Friday 22 January 2010

Hmmmm and Her.

My experience with Li Ping has reminded me that this sort of thing has happened to me before. Gender confusion and me almost go hand in hand, in fact. I used to work with someone that I never saw. By that, I had to phone him every day and discuss Northern Irish newspaper things. Oh, yes. I used to have a proper job once. There was a time when I was considered "employable".

I worked in the Law Courts in Belfast for a year and after speaking to this guy for months and not knowing who he was I thought I should at least tell him I was leaving and it was nice working with a guy that was always so helpful. Oh, and I'm Michael, by the way. What's your name, mate?

Siobhan.

Of course, it is.

I had no idea that Siobhan was legend in this little world. She had a big man's voice. Like Paisley. Terrifying. My last week working there was too scary. Now that I knew Siobhan was a woman it was hard for me to discuss features in the Belfast Telegraph without imagining what she looked like. Pigtails, pink frock, eating half a wild boar while scratching her big, fat, hairy cock. I barely heard a word she said that last week. After this weeks Li Ping incident, I'm glad to see that over 20 years later I have really not changed a bit. Maturity isn't my bag, baby.

Siobhan was the influence for a character that Bennett Arron and I came up with for our failed sit-com scripts "Central General Emergency Hospital". The BBC loved the script, they thought that only the title needed to be changed. I can see their point. We had many very positive meetings with the BBC and in all that time only one thing was ever questioned. One of the "producers" was someone who is now called Lucy Lumsden although we knew her before she was married. She was called Whore then. That might not be the correct spelling but that was definitely her name. Anyway, Whore could not get her head around a female character who had a man's voice. Why did she have a man's voice, Whore would say, was there something in her past that could reveal the answer? It was a very childish script that relied heavily on idiocy but Whore felt this character needed a genuinely moving and traumatic back story so that we could explain her voice if people wrote in asking why she spoke like a man. I suggested if people wrote in asking why she spoke like a man we could either ignore them or tell them to fuck off. I never met Whore again.

The BBC then decided to go with the God awful TLC instead of our script. Bitter? Fucking yes. Whore, it goes without saying, went on to become Head of Comedy.

I have just realised that I have no idea why I wrote all this. Bye.

www.twitter.com/michaellegge
www.preciouslittlepodcast.co.uk

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Out of morbid curiosity I searched for Li Ping on Facebook, there is a Li Ping appreciation society that definitely precedes the Li Ping incident! http://www.facebook.com/search/?q=li+ping&init=quick#/group.php?gid=28556695105&ref=search&sid=602772718.1003580056..1

The world of anecdotes would be all the poorer if it weren't for people's exasperating behaviour.

Anonymous said...

LOL So she thinks she might be a male? She needs electric shock treatment. What a fat lunatic.