Encounters

"Friday Night With Jonathan Ross Show" Filming on Monday 9th February

Mickey Rourke

I have a friend who works at the BBC and on checking the BBC press office page, I saw that Mickey was scheduled to appear on Jonathan Ross's show later in February. I emailed her about the show and she said the filming was in fact three days later, so I was able to put my name down for a ticket.

The other guests appearing on the show were the singer Will Young, Dave Manfield the comedian and music legends The Cure.

It was a lot of fun before the show started as the warm up comedian made the audience take part in a whole variety of dancing for a later Comic Relief segment to be shown in March.

Jonathan Ross's house band, Four Poofs And A Piano soon came on to perform a few songs and their shirts had Mickey's face emblazoned on, they always have the headlining guest featured on their shirts and Mickey was no exception! I thought the shirts looked rather snazzy and I always wonder what they do with them afterwards, I mean they wouldn't want a whole wardrobe of shirts emblazoned with random celebrities faces, would they? Or would they?

I read on Twitter that Jonathan had prepared for the interview by watching Angel Heart, and I inwardly groaned as he'd already covered that in the last Jonathan show with Mickey, so I wasn't sure if he was going to go over lots of the same material.

Will Young came on first and was very sweet, quite softly spoken and then he was followed by Dave Manfield, a new comedian championed by Peter Kay. As Dave was on the new uncomfortable leather sofa talking with Jonathan, the camera often turned back to the green room and Mickey seemed to be deep in conversation with Will Young, whilst drinking from a cup. Later on, Mickey had switched to San Miguel, haha.

It's Pancake Day soon and Jonathan had celebrity pancakes with the guests faces outlined on the pancakes, and Mickey's didn't look very much like him but the pancakes took lots of prodding back in the green room, not sure if anyone ate any of theirs!

Jonathan introduced Mickey by showing the clip from Angel Heart, with Robert De Niro and the egg.

Four Poofs And A Piano sang "Hey Mickey" as Mickey's intro song and the man himself appeared on stage, having hidden his San Miguel bottle inside his jacket pocket. Jonathan usually fancies himself a stylish foppish dandy, having appeared on many best and worst dressed lists over the years and he took a shining to Mickey's shoes.

Mickey seemed a bit quiet to start with, as he can be shy so I think he took a while to warm up but as soon as he and Jonathan were chatting, the high fives were flying and Jonathan bore the brunt of one enthusiastic slap that echoed around the studio, haha.

The main promotion was for The Wrestler of course and Jonathan being Jonathan he'd brought some of his own Luche Libra masks from home, and he and Mickey sat with them on for a while, even swapping seats at one point which was very funny.

Jonathan asked Mickey to rate films from his career, I thought this was really interesting as Mickey can be quite outspoken about his films and of course, I wondered what he'd say about Rumble Fish, if anything! Jonathan told Mickey to rate them using thumbs up or down.

Jonathan started with "Diner", it got a so-so middle rating from Mickey and I was a bit surprised they did seem to start from near the beginning! The stage manager and main camera then moved around in front of my view so I had to crane around, moving across in my neighbour's vision as I willed Jonathan to say "Rumble Fish" as the next film!

"Rumble Fish?"

"YEAY!" <--- That would be me, cheering out loud and Jonathan turned to face the audience. If this is still included within the show as it airs, I hope you all think of it as a literal shout out to our appreciation of "Rumble Fish"!

Due to the stage manager blocking my view, I'm not sure if Mickey's rating was positive or not, but I can tell you that "Harley Davidson and the Malboro Man" got two enthusiastic THUMBS DOWN from the man himself, as well as some booing from the audience!

The conversation turned to dogs as both men have more than five small dogs. Mickey spoke about Loki, and Jonathan gifted him with fancy dog collars for his dogs. Mickey also showed Jonathan the pictures of his dogs he has on his trouser chains.

The segment ended with Jonathan wishing Mickey best of luck for the Oscars and showing the audience the full trailer for The Wrestler!

As the studio audience left the Television Centre, we were treated to Mickey looking resplendent in a white jacket as he got into his car to leave. He was headed to the Elle Style Awards where he recieved the Male Lead award from Thandie Newton.