
• 1:06:53
  and I've helped him with it and he's actually developing a
• 1:06:56
  really good career and that's great to help him with what he's
• 1:06:59
  doing. I'll help anybody, but my loss
• 1:07:03
  is I'm a live performer. That's what I do.
• 1:07:08
  I'm a live performer. And so it's whether or not I
• 1:07:13
  can, I might be able to do 1, maybe two things a year where
• 1:07:19
  it's like 15 minutes and something I don't know.
• 1:07:25
  And then you know, but you know, what I'm saying to you,
• 1:07:28
  Christian, is to cherish those parts of yourself.
• 1:07:34
  Try not to like, say when I was hearing you saying, you know,
• 1:07:38
  I'm no one wants me. I'm a whatever.
• 1:07:41
  Well, that might be true. I'm not going to argue with
• 1:07:45
  that. No, I'm not going to argue.
• 1:07:46
  I only, you know, no. I just, I just found it funny
• 1:07:49
  that when it, when it was related to me back there, it's
• 1:07:51
  like nobody wants you. Yeah.
• 1:07:54
  Nobody wants you. But, but that might be true.
• 1:07:56
  But but does anybody? What did you know, the majority,
• 1:07:59
  the majority of actors are unwanted because they're not.
• 1:08:03
  Do you know what I mean? The point is, is that you
• 1:08:05
  cherish that part of yourself when things get tough.
• 1:08:10
  And this is just what I do when things get tough, it's really
• 1:08:14
  easy to hurt yourself with it. And to I'm going to be packing
• 1:08:24
  up. I'm going to be doing this.
• 1:08:26
  I'm going to be doing that. No, you're not.
• 1:08:29
  You're hurt. You're what you're doing is
• 1:08:30
  you're, you're, you're, you're self sabotaging and hurting
• 1:08:35
  yourself with it because because I can tell that because I can, I
• 1:08:40
  can hear it because I can relate to it.
• 1:08:44
  The the. The thing that the the
• 1:08:45
  difference with me and say other people maybe that are in this
• 1:08:49
  position, right is that I've never achieved success.
• 1:08:56
  I don't know what that feels like.
• 1:08:59
  OK, all I've ever known is pursuing and failure, right?
• 1:09:05
  So when people were like, oh, you can't give up.
• 1:09:09
  You have to keep going. You know, it's just a bad
• 1:09:11
  period. I'm like, well, I've never known
• 1:09:13
  a good period. There are good things in my
• 1:09:15
  life. Don't get me wrong.
• 1:09:16
  I'm not trying to sit here and be like, oh, worries me.
• 1:09:18
  Everything's terrible. That that would be a lie.
• 1:09:20
  You know, I I love my girlfriend very much, for instance, she's
• 1:09:23
  she's loving my life, right? But my career and, and the
• 1:09:28
  things I'm trying to do, let's face it, I'm a 32 year old man
• 1:09:32
  who survives barely on minimum wage and barely and support
• 1:09:36
  myself and I'm trying to pursue all this creative stuff and
• 1:09:39
  nothing's working. And I've been doing this a long
• 1:09:41
  time and I'm getting older. I mean, you can physically see,
• 1:09:46
  you know, all right, fair enough.
• 1:09:47
  It's conditions. I have vitiligo and poliosis,
• 1:09:51
  but like I look older. I've visibly aged in the last
• 1:09:56
  sort of three to four years. And yeah, I don't care about any
• 1:10:01
  of that. Like, it doesn't bother me
• 1:10:03
  because I don't care about the superficiality of, of, of the
• 1:10:05
  world. Like, I'm happy with me.
• 1:10:07
  I'm happy who who I am, right? I love who I am.
• 1:10:10
  OK. But when I say the world doesn't
• 1:10:14
  want me, what I mean by something like that is with what
• 1:10:17
  we do, it's heavily reliant on other people now.
• 1:10:22
  It's it's in music. It's old.
• 1:10:24
  Do they like you? Do they want to book you in
• 1:10:26
  acting? It's do they want to cast you?
