At work today a nice couple bought a digital piano, wrapped it in a full 80 metre roll of cling film, tied it to the roof of their two seater sports car with bungee ropes and drove to Switzerland.

That doesn't happen every day.

I am so glad that I'm not an actress. You know, in real life. It is no surprise that many actresses are unhinged. It's crazy making!

You may or may not remember that about 18 months ago I auditioned for a part in a show and didn't get it. I wrote about it at length here...

http://raesblog.blog.co.uk/2006/08/30/next~1084141

(I know - I still don't know how to post a link without actually posting the link. I'm not the internet goddess you thought...)

Well...some months later the same part came up in another production of the show and I decided that this time I would attempt to nail the audition. So in a move of unprecedented committment I learned the song and the scene and went into battle again, determined not to let myself down this time. It went pretty well. I remembered all the words, my voice only cracked slightly once during the song and people laughed when I did the scene (it was meant to be funny). I left happy in the knowledge that I hadn't embarassed myself. Closure. Life goes on.

Except that this time I GOT THE BLOODY PART!!!!!!!!!

This just doesn't happen. I opened the letter which said something along the lines of "Dear Rae, we'd like to offer you the part of Tessa in our forthcoming production of The Gondoliers"...and I had to have a bit of a sit down. Then I had to text expletives to a couple of people. Then I stood up. Then I sat down again. Then I emailed the entire text of the letter to a friend to make sure that it was telling me what I thought it was telling me. She verfified that it was. Then I stood up again. Then I arranged to meet another friend for coffee to get her to read the letter to make sure it was telling me what I thought it was telling me. She verified that it was. Then I felt a bit sick.

Now that all happened in June - and I've been feeling a bit sick ever since. It is now 9 weeks till the show and I've just about got the rising gorge under control (today) so I thought I'd write a little bit about The Gondoliers second time around.

My introduction there makes it sound a bit like I've been picked from the streets to take centre stage, which isn't true. I have had principal roles before, but usually ones that involve being old, or shouting, with one comedy song and a scene and a half if I'm lucky. I usually audition for the old lady/comedy/shouty parts because I'm built to be a sidekick rather than a romantic lead and so I know these are the parts I'm more likely to get. Tessa is a romantic lead! It's mental I get a guy within the first 15 minutes of the show. It's also the first time I've been anything other than back row of the chorus in a grown up Am Dram society. It's a whole new and different experience!

From the first rehearsal everyone has been really lovely to me. Which is just weird. Most Am Dram Societies are riven with cliques and gossip and it's hard to get a toe hold when you're new. The exceptional reception must be down to what I've come to think of as "the principal effect" (and this is where the crazy sets in). Obvioulsy (paranoia, paranoia) I start thinking that the only reason anyone is being nice is because I'm a principal and they have to be. It couldn't be anything to do with them just being nice people welcoming a newcomer into the fold. I've been round this block before, I know how it works. Through some computer glitch I've ended up with the most desirable female role in the show and now everyone is waiting to see how badly I mess up the first rehearsal so they can whisper to each other that "she's been hopelessly miscast and who does she think she is anyway, waltzing in here wanting to be friends as though she owns the place". Obviously, with all this going on in my unravelling brain I mess up the song the first time through. Cue the spiralling despair that makes me read significant glances from the musical director as disappointment and regret at giving me the part.

This is hard going on my mental stability already and I've only been in the door 10 minutes!

The next new and exciting challenge in being a romantic lead is the romance. With Gilbert & Sullivan societies the main thing you can hope for in this situation is that your partner will have at least some of his own teeth. I had spent the summer trying to work out who was going to be playing Guiseppe (my on stage love interest) because the letter you get post auditions just tells you who you are, not the rest of the cast and my society mole helpfully couldn't remember. I pictured a gentleman of advancing years in a badly fitting toupee with a small crust or dried spittle at the corner of his mouth. Imagine my relief to discover that not only was my on stage husband to be a year younger than me, but he was someone I went to school with. And no spittle! What a result. The downside of getting "romantic" with someone that you sort of already know but haven't seen for years is that it's really quite embarassing. Being from the uptight east coast of Scotland I barely hug my family and friends, let alone people I last had a conversation with in 1992. Making matters worse, his dad was my Guidance Teacher and now here I am pawing my respected teacher's son in front of potentially hundreds of people!

On a side issue (I don't know how to do footnotes either), the worst part of being a "luvvie" is all the cheek kissing it involves. I never know whether lips are actually supposed to make contact with cheek or if it's more of an ear rubbing exercise. And how do you know if it's going to be a one cheek or double cheek kiss? Is there a secret smile or winking signal that tells you? I invariably miss and slober on a sideburn and go in for the double when the person I'm greeting has moved on to someone else, or gone to the bar. What's wrong with a good firm handshake? You know where you are with one of those.

Anyway...back to rehearsals. My aim has been to know the music and words really well before even getting to rehearsal, just to give me a bit less to worry about. The trouble is that I'm terrible at learning lines. And there are millions of them! Living on my own I don't have anyone to read through with me as I learn so I have taken to writing them over and over and over in a specially purchased orange notebook. For months I've been sitting on the bus like Jack Nicholson in The Shining copying "When a merry maiden marries, all work and no play makes jack a dull boy" (or something) over and over and over. It's lucky nobody else has seen my book of obsessive compulsion or I'd have been carted off to the psychiatric ward some months ago. Yet, it doesn't matter how well I think I know the words, as soon as I'm faced by a roomful of fellow cast members who have known all the lines since 1952 I draw a complete blank. Can you imagine what that's going to be like in front of an audience? It's torture!

