PAY AS YOU GO-GO

They're not exactly separated at birth, but lap dancing and filmmaking share an uncanny resemblance. Let's tick the boxes.

Both are about money, self-expression and entertainment. Both rely on an audience. Both are about production (you turn up on time with the right bits of kit) and both involve exhibition (ahem). And if you think I'm being flippant, at least dancers get paid, unlike the actors and crew regularly told to cut their minimum rates by salaried TV execs. On schemes such as the misnamed New Found Film (Same Old Telly, more like) the budgets suck big time, all part of a newish yet unreported scam that allows broadcasters to dip into the Lottery till at the expense of genuine filmmaking. This is cunningly disguised as providing 'opportunities for new talent'. Yadda, yadda, yadda. Opportunism for old hacks, I call it.

The sad thing is, we fall for it. I've known actors to give up decently paid bar work for one line in a crap drama. I've known camera crews yawn their way through the shoot, busily texting for their next gig on a insurance company corporate, depressed because they're on sixty day invoices. But the sorest losers in this game are the wannabe filmmakers - already on pish money or deferrals - their dream of the Croissette cut off at the knees when their big debut feature, mangled by the machine, cut by some guy whose CV boasts Scotland Today or Shuggie goes Fishing, goes out at half eleven on a Wednesday night on opt-out.

So if you ask me which is the more respectable, my money's on the dancing every time. Because while you sometimes get grief from the clients, you'll never get fucked up the ass.