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Mischief Makers Episode 9: Mike Bodie

[Upbeat music plays]
Host: Welcome to Mischief Makers, your one stop shop for all things Mischief. Join your host Dave Hearn, as he finds out what makes Mischief... well, Mischief!Dave Hearn: Hello and welcome to Mischief Makers. I am Dave Hearn and with me, I have the multi-talented and all-round great guy, Mr. Michael Bodie. Hello Bodie.Mike Bodie: Hello, Dave. How are you?DH: I'm very well, thank you. How are you?MB: I'm not too bad. Yourself?DH: I'm good. How are you?MB: I'm all right. I've just adjusted my gain a bit, so that it looks better. I'm looking at the wave forms here on Zencast and going, humph, I dislike the size of my wave forms.DH: How are my wave forms?MB: Your wave forms are very good. Very healthy.DH: Is that what you want? Smaller ones? Or do you want bigger ones?MB: It depends, really. I'm just looking at... because I think Zencast compresses the audio on this, and I'm just wanting to make sure that our listeners have the finest quality audio that Mischief ears can provide.DH: Yeah. Well that's something that listeners should know about you Mike Bodie. Would you say you are now a professional voice-over artist?MB: That is a thing I do; I would not say that I have now stopped doing them. So, I ended up getting into voice-over a couple years ago, primarily as I realised that I was a grown man and I was tired of working at places that were not acting related. I used to work as a janitor and a receptionist, and I worked as a chef at one point. I got fired as a chef and it is the only job I ever got fired from, after two and a half weeks of working at this steakhouse.DH: Why did you get fired?MB: Apparently, I was too slow, and they claimed running about swiftly to be too slow at the place. I had to often get in there about two or three hours early to do prep, and I wouldn't be paid for it because they said, we will only pay you for one hour of prep. It's like, well, it's not enough time to get everything done that you want me to do, and they were like, well, you're just going to have to make that work. You're not going to have burgers made then, that's the long and short of it. I've been fired from that, which I was not het up about. It was after...I was in The Comedy About A Bank Robbery, the second cast, that I saved up all of my money every week just to have it. I thought, I don't want to be in a position where I finished The Comedy About A Bank Robbery that if there's no work coming up, that I'll be struggling to pay my rent and bills and stuff. So, I ended up saving a bunch of money, and I was doing some voice-over training during The Comedy About A Bank Robbery and I gotten a voice agent and was doing a handful of jobs. I ended up building a studio at home to be able to produce work from home and to be able to do really high-quality auditions. As an example, in L.A it is quite common for voice actors to have full studio setups to be able to do really high quality auditions, the thinking being that if you remove the imagination on the casting director's end of what will this actor sound like on this project when we bring them into a full recording studio, then the chances of getting the job are higher. It's kind of like, you are going into an audition for a film and you're in costume or you're wearing something that the character might wear. And then the casting director doesn't have to go, I wonder what they would look like if they wore a costume similar to the character, in which case you've already provided, so that additional creative effort on their end is removed. But I essentially work in voice-over pretty much full time in between stage and screen work, because my other alternative is to do a job that's not acting related. I could go work in an office, I could go back to working as a janitor, I could go work as a carpenter or a garbage man or a gardener, and all the other jobs I did before doing jobs that were acting related full time, that's my alternative. I think if somebody said to you, do you want to work on stage, or do you want to work in something related to stage? Or do you want to work in, I don't know, to be a deliveryman, it's like, well, if I have the option of working on stage, of course I work on stage. If the other two options are I can work as a delivery man or I can work as a stagehand or work on a writing team for a TV show or I can work in voice-over, you're probably going to pick a thing that's a bit more creatively inclined. Like absolutely no offence to anyone who works as a delivery driver but working as a delivery driver is not working in a creative field.DH: It's not what you want to do.MB: Yeah, it's not what you want to do. I'm very fortunate that I've so far found a lot of success in voice-over and it's keeping me solvent, so I continue to put effort towards it. I do enjoy it and I find it very creative, and I'll be continuing to work in it and to expand client base and business stuff and whatnot. But I think it's quite tunnel vision for an actor to go, well I only work on stage and screen and that's all I'm going to do, and if I don't get work in that, well, I'll just wait for something to come along. People will go, well go make your own work, okay, great. But while you're making your own work, you still have to support yourself, so you're still in that position of I have to support myself, I want to still work in stage and screen. Great, but you still have to support yourself. How can you do it? And what I found is I've kind of combined the both of them, I'm still able to be creative and I'm still able to act and perform whilst making money at the same time. So, to answer your question, have I become a full-time voice-over? I work in voice-over full time, but I still write down on my HMRC What do you do as, I am an actor.DH: Very good.MB: That's a five-minute way of saying no.