The day I went to see Back To The Future 2 was the happiest day of my life.

The single greatest day of my childhood was the one on which my dad took my brother and I to see Back To The Future 2. That makes my early years sound like Angela's Ashes and one trip to the cinema was the only respite I got from poverty and a string of dead siblings. Actually, very few of my siblings died (none, come to think of it) and my childhood is something I look back on as 'ok'.

Perhaps you're thinking that that being my fondest childhood memory is a little too convenient considering today is Back To The Future Day and I was trying to think of something to write a blog post about. That's not an unreasonable assumption to make but it is an incorrect one. That day really is, quite possibly, my favourite day of all time.

If my calculations are correct it would have been around Christmas 1989 and I would have been nine. Our family of five (mother, father, three living children) were heading into town to go shopping - OR AT LEAST THAT'S WHAT I THOUGHT. One of the few characteristics I had in common with other children was that I hated going shopping. Fenwicks department store in Newcastle gave my legs a tired feeling I am reminded of every time I go to a museum today. One way I would entertain myself would be to hide my arms in my jumper and try to fool strangers into thinking I had missing limbs. In my head it worked.

When we arrived in town it became clear that my mother and my, then one year old, brother were going one way and me, my dad, and my five year old brother were going somewhere else. I asked where. My mum and dad gave each other a look which said to me we might be in for something good. We were.

Back To The Future 2 is a brilliant movie. It seems fashionable to say that only the first one was any good. That is wrong. I fail to see what is bad about either sequel - particularly number 2.

1. You have Michael J Fox being cool. In number 2 there is a scene in which he thwarts Biff's goons in a stairwell by leaping over some handrails in a way that I still wish I could do.

2. The fact that the movie encompasses 2015, 1955, bad 1985 and good 1985 means that we get to see Lea Thompson and Thomas F Wilson parade their forever underrated comic versatility as various ages.

3. Good 1985 and bad 1985! The space time continuum! When Doc explained that Marty had interrupted the space time continuum and created an alternate 1985 that blew my nine year old mind! Wh-wh-wh-whaaaaaaaat?!

4. How that came about - Grays Sports Almanac. The idea that just by knowing all the sports results, someone could build an evil empire that changed the world, was fun. It's also something we need to be vigilant of. I will say though that for a book that supposedly contained every sports result for fifty years it was rather small.

5. Marty returns to the moment in the first movie in which his dad punches Biff and we get to relive it and see Marty actually witness it. Fun! This features a great moment when Marty takes the sports almanac from Biff's unconscious body. A bystander gives a wallet based performance I really enjoy. I enclose it in two short parts here. I don't know why I like it so much.





Now that I've brought up Biff again I should say one thing about the franchise that has bothered me for a long time. I may have mentioned it before. In the first movie, in 1955 in the car, Biff essentially tries to sexually assault, if not rape, Marty's mother. At the end of the movie though, in 1985, he's waxing the family car and there's a whole loveable 'Oh Biff!' vibe. I'm all for leniency but the McFly family's capacity to forgive is incredible.

But that's just a side note. In short, as I have just proved, the movie was incredible. You may remember that it finishes with a trailer for Back To The Future 3. I turned to my dad and asked if we could go and see that when it came out. He said 'Yes'. The secret to happiness is, we are told, something to look forward to and there it was - instant happiness.

On the journey home my dad pretended our Ford Cortina was the DeLorean as we shouted 'We gotta get to 88mph!'. Speed cameras weren't common place in those days and he was able to do just that. Parenting. When we got home my brother and I shouted 'Marty! Doc!' at each other for two hours and went to bed happy.

I challenge the birth of any children I may have to beat that day.

Three observations on what it's like filming a television programme.

I've just finished filming the second series of that David Hasselhoff sit com, Hoff The Record. Now, in an attempt not to slump into a winter of inactivity I'm inflicting this blog post on you.

I'm expecting readjusting to not regularly having a camera pointed at me to be difficult. Below are some observations on filming in general - a peek behind the curtain into the curtainless world of television. If you're not a TV actor you may find these observations interesting. If you are, you may chuckle in recognition. If you find these observations neither interesting nor amusing please write a long blog post of your own, assassinating my character.

