Mincing? no problem...

If I could just start with a little rant about, er, what are they called these days? One Railways, that's it. My call time on Friday was 7.00am in East London, so I booked a ticket on the first train to go from Ipswich - the 5.23am. Regular readers will be aware of my questioning of odd train times, but this is much weirder. And so very British. The 5.23am is not an empty train. I imagine the vast majority of people getting this train are regulars, and by the time we'd left Colchester there was standing room only. I only mention this to show that I was not the only one at the station at 5.15am wanting a cup of coffee. Guess what time the buffet on the station opens. Yup, 5.30am. Now, if a train leaves your station, every day, at 5.23am, would it not be worth opening half an hour earlier? It's just me, isn't it...

I arrive at 5 past 7, and 3rd AD Lucy takes me straight to wardrobe. The crew have set up base in the car park of a retail centre in East London, you know - Halfords, Aldi etc - and, compared with previous set-ups, this seems very calm. There are only three extras on this days shoot, and one of them, 'Boz' is already in the wardrobe vehicle. I'm given a peach coloured frilly shirt, bow tie, cuban heel boots and some very tight (well, at the top anyways) black trousers. Did I mention this shoot is for a TV show set in 1976? The trousers are so tight that breakfast doesn't seem to be an option, so Boz and I get coffee and wait to be called to make up. The third extra, Tom, shows up and joins us in the catering bus, and one by one we're called into the make-up truck. When it's my turn I get my hair curled and parted on the side. I had no idea how '70's' I could look. I get praise for the sideburns I had grown for the National Treasure shoot and kept, and while in make-up I meet one of the leads for this show, Patrick Baladi - the nice bloke out of 'The Office'. He's very chatty and offers the make-up ladies and I a cup of tea.

Once we have all been 1970'd, we wait for the call. Quite soon we're in a lovely big Merc being driven to the set, which is in a massive house just down the road. We're left outside while the crew re-set, and in no time we're ushered upstairs into a large dining room for rehearsal. We meet the leading lady, Tamsin, who is a stunningly beautiful, tall and willowy woman, and the director tells us what we have to do. As I am the first one in the room I get given the task of leading the waiters (for that is what we are) into the room, arranging food boxes on the table and taking the money from Tamsin. The director gets us to 'mince' into the room, and asks us to 'camp it up a bit'. It seems that all three of us are naturals in the mincing department.

A couple of rehearsals are followed with being lead down to the kitchen of this house, to wait for the crew to set up the lighting and all that gubbins. We chat with Tamsin and the make-up lady about long hair, wildebeests, Burma and Colin MacRae, before being called back to shoot the scene. We run through 5 or 6 times before the director is happy, and then the camera is re-set and we do the whole thing a few more times for cut aways.

We'd been on set for maybe an hour, and I was done. The other two were scheduled to be removal men later on in the day, but because I had been in shot I wasn't needed anymore. Back at base I change and the make-up lady sorts my hair out so I don't look too 1970s anymore. I see Patrick coming out of his trailer in full 70s gear and don't recognise him at first - thanks to the wig and Elvis sideburns he now sports - before he asks if I'm "all done" and "it's alright for some, eh!" According to the one of the crew, it had been a bit fraught earlier in the week, but in general they were on time and on budget. And it was such a change from the last two shoots I'd been on, where there were upwards of 300 extras on each.

I wander off towards the nearest tube station and wonder what to do next. My non-refundable non-changable set-in-stone return train ticket is for the 9.30pm. It's just gone 10.45am. Still, there's galleries to visit, guitar and book stores to browse in and there is that movie that my wife didn't want to go see...