How to sleep with a thesp

Some dream of treading the boards at the Globe. Some dream of their own double-act sketch show on BBC 3. Some dream of an Emmy, an Oscar and a Tab Theatre Award.

But some of us have neither the talent nor the drive and would prefer to fake laugh and hand job our way into theatre circles of tomorrow – a cosy life as the next Hugh Laurie’s wife or Stephen Fry’s husband.

‘I’d take YOU up the counterweight gallery.’

So as your brazen fellow freshers stride into Smoker auditions and prepare themselves for a flood of Camdram credits, I urge you to sit back, relax and drink in some seasoned knowledge from my helpful guide.

1. Pick your target

It’s tricky within the first few weeks to tell who’s going to be a Footlight and who’ll be tech-ing a Pembroke late show, but if you have an instinct for this sort of thing, it could pay off splendidly. Stand by your budding Tom Hiddleston and you could get a mention in his autobiography, ‘Lights, Cambridge, Action!’, as the ‘friend’ who always stood by his side. Choose poorly and you could end up ditching your first pick and wandering the ADC bar in search of a more cast-able Emma Thompson look-a-like, earning cruel nicknames like ‘the guy who sleeps with everyone’. Careful now, my fledgling fornicators.

Don’t be that guy.

2. Practise your commiserations and congratulations.

Sure, the director who didn’t pick your darling is most definitely a ‘worthless cunt’ today, but come next term the tables may have turned. Yesterday’s dejected rejectee could be cast by that very same pustule-covered shit-shoveler come Lent, so be wary of making too many enemies on behalf of your thesp. If the audition is successful? Treat them the only way you know how, you naughty girl.

Stroke his ego.

3. Prepare to be the ideal audience member

A comedy? Create a distinctive laugh that your beau will hear ricochet across the walls of the Corpus Playroom. A drama? Get those fake tears ready – dig up a personal story from your past to shyly connect to what you saw on-stage and tell your honey-bee how ‘moved’ you were by his turn as Butler Number 2.

Not a good place to ‘get it on’.

4. Do theatre

The easiest way to make an up-and-comer cum is to do theatre yourself. Shags in the ADC LX box and naughty fingerings in the hemp gallery are par for the course among us artistes. Plus, you can’t really devote all your time to chasing attractive theatre-types, (mainly because it looks a bit shit on your CV and this is Cambridge after all), so you may as well bite the bullet and do a bit yourself. Worst case scenario? Your lover dumps you and you get to do a six hour get-out at one in the morning. But go on. YOLO.