AM I AN ATTENTION-SEEKER NOW?

Thought I’d share this AI mock-up of – allegedly – me, which the marketing company sent over for the R-Type Delta ad thing I’m filming imminently. Let us not use this moment to debate the rights or wrongs of them not hiring a concept artist...

Apparently, I’m also going to be in various stills ads for the game, so you might see my face popping up in unexpected places.

Some years ago, I got asked to be involved in some sort of TV show – I can’t remember what it was now, only that I'd be going around some games fair and talking to the show's presenter about retro games. They offered me a princely $50 for one day of filming, and I turned it down. I didn’t need to be on the telly that bad, so they replaced me with David Quantick.

I was a bit snide about it at the time, thinking “Wow – Quantick must either really need the money, or must really want to be on TV”.

But now here I am, having agreed over the next couple of weeks to be in an advert and as an extra (with Sanja) in a certain crowd-funded movie - that I know some of you have supported – all for no money. I don't have the time, I've had to reschedule - for the second time in a month - seeing my best mate to fit these in (love you, Pedanthony, if you're reading this). And yet I'm still doing them. So what’s changed?

Well, I have I guess. For a start, I’m not as judgemental as I was in my youth.

But really, I just think I’m more aware of the finite nature of time. I’m just keen to try things I’ve never done before while I still can. If someone asks me to be in an advert or a friend wants me to be the background of a film... it's a new experience. It's not something I ever thought I'd end up doing, so... why not? It's a story I can tell the grandkids.

NOT THE FIRST

It's not my first time being in front of a camera on someone else's set. Many years ago, I did appear with two of my kids in the background of episode of Dani's House (The Axolotl Factor, if you can find it on YouTube; though I was young and handsome then, so you might not recognise me). I've done a few on-camera interviews here and there, and when I was 15, I was in some slideshow film that was shown at London Zoo. I also recorded the voice-over for it.

I think it was called Signals, and was all about how animals communicate without language or some guff. I'm not sure, but it might've been a student project at a local university, because an old teacher colleague of my mum had asked me to be in it. It was nerve-wracking, but they also asked if I could get a girl from my school to be in it too. Having to a) Speak to a girl, and b) Risk her thinking this was a pick-up line, was more terrifying than anything else to do with it. I randomly asked Lorraine Seeley, because I was sure she knew I didn't fancy her because, I mean, I barely knew her.

Hard as it might be to believe these days, being in front of the camera - or any spotlight - was never something I gravitated towards. It's why I hid behind Mr Biffo, why I was happy being a writer, and why when I started making stuff for YouTube I initially just wanted to direct.

I've ended up where I am by accident, in part because - as Paul Gannon warned me very early on - if I'm not in the things I make, then the credit will go elsewhere. I'm glad I didn't stay behind the camera for Digitiser The Show, because god knows what sort of issues we'd have on our hands now, but I've reached a point where it doesn't phase me, and I actually enjoy it.

The same way that I found the stream-of-consciousness nature of Teletext-era Digitiser kind of exhilarating, so I've come to find it exciting to create something from the inside, in the moment. Does that make sense?

Nevertheless, it took me a while. Anchoring Digi The Show felt incredibly exposing at first, and I didn't really relax until the end of the filming week, when I was too tired to care. And those are my favourite bits of that series. I still felt a bit rabbit-in-the-headlights when I was doing the early Digi Minis. But at some point that went away, and it has been a long time since I even noticed the camera.

As I say in the new Bubblegun Extra... that kind of worries me, weirdly, that I've become so lacking in nerves or any sort of self-consciousness when performing. The last two Digi Lives I just strolled on stage like it was nothing - and felt I missed the adrenaline. Surely there should be some Rubicon to cross, some marker that you've stepped out in front of hundreds of people who expect you to entertain them? But for me... nothing. It just feels normal now.

It's almost like a betrayal of who I thought I was!

"So - wait - am I an attention seeker now?!? Is that why they asked me to be in the ad - because they think i'm a show-off and desperate for the attention?!?"

Says the man who just received this through the door for tomorrow's filming...