Skip to main content

The Taxman Cometh?

  Hot to frot with the weatherman Fish




  

  Remember when Barry from the council came round to check on my financial status, said that I needed to get clear in my mind what constituted being self-employed as opposed to 'employed' and forewarned me to expect a pamphlet from the inland revenue?

  Please see this previous blog entry

  Well, the pamphlet came when I'd just been coaching one of the adult actors in a Derek Crofts production.
  Said Derek to me, 'His flesh is thrilling, but the speaking is weak!'
  I referred to this coaching job when I filled in the questionnaire section on the pamphlet. Permitting myself some artistic licence, at times, obviously.
  
  Are you confused about what constitutes being self-employed as opposed to employed? For your own self-elucidation we advise you to answer in writing the questions highlighted in the enclosed pamphlet with specific reference to your last completed paid employment. Your answers should be written in ink.
 Not blood, then?
  Did you “A” instigate the work or were you “B” hired to do the work?
  B
  If “B”, by whom were you hired to do the work.
  By Derek Crofts. 
  What did the person named in “B” hire you to do?
  Voice and performance coaching on a gay pornographic film.
  Did you work directly with the person named in “B”?
  No, I worked with the actors. Derek was the director. He acted in the films when he was getting started, but then he got some kind of burn out...porn out, maybe...the too much of a good thing syndrome?  I see it with my four-year-old niece. Boxing day night, parade of presents passed, she's already back playing with the little bag of pre-decimal coins I had when I was little. Derek, you see, got so far into porn he fell out the other side into a kind of skewed celibacy. Now the only thing that turns him on is a weatherman showing a bit of bicep pointing out dodgy fronts over Norfolk.
  Poor Derek, being hot to frott with Michael Fish.
  Did you provide the tools used for the work, by which we do not mean the small tools many employees take with them as a matter of course?
  Wait a moment, Mr. Tax Man: I wouldn’t let our Hungarian bit of buff - Ferenc Asztalos, star of Take Me Up The Danube - hear you casting aspersions about him having a small tool for his work. He’s a Magyar, ex-army, competitive gymnast. He can kill with his bare just about anything you fancy.
  Was your work hands on?
  No...sadly.
  Did you have to correct unsatisfactory work in your own time? Give reasons for this. What was the outcome?
  I had to dub the one line Ferenc had in Doctor Fine-Lay's Casebook
  'You’ve been hospitalised with an acute myocardial infarction, complicated by ventricular fibrillation. And just so you know, the in-hospital case- fatality rate among patients with MI complicated by VFib-CA is significantly higher than that in patients without VFib – CA. Oh, now, what might this previously undiagnosed tumefaction in the front of your hospital gown be?'
  The reason for this was because as I watched the rushes of the scene I became aware of something awry with the soundtrack. There were the Europop, pre-tumescent pig-rootling noises from the other actor.  And Ferenc himself speaking his line like Zsa Zsa Gabor with a cleft palate. But there were other sounds on the track that really ought not to be there. These were first the slam of a door, then the shouts of Emily, Derek's six-year-old:
  'Daddy, daddy, Lenka wouldn’t walk behind me in the street again. I don’t have any homework. I did a painting of two horses. Can I put it on the fridge with a magnet? Da…Um! Mummy told you you weren’t allowed to have the rudey-nudey men to play here any more, didn’t she daddy? She told Uncle Thomas thank Christ she’s got a proper job. And you’ve kicked Nemo under the sofa. I can see his quills, bloody daddy!'
  The outcome was that Ferenc became bellowingly morose, shouting: 'I am Magyar, we are prouds peoples.  Not good to fail and not have line said by me, Ferenc.'
  I had to talk him down by reminding him how the line was the only thing in the film that he couldn’t get his mouth round.
  This last page has been left blank.
  Except you’ve written on it.

  Funny I never got a reply...




Comments

Popular posts from this blog

My Mate Jamie-Ray Hartshorne

     I've been noticing that alongside photos of Jamie-Ray being a lead in Altar Boys , creating Change My Body UK TM , working the door at Freedom - and clearly asking people passing by wherever that rockpool may be to snap a double-bicep - this sort of thing is cropping up on his social media:   We're in The Diner, Jamestown Road, Camden.  He's between tour dates of  The Bodyguard,  and meetings to discuss sportswear and creatine endorsements.  The latter, he says, being all about making his product better.   Between sips of his peanut butter milkshake (he's allowing himself dairy today in my honour - I don't quite know how to take that) he says in his soft Brum, 'I've signed up for a major Muay Thai event in Thailand next February.  I'm going up against one of the Thai fighters.  That's the only real way to gain any respect in the fighting world.  That's why you've been noticing the combat photos.  I...

Some Favourite Books - But Please don't Lesbify Dame Agatha's Denouements

  I'm too tired to read anything new so have been round the libraries taking out my default-setting books to read over Christmas. These include:    The Pursuit of Love , Nancy Mitford.   The blood-stained entrenching tool displayed above the fireplace, child-hunting over Shenley Common, Jassy traumatising the local children telling them the facts of life.  The scene at the Gare du Nord where Linda sits on her luggage to cry and meets Fabrice always takes me back to the first reading of the novel, sitting wrapped in my Welsh Tweed shawl, in a tiny bedroom on the eighteenth floor of a high-rise in Kennington.   The Pursuit of Love is romantic, hilarious and bleakly eccentric.    Confessions of a Failed Southern Lady , Florence King. When I entertained troops on the American base in Kandahar, four South Carolina army captains made me an Honorary Southern Belle. Madame Galina, they said, in all her unreasonable, high-blooded,...

How to...Self-Assessment Tax

   As we near the end of the year a performer's thoughts will turn to the dreaded self assessment tax return.  Eight years ago I made a pact with myself never again to put myself through those two days of surfing receipts; forging official contracts for looking after Lady Carter's pug Mr Timothy; wondering if I would get away with claiming for two pints of Fullers Honeydew, bought to silence a city boy smoking outside the Rising Sun in Cloth Fair, after he saw me help myself to some of the festive flora on the railings of St Barts church to arrange in my hair having forgotten my tiara for a Christmas gig at Club Kabaret .    I now do a mini-tax return each month when my bank statements come, and simply tot up the running total on April 6th when I submit my HMRC self-assessment return.    Of all the self-employed professions, performers and cab drivers most frequently underpay tax; ergo they are the two professions most likely to be audited by HMRC ...