[DH & MB laugh]DH: Well, it's good because what you've done is you've jumped into the first section, which is called Getting to Know You. And I feel like we're getting to know you professionally, which is very good.MB: Wonderful.DH: You've probably heard from the other interviews that we've been doing is that I don't really have any jingles or anything. I've been getting everyone to improvise a quick jingle for each section. So, would you mind improvising us just a quick getting to know you jingle?MB: Welcome back to this episode of Mischief Makers. On this episode, we speak with our host Dave Hearn and Mischief Founding Member Mike Bodie. This is the Getting to Know You section!DH: Very good! Some of the more eagle eared listeners amongst you will notice that is the voice from the beginning of the podcast.[MB laughs]DH: That was very good. Well, we're already off and away getting to know you. We'll get into the Mischief stuff, but the first thing that people probably notice about you, but they don't notice about the other Mischief, guys, is that you have an American accent.MB: That is true. I was born in the U.S. and I left when I was five and I went to Germany. My parents went travelling in Europe in the 80s and they ran into a guy in Edinburgh who was American, and they asked him, what are you doing over here? And he says, I live over here, and they asked him how long have you lived here? He said, I've lived here for over 30 years, and they said, but you're American? Why would you leave America? And his response was, why would you stay? And so then that was when the penny dropped for them, they realised that, wait a minute, we've been told our entire lives that we have to stay in America and America is the place to be, you want to be the best stay in the United States, which as we all know, is nonsense. So, they ended up...they decided that when we have kids, let's go live abroad somewhere for a couple of years just to give our kids exposure to things outside of the U.S. Because my parents didn't want my sister and I to be Jane and John Doe, America, they wanted us to be more cultured, to have a wider global mindset, if you will. So we ended up moving over to Germany, there was a branch of a company my dad was working for and so he applied for a job over there, we moved over and we thought we were going to stay for two years in Germany. We ended up staying for about six and a half, and so we immigrated over, we weren't expats or military or diplomat. Oh, you still there? My screen has decided to go to sleep....oh good, you're still here, that's fine, everything's fine.DH: Yep. [he laughs]MB: So, we ended up staying for about six and a half years, and at the time we didn't know about international schools and I was about five years old at the time. So, I ended up going to German primary school or kindergarten or nursery, whatever the UK equivalent is, I don't know because I didn't go to it.[DH laughs]MB: In Germany, they called it kindergarten. So, I ended up speaking...I grew up speaking German more often than I did English and so it got to the point where I learned to read and write in German before I did in English. I would come home from kindergarten and I'd speak to my parents and I'd say, I am my clothes are putting, I am my room will clean, no mother, you're wrong are. To which I'd be corrected, you're putting your clothes on, you're cleaning your room, don't talk to me that way I'm your mother. Because in German, they always put the verb at the end of the sentence largely, and so I would be directly translating from German into English. I had to go and have English lessons and learn how to read and write in English because I never knew how to do it, because I was just doing it in German all day. Then eventually we shifted to some international schools, and then when I was 12, I moved over to the UK and I went to school in Windsor at Windsor Castle School for Boys and Girls. I was there for about six months and I didn't have the best time, and then I went over to an American school in Thorp called TASIS, which is an acronym for The American School in Switzerland, but this was their English branch, so it was TASIS England.DH: So, an American School for Swiss people in England?MB: No, close but zero cigars.[DH & MB laugh]MB: The original TASIS School was opened in Lugano in Switzerland, and it was known as the American School in Switzerland and it was called TASIS, it was the pronunciation of its acronym. So, then they had another one in Athens, and then they opened up another one in the UK, but it was the TASIS brand of school, if you will. So, it was an American style program that was simply based in different countries. Obviously, when they did the branding for Switzerland, they didn't consider having an international...they wouldn't call it TASIE The American school in England, so they just kept the brand and then shifted it around to various countries. So, yes, I went to an American school in the U.K in Thorpe, actually it was right next to the grounds of Thorpe Park. So, I would be working there as a groundskeeper at TASIS in the summer and then just above the cusp of the trees would be a roller coaster edge, so once in a while you'd hear, ahhhhhhhhh....