Jonathan Meres

Left school at the age of 16 and joined the merchant navy as a navigating cadet. I spent the next 7 years sailing around the world on cargo ships, passenger ships, bulk carriers, ferries and even a dredger! I left the sea because I wanted to be a rock star but ended up being an ice cream van driver instead. Eventually I went to live in London, where I put my vast experience in the ice cream industry to good use by working in the ice cream parlour in Harrods. I got a band together called Subi Kechil, named after an island I used to pass in The South China Sea. Then one day I saw an advertisement in The Stage newspaper looking for actors for a play. I turned up for the audition, green as the proverbial hills and got the part. It was a very weird play. It had goats in it. Real goats not pretend ones. Anyway then I got a job with a childrens’ theatre company and did that for a couple of years - touring round schools and theatres and stuff - before trying my hand at stand up comedy. (We’ve reached 1984 now by the way if anyone’s wondering). So I was a comedian for about 10 years. That’s pretty much all I did - unless you count appearing as an extra in various forgettable pop videos! I called myself Johnny Immaterial - but only so that I could walk on and say “My name is Immaterial. Johnny Immaterial”. Pretty funny huh? A few people obviously thought so because I won a Time Out magazine award for comedy. I was nominated for The Perrier Award for comedy at The Edinburgh Festival in 1993 with a show called My Booze Hell By Little Johnny Cartilage. I later wrote and acted in a series of the same name on BBC Radio 4. I did my last comedy gig in 1994 and since then my job description has been writer/actor, strictly in that order.