Gimme Gimme Gimme (1999) s03e02 Episode Script

Gimme, gimme, gimme
a man after midnight
Won't somebody help me
chase the shadows away?
Gimme, gimme, gimme
a man after midnight
Take me through the darkness
To the break of the day
There's not a soul out there
No-one to hear my prayer
Gimme, gimme, gimme a man! ♪
Lovely! Lovely!
Fantastic! Lovely! Lovely!
Nicole Kidman, Kevin Spacey,
the lovely, lovely Jessica Lounge.
One by one, all the major Hollywood
players come here to do theatre.
Stick a star in a play, you get BOS.
Bums on seats. Box office smash.
I'm so clever with letters.
You got me here
under false pretensions!
You said there'd be fellas. There
ain't!
Even Anna Friel played Lulu in the
theatre! Didn't know she could sing,
let alone do Scotch.
We-e-e-ell You know you make me
wanna shout ♪
Mummy met Lulu in the '60s.
She threatened her with an Irn-Bru
bottle. Bet THAT ain't in the play!
Why shouldn't Tom Cruise,
the well-known heterosexual,
want to do physical theatre
in a converted fire station?
Daddy still refuses to have Boom
Bang-A-Bang piped in his iron lung.
He may be braindead,
but he's got principles.
You're probably smelling sweat
of an old fireman.
Oh!
An old flame of mine used to be
a fireman.
Actually, more of an arsonist.
He could only get it up
to Relight My Fire by Take That.
Ah!
- Oh! - Oh, for goodness sake!
Will you stop pacing around, please!
One's twitchy around one's opening.
One needs peace, calm, serendipity.
Not a roly-poly red-headed racoon
racing round in a ra-ra skirt!
Wash your mouth out! This is a mini!
Oh, my God, look! Look! Look!
Look, I'm shaking!
One can hardly hold his mascara
brush still. Oh, my God!
Like when
the Wombles opened Petsmart -
I got so excited I wet myself.
I used to get like that every time I
seen Emu. Ooh, weren't he gorgeous?
Two long legs with a bush on top.
Where's Tom Cruise?!
I wanna meet Tom Cruise!
What's he like?
Is he a right bastard?
I rehearsed with his understudy -
Yakashato Shakamoto prefers it.
Sackashito what?
My director! A Japanese genius.
She says the other Tom
is holding back his performance till
opening night.
I rehearse with his understudy,
Stan Boardman. I love him.
Not that we've done much rehearsing.
It's one of her motifs -
she doesn't like to rehearse the
crowd scenes.
What? So is you like an extrovert?
No! I have dia-loage.
I've got very good dia-loage,
in fact,
by one of the finest wordsmiths to
have graced the great British stage.
- Jim Davidson?! Oh, is HE here as
well? - No, Jacob Salami!
The enfant terrible
of agit-prop theatre.
Made his name with his three-second
play Blink,
in which Linda Robson
was a bloody revelation.
She had me in tears. Even now,
thinking about it can set me off.
Oh, don't. It reminds me of when
I spilt a cup of tea on my flange.
It ballooned up to twice its size.
I never knew a kinder goldfish,
Thomas.
Dear Lord in Devon above,
if I might be half as good
as Dame Linda Robson,
I might die a very happy man. Amen.
Before we go further, I implore you
not to mention the Scottish play.
What, Brigadoon?
Macbeth! Say Macbeth in a theatre,
it's professional suicide.
You wouldn't catch me
saying that word.
- What word? - Macbeth!
When Vanessa Redgrave
played Madame Edith
in the stage
version of 'Allo 'Allo,
she said "Macbeth"
and choked on her own talent.
My Auntie Wilma had seven years' bad
luck. She walked under a stepladder.
Really? See, I'd never do that -
- I'm far too superstitious. So, what
happened to her? - Well, the fat cow
got trapped in the middle of 'em.
Mind you, she was handy if you
needed something off a high shelf.
She got a job up Soho -
got a see-through body stocking
and a python.