• 1:10:29
  Do they see anything in you? You know, I remember 1 casting
• 1:10:32
  direct, sorry, one agent I had actually, I mean, my agents
• 1:10:38
  dumped me after less than a year.
• 1:10:40
  The other after like less than two months, right?
• 1:10:42
  But one great thing that one of the directors, I said, the one
• 1:10:45
  of the casting directors said, sorry, agents said is that
• 1:10:48
  casting directors look at photos of, of actors like it's Tinder
• 1:10:55
  and just go like that the whole time, like, you know, until they
• 1:10:58
  match something. So they're not really interested
• 1:11:00
  in you. And I suppose the whole point of
• 1:11:05
  today's show, amongst other things, is, is the vision of you
• 1:11:08
  building you. Who am I?
• 1:11:11
  Who was I, who am I? Where am I going?
• 1:11:13
  You know, it's it's all about you.
• 1:11:15
  I mean, with my show, this show, the Christian Ruth podcast, even
• 1:11:20
  though it's got my name on it, I tried to make it about my guests
• 1:11:23
  and the topics. And you know, every now and
• 1:11:25
  again I will talk about myself. I'll share stories, but I'll try
• 1:11:28
  not to go too much into me because everyone knows my story.
• 1:11:32
  Everyone who listens knows the struggle.
• 1:11:34
  And you know, I share funny rants about things when it's
• 1:11:37
  funny. I try not to get to worries me
• 1:11:43
  and reflect on bad things anymore because I think it's
• 1:11:47
  just exhausting for everyone. It's exhausting for me.
• 1:11:49
  It's exhausting for my followers, my listeners, you
• 1:11:52
  know, for the few people that do care, it's like, I don't want to
• 1:11:55
  hear it. It's a broken record.
• 1:11:56
  And I, I'm the same. I, I'm sick of my own voice
• 1:12:00
  hearing that, you know, it's, it's not changed.
• 1:12:03
  I don't things could change. You never know what the future
• 1:12:06
  holds, right? I'm not going to give up, but
• 1:12:09
  I'm also not going to like live in in Dululu land and pretend
• 1:12:14
  like my life is something other than what it is.
• 1:12:16
  I'm very much grounded and like, no, this is my life.
• 1:12:20
  This is what it is, you know, And just make the best of
• 1:12:24
  things, you know? I mean, you say you're not
• 1:12:28
  successful, but I look at your podcast and think, well, I look
• 1:12:31
  at your podcast and I think people look at me like I'm
• 1:12:34
  successful and I think I'm not. It depends, you know, You don't
• 1:12:37
  know what other people view, but.
• 1:12:40
  Well, I look at it like this, right?
• 1:12:42
  For example, I've never earned a penny from doing this podcast.
• 1:12:46
  I pay out of my own pocket to do this show.
• 1:12:49
  I don't know how many people know this.
• 1:12:50
  Yeah. It's been 6 years, dude.
• 1:12:54
  Six years of doing this show. I don't think it's going to make
• 1:12:57
  anybody. It's OK.
• 1:12:59
  I set myself a goal of doing it for 10 years.
• 1:13:02
  We're six years in. I'll, I'll achieve that goal
• 1:13:04
  pretty easily. We'll see where we're at.
• 1:13:06
  After 10 years, I don't know if I'll keep doing it or not.
• 1:13:10
  I've gotten a lot out of it. I mean, if you go back
• 1:13:13
  throughout the years of listening to the show, watching
• 1:13:15
  the show, I challenge you to find shows that where you didn't
• 1:13:18
  learn something. And I know I, I walked away with
• 1:13:21
  it, always inspired and always motivated and moved like today's
• 1:13:26
  show moved me and remind me of a few things.
• 1:13:29
  You know, it's why I do this show.
• 1:13:32
  It's it's powerful. I think, you know, I don't care
• 1:13:36
  that only a few people listen. Those few people that listen, it
• 1:13:39
  means something to them and it means something to me.