FOOD
This is perhaps the most notable difference between life on a TV set and life in my house. On a TV set you are continually offered free, often delicious, rarely healthy, food. This leads me, a man of little to no will power, to eat Grand Slam tennis player level calories on a daily basis. The schedule goes like this...

Breakfast - every day you are faced with a catering truck happy to serve you a full fried English breakfast. Every day. There are fruits, cereals, yogurts and porridge on offer too. This doesn't mean that you don't tell yourself that a bacon and egg sandwich with a hash brown and baked beans is a fairly light option.

Morning snack - at about 10.30 some trays are brought to set. What these contain depends on the job. On this particular one they consisted of fruit, cakes and crumpets or croissants covered with cheese. What could that croissant do with to give it a bit more oomph do you think Vera? Just stick a slab of grilled chedder on it.

Lunch - This consists of three hot options and a table covered with salads and the like. The hot options are usually along the lines of a full fucking roast or a shepherd's pie.

Dessert - of course there's dessert. Two options. One of which is nearly always some kind of sponge with custard. On a normal day at home I do not have a lemon and ginger sponge with custard at 1.30pm. I did 36 days of filming on Hoff The Record series two. I had 36 desserts. In fact, so used to desserts have I become that I have had one on each of the three days since we finished. When something becomes the norm you fail to see how wrong it is. I'm like a Nazi and like so many of them I will, rightly, die at 45.

Afternoon snack - Just three hours after essentially eating Christmas dinner some more trays surface. This time they have sandwiches, fruit and more fucking cake.

Somehow, after seven weeks of Elvis circa 1977 intake, I haven't put on any weight. That, I suspect, is because of the following...

LONG HOURS
As a penalty for such a high calorie intake, everyone on a TV set has to work long hours. Longer hours than my non TV set life anyway. Not longer than a junior doctor perhaps... BUT FAR MORE IMPORTANT.

On an average day I would get up at about 5am and get home at about 8pm. This meant that I spent most of my life feeling like I had just been on a long haul flight. I realise any parents of young children reading this don't feel like I have a right to complain about those kind of hours. Well, I do. Because, as everyone knows deep down, parenting is piss easy.

Being an actor, the long hours are made a lot more bearable by the fact that you are driven to and from work in a nice car. Your ability to sleep on that car journey will depend on two key things - how loud your driver likes to have LBC on and how much they want to talk about what's being discussed on LBC.

The chauffer driven thing does make your life a lot easier than the crew though who have to make their own way and have to work those kind of hours forty/fifty weeks a year. But you don't give a shit about the crew because you are an actor and are therefore...

THE MOST IMPORTANT PERSON IN THE WORLD
The TLC TV actors are given is absurd and I say that as someone who's CV consists mainly of children's television and under the radar comedies, the most recent of which is on Dave.

We're constantly fed, we're constantly asked if we want tea or coffee, we're driven to set and then if it's raining, an umbrella is held for us and we are walked to our own personal trailer. Then after a while, a conversation like this will occur...

RUNNER: Sorry Fergus, do you mind if we take you to set now, if you're ready?
FERGUS: Sure. Can I just go for a pee?
RUNNER: No worries. Take your time.

Fergus goes for a pee. Possibly a quick wank.

FERGUS: Ok. Ready.
RUNNER: Thank you Fergus. Sorry about that.

They literally thank you for urinating. I was never treated with that kind of respect when I did the night shift at Braintree Tesco in 2001. Imagine how well top TV actors must be treated. Imagine if you've been one for forty years, it must make you a bit of a dick. I mean, TREVOR EVE MUST BE A CUNT. I've never met Trevor Eve by the way and am in no way suggesting that I've heard consistantly for the last ten years or so from crews and actors alike that TREVOR EVE IS A CUNT and that one of the most common forms of bonding on British TV sets is in the form of people telling stories about TREVOR EVE BEING A CUNT. If you take one thing away from this blog post don't let it be that TREVOR EVE IS A CUNT.