[DH & MB laughs]MB: You'd just get people during the summer enjoying the summertime and here I am getting hot and sweaty digging holes in the ground while there's people on rollercoasters 100 metres the other side.DH: Well, I'm glad for that. Because I know you quite well, and I would say that you are actually a very hardworking person and so I think maybe that's where that attitude was born, whilst watching other people in Thorpe Park you were weeding.MB: [laughing] Yeah. That is one of many things I did do as a groundskeeper.DH: So, in your various places that you grew up, I hope you don't mind me talking about this, but did you have quite a serious accident when you were younger?MB: Yes, I was in a car accident when I was a kid. So, we were in Germany for a few months and I was at the playground with my sister, and I was five years old at the time, and I decided to go home. I'd done it numerous times before, I rode my bike, maybe four or five hundred meters down the road to my house and I was coming around a blind corner and I ended up getting hit by a car that was going too fast. I didn't see it, he didn't see me, and I ended up going over my handlebars, and my head went into the windshield of the car and I cracked the windshield of the car. My bike got mangled and my handlebars stabbed me in the back, and I was sort of tumbling as the car slowed down. I was sort of hovering on the bonnet and as the car stopped, I slid off the bonnet, and the car was still moving, and then one of its wheels ran over my legs as well. So, when I finally came to, about a day and a half later, I had a broken collarbone, amnesia, concussion, bruised kidney and two of my teeth were missing. In the hospital, they stabilised me and put my shoulder in a brace and they said, well go home now. My mum, who's a paediatric nurse and was a paramedic as well and also works as an emergency medical nurse, she said, no let's keep him overnight for observation, and we were living in a small town in Germany at the time, and it was a small local hospital, so they weren't particularly well equipped. I ended up having a seizure during the night and then the doctors gave me Valium, but I was five years old at the time and they injected me with Valium for a 20-year-old, which basically stopped my heart and I stopped breathing as well. So, they had to intubate me, which is putting a tube down your throat into your lungs, I forget the exact name of it, it's where your lungs split into the two respective sides of lungs. I want to say it's a trachea, but I don't think that's correct.DH: Answers on a postcard if you do know.MB: [laughs] Answers on a postcard, exactly. So, the doctor ended up putting the tube all the way down to the bottom of one lung, and then the doctors and my mum were going, why isn't his oxygen level going back up? And it's because the doctor stuck it all way down one lung, which is where it shouldn't have been. They took an X ray and then they adjusted it, and then I was starting to stabilize and then they said, well, we need to take him to a bigger hospital, and the only way to do that was to airlift me to this hospital in Mannheim, which is maybe about a half hour, 45-minute drive away. And so, the doctor, when he's taking the tube out, he just yanked it out as opposed to taking it out the right way, and he knocks out two of my teeth.DH: Oh, wow.MB: So, my mum, she'd been on medical airlifts before in the States when she was working as a paramedic, and she was going up to the helipad with me. Then the paramedics had put an Amby bag, which is a big rubber ball to pump air into me, and my heart rate started to drop again. Then she saw that the seal on the Amby bag was off and the paramedics didn't realise that the seal in the bag was off, so the air was going out the opposite end as opposed to going into me to save me. So, she ends up sticking her hand over the Amby bag to put a seal on it and then start pumping away on the bag to get my heart rate back up. We end up going to the helipad and then the paramedics say, no, you can't come with us, and she's like, no, I've done this before, and they said, well you're not a German nurse, you're an American nurse so you don't have the same qualifications that are recognised. So I think they had to change the flight path of the helicopter to go near the autobahn, which is like the M25, so that my parents could stick their head out the window and follow the helicopter while driving down the motorway because they didn't know how to get to Mannheim and the paramedics didn't speak any English and they didn't speak any German. So when we get to the hospital and then I stabilise and I finally wake up about a day and a half later and I'm missing my two front teeth, and I stick my tongue out, and my dad's there at my bedside and I stick my two front teeth out, and I clocked that the night has passed and I'm missing teeth and I don't remember sticking my teeth under the pillow. I was gutted that the tooth fairy wasn't going to show up because I didn't stick my teeth under the pillow.[DH laughs]

