Dressed in black poly-cotton M&S frock and scratchy nylon wig, I exhibited myself at the Hayward Gallery on London’s Southbank on Wednesday. To be more specific, I made a not tremendously convincing exhibition of myself in Marc Horowitz’s The You And Me Show which is taking place there until later this month. I was playing the Queen in a spoof pitch for a BBC 3 show. The idea was deliberately bad, my performance unintentionally so.
Marc is one of those people who sees a potential in the internet beyond playing Scrabulous and viewing limitless quantities of porn. He’s a visual artist who got into comedy somehow and added Dave Gorman-esque japes into the mix (he’s about to make a new film for Sony following the route his signature made across a map of the United States – a project seemingly quirky and arrogant in equal measure). This he somehow brings all together on www.ineedtostopsoon.com site and is a creative soul probably fundamentally different from the kind he would be without the enormity of the internet at his disposal.
Appearing on his show which is broadcast live on www.ustream.tv and then archived to Youtube and his website I not only played her majesty but was a somewhat incoherent interviewee and answerer of questions randomly chosen from a ceramic walrus. I came away no less clear about the whole thing than I was when I went in. But how lovely these people were; Marc has a team of people around him, principally his co-writer Zach Ayers and an UK-based writer called Oliver Guy Watkins. It was unfortunate that we almost outnumbered the audience that turned up. Those that did amble by seemed representative of the punters at the Hayward Gallery on a wet Wednesday afternoon – somewhat international and rather eclectic in nature. So, there was a bemused Japanese tourist called Walter (with alarmingly moist hands) who got roped in as a guest (I’ve a feeling that every Japanese tourist I’ve met in Britain – which isn’t many, I concede – is called Walter), a nice but stalkery German girl, two other girls who laughed and most importantly stayed until the end and random others who came and went. To be fair they were probably hoping for a portion of Anthony Gormley’s fog. The event left me baffled but oddly touched. Maybe that’s the intention?
Sweaty-hands Walter came back to the next show, by the way. He brought an entourage who, I suspect, were told that their friend Walter was co-starring in a major talk show. Disappointment abounded.