Whilst this is not strictly speaking an post about acting, I am sharing with you experiences of the last 24 hrs because I did learn something quite useful about myself and life.

I'm currently down with the FLU - and it's the flu from hell - nasty sore throat, congested head, runny nose and bouts of fever. I knew I had to turn up at Canalot Studios at Wednesday lunchtime for a workshop. A top advertising agency is putting together an ad proposal for a big corporate brand and they needed some beautiful models, dancers, free-runners and gymnasts to do a workshop, film it and then show the client the 'draft'.

But the night before that, I went to bed at 11 pm Tuesday, having taken a sleeping pill and 2 aspirins. The aspirins didn't seem to work, neither did the sleeping pill, and by 4 am I was still lying in bed, in all my winter clothes, shivering with fever, in so much physical pain feeling absolutely wretched. I cried and I kept saying, "I just want to die, I am suffering so much I just want to die." And my partner said, "don't be silly, you are very ill yes, but you don't want to die."

I finally took a dose of ibuprofen instead which broke the fever and I did get at least about 7 hours of sleep which allowed me to turn up at Canalot Studios feeling actually quite human. As the studios were rather small, and it was a lovely summer's day, we decided to go to the park opposite the studios and have our workshop there.
The park was virtually empty. We were happily doing our workshop when two women with five children between the two of them approached. I can try to describe them in detail, but it felt like Vicky Pollard had a twin and here they were together, the Pollard twins.

Their kids strayed into our workshop because naturally, kids are fascinated by beautiful dancers and gymnasts. We told them to be careful as they were trying to do what we were doing. The moment one of us spoke to one of the children, Ms Pollard, who had been on the bench chain smoking with her twin, yelled at us, "Oi, who the f*ck do you think you are? This is our park, I come here every f*cking day with my kids, my kids are not going anywhere, you move!"

We stared at her in disbelief. The park was empty - apart from our group, her kids and the Pollard twins. We were shocked that she would use such language in front of their children. Yes I had no doubt she normally talks like that - but in front of very young children?

We tried to be reasonable with her. She told her that we can move, but she should be careful as her kids are trying to attempt some gymnastics manouvres with no training, no coach and no safety mats.

Well, what I really wanted to say to her was this, "if any one of your kids get hurt, or die, then you'll just have another to have more children, so that you can claim more benefits and get a bigger council flat. I'm sure you can find someone in that sorry council estate of yours who must be drunk enough or stoned enough to impregnate even someone who looks just like Vicky Pollard. But if any of these models or actors get hurt because of you or your kids, then TV and film producers, casting directors and theatrical agents are going to be really, really upset."

But no. I didn't say a word. I didn't see the point in talking to her. She was beneath me. That was my Eureka moment when I realized, God! Even though I had been really ill, and I felt a lot of physical pain, I certainly don't want to die! I have so much to live for, so much to give! But hey, if I was one of them Pollard Twins, then yeah, they may as well just through themselves out of the window the moment they have a mild headache because they have absolutely nothing to live for. Go figure. A life where you wake up, and watch daytime TV. Can't work, won't work. Live off benefits. Then go to the park and pick a fight with random strangers. Quel horreur. But such is this whole white underclass we have in the UK.

For those of you not in the UK, you see, we have this problem here in the UK - it's called unemployment benefits. The government gives out free money to unemployed people who don't work so they don't starve - it's not much, but it's been enough to create a whole white underclass of people like Vicky Pollard.

It seems ironic that whilst it's so un-PC to talk about 'class' in the UK, humour makes it perfectly okay to laugh at characters such as Vicky Pollard. After all, arts does immitate life. Matt Lucas and David Walliams didn't just pluck that character out of thin air, no! They live in a dodgy looking council block near Canalot Studios, London W10. And every equally dodgy looking council block in the UK.

Anyway, I'm sure you want to know what happened next with the Pollard twins. Whilst the two mothers ganged up on one of the men running the workshop, one of their sons, about 7 or 8 years old had been observing the free-runners doing somersaults off benches, walls and tree trunks. And guess what the little rascal did? Somehow he managed to get on top of a wall, and we heard him shout, "Mummy look!"

We looked up in horror and shouted for him to come down. And Ms Pollard told us, "Oi, mind your own f*cking business and leave my son alone! This ain't your f*cking private park!"

And guess what? He jumped off the wall, which I estimate to be a bit more than 2 metres, and landed face first - SMACK - into the concrete below. What a sound. Nose and mouth were bloody. Nasty. And you know what the Pollard twins did as the boy began to scream his head off at the sight of this much blood?

They started screaming even louder at the men running the workshop, "This is all your fault, I'm going to f*cking sue you. How dare you do this to my son? C'mon, do you want some? I'm not f*cking scared of you."

May I further explain that whilst her son was covered with blood about 10 metres away, screaming his lungs out for her to help - she IGNORED her seriously injured son for she was more interested in spoiling for a fight. How would you feel, if you were that boy, if you were that badly hurt, and your mother was more interested in provoking a stranger into a fight than checking how badly hurt you were when your face is covered with blood?

Maybe that does just epitomize the whole Vicky Pollard attitude - no matter how bad the situation is, she'll come up with a rant that denies all responsibility, oooh, something like...

"Yeah but not but yeah but no but yeah but ... I never even said something or nothing, SHUT UP!" Given the amount of blood there was on the ground, I daresay he was pretty badly hurt. I felt sorry for the child. We had to tell her, "We'll call an ambulance for your child. Can you see that he is hurt?"

And she said, "You gotta pay me for this. How much money have you got? You gotta gimme money for his medical shit and all that."

No interest in her child's injuries. These white underclass mothers - you see, they know that if they get pregnant and have a child, they are entitled to receive more welfare benefits. More children, more money. No one told them that they have to be a mother and take care of these children. God only know what kind of childhood these children have on these estates with such mothers who only see them as money. This mother clearly did not love her child one bit. Even strangers would react to a child falling down in the park and getting hurt - this woman couldn't be bothered with her own son. How sad for the child - to be this unloved.

I can just imagine the story she tells the other teenage mothers in her council block about how her son got hurt. Ooooh - us nasty models and actors ....

PS. Feeling much better now, thanks. Now I know I have so much to life for!

Alex