Personal Management

I've been trying to get through to my agent for a couple of days, as yet without success. It's nothing terribly pressing - just how to handle the Musselburgh thing ands whether my contract for Wolverhampton has been sorted out - it's stuff that can wait and clearly that's how they feel, too.

The single thing actors complain about more than being unemployed is their agent-either they have the wrong one, or they don't have one, or they haven't had anything for ages from them, or they never call back. Having been on the other end of the 'phone in a co-operative agency for a few years, I know that it's almost impossible to represent more than a few artists properly, and most agents have many more than a few. So it depends whether you're hot or not. And I'm not all that hot.

There's some great stuff written about agent relationships - In Withnail and I, Marwood has an agent called Swamp Betty, and whenever he calls her, Withnail says "he's wasting his time because she won't be there" - not there to the likes of him, that is. And Uncle Monty's agent, Raymond Duck - "four floors up on the Charing Cross road and never a job at the top of them" has an extra resonant frisson because he's based on someone everyone seems to know.

I had a meeting with this agent many years ago, and I was welcomed onto the fourth floor by a simpering minion. He starts by looking over my CV, and then insists on taking down my measurements for reference - he actually refers to them as my "particulars". After hat size and shoe size he breaks off, looks at me with pursed lips and says "I'll guess the rest." I begin to feel uncomfortably hot at this point.

The minion is summoned again, because it's lunchtime. "I usually have an egg mayonnaise sandwich about this time" the agent says,"you will join me, won't you?". I have some trouble with my egg mayonnaise sandwich, and I spill some of the filling onto my trousers - he's up like a shot, scooping up the oleaginous goo from my leg with a bent 10x8 glossy photo.

Just at that moment, the minion enters again with his 1.20 appointment - by a terrible coincidence, the girl whose headshot has just been used as an impromtu shovel. She takes one look and bursts into tears, and runs sobbing down the stairway.

The next day he gets me an audition for the RSC.