“That’s it, hold the kiwifruit up to your face,” the photographer instructed. “Now look like you’re afraid of the kiwifruit. The kiwifruit is out to get you!” My name is Rob Halden, and this is my first experience of a professional photoshoot.I’m a comedian by trade, but today I’ve come to Warwick and got out of bed at 6am in order to be an actor. As a comedian, my working day doesn’t need to start until 5pm. So being surrounded by an entire bustling crew of industrious people WHILE THERE’S STILL MORNING DEW OUTSIDE(!) is a terrifying experience.
“What is somebody who isn’t a real an actor even doing there?” I hear you cry. Well, Jim Shields saw me performing stand-up comedy in a strange bar in Leicester ten years ago, and ever since then he’s been recruiting me into his wild and crazy creative schemes.
This is my second acting gig under the Twist & Shout umbrella. In fact, this is my second acting gig ever. For the first role they cast me as a “Hobbit looking, Lord Of The Ring obsessed IT expert”. For this second role they’re having me portray a “conspiracy theorist and Beanie Baby collector”. So yes, I have immediately been typecast in the acting world. I expect my next role will be “insurance salesman who writes Twilight fan-fiction in his spare time”.
After being terrified of a kiwifruit for the paparazzi, I’m off to rub a Beanie Baby up and down a bemused actor’s leg. We all keep corpsing into fits of laughter as I push the little teddy bear across the knee of a man I’ve never met before.
“Are you SURE this is a business video?”I have to keep asking the crew. They assure me that despite the zany sitcom antics, the jokes, and the fact we all struggle to get through a take without cracking up at the dialogue, we’re making a video series about the very serious subjects of compliance, bribery and corruption.
In the downtime between scenes, I googled the topic of compliance within the corporate world. Now, I dunno if it was the early morning or the dry subject matter itself, but I got a very pleasant forty-winks whilst trying to read about it.
At least that little nap reinvigorated me for my final scene, where I try to convince people that there’s an international conspiracy involving coffee grounds, aliens and kiwifruit. This corruption and compliance stuff is serious business.