Called herself Snatch and Ladders.
- I should remember this. It'd make
a fantastic opening scene for the
musical of my life. - Who'd play you?
Possibly Ross Kemp.
I wonder who'd play me.
They could bring back Barbapapa.
I'm stuck between Liz Hurley
and Courtney Cox -
a position most lezzas would envy.
Ugh! Ugh!
Ugh!
- Ugh! - What? - What you doing?
- I'm just stretching!
God! I always find it helps
to grab on to a thick fireman's pole
and really open myself up
as much as possible.
I can work up quite a sweat
doing it, you know.
Sometimes it hurts, but I quite like
that, cos you know what they say?
No pain, no gain.
Cor! This room is almost as big
as our flat, innit? I mean, look
at all this space, know what I mean?
I thought you said there'd be loads
of people! I thought I'd be squeezed
up against somebody, but I'm not!
Oh! Is they invisible, Tom?
Have they got X-ray vision?
Can they see through my clothes?
- Can they see my lady garden?
- Oh, God Almighty!
Just just shut up, would you?
The rest of the cast are crammed
into a tiny room down the corridor.
- I plonked my stuff in here, they all
decided they preferred the other
room. - I should have been on stage.
When I did a play at Borstal,
Screwdriver said I had the biggest
jugs of custard she'd ever seen.
I played the Custard Lady. "I'm the
Custard Lady! Anybody want custard?"
- Then Big Bertha from B Wing said,
"Yeah, I want custard! Smash it over
my tart!" - Oh, shut up, will you!
For God's sake!
You evil, selfish chugnut!
I don't want to hear about your
feeble attempts at performingness!
God! I am a classically trained
actrine of the highest calibrations.
This is MY evening, MINE!
I don't know why you're here.
Cos you asked me!
"Keep me company," you said!
"No-one's talking to me," you said!
"I'm all on me own"!
See? The truth comes out
when you're pissed!
That's utter tosh! I'm HUGELY
popular in this company. Everyone's
shoulder to cry on, everyone's rock.
KNOCK
- Wanker! Break your neck, Farrell!
- Yeah, you great tit-head!
Oh, people are so kind. That's
a sort of first-night tradition.
It's a sort of
thespian knock and run.
- Now for my lip relaxions.
Ma-ma-ma, me-me-me - I don't
need nothing to relax MY lips, baby.
After a few vodkas,
they flap around like flip-flops.
- 'Testing, one, two, three.'
- Oh, Tom, the wall's talking!
Shut up! It's just the Tannoy,
you gout-ridden gibbon!
'Ladies and gentlemen of the
Life Cycle Of The Salmon Company, ten
minutes till curtain up. Thank you.'
Ma-ma-ma-ma,
me-me-me-me, ma-ma-ma-ma. ♪
That's enough vocal warm-up.
Time for a physical warm-up -
very physical show.
Star jumps, forward rolls - might be
called on to do them at any moment,
so this is crucial. Stand back.
Right, here we go, and
Back again.
- There. That's enough of that. - D'you
wanna go through your speech again?
- Yes, that's a very good idea.
Right, now, you give me my cue
line - "You! Passing Person! Have
you anything to say on the matter?"
- I can't remember all that. - OK, "Have
you anything to say on the matter?"
- Right. Ready? - No, wait one minute!
You're playing Tom Cruise, you're
a salmon, so keep completely still.
Don't move a muscle. All right.
An old boyfriend used to say that.
- He worked nights at the abattoir.
- OK, anyway, right.
- I'm meandering - Oh, if you smell
anything untoward, don't worry.
- It's just me Vanilla Surprise -
it tends to drip when hot.
- Oh! Ugh! Ugh!
- Me ice cream! - Oh!
Right, OK.
OK, right. I'm meandering through
and you say
- You don't half walk like a fairy.
- Just give me my cue. - I forgot it.
- "Anything to say on the matter?"
I'm just standing being Tom Cruise,
apparently.
- Say, "Anything to say on
the matter?" then I say MY line. - OK.