• 1:13:41
  You know, I always think about that as well, like you might not
• 1:13:45
  reach millions of people or whatever, but if you reach a few
• 1:13:48
  people, that's just as powerful, you know, and it's a matter of
• 1:13:52
  perspective, isn't it? The.
• 1:13:56
  Thing is, you never know. You never know and.
• 1:14:00
  It's true. You.
• 1:14:01
  You never ever know, you know, when I did first did my gay
• 1:14:05
  Elvis act, I did it as a joke. I had nothing written.
• 1:14:07
  I've told you the story, but I had nothing written.
• 1:14:09
  Turned up. I thought, what am I going to
• 1:14:11
  do? I'll go on as gay Elvis.
• 1:14:13
  Don't even like Elvis, you know? And suddenly I'm, you know, I'm
• 1:14:18
  on TV, I'm on the radio, I'm winning awards.
• 1:14:21
  I'm, I'm, you know, blah, blah, blah.
• 1:14:24
  Not huge, but going somewhere with it, on a trajectory with
• 1:14:29
  it, you know, like, so you never really know.
• 1:14:33
  All I can say to you is is I think it's really good when
• 1:14:37
  you're a performer creative to take breaks, to think to
• 1:14:43
  yourself, actually, I don't really need to hurt myself here
• 1:14:47
  and say I'm not doing this. I'm, you know, that's it.
• 1:14:50
  I can just sort of say to yourself, OK, this is a
• 1:14:53
  downtime. I've got to, I've got to get the
• 1:14:56
  creative juices back again. So let's just have a little
• 1:15:00
  break. That's just, I mean, I did it
• 1:15:02
  when I was a cabaret performer and, you know, my cabaret stuff
• 1:15:07
  was quite successful. I got nominated for a Watts on
• 1:15:10
  Stage award in 2011. I was up against things like
• 1:15:13
  Billy Elliott, the play my my little cabaret show.
• 1:15:17
  And, you know, and then I reached a bit of burnout and I
• 1:15:20
  decided I thought, right, I'm not going to perform for a a
• 1:15:23
  year. And I thought, no, I'm not doing
• 1:15:25
  anything for a year. I need a break.
• 1:15:27
  And that's what I did. I think you have to be brave to
• 1:15:29
  do that. But you know, and then by the
• 1:15:32
  time I came back, I was a bit scared, but I was chomping at
• 1:15:35
  the bit to to do it. And what I would say to you is,
• 1:15:39
  but what I've learned through my arthritis is that's not giving
• 1:15:45
  me much choice. Yeah.
• 1:15:48
  And at some point, something will happen to you.
• 1:15:52
  What age Age you can't do. Age.
• 1:15:55
  Yeah, yeah. That's good.
• 1:15:57
  At at some point, at some point something will happen and you
• 1:16:02
  know, you might go through a phase of I'm not, yeah, OK, I'm
• 1:16:05
  going to this blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
• 1:16:09
  But you'll come back to it. You, you will do and and you
• 1:16:12
  will do and you will hit a time of when you start to get
• 1:16:18
  successes more in the way that you want them.
• 1:16:24
  Reality is mate, like everyone's 52.
• 1:16:27
  Everyone's got. Window.
• 1:16:28
  It happened to me at 52. I just, I don't know, man.
• 1:16:32
  It's because it's, you know, ever since I met my girlfriend,
• 1:16:35
  it's, it's, it's, it's no longer about me anymore.
• 1:16:38
  It's about the future and trying to build something.
• 1:16:40
  And I don't know how long I have to actually do this and pursue
• 1:16:45
  all of this as much as like, it's me, it's who I am.
• 1:16:49
  And I don't think you get to, like, give up on who you are.
• 1:16:53
  What about when I have kids? You know, what about when I have
• 1:16:56
  a family? You know, I need to bring in
• 1:16:58
  money. I can't be like just surviving
• 1:17:01
  on minimum wage. That's not going to cut it.
• 1:17:02
  It's not good. Enough.
