Yes indeed, two for the price of one.
I have a friend who is an actress/director, Victoria, she teaches an acting class my daughter attends. She's been resting for the last year but suddenly got both an acting job and a directing job.
Now she's offered her adult group to do a reading of my TV script, Monsters. So we're going to organise a Sunday morning in the near future. I'll drag the daughter along to play the lead, since she was the one I was thinking of when I wrote it. (Drag? She's pulling me.)
Turns out that another friend, who I would have scarce believed it, is in her adult drama group.
His name's Pete. He's about 5 ft 6in tall and built like a brick sh*t house. Covered in tattoos. Bald. He's twenty times harder than Vinny Jones and teaches Thai boxing. He also nearly killed himself with drugs several years ago, but fought his way back. The "nearly killed himself" is not an exaggeration, he was a hairsbreadth from death.
He lives on one of the toughest estates in Manchester where he grew up. He could move if he wanted, but he wants to change things instead. Nowadays he tours schools giving drug education talks. And they listen because he's tougher than any of those kids think they are, and he looks it. He doesn't tell them not to take drugs, but he can tell them what it will do to them because he's been there. They can make their own decisions.
He also happens to be one of the nicest guys you could ever meet (twenty times nicer than Vinny Jones actually is). At least he is now, I suspect I wouldn't have wanted to meet him before he nearly killed himself.
I think I might re-style one of the characters to be him. It would work. As he said to me: "Our paths seem to cross mysteriously."
What's on the turntable? "Drowse" by Queen from "A Day at the Races"
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