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blonde Canadian woman in funny positions in various natural woodland settings. Not that the sex was important to the accent, although her accent was great. It was a sort of American Swedish. Canadians have a Scandinavian sing-song quality, and West-coast Canadians have a very particular vowel sound. The closest comparison to this accent I can think of is Loyd Grossman, who is actually from Boston, Massachusetts, but who can twist vowels the rest of us didn’t know existed.
    I tried the walk again, now with the distorted Canadian/Bostonian accent: ‘Eouo, helleo thar Mustur Dayvid Suur, Iy hayve youuour breakfust, just as yououo orduered it.’
    That was it, in some ways, Kryten, as I portray him, was born at that moment. Obviously when I finally had the whole costume on, the walk changed, the arm movements were defined by what I could and couldn’t do in the costume, but the voice is more or less the same.
    However, there is no rest for the egotistical, and no sooner was I riding the crest of a comedy wave in the rehearsal room, than Bethan Jones led me into the little side room, sat me on a chair and slicked back my hair. This is the first stage in the make-up procedure; I was having the first test of Kryten’s head.
    Next came the bald cap, like a thin bathing cap that is stuck to the skin with spirit gum all around the hairline to hold it in place. Then, the worst bit, the mask, a one-piece moulded balaclava of latex foam, was pulled over my head like a giant split condom. First they glued the rear section on to the back of my head. Then, starting with the forehead, they glued the mask to my face. Glue all over my nose, cheeks, lips, chin, neck and ears. In fact more or less everywhere except my eyelids.
    I looked in a mirror and saw a very odd spectacle. The mask was unpainted and looked the same colour as a plaster you find floating in a swimming pool. A sort of dirty grey beige colour. The skin around my eyes looked very dark, so I could still, as it were, see myself under the rubber. Rob, Ed and Doug came in and stood around looking at it. Bethan Jones explained everything about the mask’s difficulties to them.
    Rob smiled and smoked, Doug said, ‘Yeah, great, yeah, yeah.’
    Ed Bye said, ‘Well chap, what’s it like?’
    I don’t know what I said. I think we discussed the theory of irony. I said that it was ironic how when I’d first met them I was worried about being recognised for being a robot, worried about getting typecast. Here I was, so well covered in prosthetic foam even my own mother wouldn’t recognise me.
    After about twenty minutes Bethan Jones removed the mask and I was back to normal. Even that early on there was a huge relief that washed over me when the thing finally came off. I washed my face and felt it carefully with my hands. It felt new and different, even after such a short time. I made a mental note of the amount of days I had before the next mask was being applied ready for the first day's filming, which was to take place in Liverpool.

Peter Biddle.

Chapter 3
     
    The beginning of recording the third series of Red Dwarf was a difficult time for me because I was already committed to performing in a new play I had written, to be premiered at the Edinburgh Festival, 1989. The play was called Onan. It was an idea that I had been knocking around for a long time, and it finally came to fruition when I co-wrote it with John McKay. 12 Onan was the story of two men who set up the first non-sexist, non-racist, right-on pornographic magazine. The magazine was called Onan , named after the biblical figure who spilled his seed on the ground. I discovered you can say ‘spilled his seed’ on radio and television, however, if you say ‘wanker’ people seem to get upset. Funny old world. Anyway, the play dealt with all the thorny issues surrounding the production and consumption of pornography, but it dealt with them in a humorous and witty way. We hoped.
    When I wasn’t doing read-throughs