• 1:17:03
  Yeah. Well, maybe, maybe A, maybe you
• 1:17:06
  don't have kids or B, maybe you're you have a partner that
• 1:17:12
  understands your creativity and supports you financially.
• 1:17:16
  There's nothing wrong with that. Or no, what's wrong with that?
• 1:17:20
  That's what's wrong with that. What's wrong with that?
• 1:17:22
  Because because I mean, that happens a lot when when they
• 1:17:26
  put, when someone's a performer and they've got a partner.
• 1:17:29
  I think if, if like I look at things like from a business
• 1:17:32
  perspective, OK, if I was if I was actually like in the running
• 1:17:39
  for something big and that it was a risk worth taking, then
• 1:17:44
  sure. But I don't know, I, I just get
• 1:17:49
  the vibe that when people look at me, they just don't see
• 1:17:51
  anything in me. Like I, I, whenever I've worked
• 1:17:57
  with people and I don't know if it's because they're, they're
• 1:17:59
  being genuine or blowing smoke up my ass.
• 1:18:01
  I don't know. But like the friends that I've
• 1:18:02
  done countless films with, for example, they say I'm a really
• 1:18:06
  good actor or like when I've performed shows and, and you
• 1:18:11
  know, I've been paid to do that and people have been like, that
• 1:18:13
  was a really good set or, you know, whatever.
• 1:18:15
  Like I've always taken compliments with a pinch of soul
• 1:18:19
  and I'm always like, just, you know, take the good and the bad
• 1:18:23
  and just and, and keep moving, right?
• 1:18:25
  There's been sliver of, of time when I felt like, oh, maybe,
• 1:18:29
  maybe it's going to happen. Maybe something's going to
• 1:18:30
  happen, right? And it was, it's always been the
• 1:18:33
  same thing. Something happens and then
• 1:18:35
  nothing. But then not just nothing like
• 1:18:39
  dead in the water. And I've had so many of those
• 1:18:45
  over the years that it's like sooner or later you start,
• 1:18:48
  especially when I look at like what my daily life looks like,
• 1:18:51
  you know, because I mean, that's the thing I don't know that
• 1:18:53
  people always necessarily talk about when you're an artist,
• 1:18:56
  what does your day-to-day look like?
• 1:18:58
  You know what I mean? Like when you were when you were
• 1:19:00
  doing this, this this Elba Archie gay Elvis act like the
• 1:19:05
  reality is the stage time is is the small part of it really, but
• 1:19:11
  all the time that goes into rehearsal travel, you know,
• 1:19:16
  planning and and structuring this act and but when you're.
• 1:19:19
  Selling that stuff when you're, you're doing production booking,
• 1:19:24
  yeah, there's a million hats that you're wearing.
• 1:19:27
  See all. For this little bit of time on
• 1:19:29
  stage when you get to be this person and it's all worth it,
• 1:19:32
  I'm sure. But it's just like, do you know
• 1:19:35
  what I mean? Like for me, the podcast, look,
• 1:19:37
  this is the easy part, all the other stuff it all the hard work
• 1:19:40
  goes into like the, the planning of it and the release schedule
• 1:19:44
  and the social media and all that, right.
• 1:19:46
  And I love it. I'll do it, I'll keep doing it.
• 1:19:50
  I love it. But it's, you know, I'd be lying
• 1:19:53
  if I, I didn't say that I wanted things to work out.
• 1:19:56
  But at the end of the day, I think constantly going on about
• 1:20:00
  it is just torturous for all involved.
• 1:20:03
  You know, like it's come up today, fine.
• 1:20:05
  You talk about it a little bit. You know today's show is about
• 1:20:08
  you. And your story right, we've
• 1:20:10
  talked a little bit about me. Fine, OK, you know, I, I think
• 1:20:14
  we can justify it a little bit. I just I don't know, I always
• 1:20:16
  think back to this comment I got in the first like year or two of
• 1:20:18
  the show and it was a hate comment.
• 1:20:20
  But I always think about it where someone was like, no one
• 1:20:23
  wants to hear your boring stories, Christian, shut up and
• 1:20:25
  let the other person talk. And I'm.