- Ready? - No. - You cheat! You slipped it
in when I weren't looking!
- I did no such thing! - Your line!
- What? - "No" - that's your line!
- I didn't say it in context!
Oh, there's so much to take on!
My brain's mashed! Poor Tom Cruise.
- "Have you anything to say on
the matter?" - That's MY line! - Say it!
- Have you anything to say
on the matter, you nonce? - No!
Electric, Tom! Electric!
Oh!
- You think so? - Yes. - You really think
so? Oh, thank you. Bless you, Lin
Oh, it doesn't matter.
- You were brilliant, you know. You're
just like that bloke in that film.
- Which film?
- You know. That film YOU love. - Oh!
My name's Lisle,
I'm 16 and I DON'T need a governess.
No, no, it ain't that one you like.
It's that one Mummy likes.
- What's it called?
It's got a little name, like a pet.
- Terms Of Endearment? - No. - Babe?
The Bitch! That's it.
You're like that bloke in The Bitch.
- Aw, Mummy took me to see it when I
was ickle. - Wasn't that Oliver Reed?
- No, it WAS Mummy. I remember
the tang of her Victory Vs.
- I am horrified. Look.
No wonder you don't get no work.
I AM horrified that The Bitch
was the first film you ever saw.
That's where you're wrong, you poof,
- cos the first film - I - seen
was Sluts On Skis.
"Fun and games
on and off the piste."
It was a little home movie
Mummy made.
Oh, DO shut up! God!
How's my make-up looking?
You can't tell you've got any on.
Really? Bugger! Bog roll! You know
what you must do when stage-acting?
Fart silently?
I can do that - listen.
Ugh!
No, no, you have to do THIS.
You put two red dots
in the corner of your eyes.
They won't see those from the gods,
I'll just make them a tad bigger.
There. You see?
- Do you know WHY we do that? - So it
looks like someone punched you out.
No, no.
It DRAWS people to your eyes.
- It's clever, isn't it?
- Really? I'M 'aving some of that.
Now, just in case no-one can see me
from the gods La la-la-la-la. ♪
Oh, oh! Another thing you have to
remember when you're stage-acting
..is if you're playing a character
that's over the age of, say, 52,
you have to, have to, have to put
talcum powder all over your hair.
It's great, isn't it?
- Now, I wonder how old my character
is, cos you know, I'm not really
sure. - Well, what's your name? - Why?
Cos if you were called
something like Latasha,
you'd be young and black and a girl.
I'm called Passing Person - the
Salmon yells, "Passing Person!"
- and I answer.
- What's your costume like?
This is where
I started to hit upon something.
I'm in a white coat, right?
And I do a lot of meandering, a lot
of passing by, passing to and fro.
So - white coat,
a lot of passing to and fro,
- so I brought this -
I'm obviously a lollipop man! - Oh!
Well, I'd say
your character was probably ancient.
Oh, well, lots and lots of talc.
Oh, no! It's made my face all white.
What do we do now?
- We put more brown stuff on! - Yes!
My, you're getting the hang of this.
- KNOCK
- Oh! Someone's put a note through
your door. Shall I read it? - Go on.
- "You're shit." - What?! What?! Shit?
Oh, no, that's s-h-i-t - "so hot
it's Tom". Cheeky pranksters. I've
looked forward to this all my life.
I admit I was doubtful whenst
taking this on. I mean, one line!
But, as they said at the audition
- "The mug'll do it." - There are
no small parts, only small actors.
- Your leading man.
- Only comes up to my ankles.
- The sun is well and truly over the
farmyard wall. Partakez-vous a glass
of showbiz tincture? - Oh, yes.
But first kiss my lucky little dick.
Hello.
I had a lucky milk bottle through
the letter box. Nearly killed me.
- How? Surely it just plonked on
the mat. - And who slept on the mat?
- Plus it was on fire. - Oh. - Down the
back of me throat and make me giddy!
- Here's to a massive long run,
me getting lots of recognition
and becoming huge! - Bisto!