The audience. Oh yes. That's the next thing. It's all fun and games larking around twice a week in a church hall...but in the middle of March we will be taking the stage of a real live theatre. One that is normally tramped by proper actors. One that seats 1300 people a night. AAAAAARRRGGGHHHHNNNNGGGGGGG. I feel sick again. This being a principal is excellent for weight loss!

I tell you what though... I may be unspooling at an alarming rate, and thinking that everyone is talking about me behind my back, and having nightmares about being on stage in a show that I haven't rehearsed, and having diva strops with the director for calling me Rachel (that was perhaps inadvisable behaviour), but I'm having the absolute time of my life! I will never get an opportunity for showing off like this again in my life...I'm just terrified that I waste it.

The craziest thing of all is that while I am currently all consumed by this show it is of extremely little consequence to literally almost everyone else in the world. If I fall over, or forget a line, or my voice goes wibble when it should wobble it doesn't matter to anybody else apart from me.

And the other woman who thinks she should have been Tessa...yikes! Excuse me while I have a sit down.

Of all the crappy telly I waste my time watching, it is Holby City that I love the best. My devotion to the inner workings of the strangest hosptal in Britain have paid off in recent weeks as the storylines have become increasingly demented. It's as though the BBC have drafted in a platoon of disgruntled ex Hollyoaks writers who were dumped by the mighty Oaks for being too mental.

Firstly, Jesus of Nazareth (who has frankly always seemed ill at ease as a nurse) took to snorting cocaine from his desk. Rubbing white powder into your gums while on duty may well be okay for Donna (the worst nurse on the planet), but Zefferelli's muse shouldn't get the paranoid jitters while lecturing a colleague's junkie son on the dangers of drugs. You would think that the self righteous moral indignation of soapland would be just around the corner waiting for a smackdown with Jesus (or Mark as he's known in Holby), but no. He entirely got away with it. Sure, his daughter/sister (the hospital bike), was upset for about 5 minutes, but this was hardly the wailing and gnashing of teeth you'd expect from a BBC drugs denoument.

Perhaps they'll come back to it..after all they did get a bit distracted by a Robin Hood moment a couple of weeks back. You knew something bad was coming because a pretty and charmingly bland new nurse was introduced and instantly loved by all staff members. And her parents were delightful too. From the second she stepped onto the screen she to all intents and purposes a red shirted crew member of the Starship Holby, about to set foot on a dangerous planet with Captain Kirk (here played by Patsy Kensit). Peril was clearly on its way. Who'd have thought the peril would take the shape of an STD nurse with a crossbow who went a bit wibbley because he looked a lot like Vila from Blake's 7 (or something).

Patsy and the red shirt were duly kebabed by the maniac and the handsome doctor with unexpected cancer had to choose which one to save. There apparently weren't enough doctors to save both. In a hospital. With a perfectly good Casualty department. What a surprise...thanks to her ability to marry pop stars, Kensit made it while the other, non famous nurse died. Much sadness ensued - for at least a minute and a half.

Meanwhile Nigel from Eastenders was having a bad day. His position as the fluffiest doctor ever to hit a television screen was making him a push over for allcomers. His son was "going Zammo", his daughter blamed him for naming her after a rubbish Doctor Who assistant (or something) and he was about to let a cute small child with a randomly mentioned dead grandfather die because he couldn't be bothered to perform a heart transplant while his life was falling apart around his ears...oh and did I mention the crossbow wielding mentalist stalking the corridors because he didn't have time to listen to his grievances? Luckily, just as a leap from the Clifton suspension bridge (which is in Holby - not Bristol as we've been led to believe) seemed the only option, Richard Briers was on hand to show him what a "Wonderful Life" he had. At Christmas. Do you see what they did there?

In a move of genius the like of which is rarely seen in soap operas set outside Chester, we are led to see what would have become of the characters we know and love if Nigel had never existed. While the possibilities could have been endless it turned out that one of them was mad and in an asylum, but most of them were dead. That crossbow thing panned out differently without Nigel there to be all cuddly and benevolent - allowing lots of the actors a day off for Christmas shopping while the episode was filmed. Oh...and Jesus was paralysed, but the extent of his parallel universe coke habit wasn't explored.

Most touchingly, Nigel got to spend some time with his dead wife. In the real Holby (and it is real - not in any way a fictional city that looks like Bristol) she went to Switzerland to die with dignity as her motor neuron disease took hold some time ago. In It's A Wonderful Life Holby she was stuck in loveless marriage and a state of the art wheelchair because Nigel hadn't been there to give her a good reason to kill herself...it sounded more romantic the way they put it. Needless to say, I cried.

Nigel from Eastenders then had to decide which life to choose because the end of the episode was fast approaching and there was a girl with a spurious dead Grandfather who needed a new heart back in the the real world. The characters can tell when the end of an episode is nigh because a song will kick in over the hospital intercom which ties in nicely with the events of the day. It is often "Hallelujah" by Jeff Buckley, or occasionally a spiritual sung by the big black doctor because she was in the original cast of We Will Rock You and so has a nice voice. Thankfully Nigel heard the music and rushed back to the hospital in time to save the girl. As the camera panned back from her bed we see a picture of the oft mentioned randomly dead grandfather...Richard Briers, of course.

I can't see where they can take things next...perhaps a shower scene where Denis Lawson discovers that the last 5 years were just a dream? Roll on tonight's episode