Hunk

Yesterday I did eventually shoot the advert which my new hair-cut threatened to deny me. Early on in the shoot, the director intervened to give one of the other actors some tips about her interaction with me.

"Will you flirt with him while you serve him, please?"

"Well, I wasn't sure," she said. "I mean, he's meant to be playing an attractive guy, is that right?"

Meant to be?

The Most Expensive Haircut in the World

My hair has been out of control recently. I am saddled with uncontrollable locks, which grow in dense curly waves and refuse to submit to brush, hairdryer or gel. I haven't had a cut in the three months that I've been here, and I knew it was time when I met up with a friend who I'd not seen for ten years.

"I'm sorry," she said, fifteen minutes into our catch-up. "I just can't stop looking at your hair. What the hell happened to you?"

So I got a trim. It's still long on top, but it's now possible to identify that I have ears, and my head no longer looks like one of those dandelion clocks before the seeds have been blown away.

As I walked out of the hairdressers, I got a call from my agency. These are the people who have been sending me on the range of humiliating and fruitless trials which pass for auditions for lucrative adverts.

"Tom," said the girl on the line. "I've got some great news for you. You got the audition you went to last week!"

I was dumbstruck. I'd forgotten all about this audition, mainly because I'd been in there for a new record time of three minutes, and had failed to come up with anything better than a grotesque leer when asked to demonstrate my range of expressions for the camera.

"You have just the right look for the brand. They like the style, the big hair, it's perfect. Well done!"

Ah, I thought. Bugger.

This advert pays €400 for my time, and the same again as a buy-out to stop me doing similar advertising for a year. After toying with all of the possible excuses for why I looked so different - "I've got sudden onset partial alopecia" - I came clean.

So I'm now waiting for the client to approve my new look. If I lose the job, my haircut costs will have soared from €25 to €825. Surely the most expensive haircut in the world?

Tennis

I've been getting more auditions to appear in adverts here in Germany. Getting one would be amazing, as they pay at least ten times better than a day's work as an extra.

The last audition I went to was for a well-known fast food brand. The concept involved the customer being distracted at the counter by what he takes to be noise from a women's tennis match on TV, but is in fact two people enjoying their meal inordinately.

After playing the scene a couple of times over, they asked me and the guy I was auditioning with whether we'd also 'read' for the part of the couple noisily devouring their food.

"It's the director's idea," the casting lady said. "He's worried that the original concept of two women might come across a bit sexual."

We were given a croissant each, which we had to bite into at intervals and grunt. I started tentatively; my partner replied with gusto.

"More!" shouted the woman. "More, more!"

I bit harder, and groaned louder. Our grunts increased in pace and intensity as we chomped through our croissants, spewing little clouds of pastry from our mouths with every exhalation. The competition was fierce - it's possible only one of us would get the role - and so when my partner switched from grunts to groans of pleasure I followed suit.

After a minute we were told to stop, and we looked at one another sheepishly. I felt like we'd shared an embarrasing and intimate experience.

We filed silently out of the room to find a couple of girls waiting to go in.

"What on earth were you doing in there?" asked one of them. "It sounded like you were making porn."