I was on stage, alone, at a packed Alexandra theatre in Birmingham with no clear idea what to do or say for the best. And then I woke up. Except I didn’t because, to my horror, it was actually happening. This was the stage show of the television series Inside No 9. And for one night only I was in it. Yes, I thought, this is a nightmare. But I had to concede this was wholly appropriate for a show that has a nightmarish quality written through it like a stick of rock.
Inside No 9 ran on BBC Two for nine series over 10 years. It seems to me that the viewing public falls into two categories with this show. They either – like me, until a month ago – haven’t come across it. Or they know every line of all 55 episodes. This evening’s audience consisted entirely of the latter, and here I was standing before them, performing – if standing around looking frightened constitutes a performance – my cameo.
It came about because I interviewed the show’s creators, Steve Pemberton and Reece Shearsmith, on Saturday Live on BBC Radio 4. In preparation for this I binge-watched several episodes. After the first six, I had to give myself a break. Brilliant as they were, I was starting to feel as if my grip on reality was loosening. The comedy is seriously dark. After I’d had them on the show, I went back, enthused, and watched some more; and before long, real-world situations started feeling like an episode of No 9. Ordinary, blameless people – the chap serving me in Screwfix, the woman opposite me on the train, an award-winner at a local horticultural show – suddenly seemed invested with the potential for madness.
I was flattered to be asked to make a cameo appearance. By the time it came around I’d formed the opinion that Steve and Reece were luminously brilliant writers and performers, but also quite mad. Still, how challenging could a mere cameo be? Answer: a lot more challenging than I might have hoped. As I was talked through the plan, at length, in my dressing room, my mind turned to whether I could remember the route back to the stage door for my escape.
It turned out I was playing a character in a story, with things to say and not say at specific times, cues to listen out for and all that kind of thing. Don’t worry, they said, which is what people always say when there’s something to worry about. There was a lot of detail to take on board. And I’m really not a details man.
Backstage, many darkly dressed people moved around me doing their jobs, quietly, urgently, efficiently. Not for the first time in my life I got the feeling that everyone apart from me knew exactly what they were up to. Waiting in the wings, I thought two things very clearly: 1. This lot are good. 2. I’m going to cock it all up for them. Then, suddenly, I was on. Some stuff happened they deliberately hadn’t warned me about, but I just assumed I’d zoned out and missed that bit in the briefing. I think I did OK. And then it was over.
I went back to my dressing room and noticed I was shaking. I shot out of the stage door and into the pub round the corner, which was quiet, eerily so. I got myself a pint and sat there wondering what had just happened. Then a bloke walking around in his socks carrying a ventriloquist’s dummy came up to me and asked for a selfie. I wondered if this was part of the show too, this scene perhaps being transmitted to the audience next door. But no, he and his dummy were appearing in a comedy show upstairs – one without much of an audience, by the sound of it. Poor bloke(s). Like I said, my whole world has gone a bit No 9 on me.
• Adrian Chiles is a Guardian columnist