• 1:20:27
  Like I think it's, it's a conversation.
• 1:20:29
  It's a conversation. Who knew, right?
• 1:20:31
  I didn't know when, when I said to you about, yeah, you know,
• 1:20:35
  should we do a podcast? And I'll tell you about my
• 1:20:37
  arthritis, but it's there's there's something to learn from
• 1:20:44
  other people. And so when you're saying that
• 1:20:46
  to me and I'm thinking, OK, I've just, I've gone through a
• 1:20:52
  breakup with mine. I don't have any choice.
• 1:20:56
  You know, I've gone, I've gone through what you're, you know,
• 1:20:59
  I've gone through, right? I'm not doing that anymore.
• 1:21:01
  And all the pain and suffering and then gradually thinking, oh,
• 1:21:04
  no, I'm going to have to go back to it again because it's
• 1:21:06
  intrinsically part of my character.
• 1:21:08
  But this time I'm like, I really have no choice.
• 1:21:13
  I'm digging my nails in thinking, right, OK, I'm going
• 1:21:17
  to go and do a gig. And if I've got to sit on a
• 1:21:19
  chair and do it. Because suddenly when you're
• 1:21:21
  losing it and you don't have any control over it, is this a
• 1:21:25
  completely different kettle of fish?
• 1:21:28
  Can you see? Now as well, why I'm like, if I
• 1:21:31
  just keep talking about it, it's complaining because I still have
• 1:21:34
  the capacity to try. It's it's almost like I've got
• 1:21:38
  ghoul here even talking about it to you.
• 1:21:40
  Like, no you're not 'cause you I don't.
• 1:21:41
  Think that, no, I think I don't think you should negate people's
• 1:21:46
  people's individuality or, or feeling, you know, and things
• 1:21:50
  are when, when one goes through life and you don't feel you're
• 1:21:55
  getting success, you don't feel you're getting recognition, you
• 1:21:58
  don't think, you think I'm putting in all this hard work
• 1:22:00
  and I can't even get my foot on the 1st rung of the ladder.
• 1:22:03
  And when I do, it slips off. You know, that's painful, That's
• 1:22:08
  painful. That is really, really painful.
• 1:22:12
  There's nothing worse than losing yourself belief and, and
• 1:22:16
  stuff like that. It's incredibly painful.
• 1:22:18
  I've been there. I've absolutely been there, you
• 1:22:22
  know? Do you know what I mean?
• 1:22:23
  What was what was the driving force for you to keep trying?
• 1:22:26
  It wasn't so much a driving force.
• 1:22:28
  It's more about, you know what makes us who we are?
• 1:22:33
  You know why. Why is one person a doctor?
• 1:22:37
  Why is another person a mathematician?
• 1:22:40
  Why is another person a bus driver?
• 1:22:43
  Why is that? Why am IA performer?
• 1:22:47
  It's not because I don't like being in front of an audience.
• 1:22:50
  I I had got. That's the worst thing for me.
• 1:22:52
  That's not why I do it. I don't need applause.
• 1:22:56
  I don't need a pause. I'm creative and my creativity
• 1:23:00
  comes out in performance. It doesn't come out in painting
• 1:23:03
  or or sculpture or writing a book.
• 1:23:08
  It comes out in performance. That's my individuality, my
• 1:23:11
  character, my karma is everything that I come with.
• 1:23:15
  Everything that I am is my language.
• 1:23:18
  Yeah, OK. It's, you know, being a
• 1:23:22
  performer is something slightly different to being a banker,
• 1:23:27
  but. But there's something that
• 1:23:28
  drives the banker. I mean, I look at that and I'm
• 1:23:30
  like, Oh my God, you've got a real job.
• 1:23:32
  I find it fascinating in other people's lives.
• 1:23:35
  Why am I the way I am? But unfortunately or
• 1:23:39
  fortunately, I am at that way, yes.
• 1:23:44
  It's lovely to get success, it's lovely to to have that, but you
• 1:23:51
  can't keep hold of success. It moves very quickly.
