The Man In the Rubber Mask by Robert Llewellyn

fight, when the pain would be unpunched out of him.
    This episode has gone down in Red Dwarf history as being one of the best, but when we were making it, it became harder and harder to understand what was going on.
    My biggest problem all the way through series 3 was trying to learn my lines. At home I had started to wear a groove in the kitchen floor, pacing up and down for hours as I tried to get these complicated lines into my head. As I’ve mentioned earlier, learning lines has never come naturally to me, but I can do it. However, I felt inadequate when faced with a long Kryten speech; Rob and Doug’s language is so unique, is so free of cliché that it makes it very hard to learn.
    When I have learned other people’s scripts there is usually a turn of phrase or a sentence structure which you recognise and you already have at your disposal. It’s therefore fairly easy to learn as you almost know it already, you only have to memorise it in order.
    With Kryten talk, this is never the case. Rob and Doug will never use a hackneyed turn of phrase, they always come up with new ways of saying something. This is one reason I love their scripts when I first read them, and hate their guts as I try and learn them. There were times as the third series wore on where a new and tortuous Kryten line would make us all laugh simply because it was so tortuous.
    The standing joke was that Rob and Doug would write me a five-page long explanatory speech, telling the rest of the crew how black holes work, or that time dilation would save us from the horrific fate overhanging us. This speech would be very long and very hard to learn, it would start with the word ‘Listen…’. Most importantly of all, at the end, Danny would smile, show his teeth and say, ‘I was with you until you said listen.’ This would, of course, bring the house down.

    In the rehearsal room were two old bunk beds 18 which stood in for the beds in the officers’ quarters where a lot of the action in series 3 took place. On most mornings I would arrive, script in hand, still trying to do that killer speech on page seven. Donna DiStefano would be going through her props, Ed Bye would be pacing around working out his camera script. Chris Barrie would be on his mobile phone trying to fend off offers of work and see if he could fit in a four o’clock. It has taken me a while to find out what a four o’clock was. I know that during the war the gunners in British and American bombers used to point out enemy fighters to each other using the clock as a common reference. Hence, ‘The hun at five o’clock high chaps, give ’em hell.’ However, Chris Barrie’s four o’clock is a voice-over recording at four o’clock, in the afternoon, hopefully after rehearsals. Not quite so brave and dashing as the World War II gunners reference, but with a charm all of its own.
    On the top bunk there would be an inanimate lump, otherwise known as a sleeping Craig Charles; in the lower bunk would be a far more elegant body, stretched out, but likewise, fast asleep. This would be the graceful frame of Danny John-Jules.
    Everyone would work quietly, so as not to wake them until rehearsals began at ten o’clock. I have no idea what Danny and Craig did during the night in those days, but it clearly didn’t involve sleep. They made me feel so old, they did in fact call me granddad for a while when we each revealed our ages over lunch. Well, Hattie wouldn’t reveal hers, I politely didn’t ask, being a nice, middle-class, well-brought-up boy. However, such niceties didn’t hold Craig back, who immediately said, ‘Come on Hat, how old are you, man?’
    Hattie wasn’t having it, and her age remains a mystery to all of us to this day. When they found out how old I was, they were amazed.
    ‘I’ll be dead before I’m that age, man,’ said Craig. ‘I’ve peaked already man, I’m twenty-four and I’m burnt out.’
    When I gave him a lift home that night he was quite animated.