Danger, man at reconstruction work

up with the winning formula for himself.

MUCH as I admire the skills of my photographer colleague, Mike

Wilkinson, I knew he would never manage to prise that bunnet off Forbes

Masson's head for the photograph on this page. Under the cute Bisto boy

cap, you see, is a hairstyle from hell. Half of Masson's hair was shaved

off for his recent London role in The Life of Stuff. He looks, he says,

wincing a little, as if he is recovering from major brain surgery,

because the missing follicles are showing a marked reluctance to return.

Let us therefore draw a veil over Masson's lack of tonsorial

achievement and attempt to burrow under that thick ginger thatch. Let us

try to discover whether there is more to Masson than just the ''camp,

old variety tart'' he claims to be. Is he simply an actor and writer who

calls himself ''a provider of entertainments'' or, since his erstwhile

partner Alan Cumming's recent critical success in Hamlet, ''the man who

used to work with Alan Cumming,'' one half of the late-lamented Victor

and Barry? Or shall we say that he is only a mummer trying to earn a

crust, but one with the enviable capacity to be in two places at once?

This festive season, Masson, he of the slight, studentish build, pale,

thin, worried features, and daft grin, is not only behind you, he's also

in front of you, with his very own pantos in both Edinburgh and Glasgow.

Oh yes, he is! His new version of Snow White is at the Tron in Glasgow,

while the lad himself is about to star at the Edinburgh Royal Lyceum in

Michael Boyd's production of Masson's own side-splittingly funny

Cinderella, first seen at the Tron last year.

So, a carroty-haired little over-achiever with a Van Gogh complex, or

a vertically-challenged chap with Napoleonic ambitions, as one newspaper

inferred last week? Oh no, he is not!

Masson shifts uneasily in his seat, rattles the ice-cubes in his

mineral water and admits, well, yes, he is almost as ubiquitous as the

Chip. But . . . ''I do tend to spread myself about a bit, maybe too

much, I suppose. I feel as though I should be concentrating in one area

-- the straight acting or the writing -- and I know as far as my London

agent is concerned, they would prefer me to be a bit more marketable in

one area. They don't really know how to package me.'' But he does enjoy

dipping a toe in various waters, although it smacks of becoming a jack

of all trades, master of none.

Anyway, he sort of drifted into pantos through doing Victor and Barry.

It will be remembered that V&B were once gloriously incarnated as

Victoria and Barathea -- the Hinge and Brackett of the Clyde -- in a

Tron panto some years ago. And Masson himself recalls a childhood of

virtually non-stop panto-going every Christmas. ''My mum and dad are

quite old and when I was young they took me to lots of pantos -- Rikki

Fulton and Stanley Baxter. My folks loved all that stuff and I do think

a lot of that infected Victor and Barry, too. But it was when I started

doing some stand-up on my own that Michael Boyd asked me to write my

first panto. It was fun because I could work out all my own music stuff,

too. I love all those showbizzy numbers from the days when my mother was

involved in amateur musicals and used to drag me along with her. I also

like taking the p**s out of all that.''

That's what he does with his pantos -- he takes a traditional story

and subverts it. He does find, here Masson hesitates, that in writing

them, ''there are elements in the structure, there is something kind of

cathartic about it. It's dead weird. When I look at the finished result

I see major things about me in them.'' Now couldn't an analyst have fun

with that?

''Yeah, I do see me in them. Which is very frightening.

Subconsciously. Usually the male heroes are quite kind of timid,

insecure people who have this 'thing' inside them which comes out at the

end of Act I.'' What sort of 'thing', like Alien? ''You know. This

confident self, this thing! And I always end up being dominated by

women. It's really strange.''

