Redundant
adjective
Not or no longer needed or useful; superfluous.
synonyms: unnecessary, not required, inessential, unessential, needless, unneeded, uncalled for, dispensable, disposable, expendable, unwanted, useless;

Well as 2014 drew to a close it was suddenly far from ‘beginning to look a lot like Christmas’ as the song goes. The part I played in the advert I filmed holding a tray full of parsnips didn’t make it to the final cut, one slice of a commercial montage too many, even in the giddy throws of Christmas consumerism. To say I was gutted is an understatement. See the dispensable parsnip above, and he was only an extra. This was not because I gave my best performance ever (though I did have a tiny inner objective in the scene to get a tray of parsnips from one place to another, ‘I’m a…a worker…a parsnip mover, my job is to…is to…make sure these parsnips are safe…however heavy’,) and not because it’s the most important thing to happen in the world, at all, but because it was money. As simple as that. Three weeks before Christmas and the earnings you thought you were getting are only a fraction of what you signed up for. The same day I also found out that I didn’t get two other jobs, one, a drama that I was very close to getting and that I really wanted.
I was, however lucky that last year had brought so many positive experiences, in other creative pursuits to cancel out the disappointments. And also, by some Karmic justice, fate decided to run a different advert I did last year to make for the loss. The problem with filming a commercial these days is that you really don’t ever know if you’ll be in it, but you place your trust in there and hope for the best. It creates sometimes a tense atmosphere on set though and you often see actors behaving like meerkat’s, ducking and diving and watching their backs in case things suddenly change and the parsnip holder is now the sprout slicer. Its all about keeping you on your toes, remember to drink lots of coffee. Never mix vegetables and film, that’s what I’ve learnt. Unless of course they help you cry, should you so need it. I really could have done with this lot around 1999 when I was trying to squeeze out tears for Holby city. I could have got an Oscar for my performance today.