DEAR DEIDRE…

 

Doing Dear Deidre video casebook "Ruth's Dilemna"

 

It’s my day off and I’ve got a cracking hangover. I’m in bed, semi-naked, with a gorgeous blonde who is clad only in lingerie. A good night out you might think? Sadly, no – it was rubbish. I am here, not because I have suddenly developed the charm to pull fit blondes and the cheek to bring them back to Granny’s, but because I am in the middle of another Dear Deidre shoot.

For those that aren’t aware, Deidre is The Sun’s agony aunt who advises readers how best to deal with their problems. In the past, she has advised everyone from teenage mums-to-be to cross-dressing dads. She knows when to come clean and when to keep schtum; when to forgive and when to say enough is enough. Every week a reader’s problem is acted out in Deidre’s Video Casebook online and in picture form in The Sun in her photo Casebook.

On the occasion I refer to, I was “modelling” – I use that term loosely – for the Photo Casebook, the fifth time I had done so. At this point I would love to tell you that I am registered with a top modelling agency or that I was headhunted for the part while strolling down the King’s Road. Neither is true. However, I did once think I had achieved such prestige…

After doing a Deidre shoot a few years ago, I was on the train back to Oxford telling a friend over the phone exactly what it had entailed. I explained how I had been posing in bed – this time with a middle-aged woman – and how it had been, as ever, half funny half embarrassing. At Oxford station, a man tapped me on the shoulder and asked if I was the Dear Deidre guy. Taken aback I said I was and he said he couldn’t help but overhear my conversation on the train.

He gave me his card and said he was a photographer who had just set up a studio in Oxford and was looking for models with experience. He asked me to email him. I was elated. I’d always known I was better looking than the mirror and other people suggested and here was evidence. I was going to make it; I was going to be big. I gloated to my sister endlessly and emailed him.

He replied a day or two later saying that he had been unable to elaborate at the station and that his work was very tasteful (I think the exact wording was ‘I focus on mouth and smile’) but I would have to be entirely nude. Farrrrkkkkkkkk. I hastily deleted the email and bitterly regretted having told everyone at the pub and anyone else I had seen in the intervening days. I was also aware that in my foolish excitement I had included my phone number in the email. I tried not to think about this.

So when I got a text from an unknown number a few months later reading can you do toyboy shoot nxt friday? I prayed it wasn’t him. Luckily it turned out to be Laura, offering another Deidre.

My dear second cousin Laura is the creator of Deidre. Almost everyone in the family has done a casebook or two. Legendarily my sister starred with my dad in a story in which she found him cross-dressing. The pictures are priceless.

Laura doubles up as scriptwriter and editor and director and, as far as I know, also puts the videos together on her computer. Deidre has a certain style and Laura knows exactly what it is. “Edginess” is not Deidre. No skinny jeans or big hair. A sensible “Stevie G” haircut and a nice shirt and jeans are eminently suitable. Laura is aware that blokes are the target audience so women are usually busty, attractive, scantily clad and seen but not particularly heard.

In my latest story, I catch my mum shagging my uncle (dad’s brother not hers) on the kitchen table and write to Deidre to ask her if I should tell my dad. Most of the pictures are simple to do and one, with my mum and uncle in foreground and my head popping up in the kitchen window, very funny. It’s the bed scenes that can be problematic.

For the purposes of getting as much booty in the story as possible, my character has a girlfriend whos only appearances in the story are next to me in bed. We have a do a few different scenes in two different beds. I don’t think I will ever get used to stripping down to my boxers in a room with relative strangers. I always wish that I had bothered to go to the gym at least once.

My “girlfriend”, I discover is 18 and has just finished dance school. Oh! I wished I was I was just a tad more ripped. I can’t help but look down at my scrawny body; a mole on my stomach seems to have sprouted a particularly long hair…for fuck’s sake. I hope its close enough to the belly-button region to go unnoticed.

When we get in position for the first photo, her arm is supposed to be gripping mine. She had a light touch and I was convinced I felt slight strokage – I dared to dream. My confidence boosted slightly, I attempted some chatter between shots. She seemed unimpressed with my views on street dance however.

As it happens in the end, the bedroom scenes passed relatively uneventfully. I have done a shoot before with a woman with enormous breasts (pictured above) during which I barely knew where to look. And in past, I have found stopping the giggles near impossible.

So look out in tomorrow’s (Friday) Sun for me in the photo casebook.

Before anyone says that this blog is nothing but shameless publicity seeking, then I fully admit that it is. I do like being in Deidre and I do like talking to people about it. I’m fairly certain that it is more exciting to hear about than most jobs. It was also a brilliant conversation starter at uni, particularly if I found myself in the awkward but all too frequent position of having bumped into someone who I knew but had nothing to say to.

I don’t regard it as sleazy. It is kitsch and has to be viewed with humour. It is not bad taste in the slightest, just cheesy. But perhaps one day, if I’m a famous journalist or politician, it will come back to haunt me.

But for now, I take the same attitude to doing a shoot as I do to blogging. I do Deidre because it’s fun and well paid. And I blog because its fun and I am assessed on it at the end of the term. If you’ve done something, why not share it with everyone?