For a couple of years now, 30-year-old Masson has been working hard on

building up his confidence and on a musical based around Don Juan, ''but

trying to get in touch with this New Man thing, to know what it's all

about''. He thinks of himself as a New Man, but his actions don't always

square with all that stuff. ''I think, 'who am I trying to fool? Who am

I trying to kid? Where do I fit in? What is my role?' ''

So is he a New Man? Well, he makes soups. ''I always think -- oh, it's

getting really w****y now -- that it's about seeing women as your equals

and not being in a dominant state about it. It's about equality which is

very difficult because society is so male-dominated and it's about

caring . . . but there are things I instictively find myself doing that

go against all these ideals that I have in my head and that's when it

all starts to get a bit shaky. And I start to think that I am not as

nice as I am painting myself here. I'm not a reconstructed man at all.''

He has a girl-friend, the talented young actor Fiona Bell, with whom

he fell in love when she was his Cinderella at the Tron last year. She

will again be Cinders to his Buttons at the Lyceum this year. Various

traumas in his private life earlier this year caused what he describes

as ''a bit of a schism in my head''. It meant he had to withdraw from

Michael Boyd's Mayfest production of Macbeth. He pulled out the day

before rehearsals started. ''I wish I hadn't put everyone through that,

but I just wasn't on top of things; I was a bit wobbly. I was to have

been Ross -- the spiritual centre of the piece -- and I didn't think I

was feeling very spiritual at the time. I was right off the rails.

''There was lot piling up on me -- overwork, everything to do with my

father's illness -- he is in his eighties and suffers from dementia --

and knowing I was reaching 30, and looking at my dad and going, 'what

did you do with your life?

What's happened to you? Why are you this shell who doesn't know who I

am and who can't dress himself properly?' My dad was going to be a

footballer, you see, a professional, but family pressures . . . He never

did it, he went into the family business in Falkirk, selling gravestones

and fireplaces -- a strange combination -- and became a workaholic. I

was to have followed in his footsteps and picked up his chisel or

whatever you do with gravestones. I did a year of accountancy and hated

it so much that I took myself off to drama school in Glasgow.''

At the RSAMD he met Alan Cumming, two years his junior. ''The swine is

not only more successful than me, he is also younger and healthier,

having stopped both drinking and smoking.'' Masson still indulges in

both of the latter activities. As a straight actor, Cumming is currently

conquering London.

So have those camp old thesps, those mainstays of Kelvinside am-dram,

gone the way of their wardrobe mistress, Ophelia Wishart, and been laid

to rest?

''We like to say they are in cryogenic sleep, that they are on ice

somewhere. I think that's quite important because otherwise we would

have been at each other's throats by now. We have been known to get a

bit nippy with each other. It was worse when we were doing V&B because

there was the strain of being onstage together.

But no, I don't think we'll bring them back, although we are still

working together'' -- on the May, 1994 BBC-2 sit-com, The High Life,

which they have written and in which they play a couple of air stewards

-- ''and we both really enjoy writing together, although logistically

it's difficult. Alan has a fax. I don't. I'm the neurotic one and Alan

is so organised, he's a walking Filofax.'' An attraction of opposites?

''Yeah, it has been just like a 10-year-old marriage. Without the sex,

by the way.''

Does he ever look at Cumming's success in films and theatre and think

why him, why not me?

''Oh yeah, I wouldn't be human if I didn't feel those things. There

were certainly times in the past when I maybe got a wee bit hint of

bitterness. I do think there was a bit of that in me. Yeah. But, as I

say, I wouldn't be human if not, because we worked together for so long

and our careers went the same way, and then there was this dramatic leap

for Alan when he moved to London.''

And yes, he thinks all the time about making the move south, too. But

he's an only child, one who has been cossetted and protected, one who

has never had to take responsibility, one who feels entirely exposed

having come out into the real world. And now he realises he has to take

responsibility for his parents.

''Sometimes it seems that everything is falling apart, including my

dad's business, and I'm racked by that guilt thing, thinking that I

should have gone into the business. And then you stop yourself and you

think, 'please, please, just stop it'. Obviously I talk to other people

about my folks and they say, 'you've got your own life to lead'. But I

feel running away from it all is a certain sort of male thing.''You run

away from your responsibilities and think you are getting away with it,

when in actual fact they are accelerating at greater speed than you are

and you are going to end up hitting them at even greater speed. Weird,

eh?''