MB: I was like, oh, man, I missed this one chance I get. I got two teeth knocked out, I'll make an absolute fortune on these boys and I didn't stick them under my pillow, I'm gutted. My dad was oh, well, we'll see what we can do, and then like half hour later there's a 20 Deutsche mark bill, which is like the equivalent of twenty quid. My dad goes, oh look, there's 20 quid here! The tooth fairy came![DH laughs]MB: Granted, I'm five years old so I'm thinking to myself, I'm buying a house and a yacht and a plane.DH: It was more money than you'd ever seen.MB: Yeah. I was happy if I had two pennies in my pocket. I was like, Dad I got two monies!DH: Wow. If your mum hadn't been there....MB: Yeah, I would have been dead.DH: Yeah, on several occasions.MB: [laughs] Yeah! I think the first occasion would have been the clincher. I don't think there would have been the occasions thereafter. [continues laughing]DH: Yeah! That's so weird. That's so good that your mum was there. Did you ever meet the driver of the car?MB: I did, yeah. He was 17 and he had gotten his driver's licence two weeks before.DH: Oh, wow.MB: And he came by the house at one point and he gave me a little stuffed donkey and then some chocolate. And I took the donkey and I thought, oh, I have a new toy. But of all the animals I had, the donkey was the least...I enjoyed its company the least.DH: A nice gesture.MB: A lovely gesture from the man. But I had plenty of friendly penguins to enjoy the company of.DH: Sorry, you might hear a banging, there's somebody outside my house putting some bins away. So, you know, that's live theatre for you. Were there any lasting effects from that?MB: Yeah. So, my left shoulder still clicks to this day, it's like a mild party trick. Like hey guys, I was in this accident, want to feel something weird? [makes cracking sound] crunchy shoulder! When I was 15, I got diagnosed with ADHD and it was believed that the trauma from the head impact of the car was caused by that. These days, I simply might have just had it because I just have it. But in either case, whether that was the cause of it or not, it's one of the things I got to deal with on a sort of a regular basis about organising myself and not being distracted and trying to get a better understanding of how that all works. When I was in high school, I was put on a bunch of medication for it, which was not the most pleasant experience and so I stopped taking it because there was a lot of side effects from taking the medication.DH: It's a very American thing, isn't it? To put those kids on various drugs.MB: Yeah, it is. Partly because, obviously in the states the pharmaceuticals cost an arm and a leg and selling pharmaceuticals and pushing pharmaceuticals onto people who may or may not need it, is business. And obviously the medical institution, the states will say, no, no, that's not the case, but there's enough evidence to kind of go, all right. well, I think you don't need to charge like 30 quid for an inhaler, which over here would cost like seven quid for it. Sorry, one second, my screen is going to sleep...ok great. So, when I was about 15, I was diagnosed with ADHD, which is the main classification for a number of different sort of sub classifications. So, ADHD is known as attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, and it's often archetypal associated with young rambunctious kids who were quite physically hyperactive, but that is a classification within that. But then there's also people who are mentally hyperactive and who fidget and can't sit still. I still catch myself with my leg bouncing or hand tapping or something, and I'm just not conscious of it until I go, oh, why's the table moving? Oh, because I've been bouncing my leg for an hour and I haven't noticed. I was put on a bunch of medication in high school, which pretty much ruined high school because of all the really unpleasant side effects. It triggered a lot of depression and anxiety and like mild hallucination and this kind of stuff, I took them for a couple years and eventually I stopped. But it was in that kind of formative period in my teenage years where I believed that these side effects were core parts of myself, so I spent a number of years learning to undo those thought processes and those thought patterns. It was around the same time I was applying for drama school as well. Essentially my background was from a very sheltered suburban, I'd say sheltered because that's kind of what it was. I wasn't really exposed to anything in the big city or anything, like kids in my year who went to Camden and maybe got a burger and a Pepsi, I was like, oh yeah, these guys are hardcore...guys we're in Camden, we're a bunch of bad asses. Like, you're going to the Asian food place, you're just around Camden and suddenly you have this thing about you. Like, yeah, we went to Camden, and we were there! Like, wow you were in Camden! Yeah in Camden![DH & MB laugh]MB And anybody who knows Camden will know that it has a reputation....parts of it have a reputation for being quite seedy, in other parts for being quite hipster and cool and very wholesome and whatnot. But this was also before a lot of it was rebuilt, so it was very seedy at the time, like twenty years ago.DH: For the cool kids.MB: Yeah, for all the cool kids. But....I lost my train of thought. I can't remember....can I get a train ticket for that train of thought?DH: There it is, there's some of your ADHD kicking in right now in this interview.MB: Exactly.DH: So, you said you'd stopped taking the medication.MB: Yeah, so I stopped taking it, which was good because then I didn't have the side effects. So then recently I've been investigating it a bit more, because I spent a lot of years denying that I had it. But I realised that a lot of my patterns of behaviour are quite.... So, I've recently met someone who is very lovely, and they introduced