King Box

Put away your bucket and spade, get used to wearing shoes again and brace yourself for class. Rehearsals for the school play begin this term.

For about four years I got the star part in all the school plays, until the final production when I didn't bother to learn the lines. The opening night was the worst in my brief acting career. At the end, some parents in the audience actually booed me. The teacher director stood on stage and formally apologised for my performance. The local paper wrote a review in which they said that I had single-handedly ruined it for everyone, and that I was a disgrace to the school. The second show was abandoned and the school broke up for Christmas.

The play was called 'King Box' (it should have been called 'king box) and was a moralistic and cautionary tale about the evils of watching too much television.

I played the evil King Box, and my costume was a Dracula-like cape with a massive cardboard box over my head, painted - so they thought - to look like a TV. The screen was a sheet of greaseproof paper which I could barely see through, but had the advantage of hiding my face from the audience. Without that screen I might well have been beaten up in the dark carpark after the show by some of my fellow actors' fathers.

My job was to stride around the stage commanding waxen-faced children to watch more TV. I cannot remember any of my lines but I couldn't even then, so this is hardly surprising 53 years later.

Toward the end of the play, the children gang-up on King Box and make a plan to rid themselves of his evil influence once and for all. They capture him and tie him up, then give him a good talking-to, after which he promises not to be so pushy and to leave them in peace to do their homework at night. He agrees to these conditions and the children release him.

The finale was the newly-freed children merrily dancing around the reformed King Box to horribly chirpy music piped onto the stage through the Tannoy. King Box was supposed to join in with the dance, but I refused to do even that, so stood perfectly still as they gambolled around me for what seemed an embarrassing age.

This was just TV for Christ's sake. What would they do about smartphones?!