The happy burglar.

When I was in my late teens I appeared in a sexually explicit art film called “The robbers” it was shot in black and white on sixteen millimeter film, with no sound. Later voices with French accents were dubbed in. It had a budget of about three quid and you could tell. The cast consisted of a friend and myself along with a young lady whose name I cant remember. My pal and I were recruited by a chap called Bob who sold ice cream from a van and was quite well known in the Gorton area of Manchester. I remember he plucked his eyebrows a lot, wore an Alice band to keep his hair back and spoke with a lisp. He was a sort of get you anything man, and he could, for a price be it tickets to a show, half a side of lamb, car radio, or even the full car.

Oh I know what your thinking but I was young, impulsive, ambitious, skint and despite all the talk of a permissive society with free love on every corner, I can assure you the sixties were anything but that, well my sixties anyway. So the chance to have some fun, perhaps even become famous and get paid for it was an offer I couldn't refuse. Beside which the brag factor for appearing in this type of film was off the scale.

In those days the actors (I use the term loosely) always wore something to hide their identity, in the young ladies case it was a ball mask, whilst my friend and I who were burglars wore a black mask and a stripy jersey, (Didn't all burglars?) we looked like two bumble bee's in flat caps. The whole thing was shot in an attic flat in Longsight which had a skylight, it was very dingy and smelled quite badly, but I'm a trooper, a complete professional so I didn't let any of this put me off. Our heroin sat at a dressing table in her boudoir preparing for the ball. My friend and I appeared at the skylight guns in hand and leered at her for a while before jumping through and frightening the poor girl to death.

I managed to make quite a reasonable job of this bit despite spraining my ankle badly, which is why later in this love epic my grimaces and face contortions are down to the pain rather than enthusiastic love making on my part. The guns played an important role in the proceedings, we waved them about menacingly and of course the heroin having no choice submitted grudgingly to our demands. My friend and I didn't know it at the time but the masks had been a last minute thought by the guy making the film. He had cut them from a dog blanket he found in the flat, they were very uncomfortable, itchy and it goes without saying smelled of dog.

I gave the performance of my life, despite having one ankle larger than the other, having to wave a gun around and suffering immense discomfort from a badly fitting dog blanket that I was having an allergic reaction to. On top of which I was sweating profusely (acting can do that to you) the mask eventually slipped down to my neck at one point getting stuck in my mouth. My face for days after had an angry rash in the shape of a burglars mask, I also had a rash on another part of my body which the mask never saw, still trying to work that one out.

It was shot in one take, with a couple of extra pretend bits, like I said it was a small budget, in fact before the camera rolled the director chappy hammered into us the fact that there wasn't a great deal of film and it had to be right first time. The young ladies acting was reminiscent of the silent film era, lots of clasped hands, imploring, and putting her arm to her forehead, you would think we were going to tie her to a railway line and leave her for dead, instead of just robbing her.

I saw the finished article once and I have to say I wasn't impressed, my friend however was and he secured a copy which years later he had transferred to video. I know this because I saw him recently and we talked about the incident over a drink. He seems quite proud of his short film career and intends to get the video transferred to DVD. He asked me if I would like a copy, I declined although I am curious and may change my mind about that. Who knows it might finish up on you tube.