Assisted Dying to be offered to actors on daytime TV ads
- Sully
- 1 day ago
- 2 min read
Frank (48) has been involved in acting for as long as he can remember. He earns just enough from bar work to stave off eviction. He’s a slim, silver fox with a neatly trimmed beard – sexually unthreatening but with an aura of worldly success, as required for daytime TV. Occasionally he gets a role repeating a catchphrase on a car insurance ad or pretending to have mobility issues before beaming with pleasure at the wheel of a battery-powered death-trap. ‘Acting was all I ever wanted to do but if you pay attention in that Go Compare ad you can see the life leaving my eyes. Then I started to notice other daytime ads – all the actors are mutely pleading for death’.
Susan (56) has the sort of face other women find safe. Her biggest role this year has been for an indigestion remedy where she has to screw her harmless face up in part one and beam in part two. All of her roles have involved beaming in part two. ‘The indigestion face is easy - I just visualise the gas bill - but I’m finding it increasingly hard to show joy. Look closely and you can see that I’m dying inside. Ironically, if I had a proper role, one where I was meant to simulate joy whilst dying inside – think Alexander Armstrong in every Armstrong & Miller sketch – I probably wouldn’t manage it. That would need serious acting skills’.
Thousands of dedicated actors find themselves in a no-man’s land of soul-destroying work for largely worthless products which will only be seen by people who are, themselves, quietly waiting for the grim reaper.
‘I sometimes think they want us to look like we’re in despair, just to reassure the viewers’, said Frank. ‘That’s why I’ve asked for an amendment to the Assisted Dying Bill to allow middle-aged actors to cut to the final scene rather than having to pretend that organising their no-frills cremation in advance has brought them peace of mind. God, I hated that one. Plus I couldn’t afford it – they’ll have to dump me in the wheelie bin when it’s my time’.
Opponents of the amendment point out that daytime TV serves a valuable purpose in keeping old people out of Sainsburys during busy periods, and probably reduces the number of mithering phone calls you get from your parents. Remove the advertising revenue and the programmes would be even more low-budget shite than they are now, which might result in a tsunami of old people actually leaving the house and causing mayhem in their battery-powered mobility death-traps before finding out just how grim a no-frills cremation can be.