Cracked Actor

My little girl attends a Saturday morning Drama class in the city. Every Saturday we go there and whilst she makes friends and has fun I wait in the foyer area with the other mums and dads.

Some are great whilst others are just plain annoying, whiny-accented upper middle-class wannabes wearing odd wellies and sporting home-made haircuts. You know that look, they spend a fortune in Harvey Nicholls and still manage to look like a bunch of pikeys.

Over the last few weeks I have become fascinated by these people and their ways.

One of the things I have noticed is that all of their kids have unusual or original names. Not unusual in the mould of Gwyneth Paltrow, but getting there. They range from the completely made up, moving through to the outrageously Scottish to the just plain daft. It kind of reminded of that old Billy Connolly sketch about the "Second Name Clan" - "Where's Finlay? Oh, he is over there with Crawford and Farquar having a round of golf." Except the Drama class version goes more like this:

"Sorley, Hamish where is Lila? Don't know mum, she was playing with Beeny a moment ago but I think she went off with Sejanus." I kid you not. My wee girl has the most normal name of any child there and she has an Arab one!

The other noticeable thing about these parents is that they are as tight as a naff's chuff. In between classes they produce mountains of sandwiches and flasks of tea. I am all for frugality but would a wee treat from the vending machine or a visit to a city centre cafe every now and again really break the bank? I mean, FFS, I overheard one of them tell her kid, "You can have butter or jam on your scone but not both." Maybe that is why these types always seem to live in huge gaffs in the West End.

Anyway, I digress, the point of this post is not about them but about another one of the parents. He is probably not cracked yet but I reckon, by Easter, he will be. The guy in question is an actor on a long running Scottish Crime Drama and he brings his wee girl every week. No big deal you might think but the sandwich brigade and the hordes of 'resting' actors who teach the kids' classes just won't leave the poor guy alone. You can tell that he finds the collective fore-lock tugging totally embarrassing yet he is polite to a fault. You can tell that he just wants to do the Saturday morning mum/dad stuff like the rest of us instead of having to run the gauntlet of sicophants and crashing bores every week.