GJC4KFC4EVA

God I love KFC. If the Colonel wasn't some rotting corpse infested with maggots buried deep down in a field in Kentucky I would kiss him on the lips and offer to do much more if he would just whisper those sweet 11 herbs and spices into my ear. Recently I stumbled upon an article in The Guardian claiming to have the secret receipe and for those of you who can't be bothered going to the link, here it is...
1 teaspoon ground oregano
1 teaspoon chilli powder
1 teaspoon ground sage
1 teaspoon dried basil
1 teaspoon dried marjoram
1 teaspoon pepper
2 teaspoons salt
1 teaspoon paprika
1 teaspoon onion salt
1 teaspoon garlic powder
2 tablespoons Accent (MSG)

Who knows if this is the real thing. Perhaps it's even better than the real thing although I doubt that's possible even if Bono says it is. Bono talks a lot of shite anyway and comes up with lyrics like, "Stuck together with god's glue, it's gonna get stickier too'. I always thought 'god's glue' was a euphemism for jizz and if so there's much better rhyming potential with 'duck butter' anyway. Here is a receipe for Bono:

1 teaspoon ground bollocks
1 pair of silly big glasses
1 pair of tight pants
1 big potato
4 litres of sanctimoniousness
2 tablespoons of Irish tiddly tiddly Accent
Mix until smooth and tasteless and sprinkle over a tablespoon of Brian Eno before serving cold.

Feel free to add receipes for your own favourite bands or singers.

But back to KFC. Some euphemisms for KFC include 'KFaeces', (thanks to Jari for this I think) and 'Dirty Bird', (thanks to Ben for this one) . Deep down part of you knows that by consuming KFC you are consuming small amounts of pooh and dirt along with the bird but if you're like me, that's all part of the thrill. I don't smoke, or take drugs made up of single letters, I have no desire to jump out of a plane or bungy jump or fall backwards into the arms of a bunch of actors doing some wanky trust exercise however I do love to eat KFC because you know it's not good for you, it feels dangerous, naughty and wrong and you keep furtively looking out the window in case somebody you know sees you with chicken juice dribbling down your chin and a breast hanging from your soggy lips. Just typing that last sentence has got me all moist for some of the Colonel's crack and I've already had some for lunch.

Here's is a picture of me with Ben eating some of the Colonel's finest in Clapham Common. I had been told that the best place in London to go and share your meat with another man was Clapham Common and they were right, it was lovely. Look how happy we both are. I think this love of KFC comes from growing up in Christchurch. For a long time KFC was the only fast food you could get in Christchurch. It was such a special treat and I still associate it with occasions like birthdays, marriages, Christmas and death. Just like Pavlov's dog I start salivating when I hear a bell rung by a Russian with a big bucket of chicken. In fact Ivan Pavlov bears an uncanny resemblance to Colonel Harland David Sanders, so they may be the same person which raises questions I can't be bothered asking or answering.

Please don't judge me for my KFC obsession. I only ever have a two or three piece quarter pack, I never eat the potato and gravy and all this new fangled hot spicy wing crispy nibbler stuff is anathema to me. After every meal a small part of me dies. I feel guilty, dirty and ashamed but I know I will do it again and ask myself the same question, 'Which came first, the chicken or the Greg?'

Doin' it for the kids

I apologise for the lack of bloggage recently, I've been working hard to bring the magic of theatre into the lives of children on the North Shore by dressing up as a tree, river, fish, dancing flower and baby bear. I also jiggled a soft toy bunny with a Welsh accent behind a bush. Here's a photo of me as baby bear with the actual set in the background. I look a bit like what you might get if that horrible man Jay Kay from that horrible band Jamiroquai rooted a horrible raccoon.

I've done a lot of children's theatre. My first show was a variation on the traditional Goldilocks story called 'Goldilocks and the Three little Rumpelstiltskins'. I can't remember much about it except that it was done on a budget and I played all three bears with a different type of fur coat to indicate which bear I was. The brown fur coat was for the grizzly bear who was angry, the white fur coat was for the polar bear who was cold and the black fur coat was for the black bear who was...black. He entered to hip hop music and sounded like what you might get if Flavour Flav had rooted Chris Rock while Gary Coleman stood by with a turkey baster and a pipette of his own duck butter. You can imagine how a skinny white guy pretending to be a bear of African American origin went down in early 1990's Christchurch...they loved it.

I'm still amazed we didn't receive any complaints. A few years ago I was playing the Hare in 'The Hare and the Tortoise' and I based my accent on Al Pacino in 'Scent of a Woman' and said 'Hoo-ah!' whenever I couldn't remember my next line. After the show an American woman came up to me while we were being bum-rushed by the kids in the foyer and whispered in my ear something like, "Black people can be good people to, you shouldn't reinforce racial stereotypes to small children." I stammered something like, "I'm a hare, not a black person and I'm meant to be Al Pacino", but she had gone before I could finish. You could hardly call the hare a bad person either, sure he was boastful but he got his comeupance and apologised to the tortoise at the end and joined in on the final song. The kids loved the hare as well, I was swamped with sticky children wanting to pull my tail and sign their stubs.

Children are great fun to perform to. It's just like performing to a bunch of really drunk adults. They yell stuff out that makes no sense, scream and cry for no reason, start talking when they are bored, wet themselves and fall asleep. They have no concept of how one should behave in a theatre which is fantastic. I've been to so much dreadful theatre where the audience sits in silence bored beyond belief, gives the cast a big clap at the end, tells their friends they came with afterwards how wonderful it was and then returns home feeling miserable having wasted $50 on two hours of self-indulgent thespwank. Children are brutally honest. Some memorable criticisms of my performance include, "You can't sing.", "You're dumb.", "You look like a girl." and "My daddy wants to kill you."