I Grew Up In A Cult

I grew up in a cult, a harmless cult but a cult nonetheless. My parents were and still are members of an Indonesian spiritual group called Subud. I say harmless because I really think it is. People of all and no faiths are in it and it forbids it's members from recruiting people. If someone asks you about it you can talk about it but you are not allowed to actively promote it. The theory is that if someone is supposed to find Subud - they will. Well, it's been going for nearly 100 years and has roughly 10,000 members worldwide. That's a little bit more than Luton Town's average attendance. My suggestion would be that either not many folk are meant to find it or Subud might want to look into finding some flexibility on that rule.

So what is it? The main thing that Subud members do is something called 'latihan' which translates as 'spiritual exercise'.  What does that mean? The idea is that, for half an hour or so, you submit yourself to God (or whatever you believe in) entirely. Does it work? Fuck knows.

From the age of 17 I did it regularly for about two years. Some experiment with drugs in their teens, others their sexuality. Me? Twice a week, I went to a small hall in Suffolk and pretended to be moved by God with my dad and his fifty something year old mates.

Since I was very young I had been in rooms next door to latihans, so I knew what they sounded like. Familiarity meant that, to me, there was nothing unusual about it. You might feel differently. People tend to sing nonsense or speak in tongues. Once I started attending latihans I was unsurprised to learn that they move about and dance too. Each person does their own thing. At no stage does a group ever find itself synchronising into an old show tune.

So there I was in a hall on a Tuesday in Sudbury about to receive God for the very first time. The men around me (latihans are split by gender) began to do their thing. Had I not grown up around it, it might have frightened me. I was just waiting for my spiritual earthquake though. Hit me Lord. Hit me with the answer. Nothing came. Should I sing anyway? No mate. It's your first one. Don't get ahead of yourself.

I should say that my parents never suggested I join. It was my own idea. Ludicrously, I think I thought that saying I was in an Indonesian spiritual group might be an effective chat up line. I also did it to feel like an adult. In Britain, once you're seventeen, you can drive. Well, I didn't have the money to take the test and, more importantly, have never trusted myself with heavy machinery. But for me, my seventeenth birthday came with another potential right of passage - Subud. All of my parents friends were in it and all of my parents friends were nice. Fuck it, I thought. I wouldn't mind a bit of God's love pouring down on me. There's nothing good on telly on Tuesdays anyway.

But God's love did not pour down on me. Perhaps I always stood in the wrong part of the room. The idea of God is a pretty big thing though and once you've decided to let the fucker into your heart you might as well give him a chance to find you. So I kept going back and He kept on missing me. After a while though I became aware of the fact I was the only one in the room not doing anything. As an A level Theatre Studies student I hated the idea of not putting on some kind of performance. So I started to sing. I started to move about. I even started to churn out some gobbledygook. There was only one occasion in which I convinced myself that I had actually felt a Divine presence. On reflection though, I think it was a draft. Gradually my attendance dropped off and about a year after going to University, I stopped going altogether. I was doing a drama degree. I had enough nonsensical moving about in my life.

I have nothing bad to say about Subud. I call it a cult in the nicest possible sense of the world. It has a 'cult' following in that its membership is small and geeky. Growing up around it gave me, from the get go, an openness to unusual things. But then my fruitless experience of practicing it may have contributed to a cynicism towards them to. When the time came and I opened up my receptors to let the spirits in - I didn't feel a fucking thing.

Four entertaining stories from my trip to Morocco.

ONE - Vicar in Ralph Lauren.

Thanks to it being the off season and me having a fundamental lack of responsibilty with money, we stayed at two rather nice hotels in Morocco. The first guests we met were a well to do couple in their late fifties from Gloucester. Whenever I meet someone, I can't help but try to impress them with my knowledge of where they're come from. It's a little bit of a twattish trait but at least I'm making an effort. As soon as they said Gloucester all my brain kept shouting was 'FRED WEST! FRED WEST!'.

I managed to avoid that subject by moving onto another of my conversational weapons and asking what they did for a living. Seriously guys, try it. Turns out she was a nurse and he a vicar. Here's the thing, they were dreadfully posh, staying in a relatively pricey hotel and wearing what looked to me like expensive clobber. In this country at least, I've always been under the impression that those are two of the worst paying professions. I decided that he must be a former stock broker who handily found God just before the last crash. Being the judgemental arsehole that I am, I delved deeper and asked how long he'd been in the 'old clergy game'. Twenty four years it turns out and before that? A CEO? A drug baron? A yacht salesman? No, a fucking teacher! There's something seriously fishy going on there and I can't prove it but I am dead certain that this couple in some way profited from the Fred and Rose West murders. IT. JUST. ADDS. UP.

