There is an article in this Christmas edition of the Radio Times about Catherine Tate with a rather curious mention of me. “…Catherine was trying to make it as a serious actress, not a comedian, and worrying if that would ever be enough to pay the bills. There was great excitement, I recall, when her friend Derren Litten (now the successful writer of Benidorm) landed a lucrative two-day job on a Quavers commercial”. I don’t remember the writer of this article (Kathryn Knight) who says she was a flat mate of Catherine but I do remember the Quavers commercial. We shot eight adverts in two days in the (then) empty Pearl Assurance building in Holborn. It’s true those commercials were very lucrative, I got paid £52,500 for two days work for the commercials to be played over two years (£25,000 for the first year then the same for the next year with a 10% increase). I know that seems like a lot of money for 2 days work (and indeed it is) but when you are a fairly unknown actor (as thankfully I still seem to be) you’re risking quite a lot doing tv commercials, the exposure isn’t always a guarantee to further television work; sometimes quite the opposite. As I remember it I’d not been out of drama that long (maybe a few months) and had struggled with my artistic conscience whether or not to accept a job offered to me from one of the tutors. I was asked if I wanted to do a 4-month tour of Italian school doing Waiting For Godot. Three actors and a transit van driving across Europe to bring Becket to the (I suspect) unruly and ungrateful children of Italy. Actually that’s slightly unfair, they may have been the most grateful, enthusiastic audiences I’d ever play to. Thankfully I’ll never know. When I turned down the job the director/tutor said to me, “You’re a very good actor Derren, I just hope you don’t waste your talent playing the kooky neighbour in television sitcoms”. (Well I haven’t yet but there’s still time).
Anyway, I’m not here to boast, the Quavers money didn’t last very long, I was a northern boy in my early twenties living the life of a louche, insouciant thespian; how long as £25K gonna last over a year when most of my friends were on the dole? I am here comment on how things have changed. The halcyon days of milk and honey when even unknown actors could earn big bucks for TV commercials is long, long gone. Yes, big names can (and do) easily still command six figure sums for embarrassing themselves in the name of Argos or British Telecom but no-name actors such as myself are now being offered so little money for prostituting their talent it’s become depressing. A few weeks ago I was asked if I wanted to audition for a ‘cash for gold’ TV commercial. Now I’ve seen a few of these Cash For Gold commercials and it’s obvious the production values are slightly less than what I spend on my average lunch but I wasn’t quite prepared for the ‘talent’ budget. For the indignity of flying in through a window, dressed in figure hugging spandex (not a good look for me.. a funny one but not ‘good’) as superhero ‘Captain Gold’, poised to relieve two penniless old biddies sifting through their jewellery I was to be offered £1,000. One thousand pounds minus expenses, agents commission and (from April) 50% tax. This was for the ad to used for 2 years. I make that £500 (minus commission and tax) for the pleasure of kids in the street laughing at you and calling you a c**t per 52 weeks of the year.
Of course I’m not saying all TV commercials for nonentities are this poorly paid but with less and less work available and more and more actors out of work it’s a disgrace advertisers have the audacity to offer this kind of money. Now, if I’d not pissed my Quavers money up the wall and had invested it in gold I’d be laughing all the way to the bank.