me to a YouTube channel called ADHD Girl, and it's about this woman in the states who talks about her experiences with ADHD. Having watched a lot of the videos and a lot of stuff she talks about is very similar to myself, and I think in a very similar way and it was quite revealing. And this person who I met, she'd say, is this a big thing for you? And I said, yeah, after I stopped taking my medication, I denied that I had it at all, because I'd never really gotten any support for it. But now that I'm an adult, I realise I still have it. So things like, trying to maintain focus for long periods of time or getting bored with stuff easily or being easily distracted or I'll be paying attention to something and then something will distract me and then I'll just go off and pay attention to it and I'll completely forget that someone was talking to me still in that regard.DH: So, what's the difference between that kind of behaviour and just a regular teenager?MB: I think the idea of ADHD has been it's easy for someone to go... with somebody who has it, they don't know they have it, to go, you're lazy, you're undisciplined, you lack focus, you are stupid, because you can't operate in the same way that someone who's neurotypical does. And a lot of the things in the world and a lot of self-help books and a lot of things they write in various magazines in Men's Health, Cosmopolitan, Vogue, whatever, when one says let's talk about mental health, a lot of it is valid, but on a very kind of superficial baseline level. A lot of it is geared towards people who operate and what's known as a neurotypical kind of level, who display the typical characteristics of an average person, and anything that deviates from that in any way, it's easy for people to go, well, you're just a bit thick or you lack the ability to maintain focus, you're lazy, you're undisciplined. And these are all things that we obviously hold the idea of somebody who is who is hardworking and proactive and somebody who is disciplined and somebody who's able to focus for a long period of time, we hold those elements in high esteem. And if you are an individual who lacks those in any way, it's easy for somebody to go, you lack these things therefore, you are inferior to myself. Generally, the person who brings attention to those things probably has an issue with themselves and is making himself feel better at the expense of somebody else without taking into account how those words and actions make somebody else feel. Like, it's easy for me to look at another actor, for example, and see their career and go, well, you have that career because you have these really great connections, and those connections happened because your family is well connected, that's an element that you didn't have control over, that's something you were born with.
And it's easy for me to disregard my own lack of effort or my own lack of pro-activity by comparing myself to somebody else and going, you have these things which I don’t, and you don't deserve them because you didn't work towards them.DH: Sure.MB: Or it's easy for me to justify my actions in a certain regard because of things I've done. Say I've done this, you haven't, therefore I am superior in some way. And at the end of the day, it doesn't really matter, but it's just a way of me making myself feel better or somebody else making themselves feel superior to somebody in some way. But as far as how it differentiates from somebody being a quote unquote average teenager, I mean, granted, like any teenager can, teenagers are generally fickle creatures and hormonally driven, and can be quite emotional as they start to become exposed to their spectrum of emotional experiences and physical experiences, and their bodies and stuff start changing and they're not really sure what's going on, and they do it at different levels and at different times. So, there's no real one kind of set way of doing it because all these changes are happening. Teenagers tend to be quite sort of volatile creatures and are looking for some form of stability, so then in regard of going, is this just some teenagers? Well, it can be, some teenagers do have it, and they may behave that way, but it's something that I'm still sort of continuing to investigate and trying to look at strategies to help manage my own organisation and work stuff, and to become aware of how my emotions are forming or reacting to certain things based on how my brain is wired, if you will.DH: Yeah, that makes sense.MB: Like, for example, there's a thing called object permanence. People with ADHD and other neurological disorders have a difficulty with something called object permanence. Which is, for example, if the sky is blue, this is a very broad-stroke course example, if the sky is blue, the sky will always be blue, and anytime it is not blue, then that makes me really upset because the sky is blue and it should always be blue, it should never be anything other than that. And if it changes, well, that makes me really upset and really angry, as opposed to having a mental flexibility to go, the sky isn't blue today and that's OK. It's grey.DH: Sure.MB: It's overcast or there are clouds, that's fine.DH: Yeah.MB: But with people who struggle with object permanence, it's a belief that a thing will always be the way it is, and any deviance from that causes stress of some kind. And granted, you could argue, well, you know, things change in life and you have to adapt. Yeah, that's true, and people do adapt. People with ADHD, the reaction