TWO - The Branson Couple

Hot weather, laziness and a basic lack of curiosity about other cultures (not true, I've been to Epcot) meant that we spent a lot of our time by the pool. Our most common fellow pool dwellers were in their mid twenties and quickly became known as 'The Branson Couple'. That was because he always had a copy of Richard Branson's autobiography in his hand. Always. Even when he was in the pool, he leaned on the edge with 'Like A Virgin' in his hands. Here's the thing though, and this became an obsession of mine, he never seemed to be reading it. At the end of the four days in which we shared the same hotel it appeared as if he had read no more than ten pages. He just sat there, talking to his transfixed girlfriend about Richard Branson.

Here's something he actually said after reading his paragraph for the afternoon...

"Did you know that Richard Branson invented Times Square?"

I think you might want to see if you can get another source to verify that for you mate because it sounds like Branson might be telling you a bit of a porky there. Yes, it would seem that in one of Richard Branson's books he claims that Times Square, named 'Times Square' in 1904, was invented by Richard Branson.

THREE - Ramadam

Two things worried us before arriving in Morocco. We wondered whether we had been foolish to book a holiday in a place which was forecast to have 40 degree heat and which was going through the last week of Ramadam. That doesn't seem like a good combination. Between the hours of 6am and 7.45pm every healthy adult in the entire country was refraining from food and water. Literally everyone who served us on our entire trip was staring at us through a kind of giddy haze.

"What's that you want? Another Mojito? And a big bottle of still water? Of course. And a chicken sandwich? With fries? Yep. Sure. Sure. I'll just walk up those stairs to our furness of a kitchen and get that for you. No worries. You stay in the shade and surreptitiously listen to The Branson Couple with a view to mocking them in your shitty blog."

While we sat under our umbrellas and sipped on our cold drinks complaining how hot it was, we watched starving gardeners hard at work in the midday sun. It's amazing how quickly you can put guilt to one side.

FOUR - DANGER!

On our first trip to the souks of Marrakech we got a little lost. No problem, I thought, for I am a seasoned traveller. Salt, pepper, herbs. The lot. Yes these souks have a reputation for hassle and ball ache-ery, but I think I know how to handle it thank you very much. My ability to fit in abroad is yet another reason why I am the natural successor to Michael Palin.

I thought about an old university friend who came back from Marrakech telling tales of being tricked, virtually kidknapped and cheated out of money. That won't happen to me. He was naive, whereas I am fucking Phileas Fogg up in this bitch.

Three minutes after having that thought someone offered us directions. Someone else had already given us some without any hassle so we figured this guy was the same. He saw that we weren't some weak ass Europeans he could mess with. But then rather than just pointing us the right way he insisted on leading us there. For ten full minutes. We sensed that this wasn't just a scout collecting a good deed badge. We would have to pay for his services.

Once he had dropped us near our destination he mumbled his price at us. It was, I thought, a high price. Enough money to get a black cab home on a Saturday night. We handed him something we considered more reasonable. Immediate anger.

"This is for small boy. You give this money to small boy. Not for me."

Like a dickhead, I showed him exactly where my credit card was by putting my hand in my pocket to hold it. He looked at my pocket and at me, letting me know he knew the score. He pointed at my girlfriend's handbag, implying we owed him the contents. There suddenly seemed to be a lot of dark corners around and not many people. Briefly, I pictured my rape.

As it happened, five minutes of firm insistence that he wasn't getting anymore, in the manner of my dad telling me I couldn't have an ice cream was enough for him to leave. It was that same kind of head mastery attitude that got Britain it's empire. Oh no, hang on. I've just checked. It was guns.

Beer Snakes

Y'all know what a beer snake is? It's something that happens, as far I can tell, only in Britain and only at cricket matches. It's controversial too. As you enter the stands at The Oval cricket ground in London you will see signs which say that...

