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Speculate on the home life of Kris Marshall's character from those phone ads

Regrettable Juvenilia

07:15 / 13.09.07

It seems obvious from the latest one of these that his partner no longer finds him physically attractive, or by implication sexually satisfying.

Given that it was presumably his youthful vigour that first attracted her to him, this seems to portend doom for their already clearly troubled relationship.

How did I end up having to look after two kids, both of whom regularly tell me "You're not my real dad, fuck off back to the student union?", he must regularly wonder, lying awake at night, somehow so alone in spite of the woman next to him.

Jawsus-son Starship

07:53 / 13.09.07

Godammit Pete, he's doing the best job he can! He's got to contend with these little one's real father, who as I remember it is some kind of hollywood big shot! What does he have to offer but up to 8mb Broadband, and a line of rubber faced antics which isn't fooling anyone! You can tell he's cracking up - he laughed right in the face of that emo stepkid of his, he's obviously worried about the fact that he's only shacked up with this women to replace his mother. The Oedipicial nature of the relationship would worry anyone.

But he's trying to move on - he chanced chatting up a girl at his party. He struggled, but he gave it a go. I'm more worried about the evil presence of his girlfriend/fiance - when she saw him trying desperately to claw his way out of the lovelss relationship by hitting on another women DIRECTLY INFRONT OF HER, she just gave a little dispassionate titter and turned back to her friends.

This advert series is this generations "Who's afraid of Virginia Woolf".

Whisky Priestess

08:06 / 13.09.07

I particularly feel for the ad in which Kris Marshall and his suddenly-aged-by-five-years stepson are round at Kris's dad's place watching "teh footie" and Kris reminisces about having his hair mussed by his dad in triumph when their team (probably Accrington Stanley) won.

Right on cue, the team scores, and Dad reaches for Kris's massive ginger head, headlocking and humiliating him in the old ritual. Kris fears a repeat of it for the stepson (and consequent social ostracisation, mental damage, shattering of the family unit, divorce and public ridicule) - but his worries are unfounded! Because his dad goes to do it and pulls back!

Because his Dad is more physically afraid of Kris Marshall's 10-year-old stepson than of six-foot-plus Kris Marshall himself.

At which point Kris Marshall's cock and balls shrivel up and drop off from sheer humiliation and emasculated shame.

All Acting Regiment

09:49 / 13.09.07

Who needs a real family when you've got a fridge full of fat-free, dairy-free foods, designers and property buyers making you sure you and your house look really marketable, and loads of internet stuff that just passes me by, to be honest.

Hah - they can back up their photos using BT's "Back up your photos" shtick.

"Here's one with my first husband - here's a lot, actually - the birth of our children - "

Marshall: "Wait, what was that?"

"Nothing." (Shuts album).

Marshall: "I saw something. What the fuck ..."

"Nothing. It's nothing."

Marshall: "Why's it password protected?"

"NOTHING!"

Not in the Face

13:17 / 13.09.07

You can see the resentment in the little traps he lays for his wife.

She seems rather distressed to have lost all of the photos. Rather than immediately comforting her or worrying that they might have a virus as thats a pretty impressive feat, he drags it out by taunting that she could just do the album again and goes back to brushing his teeth while she steams. Finally he relents and tells her that without her permission he authorised BT to download and store intimate pictures of her children as babies and other elements of her life before him.

The next advert will be for BT streaming video so his wife can put a camera in the daughter's room watch as he, in his overly casual way, roots through her underwear drawer while his internal monologue drones on about the issues of newer versus older models.

ONLY NICE THINGS

13:24 / 13.09.07

I think that he is saying "let's make another one", which she takes to mean "baby", rather than "photo album". Not that that makes it better. If anything, it is an order of magnitude more cruel.

All Acting Regiment

13:48 / 13.09.07

CRUEL

WHAT IS CRUEL, GUYS

WHAT IS IT

13:50 / 13.09.07

Yes, but does anyone doubt that after that little stunt, he's going to end up being painfully, and humiliatingly, drained of what few viable sperm he has left, before being exiled to the broadband connection in the spare bedroom of his own home once and for all? Like a beaten dog?To the sound of mocking laughter?

I can't see any other way it's going to play out, myself.

Not in the Face

13:52 / 13.09.07

I'd never thought of that. The idea of them actually having sex seems rather preposterous. My personal backstory for them is similar to a particularly unfunny rom-com where she, feeling down after her divorce, meets his 'nice guy' act and, taking pity on him, marries him. Noe sometime later, the pity has withered and died leaving an inward trauma that she now has a 3rd child, only this one will never leave home.

All Acting Regiment

14:09 / 13.09.07

STOP IT

MARSHALL IS GOOD STEP DAD

GOOD STEP DAD

14:12 / 13.09.07

Are they actually married though? They certainly weren't to begin with, when Mum took it upon herself to move her family into Kris' home without so much as a by-your-leave, in fact as if she and her degenerate spawn were doing poor, hapless loveable old Kris a favour.

14:14 / 13.09.07

test edit 5

Tryphena Absent

14:40 / 13.09.07

ARGH. IT'S CAL BACK FROM THE DEAD!

Not in the Face

14:47 / 13.09.07

What really hurts, our would if only they knew, is that at an extended family BBQ the ex-husband and Kris's mum met and hit it off due to a shared interest in expensive watches. They are now having an affair, enabled unwittingly by Kris and his dad who maintain the routine of spending every saturday watching the football together. This allows the kid's father to claim he doesn't want to get in the way of Kris and the boy bonding and free up his saturdays as well.

