Wait a Minute, Mr Tax Man!

We self-employed performers in the UK will be skin of teeth submitting our tax returns by 11.59 and fifty-nine seconds on January the thirty-first.

But only if we're that anal and over-organised. 

Now, one, don’t worry – the following won’t get over-naughty, just naughty enough – and two, it isn’t true. Though an actor in my year at Guildhall went into porn, which gave me the idea. 

An HMRC pamphlet gave me some amusement one dullish day in Aldeburgh, Suffolk. 

Q. 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 pamphlet with specific reference to your last completed paid employment. Your answers should be written in ink.

A. Not blood, then?

Q. Did you “A” instigate the work or were you “B” hired to do the work?

A. B. 

  PS - maybe use numbers as well here? Letter on letter is a tad confusing. 

Q.  If “B”, by whom were you hired to do the work?

 A. By Makam Chapman. 

Q. What did the person named in “B” hire you to do?

A. Redubbing a line in a gay porn film.

Q. Did you work directly with the person named in “B”?

A. No, I worked with the actors. Makam was the director. He acted at first in films, but then 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. Before Christmas Lunch even, parade of presents passed, she's already back playing with the little bag of pre-decimal coins I had when I was little. Makam 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 Makam, only ever being hot to frott with Michael Fish.

Q. 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?

A. Wait a minute, 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 might fancy.

Q. Was your work hands on?

A. No...sadly.

Q. Did you have to correct unsatisfactory work in your own time? Give reasons for this. What was the outcome?

A. 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 - being a reliable beta-viewer of such things - I became aware of something amiss with the soundtrack. There were the Europop, pre-tumescent pig-rootling noises from the other actor, and Ferenc himself speaking his line sounding 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, Makam'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 he couldn’t get his mouth round.

This last page has been left blank.

Except you’ve typed that on it.

Funny, HMRC never replied.