• 1:23:55
  Sure, but it reinforces what you do.
• 1:23:57
  Do you know what I mean? Like when I, when I talk
• 1:23:59
  success, what I mean is just, I've said this many times, my
• 1:24:03
  goal has always has been this to earn a living from creative
• 1:24:09
  endeavours. Yeah, that's it.
• 1:24:10
  That's it. Yeah, I'd if I could.
• 1:24:13
  If I could do that, I'd die a happy man.
• 1:24:16
  Yeah, well, I only started doing that when I, I mean my cabaret
• 1:24:20
  were I didn't really make any money out of that.
• 1:24:24
  So I had my my daytime job and I'd do gigs as and when I felt
• 1:24:28
  like doing them and I'd do them and creatively keep going, keep
• 1:24:33
  working on my material. And it gave me something as an
• 1:24:36
  actor. Yeah, I'd, I had a few jobs that
• 1:24:40
  paid, but I did a lot of stuff. It wasn't really a sustainable
• 1:24:43
  career. El Barachi, my gay Elvis is the
• 1:24:46
  only thing that has really bought in money.
• 1:24:50
  And like I say, at 525052 that started.
• 1:24:55
  I didn't know when I went and did it as a joke that I was
• 1:24:59
  going to end up doing it. I didn't.
• 1:25:02
  I had no intentions of it being anything more than I haven't
• 1:25:06
  written anything. I'm going on stage tonight, I'm
• 1:25:08
  going to do this. That's what happened.
• 1:25:10
  But if I had on the numerous times when I've said, well,
• 1:25:15
  that's it, I'm not doing it anymore, blah, blah, blah, blah,
• 1:25:17
  blah, blah, blah, and then I go for this hurting period and
• 1:25:21
  blah, blah, blah and then come back to it.
• 1:25:23
  Had I stuck at that, I never would have had that.
• 1:25:26
  I never would have had that experience.
• 1:25:29
  The galling thing for me is that there's still stuff to squeeze
• 1:25:32
  out of it, but I can't. That's the really hard thing for
• 1:25:36
  me. It's a horrible feeling of that
• 1:25:40
  slipping through your fingers. I could.
• 1:25:42
  I could feel it slipping through my fingers.
• 1:25:45
  I've still not 100% come to terms with it.
• 1:25:49
  When I have a good day with my arthritis, I'm thinking, oh, I
• 1:25:52
  could go and do that. I think I could do it.
• 1:25:55
  You know, maybe I will. Maybe that's, yeah, maybe I'll,
• 1:25:58
  maybe I'll take that gig and then I'll do that gig the week
• 1:26:01
  after and then next I'll have a bad day and think, Oh no,
• 1:26:04
  there's no way I can do that. There's no way I'm going to be
• 1:26:07
  able to do that. This gig I'm doing in March, I'm
• 1:26:10
  sort of like I'm doing it potentially because I haven't
• 1:26:14
  done a gig for ages. I just want to have a go.
• 1:26:17
  If I have to sit down, I have to sit down.
• 1:26:20
  Is it going to be the last one I do or am I going to do anything?
• 1:26:24
  OK, well, I might be able to do that again at some point, but
• 1:26:27
  I'm not absolutely doing any absolutes or finals.
• 1:26:31
  I'm just thinking, well, it'll be what it's going to be and.
• 1:26:34
  This is kind of like a the real ultimate test, really.
• 1:26:37
  This this gig coming up? I just need I had a really
• 1:26:41
  horrible experience at the last festival I performed at and I
• 1:26:45
  won't go into details just in case they watch this because I
• 1:26:47
  don't want to come across like I'm slacking them off.
• 1:26:49
  But they were not pleasant and nothing to do with performance
• 1:26:55
  or anything like that because I didn't really get to do my
• 1:26:57
  performance. But I and I was very hurt by it
• 1:27:01
  afterwards and I don't want that to be my final experience.