Glenn Close But No Cigar

15:25 / 13.09.07

Next ad in the series:

Interior, night. Tight shot of KM checking his emails. A click of a mouse, a scan of a message and suddenly KM is jumping up and down on his great, galumphing clown's feet, making noises like Tom Baker at the fireworks. Voice from offscreen. It's the older woman.

OW: 'What all this fuss about, Kris? Have BT slashed their broadband rates again?'

KM: 'No, no, its...'

OW: 'Has that woman from the party accepted you as her friend on Facebook, despite your woeful attempts at flirtation?'

KM: 'No, not that Mum, er, I mean, darling, it's...'

OW: 'Have that online pharmacy in Lagos finally refunded you for those Cialis pills that caused your testes to reascend?'

KM: 'No!... They've, they've...'

OW: 'WHAT THEN!'

KM: 'They've finally accepted my membership application to Barbelith!'

Camera pans back, to reveal that the shelves of KM's computer room are stacked with row upon row of leather-bound Invisibles trades, Robert Anton Wilson novels, and the collected works of Jack Horsley. The floor is covered with used tissues and disgarded sigils. KM reaches up to his ginger hair, gives it a firm tug, and reveals that it's *gasp* a wig, beneath which he is as 'nice and smooth' as King Mob, with whom, of course, he shares his initials.

Breaking into a broad grin, KM signs in and heads straight to the Temple, where he invites board members to join his nascent cell of Situationist chaos majickians / freedom fighters (in which, of course, his emo stepson will play the role of Jack Frost), before flipping to Comics, where he suggests a radical rereading / re-annotating of the The Invisibles, with a new thread for each panel.

If only the older woman had insisted they stick to dial-up.

17:17 / 13.04.08

It's difficult to see how much worse life can now get for Kris. It would be bad enough if she laughed at his mobile, as it were, but for her to just, y'know, ignore it like that ... it can't be good for his mind.

It can only be a matter of time, surely, before he really gets stuck into his broadband connection -

'What's this then?'

'I dunno ... Well teenage boys are like that, I s'pose ...'

'I don't think that my son even knows what 'double penetration' is ...'

'I didn't at his age, but ...'

It's you, isn't it Kris? It's you!'

Awful pause

'Well I can't get it at home can I?'

Kris pulls down his trousers and pants

'Look at it ... It's not wrong to have needs, is it? I am a man ... I am a man ...'

Exit Kris in tears

Cut to Kris shivering in a bus stop, listlessly dialing up hardcore sites on his cell phone. A cell, we are now to understand, being something that he's going to be in for the rest of his miserable life. Metaphorically and, increasingly frequently, otherwise.

Kali, Queen of Kitteh

17:55 / 13.04.08

Okay, I entered this thread because, frankly, I couldn't resist the premise. I am laughing quite a bit. But pray tell, how would I go about finding these ads to watch for myself?

All Acting Regiment

18:08 / 13.04.08

Fifth bolgia, a bit further on from where Nessus shoots arrows into people's heads. Possibly Judecca by now, though.

Glenn Close But No Cigar

19:17 / 13.04.08

youtube is your friend

Kali, Queen of Kitteh

20:24 / 13.04.08

Poor bastard.

01:44 / 14.04.08

Indeed. The thing is, Kris Marshall's not actually a bad actor. He was good in 'Dead Babies' for example, even though that wasn't entirely successful as a movie.

And yet at this rate, unless his agent can pull off whatever genius move Anthony 'Gold Blend' Michael Head's managed, Kris Marshall is likely to go down in history as the furtive tosser from the BT ads.

Horrendously, that might be what the vicar talks about the most at Kris' funeral.

It sounds hopelessly bleak, but it's a real possibility.

In a way, you have to hope he's on a lot of high quality drugs at the moment. It'd be a chicken and egg situation, if true; the BT money would pay for the steroids, coke, vodka and so forth, but on the other hand, would he need quite so much of all that if he wasn't appearing in this stuff in the first place?

I'd be amazed if he doesn't cry himself to sleep, most nights. Big dreams, rave reviews at drama school, you want to play the Dane, and then life goes and does this to you ...

All Acting Regiment

10:41 / 14.04.08

Well, you know. There comes a point in a young man's life.

18:28 / 14.04.08

A point wherein given the choice between HOTT SEXX and free phone calls, Kris Marshall's decadent loving cannot apparently compete with tariff reduction.

Not in the Face

12:37 / 18.04.08

Kris' discussion with his agent about the most recent advert.

Agent: So you see the joke is the audience is lead to believe the parents are worried that the young girl is watching porn/being groomed over the internet but in fact because of BT 's parental safeguards all they are worried about is that all the time spent on the computer is making her a geek.

Kris: Don't you think that's a bit, well sexist? I mean what's wrong with a young girl being into technology? And another thing, the whole sex angle we've been doing in this advert and the last one, its a bit well. I'm not very comfortable with it. I am playing her step father and there's that Shannon Mathews case all over the news. You don't think there's chance people will read the wrong thing into it? I mean I don't want to be type-cast

Agent: Its funny you should say that Kris. BT is looking to promote its video-nanny service, you know, watch the kids over the internet while at work and the agency are looking to do something a bit more, well post watershed with an eye to next year's advertising awards. It'll be over a couple of adverts. So in the first advert you're character will find out he'll have a lot more time to spend at home when you get your P45 by e-mail, at home while on the loo, thanks to BT's wireless home system. And then . . .

Whisky Priestess

14:41 / 28.04.08

Oh dear.

I feel a bit bad about taking the piss now, even though it's only of his character, not of him. What if he knew? What if he walked in front of that car ...

Kali, Queen of Kitteh

15:57 / 28.04.08

Wow. Poor Kris. I knew it was bad but surely it's not that bad...