That's nice. Well,
they're mighty fine at Cost Cutters.
Now! On with the boots.
So, what's this play about?
- No idea. Set on a boat. - Oh!
I almost forgot. Your agent phoned.
- Oh, fantastico tanspastico! Is she
going to come to the party? - No.
- She couldn't come. Something about
the decorators. - Oh, bugger lumps!
- Decorators? What's that all about?
- I don't know.
Said she'd rather watch paint dry.
Oh, yeah!
She's just taken on Handy Andy.
He's opening in his play tonight.
He'll be far more nervous than I. So
there's a spare ticket if you want.
No, you're all right,
I'm not a big fan of fish.
What if I forget my line?
I need you to yell it at me.
You ain't gonna forget your line.
One word, three letters - "No". OK?
- Oh, my God! - What? - My mind's gone
blank! I can't remember anything!
I'm having a panic attack! Ah!
Oh! Yakashato, hi!
SHE SPEAKS JAPANESE
Director say, "Soft whispers
a morningtide wind in the wind chime,
"mean the very special songbird
come down from mountain
to drink from pool of beauty.
"When bird lay egg in nest
at brow of foothills, bird that born
have wings to fly higher.
"Ride that bird far, far away.
"Bird young, bird free, bird you."
Right, so, does that mean
I should ditch the talc or not?
SHE SPEAKS JAPANESE
Bugger me, Yakashato,
no wonder you're a comedy genius!
Break a leg, Tom.
Did you hear that? "Break a leg"?
Christ, what a bitchy thing to say!
I know, the Norwegian nonce!
Oh, God, blimey! These slacks
are a bit tight around the gusset.
You can tell I'm not Jewish!
- Oh, ho-ho, I love a nice Jew,
Thomas. - Yeah.
- All the nuns in my convent
were Jewish. - Were they?!
All except Sister Brian May, the
headmistress. She was a vicious cow!
Linda Hughes,
why aren't you at netball?
Cos Sister Contraception's a big
lezza and keeps looking up my skirt.
Sister Contraception
is a holy creature,
and the only skirt she'd look up
would be Our Lady's.
Dirty, dirty child! Now,
Father Dick will be along shortly
to take confession.
Will you be confessing?
- Nah. I'm gonna sell my story
to the Catholic Herald. - You're going
the same way as your mother,
and she was evil, Linda. Evil!
She was the child of Satan, Linda,
and you know what we do
to girls like that!
This skirt stays on!
They go to Borstal! But not before
they've had a taste of my cane!
- Touch your toes! - Ah! - Oh, stop
whingeing, you miserable little cow!
And they say school days are meant
to be the happiest of one's life.
- Yeah, bollocks! Were you happy
at your school, Tom? - Ah.
- Smoke that. - What is it? - It's heroin.
- We're 'eroin addicts.
- No! I'll imagine Mars bars
chasing me down the street.
Smoke it or I'll tell everyone
you tried to grope me knackers!
- You big girl! - Leave me alone! - You
must be a girl, you got girl's hair.
- Yeah, you sit down to wee.
- It keeps the rim clean.
- Stub it out on his arse! - I'm not
touching his arse! - Be gentle with me!
Stub it out on his arse!
Aagh!
Stop that at once! Oh, no!
I've gone as white as a sheet!
- Time for more make-up, methinks.
- MUSIC
Oh, my God! That's my opening music!
Oh, no! I need to go wee-wee.
- Go in the sink. - Dare I? Dare I? - Go
on, Tom, we've all done it. - Yes, OK.
Ah!
Ah!
- I can't go! I can't go! - Here you
are. Have some more to drink,
that'll shift it. - Yes, that'll help.
- Mmm, mmm, mmm. Turn on the tap
now, Lindy. - I ain't sticking my 'and
down your rear - I'll lose it.
- Well, distract me then. Do something
distracting, then it'll come out
of its own accord. - Okey-dokey.
- What in God's name are you doing?
- I'm miming - I'm stuck in a box.
Here's a door.