"The making of 'beer snakes' is prohibited. Furthermore, anyone seen making a 'beer snake' or facilitating the making of a 'beer snake' will be ejected from the ground and shot".

That is (almost) what is says, word for word. So what is this dangerous evil creation? For the uninitiated, a 'beer snake' is a stack of empty beer cups, held by a number of secretly depressed men, which, once large enough, begins to resemble a giant snake.

During the summer, I will sometimes join 21,000 other people at The Oval on Friday nights to watch T20 cricket. A visit to any London pub, restaurant or Tesco Metro shopping basket would suggest that Londoners like to drink every night of the week. So 'legitimate' drinking night, Friday, just means heavier indulgence. This is very much in evidence at The Oval. Civil servants, human resources managers and legal secretaries all clock off and bundle in there under the pretence of watching cricket. By the start of play most will have drank more units than we're told a small woman should drink in a week.

Roughly half way through the game, some fancy dress wearing P.E teachers on a stag do will put together a stack of about twenty cups, quickly taken away by a steward. This will be half noticed by the closest 2,000 people when a few boos are directed at the steward.

About fifteen minutes later, you'll hear the first localised chant of 'FEED THE SNAKE!'. Turn, and you'll see a sixty cup high stack and a flurry of excitement. A steward approaches. Boos rain out. Just as he's about to get there, the stack is quickly passed to someone too far for him to reach. Huge cheers. 'FEED THE SNAKE! FEED THE SNAKE!'. The closest 5,000 people are now throwing empty cups in the direction of the rapidly growing stack. No one is watching the cricket. Another steward approaches from the other side. Boos. The stewards laugh, good naturedly, but stick to their task. Now there's a third steward. They're closing in. Soon, the stack has nowhere to go. It's taken away and, we can only assume, humanely destroyed.

But wait! Two stands to our right there are not just one but TWO stacks, both at least as large as the recently confiscated one. Frenzied excitement. 'FEED THE SNAKE! FEED THE SNAKE!' A shower of empty cups. And look! Passed from row to row, the stacks are gradually moving towards each other. We all know what has to happen... the stacks must be conjoined. As two brave souls begin the delicate surgery, the crowd shout in anticipation 'Ohhhhhhhhhhhh'. A world famous cricketer hits an incredible six. No one notices. And then it happens - the stacks are successfully connected. Huge cheers. Unbridled joy. The tower turns from vertical to horizontal. Those lucky enough to be underneath it hold what can now officially be called a 'snake' aloft with pride. Everyone in the ground gets a hint of what the VE Day celebrations must have been like.

'FEED THE SNAKE!' FEED THE SNAKE!'.  But we're running out of cups now and each new one is merely adding to the innevitability of the snake's eventual death. Unable to take the strain of it's unweildy weight and the approaching net of stewards, the snake slowly dies.

There is nothing more representative of what is right and what is wrong with Britain in 2015 than 'beer snakes'. They should win the Turner Prize. I urge you to go and see one before they die out.

Brothers

Me and my brother used to make my other brother think that he didn't exist.

From roughly 1989 until 1993, the three of us shared a room. We lived in a two bedroomed house in Newcastle and my parents (selfishly I think) decided that they wanted one of those bedrooms entirely to themselves. A much fairer arrangement would have been for us to alternate who slept in a three person room and who in a two person one on a nightly basis. That way we'd each get the chance for a little more space and we'd get to know each member of the family a bit better. But no, we lived under a kind of adults versus children apartheid. Come to think of it, it may having been Mandela's impending election in 1994 that brought our own tyranny to an end. Either that or us moving to a three bedroomed semi in Essex.

In our three child bedroom (or township) spirits were kept up by fucking about. The three Craig boys were born in '80, '84 and '88 respectively. At the opening ceremony of each Summer Olympics my mother would pop out a brand new baby boy. Those relatively large age differences gave me, the eldest, a rather healthy upper hand. While the other two slept on a bunk bed, my dad constructed a sort of shelf/tree house type thing high on the opposite end of the room for me. From there I was able to hold court. I scared the shit out of them with improvised ghost stories. The best of those revolved around a man who climbed through windows, took children, killed them and then put them into a machine which extracted the salt from their bodies. He went on to sell that salt to chip shops.

