Filming with Fred's House

Got back about an hour ago from the Fred's House film shoot; Fred's House are a brilliant (and I mean that genuinely) band from Cambridge who write lovely songs, and today it was the filming of the promo video for their new track, 'Someone Else's Road'. When I signed up originally I thought it was to be an extra, but a couple days back it turns out I had one of the 'bigger' roles. Like it or not, I'm somehow, accidentally becoming an actor, there just seems to be a need for awkward people in my age group at the moment. It's a great track - it's basically a story, I don't want to spoil it too much because the video will be out soon and there's some nice moments in there, but my likable loser character, Naughty Billy, gets his girlfriend pregnant, her mum goes mental, there's a nice ending to it all. I enjoyed being 'in character' today, and even though I only had about four hours sleep inside me after last night's gig I felt inspired by the quality of people I was working with. Let's be honest, I turned up looking and feeling like shit, but as soon as things started moving it was brilliant fun - even if a lot of my scenes involved being hit reasonably forcefully by a handbag. Things kicked off at about 9.30am, and finished at 6pm, it was a strange way to spend a Sunday, especially as my character seemed to be one of the main points of focus, but I enjoyed every second of it (despite the marks and minor cuts on my arm from the handbag hits), people are just so nice. All of Fred's House are just so nice, and decent musicians too. I found it brilliant to watch Kate Madison and Emily Blickem team up (with Martin Galvin and Jerry Leeper on hand) as they're outstanding film makers and they just work so hard to get every shot perfect. I loved working with Katie Barton (who played Kathryn, the girl my character gets pregnant) and Angela Rowland (who played Kathryn's mum). It's a great tune, they'll do well with this one. I'm genuinely exhausted now, just going to write my newspaper column, nail the final draft of the Edinburgh script then I'll chill out with a beer and mediocre TV I think, but that was a really nice way to spend a day.