tends to be much more extreme, this is from my understanding, I could be getting this wrong from what the medical literature says, but the reaction tends to be a bit more extreme in that regard, and that's a reaction typical of individuals who have it.DH: I suppose that applies to things that aren't objects as well. If you've got a sense of how you think someone should behave or someone should react to something you say, it has some kind of structure and security. If somebody's behaviour deviates from that, I imagine that could be quite stressing to someone.MB: Yeah. That's one of the primary places that people with ADHD struggle with object permanence, is when someone's reaction is different to how they expected it to be because of one thing or the other. Whereas somebody who is neurotypical would go, oh, they're having a bad day, that's fine, someone with ADHD might suddenly then go, well, I've clearly done something in order to cause this to happen, or they might go, there's something wrong with them, there can't be something wrong with me, and it can tends to go one of two ways. Either belief that the personal individual has caused something, or the other person is at fault for something because of a difference of behaviour in that way.DH: Sure.MB: Indeed, the challenge with object permanence and people with ADHD often happens in interpersonal relationships in that regard. That someone reacts in a way you didn't expect, or they reacted a different way because of what's going on for the other person, and it's difficult to acknowledge and accept the circumstances of the other person as being entirely independent from you as the individual.DH: That makes a lot of sense. Actually, I was going to ask, I've got some questions here about your more outdoor adventures.MB: Sure.DH: To link those two to the ADHD, is that one of the reasons why you pursued doing more things involved in nature? Did you find it quite calming?MB: I liked the idea of.... I liked practicality. I like things that are quite pragmatic and hands-on, and I've always been a very hands-on learning kind of person. I have a need to understand how things work. The idea of something being hidden from me...so for example, when I watch a magic show, I'll say to myself, there is a way to make this work, this is an illusion, it is not a genuine, quote unquote, magic. They have not dematerialized themselves and then re-materialized somewhere else, there's a trap door back there, they've gone under the stairs or they've hidden themselves in some way or there's a false panel. And so, I find if I watch a magic show, I'll go, that's a very good trick, but at no point do I believe, oh goodness that's genuine magic! So, I always love the Penn and Teller stuff, when they talk about how the tricks work or when a magic trick of any kind is revealed. Or I'll get the small magic toys that they used to have at Harrods years ago, and I'm sure they still do, and I'll look at it and I'll get up and go, oh, so that's how they make the coins disappear. And so then suddenly I'll be really fascinated by that, and I'll go, well, I know how it works now, the magic is literally gone.[DH laughs]MB: But as far as things outdoorsy, I've always been quite pragmatic and I've always liked the idea of self-sufficiency and being able to look at a tree and go, I will make a house from this tree and then I will have a house.[DH laughs]MB: I like the elements of the physical exertion and I like the physical challenge. I enjoy hiking a lot, particularly when you go camping hiking, when you're having to carry your life with you for several days travelling or going somewhere.DH: That's my worst nightmare, you've just described.MB: Really?DH: Yeah. I can't be doing that. I like a hotel, what can I say? I'm a man of luxury.MB: Yeah, you just walk around a hotel. [he laughs]. Well, it's like that one time in Edinburgh during the Fringe when we were at, I think it's The Restaurant Under The Stairs and you were in a three-piece suit and you said to me, Bodes, could you carry me up Arthur's seat?DH: Oh yeah!MB: So, I thought for a moment about it and yes, yes, I could carry you up Arthur's seat. And so, we kind of mulled it over and thought yeah, we'll do it later.

DH: I think there is time for this as a brief narrative certainly. Wasn't it....We traditionally went up Arthur's Seat at the end of every Fringe, and I said I couldn't be arsed with it because I was in a three piece. And I said look, it always seems like a good idea at the time, you have walk for like an hour to get there, then it's a really long time up, then you've got to come all the way back down. I think I said the only way I'll do it is if you carry me up, and I said it, it was a joke. But I think you were then sort of like, no, I can do it.MB: Yeah. It was because you were talking about it and then I think I was sat opposite you at the table, and then you said Bodes, could you carry me up Arthur's Seat? And I went, yeah, yeah, I think I could. At the time we thought, oh, what a joke, lads![DH laughs]MB: And then we finished our drinks and we were like, Dave, do you want me to carry you up Arthur's Seat?DH: Ladies and gentlemen, it happened. It happened! Mike carried me on his back from ground level up to the very peak of Arthur's Seat. I've got a photo of it somewhere!MB: Yeah. It was the least amount of effort you did to gain that much altitude. [he laughs]DH: Yeah, it was amazing.MB: Yeah. The proudest part of that for me was that at no point did I ever put you down. If