In 1991 I turned eleven and Alec, the youngest, turned three. The mental advantage I had over him was unfair. Mason (seven years old, born at the Los Angeles Olympics) and I playfully wound Alec up. The most memorable occasions were when we pretended that we were the only two people in the room.

ME: Mason?
MASON: Yeah.
ME: What do you think it would be like if we had another brother? Do you think it would be good?
MASON: Yeah.
ME: But we don't have a another brother do we?
MASON: Yeah, it's just you and me.
ALEC: Hey! What about me?
ME: Don't you think it's weird that mum and dad bought a bunk bed when there's just you.
MASON: Yeah. It's weird.
ME: Yeah. The bottom bed's just empty isn't it?
ALEC: Hey!
MASON: Yeah, it's empty. There's no one in it.
ALEC: Hey! Can't you hear me?!
ME: Just you and me, eh, Mason.
ALEC: Hey! Mason!
MASON: Yeah.
ALEC: Fergus! Mason! Can't you hear me?!
ME: Can you hear a little fly buzzing or something?
MASON: Yeah, I think so.
ALEC: It's not a fly! IT'S ALEC! YOUR BROTHER! HELLO! HELLOOOOOO!
ME: Oh, it's gone now.

I made another human being question their own existence. Fucking hell. I am a monster.

Sundayfication

I don't know about you guys but I'm tired of hearing about Britain running out of bees. You can't turn to page 34 of your newspaper without reading about it. But then, no one reads newspapers anymore either. Britain is running out of bees and newspaper readers. What else? Pubs. That's what.

I wrote a blog post about this about five years ago. Since then the situation has got worse. Far worse. Britain is running out of pubs and no one seems to give a shit. I'm talking about actual pubs and here is my definition of an actual pub...

1) I should be able to go into the pub on a Tuesday afternoon and find at least four alcoholics at the bar. They're allowed to talk to each other but they must know each other from no where other than that pub.

2) I want a pool table, dart board or at the very least a quiz machine.

3) If there is a child in that pub I want it to be an eight year old spending his fortnightly Saturday afternoon with his semi absent father by the pool table - NOT A BABY IN A BUGGY.

4) This pub cannot serve hot food. Crisps, pork scratchings and possibly some cheese rolls. NOTHING THAT REQUIRES A KNIFE AND FORK.

5) Women are certainly allowed in this pub but it is still ran primarily as a creche for men.

These pubs are dying out and they are dying out fast. And who's fault is that? YOURS. Why? Cos you love your fucking Sunday roasts so much don't you. But you can't be arsed to make one can you? No. So you trundle down to your local, point at your mouth and say 'where's my fucking dinner?'.

And so we've had what I call the Sundayfication of London (and I suspect, most of the rest of Britain). All pubs now revolve around Sunday. The market gets what the market wants and what the market wants apparently is leg of lamb. Go into a gastro pub on a Tuesday. Not that you would of course because you're still digesting your fucking roast but go on, go in. They'll be some newspapers at the end of the bar next to an unlit candled wine bottle. Pick them up. Not Tuesday's newspapers are they? No. No, they're fucking well not. Every piece of reading will have been part of a Sunday newspaper. If you're lucky there might be a Sunday Times magazine left but most likely you're looking at the scraps - the money section, the 'family' section and the section that best demonstrates the utter uselessness of print newspapers - the TV listings.

The time between Sundays for neighbourhood pubs now is just dead air. They might fill it for an evening with a quiz night but where does that leave Gary and Barry and Terry? They had enough of feeling thick at school, thank you very much.

Look, I love a pub roast and I love a pub quiz but while we're all worrying about the rain forests and the bees something far more important is disappearing. Pubs. There's about four actual pubs left in London now. The rest are just restaurants masquerading as pubs.

Back in the last century it was all about the Campaign For Real Ale. Well, that battle's been won. You've even got your ye olde tankard style jugs back. Congratulations. I for one appreciate it, well the good beer anyway. But if I now have no other option than to drink that beer sat between a child with a colouring book and someone eating mackerel tagine with a diet coke then I'm not sure the battle was worth it.

Right, that's it. I'm writing a book on this.