• 1:27:07
  Right, I understand. I don't want that to be my final
• 1:27:10
  experience and I want I have an audience of people that are
• 1:27:15
  saying to me, you're going to perform and I'm saying, OK,
• 1:27:17
  we'll come along. I'll do what I can.
• 1:27:20
  I'll do what I can, and if that's enough, so be it.
• 1:27:24
  And if it's not, I'll think, OK, that's in the can there.
• 1:27:26
  I have a feeling for some reason that it will go really, really
• 1:27:31
  well. I think it'll be a joyful event
• 1:27:34
  even if it goes if even if it goes really well afterwards.
• 1:27:39
  What am I like physically? Am I going to be able to do that
• 1:27:43
  again? I think your assessment is, I
• 1:27:48
  mean, I'm not a physician. I don't know, right.
• 1:27:52
  I'm maybe I'm talking out of turn here, but I get the feeling
• 1:27:55
  that a lot of the time when it come, because you always hear
• 1:27:59
  about people who I've had people on the show before who, who have
• 1:28:04
  had conditions that are pain involved, right?
• 1:28:09
  And they still live their lives. And like there, there was a guy
• 1:28:13
  on my show who did the fucking skydiving and he had like
• 1:28:16
  really, really terrible pain in all of his body, like
• 1:28:19
  everywhere, and he was fucking skydiving, dude.
• 1:28:22
  Like it. Maybe this is one of those
• 1:28:26
  situations where it's like you could do it, but it's it's going
• 1:28:30
  to it's going to be a lot of pain and training in it, but
• 1:28:32
  you. Definitely could do it.
• 1:28:34
  But oh, I'm. At the gym, I'm at the gym, I'm
• 1:28:36
  trying to build my muscles. I'm in total preparation.
• 1:28:39
  Total preparation for it. This is what I mean.
• 1:28:41
  Maybe there is a chance. Yeah, All right.
• 1:28:45
  You can't do it like 10 * a month.
• 1:28:47
  Maybe it's got to be like. I couldn't do an hour show, for
• 1:28:50
  instance. I couldn't do an hour show
• 1:28:52
  right. But, but, but that's OK, you
• 1:28:54
  know, like it's, it's, it's knowing the limitations but also
• 1:28:58
  not completely giving up either and finding the fine line
• 1:29:00
  between yeah, you know, and only you know that as.
• 1:29:03
  Well, yeah, to be. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 1:29:07
  The, the thing with performing is as well is it takes a lot to
• 1:29:11
  get the ball in the air. Once the ball's in the air and
• 1:29:15
  you can keep, you can keep it up in the air.
• 1:29:19
  And then generally with creative personalities, certainly when
• 1:29:24
  you're having to like yourself, like myself, create your own
• 1:29:29
  stuff, eventually you run out of energy and the ball drops again.
• 1:29:33
  And then you've got to get, oh, you've got to get it up in the
• 1:29:36
  air again. And that's the, that's, that's
• 1:29:39
  my big issue with it is I'll get the ball up in the air for one
• 1:29:43
  performance, but then do, and then I've got to get that ball
• 1:29:46
  up in the air again, you know, the drive and stuff like that.
• 1:29:51
  But no, I'm, I'm committed to doing it.
• 1:29:53
  I'm going to go and do it. I'm going to have some fun and
• 1:29:57
  I'll let you know how it goes. Yeah, please do.
• 1:30:00
  I think we'd all love to to know how how it's going to go.
• 1:30:03
  If I get a little bit of video, I'll send it through.
• 1:30:06
  Where, where is the? Performance, It's just there's
• 1:30:08
  AII don't normally do pubs, you know, like I do festivals and my
• 1:30:12
  my big thing. I mean that's the majority of my
• 1:30:14
  performance of festivals. Corporate but so I don't
• 1:30:19
  normally do pubs but there is a pub where I live called Elton
• 1:30:24
  Arms. It was the pub they used for the
• 1:30:26
  Nags Head in Only Fools and Horses And if you Google it,
• 1:30:31
  it's considered to be not the best but one of the best live
• 1:30:37
  venues in London. And it's a really lovely pub in
• 1:30:40
  Greenwich. And I did a gig there a few
• 1:30:45
  years ago and it was received, It's a straight pub.
