Robert Llewellyn - The Man In the Rubber Mask

In the giant control room in the sky, there are banks and banks of lights on a huge, smooth black control board, each one connected to an emotion, or a significant experience of a human being on earth. If only we were aware of them, our lives would be transformed. If only Id known that my irony warning light had been burning so regularly over the last five years that the bulb needed constant replacing.

The irony light was full on when I was carrying the last bag of props down seven flights of stone steps in an Edinburgh apartment building. It was on because I thought carrying seven bags of props was hard work. I thought life was tough and the rest of the world was sitting around chatting and having tea, having sex or sleeping off the copious poisons of a nights debauchery. How come, I thought, I was heaving great big boxes of heavy stuff about so early on a Sunday morning?

It was the beginning of September in 1988, the end of the Edinburgh International Festival of theatre, music, dance, poetry, opera, jazz, film, television and shagging. I always had the feeling that there was a lot of the latter going on in Edinburgh, in between all the former.

This was the time of year when Edinburgh turns into a thespian village. This was a concept that came from some old luvvie who made an opening speech at the festival club along the lines of, Once a year the City of Edinburgh is turned into a giant thespian village. To which one embittered and no doubt hung-over member of the audience mumbled wanker under his breath.

Apart from shagging and thespians, there was an astonishing amount of drinking taking place, astonishing for me because I dont drink very much. Half a pint of watered-down lager and Im performing a sad, comedy stripagram on a bar-room table before you can say keep your dignity. If I drink a double whisky Im transformed into a smiling human vomit cannon in about thirty seconds, so I stick to orange juice and very expensive mineral water.

However, unlike most non-drinkers, I quite enjoy the company of drunk people. There are two bars during the Edinburgh Festival where people I know lean against the wall and talk a lot. The Assembly Rooms and the Gilded Balloon. In the Assembly Rooms, we all stand around under huge, posh chandeliers, shouting and laughing in a loud show-off sort of way. All the time we are talking to someone, we are looking around the room hoping to meet someone really famous. Its a complaint called Edinburgh neck, an involuntary spinal twitch that ruins any conversation and reduces all communication to gag try-out and witty put-down. The room is packed full of insecure, loud-mouthed performers, agents and TV executives. I love it.

The Gilded Balloon bar is slightly different. It is where the exact same crowd go when they are pretending they hate the Assembly Rooms bar. I love doing that. I love going to the Gilded Balloon after I have been in the Assembly Rooms, twitching my head like a demented automaton, and then slagging everyone off for being so posey.

I cant stand the Assembly Rooms. Its just utterly full of people looking around to see whos in. I mean, Lenny and he said to me, I met Lenny Henry once. Well, I didnt actually meet him, I saw him at a party.

The Gilded Balloon bar isnt quite as glamorous as the Assembly Rooms. It is in fact a narrow corridor leading to the toilet, but it will accommodate up to one hundred and seventy very drunk comedians. Drunk comedians stand very close to you when they are in full flow. They tell you what you should do with your show, your life and your lover. By three in the morning, it can begin to look rather sad, and if you are not deeply relaxed after seven pints of designer lager (total cost 304.76p) then the best bet is to head for home.

The final bag was stuffed into my small, rusty hatchback car and we set off. I breathed in the crisp Scottish air and brewery fumes for the last time, little knowing that by the time I got twelve miles down the road, one of the new, super-cheap remould tyres I had bought to get the car through its MOT would tear apart like a wet paper bag in a wind tunnel.

My two companions, Martin Pople (who could have gone out with Greta Scacchi, but didnt) and Deborah John Wilson (whose brother is Yaphet Kotto, the black guy in the original Alien movie), sat on the side of the road laughing as I struggled to get the spare wheel out from under the monstrous amount of stuff we were carrying.

By some fluke the spare wheel was pumped up, I found a jack and a spanner, so after a few more comedy wheel-changing moments we were on our way.

The reason I had super-cheap, fell-off-the-back-of-a-lorry, good-as-new tyres on the car was because I was skint. This was my normal state of affairs: nothing to worry about, I got by, somehow. It was only odd because I had just completed a sell-out run of a play I had written called (and you should read this bit as if you were announcing an upcoming science fiction movie, the classic deep American rumble voice) Mammon, Robot Born of Woman .

It had been nominated for the Perrier Award. gave me a big hug in the bar of the Assembly Rooms and told me with barely concealed delight that I hadnt won.