- Walking down the street. Oh, look,
there's a disco. Let's shaft.
- Oh, God, this is ridiculous!
- I obviously don't need to go.
Pull me off. - Ugh! - Off the sink!
- One, two, four - Ugh!
Tickle me, Lindy. Hurry! Tickle me.
'Passing People to stage left to
walk across the back of the stage.
The Passing People to stage left.'
Oh, my God, that's me!
Hurry up and tickle me! Agh!
- Oh! - Oh! - Ah! Oh.
- Agh! Ah-ha-ha! Oh!
- Cover it up with your coat.
- Brilliant! Can you tell? - No, it just
looks like you've got a fat arse.
- It'll come in handy
if you get nervous.
- My stick! My kingdom for my stick!
- Oh, good luck, Tommy baby! - I can put
more make-up on the way down. - Yes.
- Come and watch me from the wings!
Flush, flush, against the tide.
Flush, flush, again I jump.
ALL: Oh!
Against the tide I slowly float.
You. Passing Person. Do you have
anything to say on the matter?
All right! Don't push me!
You. Passing Person. Do you have
anything to say on the matter?
Linda! (Linda! Linda!
(What's my line? Tell me my line.)
- (No. - Tell me my bloody line!)
- Nooo. - Don't be so unfair. This
is the biggest night of my career.
All I'm asking you to do is prompt
me the line of dialogue we rehearsed
before - now! Are you going to?
- Nooo.
- SALMON: OK. That's it!
- Bring the goddamn curtain down!
- We're in a converted fire station,
love! There isn't a bloody curtain!
- Who are you? You're not Tom Cruise!
- Oh, shut up! - I - was cheaper!
What sort of production IS this?
They're so desperate they lie, say
a top Hollywood star's in the show!
At least I'VE got nothing
to be ashamed of.
- Director didn't have to smash your
lollipop over your 'ead. - Director!
Couldn't direct a stray pube
going down a plughole!
Who was that bird who wanted
you to die a slow death?
Norinda, the "wardrobe mistress".
Fancy having an affair
with a wardrobe.
She's had it in for me
since I said to her,
"The yellow of your acne
is clashing with your sari."
And now, apparently, it's offensive
to make your face
a little bit browner
than it is usually.
Who was that bloke
who wanted to garrotte you?
The producer. Producers! They're
only interested in making money.
Wouldn't know art
if it came and slapped them
in the face with a branding iron!
Who was that came up and slapped you
in the face with a branding iron?
Just an irate member
of the audience. What's the biggie?
I came on, I did it, I came off.
That's half the bloody battle!
Oh! What's this?
They've billed me for the sink!
I don't believe it! £190?
That's a year's wages!
'Thomas Farrell!'
DIRECTOR SHOUTS IN JAPANESE
'Director say, "Tom Farrell,
if you're still in the building,
and I know you are, you camp pillock,
'"I've got one word to say to you -
why?"'
Why what? She makes NO sense. No
wonder this show's gone cock-a-hoop!
I'm surrounded by amateurs!
Well, we better go 'ome, Tom.
They said
they'd set the Rottweilers on you.
I feel fantastic!
Must be the after-show high!
I'd like to do it again
except I can't, I've peaked.
BARKING
- Quickly, Linda! Go down on
that pole! - All right. Where is he?
See? This is all your bloody fault!
Cos you mentioned the Scottish play!
Brigadoon! Brigadoon!
Briga-bloody-doon!
You bastard, Tom!
You bugger, you bastard, you!
Bugger! You bastard! Agh!
I'm stuck! I'm stuck!
My arse is too big for the hole!
I'm stuck! I'm stuck! My legs
are wrapped right round this pole!
I think I like it!
I think I like it!
Gimme, gimme, gimme
a man after midnight
Won't somebody help me
chase the shadows away?
Gimme, gimme, gimme
a man after midnight
Take me through the darkness
To the break of the day
There's not a soul out there
No-one to hear my prayer
Gimme, gimme, gimme a man! ♪