• 1:30:49
  It went down really well. And then I did another one about
• 1:30:52
  six months later and it, it was, the whole place was like up and
• 1:30:58
  having real fun. And then of course knees have
• 1:31:00
  gone and Jeff who runs it, really nice guy.
• 1:31:06
  And he's had his own issues with joints, you know, youngish guy,
• 1:31:12
  hip replacements and stuff like that, had a horrendous accident
• 1:31:15
  in his youth. And I've spoken to him and I
• 1:31:18
  just said that I want to do a tryout and he said well come and
• 1:31:20
  do it here. So I said I'd love to.
• 1:31:22
  So it will be what it's going to be.
• 1:31:24
  But I don't like, I say, I don't normally do pubs, I like pubs.
• 1:31:28
  I like pub performing. I like the rowdiness and the
• 1:31:32
  hecticness and so much going on. You know, I don't like it with a
• 1:31:36
  quiet audience or something like that.
• 1:31:38
  I like festivals, but on a festival stage, you're miles
• 1:31:42
  away from the audience. You know, you're miles away from
• 1:31:45
  the audience. You just feel like a prat.
• 1:31:49
  Whereas pups, everybody's close up and kissing you and you can
• 1:31:52
  hear all the chatter and, and this, that and the other and
• 1:31:55
  you're getting your bum pitched and.
• 1:31:57
  And all that is messy. So I'm looking forward to that.
• 1:32:00
  Yeah. It'd be fun.
• 1:32:02
  I'll do what I can do. Yeah.
• 1:32:06
  But so. Yeah.
• 1:32:09
  So that's why I wanted to share. Yeah, thank you so much for
• 1:32:13
  sharing the story. It's been, it's been very
• 1:32:16
  powerful. And I'm just happy to hear
• 1:32:21
  you're not giving up and that you're you're pushing and you're
• 1:32:24
  and you're really you're working at this.
• 1:32:26
  Do you know what I mean? It's, it's inspiring stuff to
• 1:32:28
  hear, to be. Honest, I'm starting to.
• 1:32:30
  I'm starting to work it out. I'm starting to.
• 1:32:33
  It's like I say, the important thing for me is if, when, if and
• 1:32:39
  when I end up unable to. I mean, I'm not going to be like
• 1:32:44
  paralysed, I'll be. But you know where I think,
• 1:32:47
  right, I really cannot perform anymore or I really cannot do
• 1:32:50
  that anymore. Though I don't look back at this
• 1:32:53
  time and with regret and think I wasted that bit because although
• 1:32:58
  I was in pain, I could still do it, still do something.
• 1:33:03
  Maybe not as I want to, but I could still do something.
• 1:33:07
  So it's to it's to fulfil that time.
• 1:33:10
  And I suppose I would say to people, which is what I've been
• 1:33:14
  touching on with yourself, I suppose no matter what you do,
• 1:33:17
  life does change and life can be cruel and you have to find the
• 1:33:23
  value within that. And it is such a cliche to say
• 1:33:28
  make the most of it now, but you know, things change.
• 1:33:33
  Things change very quickly and it is really important to
• 1:33:39
  embrace where you're at and don't give up.
• 1:33:43
  Thank you so much, James. I really, really appreciate it.
• 1:33:46
  Yes, thanks. A pleasure mate.
• 1:33:47
  Thanks A. Pleasure mate, and to all the
• 1:33:49
  listeners of the Christian Reef Podcast.
• 1:33:51
  And Vilma, love you. Yes.
• 1:33:52
  And Vilma? Yes.
• 1:33:54
  Everyone. Listening to all the listeners
• 1:33:55
  of the Christian Reef Podcast, thank you so much for watching
• 1:33:58
  and listening. I hope you found it as inspiring
• 1:34:00
  as I did. Yeah.
• 1:34:03
  As always, be safe, be well, and as James said, never give up.