What children possess in abundance is imagination and a wonderful ability to completely suspend disbelief. If you've got the acting chops you can put on a different wig and you are instantly a different person. They just go along with it. I made what is possibly the worst prop in the history of New Zealand professional theatre, a giant hand painted on floppy cardboard glued to two bamboo sticks that I jiggled onstage while yelling 'Fee Fi Foo Fum' and the kids shat themselves. The management of the theatre also shat themselves and gave us a professional props person from then on so it was all worth it.

I did have a bit of a moment last week when I realised I was 35 years old and playing a baby bear. This was followed up by another moment when I was waving blue fabric up and down being a river while bubbles fell on my head. This was followed up by yet another moment when I was dressed as a tree who looked like he was giving a blowie. You cannot help but question your career choice at moments like these and ask things like, "What am I doing?", "Where is my life going?" and "Why do I look like I'm sucking cock?". But then you remember that you are getting paid to work with fantastic people to make kids laugh and you're not working at McDonalds or a call-centre selling wine.

At those moments I also think of the best moment of my acting career so far. I was the Big Bad Wolf in 'The Three Little Pigs'. He was an East London wide-wolf but sang like an asthmatic Elvis Presley. This is no way implies that people from East London are big or bad. My big number was about how much I loved eating bacon sandwiches however by the end of the show I remained hungry. We were in the foyer afterwards signing and hugging when this wee boy, maybe 4 or 5 years old, came up and handed me four small bacon sandwiches with their crusts cut off wrapped in glad-wrap. His grandmother explained that he had been to see the show yesterday and was very upset the wolf never got his dinner. That night he rang her to make some bacon sandwiches and bring him back the next day so he could give them to me. My jaded old luvvie heart melted and I gave him a big hug and felt better about everything. Hoo-ah!

True Lies

What a week it's been. My computer gets a virus and Michael Jackson dies. We don't yet know how The King of Pop popped his clogs, it may have been a virus but it seems more likely to have been an overdose of prescription drugs. The sort of prescription drugs one might prescribe to a horse who had trouble sleeping or perhaps to a person about to have a ten hour operation.

Whatever the case his death certainly had nothing to do with his state of health. He was in fantastic shape, absolutely fantastic. I know this is true because The Incredible Hulk told me. He said, "I'd never seen him look better" and that, "he seemed fine, alert, no pain at all." Even though that final phrase seems better suited to someone who is just a head being kept alive in a jar of bubbling liquid, who's going to disagree with The Incredible Hulk?

Here are some photos of Michael Jackson and as you can see he's an absolute picture of health.













It must be great being a celebrity, not only do you get paid lots of money and lots of people want to have sex with you, you can go on TV and tell fibs and get away with it. The Incredible Hulk could have said, "Underneath his slim exterior Michael Jackson had a body just like mine and could bench press 400 pounds upside down while sipping on gin and Jesus Juice" and everybody would have agreed and nodded their heads and thanked The Incredible Hulk for his startling revelation.

It must be such a rush knowing you can spout forth with any old bullshit and nobody picks you up on it. In California The Terminator has told everyone that instead of getting paid or getting your tax refund you will receive an I.O.U which he says are "rock solid". This from the man who said, "Money doesn't make you happy. I now have $50 million but I was just as happy when I had $48 million." It must be reassuring when you're feeding your children sausages made of dirt that you have a stack of I.O.U's from The Terminator in your top draw just waiting for some financial institution like Wells Fargo to convert them into your hard earned Benjamins. Wells Fargo got $25 billion worth of I.O.U's from Obama but recent stress tests have shown they probably need another $13.7 billion in order to remain well capitalised. Hasta la vista baby.

Luckily in New Zealand we don't have celebrities, all we have are people on Shortland Street, people who used to or currently play rugby or cricket and Marc Ellis. These people try and tell us fibs but we just laugh at them because we know somebody who knows them, they are related to us or we are actually them.

I went to a focus group on Thursday where I sat around with nine other men and discussed the merits of a new series of TVC's for a large hamburger producing multi-national company that is desperately trying to rebrand itself to make you think their offerings are as healthy as Michael Jackson. E,I,E,I,O,U. It was quite surreal walking into a small room in a Parnell hotel and seeing nine middle aged men and a video camera. I half expected my cup of tea to be laced with rohypnol but still had two cups and three pastries and loosened my pants. I was getting paid $70 and times are tough. After listening to a few of the test voice-overs my fellow focus groupers began suggesting better replacements, namely, Colin Meads, some Aussie guy who plays league who I'd never heard of and Marc Ellis. As someone who has done a bit of voice work myself I began crying on the inside and wanting to shove all the hotel pens up their posteriors. Not only would this have made me happy, it would have produced a video that could have made me more than $70. I wondered what they all did for a living and how they would feel if instead of using their accountancy/plumbing/gynecological services I got Marc Ellis over to probe my U-bend.

Not only do celebrities tell fibs, they think they can do anything. Rappers can be fashion designers, singers can write books, actors can advise developing countries on economic policy and Sting can do all of it while having tantric sex. One thing they can't do yet is cure swine flu. BBC World has just told me Ron Weasley has a mild case of swine flu and Harry Potter hasn't helped one iota. Boy wizard my arse.