Pictures of Lilley.


This morning, I sorted out some old clothes to put outside my flat for a charity collection. While I donated a lot, I stopped short of giving them this:

'Trendy'


In case you don't recognise him, that's the Right Honourable Peter Lilley MP. If you’ve ever wondered what it would be like to iron a transfer of an ex-Tory Cabinet Minister's face onto a t-shirt and keep it screwed up in a bag for six years, there's your answer. He seems to be covered in blisters. He looks like the guy in the painting in Ghostbusters II.

Terrifying.
 

I should probably explain why I have it. In 2008, Doggett & Ephgrave were asked by the Hitchin Rotary Club to do a short skit at a local event. What they wanted was very specific: a sketch based on the lesser-known Who song Pictures of Lilly featuring our MP Peter Lilley.

We might not have said yes, if we hadn’t needed to raise a fortune for our first Edinburgh Festival. Hitchin's excellent Town Centre Manager said we should see it as a chance to pester local businesses for donations. He was right.

The actual idea was clunky from the off. For a start, the song is about wanking; something we'd have to neatly sidestep if we didn’t want to cause offense. Lilley had agreed to take part, but wouldn’t be available for much rehearsal. Whatever we did would have to be simple.

A week before the show we had a burst of inspiration. We'd do it as Portakabin - a fictional experimental pop duo we’d gig as now and then - and use an idea based loosely on Bob Dylan’s iconic video for Subterranean Homesick Blues (the one with all the cue cards). Lilley could walk on at the end and tell us off for doing it.

All was fine until the night before, when I received a phone call from Lilley himself. It transpired that his team had agreed to him doing it without listening to the song. Someone in his office had finally got around to it, realised it was about masturbation and raised the alarm bell. He was understandably worried.

I did my best to reassure him. I told him that we had edited out the verses with the most overt sexual references. I also said that we wouldn’t be sending him up. Our characters were meant to be his biggest fans. If anything, the joke was on us. He put the phone down sounding reasonably convinced.

The day of the show was tense. We were meant to close the first half, but still didn’t know for sure if Lilley would turn up. We were a good forty-five minutes into the performance before he arrived with his wife. We had a brief, stilted conversation, where we explained what he had to do, then we were on.

All in all, it went well. Despite the suspect subject matter and the lack of rehearsal, the Rotary Club liked it. Peter Lilley came off as a really good sport. It certainly didn’t do his profile with his constituents any harm.

He didn’t come off so well with us. No sooner had he exited stage right than he promptly left the building. He didn’t stop to say goodbye or thank us. Needless to say, he didn't get my vote.

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