Crying In The Dressing Room

ell well well.

Look at you. You’ve got the lead part you’ve always wanted as a detective in a TV series. I’m not going to lie to you. I’m not going to give you a load of bull just because you’re my brother. I’m going to give it to you straight. Let me put my cards down on the table here – I’m not going to say I’m pleased for you.

You want my warm smile and a handshake of congratulation? No, I’m not going to give you that at all. I’m not going to slap you around the back, I’m not going to buy you a drink.

I’m going to be honest - I hate to see your success. Because if you were here now, I’d say, I hate to see you happy in your job, getting well paid for it, getting all the attention and all the things I don’t have in my life.

When I watch your confident good-looking face on the screen, I can’t stand it. Because you get the lead roles, and I get the small ones. You get the lead in a TV series with your face plastered all over the Radio Times and the biggest part I’ve got to date is a dentist in a toothpaste commercial.

And to add insult to injury – brother, I can’t believe how you managed to swing this – I usually like detective shows, so how am I going to enjoy watching this? It’s like you’ve deliberately taken away my only pleasure. And you seem to be having so much fun, and while I’m watching you, let me assure you that I’m not having fun at all. I feel like some leftover shouldered to the side of the plate. While you’re in the centre getting all the attention.

There was a scene last night – it was near the start, you were smiling and laughing with your sidekick – and it was like you were having fun for real, saying, Isn’t this a great job? I wanted to kick my television set in.

Why isn’t it me on the screen? It’s like I’m stood outside a television shop in the rain and the wind watching you through the wet glass on twenty different televisions. You born with the talent, and me born without.

Let me tell you something, brother. I try to cheer myself up that perhaps you’re not really happy. I do. Maybe, as you’re an actor, your smile is just an act.

Maybe before you go on set, before your scenes where you play the confident hero who casually solves the crimes, you’re in floods of tears. Maybe the stress of carrying the weight of the lead role is too much for you, and you wish you’d never got the job.

That pleases me, that image: I like to hold it in my head, to play it again and again, my exquisite film of you crying your desperate eyes out in the dressing room, lying down on the floor with your head against the legs of the chair, your head and shoulders shaking and the vodka slopping out of the sides of the glass in your hand.

I like to think that film is the real film, and the detective programme you’re in is the fake.

Because I prefer your pain to your pleasure. Brother, I would love to think of you as lonely.

In fact, your loneliness is what keeps me going. When I’m down, when I’m browned off with life and I think it’s all a waste of time, I think of you sad, and that brings a smile to my lips.

You know, jealousy is a virtue. If I’m pleased for your success, how does that help me in my life? It does nothing for me. But if I’m jealous of you, it spurs me on – it’s my get up and go.

Considering we’re brothers, we’re not at all close, are we? We will be on the surface – smiling to each other at Christmas, exchanging presents, handing out the cards at our parents’ house, acting the dutiful sons in front of them, keeping them happy with the illusion that we all love each other – letting them think that what they see is the truth.

After all, we’re both actors, aren’t we? That’s what we do –  we act for a living so naturally we act in our relationships.

In fact, let me let you into a little secret – I love to lie. And that’s the truth. Someone once said – it must have been some ponce who knew bugger all about life – someone once said that the truth was a very powerful thing.

They were talking rubbish. Because it’s lies that are powerful.

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