I had to stop for a rest, you just laid, draped across my back while I just took a breather.DH: Well, I tried to make you stop. I remember, and you insisted, you were like no, I can keep going, and it was very impressive.MB: I think we had Mr McLennon with us at the time, and he was like, no boys, I don't think you can carry Dave up Arthur's Seat.DH: Yeah, and it should be said that my friend Calum is also a soldier.MB: He's a veteran of the British Army who has seen numerous deployments in various very dangerous parts of the world and is a very tough and hard man. One of my favourite things was at the end, Corporal McLennon gave me a handshake and said, Bodes, that was impressive. I was like, thanks mate, I appreciate it.DH: That's all you need, that's what you did it for.MB: Yeah. There's a great photo of me just being utterly exhausted, sitting on my backside, and then you with your hands on your hips, laughing in the air.DH: Yeah, I'm having a great time.MB: Yeah. And I'm just completely knackered and you're just laughing your head off in a three-piece suit at sunrise on the peak of Arthur's Seat. [he laughs]DH: Yeah, that was crazy. It's just what you do when you're younger and you're bulletproof, you can do those kinds of things. Now I'd be like, no Bodes, we'll just get a cab or something.MB: You'll get an Uber up there!DH: Yeah, an Uber, that would do it! So, I've got...actually while we're on the outdoors, because I might have, because we've been chatting for a little while now, we might have to skip a section, but that's OK. I've got one more question.MB: What's the section? I'll be quick about it.DH: Well, it's Questions from the Web.MB: Awh! Let's do questions from the web!DH: Ok, we'll do it quickly. Actually, I've got one more question from outdoors. Is it true that you were trapped once by a mountain lion?MB: I was stalked by two mountain lions.DH: Right.MB: I was in New Mexico on a hike one time, and we get to our camp and for some reason... I think we had to stop somewhere earlier in the day because it was a thunderstorm and we couldn't go walking in the area because there was risk of being struck by lightning and we didn't want that, so we had to stop for a while. So we get to camp late and it's dark out, and mountain lions hunt between dusk and dawn because of the lighting conditions, they can see better at those times than other animals can, I believe I could be incorrect, but that's when they do most of their hunting. So, we could hear two sound sources around our camp that were moving in a circle, and occasionally we'd hear like some rocks tumble down from a cliff or a branch break or something, or a rustle in a bush.DH: That is absolutely terrifying.MB: Yeah. And our headlamps weren't powerful enough to shine a spotlight on them or anything. But we were absolutely certain, yes, this is a mountain lion, because if it was anything else, it would have left by now. If it was a deer or something, it would have just run off. So because these two sources kept circling, we could hear them moving at the same distance of where they were previously, and then we'd be like, well, now it's over here, and this other one's over there and now it's over here, and there and there. We thought, these are mountain lions and they are circling us but there were seven of us at the time in this group. So, I was initially terrified, like guys, there's a mountain lion circling us and they're like, yeah, and? Because the other guys in my crew, they grew up in parts of the states where bears and mountain lions and wolverines and rattlesnakes was a part of life. if there's a bear in the backyard you don't go outside until it leaves. Whereas for me it's like, oh God, goodness, a bear! Argh! And then after a week or so out in the wilderness in New Mexico, then it's eventually like, meh, it's a bear, whatever, and you just get over it.DH: Desensitised to the bear.MB: Yeah, you kind of get desensitised to the wildlife. Meh, wildlife, don't bother it.DH: That's very good. Well, tell you what, I'll rather clunkily move us onto Questions from the Web.MB: Go for it.DH: So, these are some questions that have come in from some people on Twitter. However, can you just give us a quick question from the web jingle?MB: Yeah, one second. And coming up next is the questions from the web, questions received from Twitter on various Twitter accounts. And here we go!DH: Nice! Very nice. So, this first question is from Bethany, she says, do you think the way that Mischief have made shows has changed over the years? And did you ever think it would get where it's got to today?MB: To be honest, I don't think any of us knew that we'd be in a position where we are today. And as far as shows go, like our first show was Lights, Camera, Improvise, actually, no, our first show was Let's See What Happens which ran for two weeks and which we swiftly put to bed at the end of the first Edinburgh. Then we started working on Lights, Camera, Improvise for a while, which later became Mischief Movie Night, and then we had Late Night Improv Fight as well. So, we largely did improv stuff for a while and it wasn't until the boys wrote The Play That Goes Wrong, or sorry, The Murder at Christmas...was it Murder at Christmas?DH: Murder Before ChristmasMB: Murder Before Christmas, that's when things took off. So as far as, like from where we started to where we are, I'd say, yeah, things have changed largely that we're not doing impro in that respect. But I think the comedy itself has grown up, has