Category Archives: The Columns

The thing you do when you're an "actor"… {Ceri's Column}

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I’m sure that “waiting” is the biggest pain in our collective arse! I mean, war and famine and such are more than a pain in the arse…unless you’re that soldier who got shot in the arse…balls, I’ll start again.

Uh…feck! See what I mean?

All that nonsensical rambling was written as I am waiting for my frigging train to arrive. My mind is not at its razor-sharpness when I have to wait for junk! It grabs on to thoughts like “I wonder if this train has power sockets” or “that hair growing from my mole…is it ok if my girlfriend plucks it out? It won’t get worse, will it?”

When you’re a mediocre actor, like myself, your time spent waiting is roughly four times more than, say, an oil-rig worker. Oil-rig workers don’t sit in their house thinking “maybe if I’d tried an Irish accent”. Oil-rig workers don’t sip at luke-warm cappuccinos in the Starbucks next door to Johnny Jenkins’ Casting for two hours because they miscalculated how long it takes to drive to Manchester and are 3 hours early. Oil-rig workers wear overalls, not their god damned pyjamas for days and days and days hoping against hope for your agent to ring.

Last week, I waited for 2 and half hours to be asked: “Oh…can you come back tomorrow?” 2 and a half hours of sitting and looking at the floor and wondering why I hadn’t brought my IPod and what do I get?!  24 more hours of waiting. AAAARGH!

Oh well, I suppose I could be doing a job that involves “working” or “thinking” or “Business acumen”. We have made our own beds, so let’s…uh…lie…in them? Does that butchered idiom make sense?

Oh shit my train’s here……

by Ceri Phillips

How to: build a pencil crossbow {Misc-uity}

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 Oh WOW!! Meet me in the stationary cupboard! I feel crafty!

Click to enlarge

A step by step tutorial from Weapons of Mass Destruction.

Not so Hidden Gems {Ceri's Column}

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By Ceri Phillips

Every once in a while I stumble upon something wonderful. Well, to be more accurate, I walk along quite briskly, late for a meeting and then, on stopping for a moment, usually to tie a shoelace or spit out some gum, realize where I am or where I seem to be or around or about to experience and it turns out to be something wonderful. But my opener has more zing…the fuck was I writing? Ah yes, the last time I happened upon something wonderful was a week or so ago in good old London, (oh, for those of you who don’t know, London is a quiet, unassuming city near Slough). I was busy shopping for a few essential items in Covent Garden; essential items like root beer, American chocolate bars and impractical yet highly fashionable boots when KABLOOM! Thunder. I hate the frigging rain so I took cover in the first shop I could see. A place selling frozen yogurt.

Now, I am not the biggest fan of most frozen desserts apart from ice cream and I must concede that I am a total ice cream Nazi. Anything less than orgasmic ice cream is spat across the restaurant/parlour/funeral home into the coffin (sorry Aunty Em). Most other frozen desserts are gimmicky bollocks or pretentious “palate cleansers” used to add on £7.50 or more to your bill. Frozen yogurt is just not my thing. Plus, this place is called “Snog”. The name made me remember awkwardly tongue-poking braced acne sufferers in the corner of some dingy disco…when I was a teen, I hasten to add.

However, this particular vendor of iced cow juice is so fucking extraordinary that I will not only go again and again, I’m buying some god damned shares in the business!


Seriously now, this place rocked my tiny mind. First off, the fact that green tea frozen yogurt is available here wooed me past my initial pessimism. My girlfriend suggested I try a smaller size, pointing to a gluttonous child sitting with a “Medium” that should be called an “Oh fuck I need some stomach staples, Mum.”  After you pick a size and which flavour yogurt (plain, green tea, or a rather stunning dark chocolate) you get to pick toppings and sauces. I got an original flavour with white chocolate stars and a shot of espresso on top.

Sweet shit! My taste buds have barely recovered! I swear I heard a tiny muffled “Oi! This tastes like shite” emanating from the end of my tongue last time I ate some Ben and Jerry’s. Must have been the LSD.
The best thing about this chance discovery was exactly that; it was a total fluke. If I’d been told about this place by a trillion trendy Hoxtonites and urged to “pop in when I have a mo” (or however the fuck they’d phrase it), I would have enjoyed my experience. I would have thought “yeah, this is nice”. But finding it myself, as if I were customer numero Uno and therefore “special”, amplified the pleasure.
So next time you’re walking from one tube station to another or (if you don’t live in London) from one…uh…taxi rank to another…please stop and look at the shops and cafes around you. You may just discover a not so hidden gem.

Ceri Phillips is a young writer and actor currently playing Ollie in BBC’s Coming of Age. He’s also creating comedy forhis sketch group ‘Le 122’.

Dear DONOVAN: Why do birds

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Meet DONOVAN. The unforgiving, cynical, potty mouthed agony uncle. No one knows why his name’s always in caps, maybe he shouts it for emphasis.

** Disclaimer: The views, colourful language and opinions expressed in this article are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of Frostmagazine.com **

Dear DONOVAN,

I was pooed on by a bird. Why do people always say it’s lucky if a bird poos on you…?

Chris from Waterford

Chris,

I hope you are referring to the feathered type and not Two girls One cup!

…or some hooker with a dodgy stomach who has convinced you out of embarrassment that “it’s all the rage in Holland!”

I have no idea why, and refuse to look it up on Wikipedia as it’s a waste of my time and yours to do so!

I can only imagine they mean that it’s lucky it missed your eyes or mouth!

And In what other situation would that be an acceptable thing to say?

If you worked in a zoo and a ruddy great elephant or hippo dropped a big on one you, your mates wouldn’t say that’s lucky would they?

They would just laugh; so would everyone else watching; maybe even film it and stick it on YouTube! and then not speak to you for a few days.

So stop this stupid superstitious tradition and have the fucking guts to say “that’s soo fuckin funny mate how unlucky was that!!!!”

If it was really all that lucky you’d get flocks of businessmen, homeless people and fellers holding lottery tickets lying on the ground in Trafalgar square having spiked bird seed with chilly powder waiting to be shat upon!

Then masturbating themselves into their own oblivion saying I’m so fucking lucky!!! check out my goggles.

While I’m at it, what the hell is so lucky about a rabbits foot?? It wasn’t lucky for the poor rabbit!

Chris you remind me of a much younger me, before the sexual abuse and eczema!

don’t let these silly people get to you.

I’m sending you a DONOVAN mug and at least 3 strands of my pubes (Framed).

God bless you young man.

Are you an Owl?

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Owls. We all know them: pissy little hooters that flutter about at night, caning it on mice and relaying letters for wizards. But are you an owl? Or do you know someone who might be? It’s a growing problem, as our exclusive survey of people and owls showed: fewer than 40% of people who thought they might not be an owl were wrong.

And that’s just the tip of the iceberg. Since 1990 there’s been a forty-fold uptick in owls who don’t know they’re people – a figure that’s more than halved in that time.

So what can you do if you think you might be an owl? First, you should know the warning signs. Can you rotate your head through more than 180° Celsius? Are you blind when you’re born? Can you see in the dark? Do you ever fly into a room, then realise you can’t remember why? If your answer to all of these questions was a piercing screech, you could be an owl.

But there’s no need to feel ashamed. Where once owls were considered second-class citizens, today they’re a staple of fashionable clubs and clothiers, with stars from Alexander Armstrong to Zinedine Zidane lining up to sing the praises of our tawny friends. So thus summer, don’t wear a frown — wear a fr“owl”n!

By Darien Graham-Smith.