[idou]

Блин, Моффат

Мофф о съёмках в Нью-Йорке, толпе фанатов и себе любимом. Завирает же, что ему письма не пишут.

Моффская байка

“Moff!” said the voice on the phone. “Stop writing and get over here!”

Let’s be clear: I have never invited anyone to call me Moff. I haven’t suggested it, encouraged it, or in any way condoned it, Particularly not when it’s THE Moff: I have many delusions, but being Peter Cushing in Star Wars isn’t one of them. For a long time, I refused to accept it was really happening. But then some newspaper said I was called that, and Karen said it when she picked up her NTA, and when I mentioned my bemusement to my wife, she looked shifty and left the room: later, I noticed on her Twitter Bio, she was ‘wife of the Moff’. Do I look like a Moff, does my smile carry any hint of Death Star, do I –

“Moff, shut up about the Death Star and get over here! You’ve got to see this!”

Okay so the voice on the phone was Matt Smith, and obviously I know better than to disobey a direct command from the Doctor himself. And where I was standing was my hotel room in New York.

First thing that morning, I’d been to Central Park to watch the first few takes of the Doctor and Ponds having a picnic on a rock. A sweet little scene with no monster, just some chatting and a book. Oh, but it’s the beginning of…. well never mind. All that’s to come, no point in getting you all upset now.

And of course, because we were in New York – or so I reasoned – there was just one fan watching. Just one guy with a camera, looking thrilled to his socks that the Doctor had turned up in his home town.

“Not our usual crowd,” I said to Marcus, who was crouched at the monitor like a lump of solid Yorkshire.

“Five weeks til we shoot Christmas. We don’t have a sсript,” he replied like a distant storm rumbling in the North.

“Don’t suppose, we have that many fans here,” I continued, in my extra-specially bright voice, to cheer him up.

“Five weeks. Not a page,” he intoned like a church bell in one of those films about Northern people where a small child dies and probably a dog.

“Wonder what sort of fan base we have here, because the transmission pattern-”

“Weeks: five. Pages: none,” wept a number of flat vowels.

“You know,” I said in my changing-subject voice, “I’ll probably stroll back to the hotel and do some work, actually.”

He gave me a look that could’ve decapitated an unprepared bystander, and remarked “Stroll?!”

Back at the hotel, I ate lunch (fortunately there were some Pringles in my room) and I tried to think of anything remotely interesting to write in my sсript. Four pages later (and I mean four pages I cut for being dull) Matt was on the phone, and I was on my way back to Central Park. And oh dear God! My first thought was that there must have been an accident – what else could justify this HUGE crowd. I mean, Matt had said some people had turned up to watch, but surely not this many. Not these hundreds of people, pointing and cheering and laughing. Blimey, I thought to myself, Central Park is a cruel venue for an accident. But, no. There at the heart of all the excitement, looking more astonished than I’ve ever seen them, were the crew of Doctor Who.

There was Matt Smith bounding up some steps to go to the loo – and getting a huge cheer for his efforts. Cardiff would never be the same for him! There was Arthur Darvill refusing to go to the loo after Matt, in case he got a smaller cheer. And there was Karen Gillan, staring at her phone, and pondering whether she should join Twitter.

“I don’t think you need to,” I said, “I think they all followed us to work.”

And there was Caro Skinner, who’s also from the North: “Finished Christmas?” she asked.

“There were some Pringles in my room,” I replied, choosing to re-interpret her question as an enquiry about my lunch.

“Well there’s proper food over there,” she said, nodding to the catering.

So I headed over to the big trolley with all the food – but that entailed walking through the crowd again. And this time (in the absence, let’s be clear, of anyone more exciting) the crowd decided to cheer me. They cheered and clapped me all the way to the lunch selection. I stood there frozen with embarrassment and indecision, and they made encouraging noises (“Go for it, Moff!”). A row of girls popped up on the other side of the trolley and started photographing me. Now more self-conscious than I’d ever been (and I’m shy and Scottish and can get tongue-tied alone with a shrub of medium size) I panicked and grabbed any old thing.

“Pringles?!” withered Caro, when I got back.

“They really work for me.”

“How many pages today?”

“Four.”

“Not bad.”

“Yeah.”

Some time in between then and the following night – when over a thousand people turned up to watch the TARDIS team run in and out of a building – I somehow found the time to start enjoying it. This was Doctor Who! The show I’d grown up with, the show I’d loved all my life – and here it was, for two nights in New York, surrounded by screaming crowds. Think about that for a moment. Who’d have thought this could happen? Remember that long 15-year gap when our show disappeared? If you’d been told about this in those long, dreary years, would you have believed a word? Doctor Who didn’t just come back, it came back huge. And miracle of miracles, it just keeps getting bigger.

At the end of the night, I piled into a minibus with Matt and Karen – and all around us people were shouting, cameras were flashing. “Matt, smile!” “Karen, will you marry me?” “Moffat, could you move your head a bit?”

As the van started up, a young woman in a Sherlock t-shirt (oh hello Other One) was slamming her hand on the side of the van. “Mr. Moffat! I have a fan letter! Please, Mr. Moffat!”

What, a fan letter. For me? For me?!

“A Sherlock fan letter! Please, Mr. Moffat, you must take this!”

Matt was looking round at me. “Do you want me to get that for you?”

Sorry, what, WHAT?! A fan letter for me, and Doctor Who was offering to get it for me. I have fan mail, and Doctor Who is my postman.

“Yeah, why not,” I said, all grand and important. So Matt reached out the window and took the letter.

“Can I read it?” asked Matt. “Why don’t I read it out to you?”

Doctor Who was going to read my fan mail to me?! Okay…

“As you wish,” I said grandly. And oh, how I pomped and preened and puffed. For a moment, I dared to believe it was all true. I wasn’t just some whinging Scottish hack with unrealistic hair, I was THE MOFF. Bring on the crowds! Bring on the adulation! Destroy the Alliance!

Matt opened the letter, gave a little laugh, then cleared his throat and started to read.

“Dear Mr Gatiss…”