developed and matured over time with experience and trial and error and stuff. So, going from impro to scripted: vast change. Like we now have a script we can work with. But then as far as going from Play That Goes Wrong into things like The Goes Wrong Show and other projects, I'd say that it's just a case of becoming more tuned and better honed at what jokes work, where to put them, how far you can go with a joke, the things you can do with it and just a cumulative experience of things that work and the things aren't as effective in that regard. That's what I would say has changed.DH: And this is a different Bethany, this is Bethany Campbell, she asks, what is the best experience you've had through being a member of Mischief?MB: I think going up to the Fringe, because I didn't know the Fringe existed until somebody on our foundation course at LAMDA said, yeah, there's a thing in Edinburgh called the Edinburgh Fringe, it's where all these shows for theatre and stuff go up every year and I thought, OK, cool. Because if we hadn't have gone up to the Fringe with Let's See What Happens years ago, I wouldn't have known about the Fringe, and because the Fringe became the peak of my year, every year, was going to the Fringe for a month and seeing shows and doing shows and being up in Edinburgh and that kind of stuff. So, I'd say for me so far, being able to go to the Fringe and to be able to say that I'm a part of Mischief itself. Those are the two things for me actually that are kind of the best experience with Mischief so far. No singular kind of, hey this one time at band camp moment or anything.DH: Yeah. I should say as well, some people may not know this, but you are a founding member of Mischief. You've been there since the beginning.MB: Yeah, that's true. You and I and a handful of others are some of the original founding members of Mischief.DH: So, you can't get rid of us, we're like old barnacles.[DH & MB laughs]DH: Daisy asks, if you were to be arrested, what do you think it would be for?MB: On accident. I think I would probably be arrested just accidentally, like somebody would say, sir, we've arrested this man at the scene of the crimes. Oh, is it Mike Bodie? Yes. He's innocent, let him go. Ah, I'm sorry Mr Bodie.DH: Let him out immediately. [he laughs]MB: Yeah, no, not at all, please, I'm happy to oblige.DH: What do you think I would be arrested for?MB: You would probably have mallard a bunch of nasty men in a bar, and then somebody would probably say Dave started it, and then CCTV footage would say, no, no, Dave defended himself, he's innocent. And then again, they'd go, whoops, we've arrested the wrong person.DH: Very good.MB: [laughing] Very specific.DH: Very well answered.MB: All of your tales of like ah damnit, I've gotten into a fight again and I had to win again.DH: I had to run away, yet again!MB: And it would be like, this man clearly defended himself, he's innocent.DH: [laughing] He's just a hot-headed young man hiding under the bar. So that brings us to the end of questions from the web, and we're just going to move into the quickfire section. So, can you give us a quickfire jingle?MB: Bow bow bahda da bow bow quickfire jingle!DH: Very good.MB: It's not my finest work [he laughs]DH: [laughing] I enjoyed it. There was less prep this time, I thought it was good.
So, I'm going to do this slightly differently. So usually what I do is ask people lots of questions really quickly and just try and get answers as quick as possible. But what I'm going to do for you is quickfire voice over. So, I'm going to give you a bunch of different characters and I want you just to improvise a different voice for them. You can say anything, any sort of one line, it doesn't have to be anything too long, and I'll give you the character, you've just got to do it as fast as possible. That make sense?MB: Yes.DH: Great. Ok, so your first character is a concerned medieval villager.MB: Oh sorry, my lord!DH: [laughing] Your next character is a smooth Southern gent.MB: [in a Southern accent] Well, howdy there good lookin!DH: Yeah, this is great. Ok, an A.I. robot butler.MB: Would you like ice with your 14th drink, sir?DH: Nice! A panicked cowboy.MB: Argh, darn tootin I can't find my damn cow!DH: [laughs] An angry toad king.MB: [in a low, croaky voice] I've had enough of this.DH: Oh, that was very good! And finally, Billy the happy dog.MB: Oh, are we going for a walkies? Going for walkies? Oh, are we going for walkies?DH: Wow. The speed at which you did those was very impressive. Well done!MB: This was the quick-fire round, yes? Not the slow burn circle [he laughs]DH: I thoroughly enjoyed the panicked cowboy, that was such genuine panic.[MB laughs]DH: That was very, very good. Well, I'm afraid that's all we've got time for, really. Ladies and gentlemen, thank you very much for listening. I've been Dave Hearn.MB: Thank you for having me ladies and gentlemen.DH: Thank you Mr. Bodie.MB: Thank you, Mr. Hearn.DH: If you want to find out some more about Bodie's voices, I believe you have a website? MikeBodie.net.MB: I do, it is, crazy enough MikeBodie.net. [laughs]DH: Bodie is spelt like body.MB: Bodies without the s. BODIE. The website is in dire need of updating, it is a little bit old.DH: Oh, well, we'll try and embed a link or something, I don’t know if we can do that.[MB laughs]DH: Actually, I'm going to have you sign off on this Bodes. So, can you say thanks very much for listening, keep on making Mischief?MB: Thanks very much for listening. Keep on making Mischief!DH: Nice.