What's My Line?

I'm just about old enough to remember the last days of What's My Line, a television programme in the 1950s where someone came on and mimed their job and a panel of celebrities (yes, best beloved, they had celebrities back then) had twenty questions to work out what they did. (I'm probably confusing this game with Twenty Questions, another staple of the period, but that's not the point.)

If I were on What's My Line? today, my mime would be sitting in front of a computer and typing, occasionally getting up to make tea or coffee or filing or binning some papers about building repairs, Virginmedia pricing, special offers from Sainsbury and the like. Of course the panel would not guess my profession, unless they were unusually insightful or devious. Because the answer would be "I'm an actor" and when they asked me what typing or filing had to do with being an actor, the answer would be "I'm not typing or filing or making tea. What I'm actually doing is not learning lines."

And that is exactly what I have been doing for the last few days. Not learning lines. (Which means that the true answer to the question "What's My Line?" is "I haven't a clue", but, clever people as you are, you've already worked that out for yourselves.) I'm finally beginning to feel guilty about it. Not because I'm under any immediate pressure to know my lines - the first rehearsal isn't until 7th January - but because I'm aware that the sooner I know the words the sooner I will be able to get into the character. And that's the most important part of the job...

Ah well, perhaps tomorrow. Now, however, it's time to stop typing and go and make that tea...