Tamara Rojo, dancer
I once had to dance in a beige, skintight, all-in-one costume with a bald cap. It was to make me look like a newborn baby — but it made me look like a condom. It would hardly have mattered what the choreography was like, so hideous did I look. But it wasn’t very good either.
My current position at the Royal Ballet is the best job. There’s the prestige, plus all the amazing dancers and teachers I work with. The best performance I ever gave was at the farewell for Julio Bocca in Buenos Aires. They closed off the main street: 300,000 people came. I felt like one of the Rolling Stones.
Arthur Smith, comedian
I’ve been a road-sweeper, a toilet cleaner and a TEFL [teaching English as a Foreign Language] teacher. I spent several days in supermarkets on the south coast dressed as a fox, too. My role was to detain shoppers long enough so they could watch my lady colleague prepare a tasty new brand of chicken burger, and then buy it. The costume was 8 feet [2.4m] tall and terrifying: wherever I walked, you could hear small children crying.
Bob and Roberta Smith, artists
The worst was also in some ways the most rewarding. I was caring for a man with severe cerebral palsy. He was courageous, but could do nothing much for himself. He had a powerful sexual appetite, which meant taking him to visit prostitutes. I had to wait on the corner while the car gently rocked back and forth. I felt I had hit rock bottom — but my difficulties were nothing compared to his.
In art world terms, probably the most horrid job is working for companies who ship other artists’ work around. Often the more successful artists are beastly to the kids who are just starting out.
Billy Bragg, musician
Working in an all-night petrol station was my worst job. The hours were long, the wages low and the management were skimming off money claiming you pilfered Rolos. Awful. My best job? Come off it — I get paid to do the thing that I always wanted to do.
Gillian Wearing, artist
My worst job was telephone market research. I hated cold calling — although occasionally you got remarkably interesting answers: One old lady didn’t realize cinemas still existed. My favorite job was temping for Virgin Records in the late 80s . Everyone was sweet and laid back, and they had contemporary art on the walls.
Kwame Kwei-Armah, playwright
I worked at a telesales company that was like David Mamet’s Glengarry Glen Ross, with the manager standing over you shouting. My best day job was teaching drama to young people at the black arts center Yaa Asantewaa, in London. Years later, I ran into two of my students, who are now professional actors. That warms my heart.
Price of fame: what artists earn in the UK
Actors
► Minimum Equity rate for an actor in a West End play: £550 (US$887) per week (excluding expenses).
► Minimum Equity rate for an actor in regional repertory: £350 per week (US$564) (plus £124 (US$200) relocation allowance).
► Daily pay for a “supporting artist” in a BBC TV show: £85.50 (US$138).
► Amount an actor can make for an advertisement: £5,000 (US$8,060) to £15,000 (US$24,190) for a TV commercial (two to three days of work).
Dancers
► Minimum Equity rate for a touring cabaret dancer: £340 (US$548) per week and £177 (US$286) expenses.
► Minimum Equity rate for a ballet dancer performing regularly with a company: £400 (US$645) per week.
Musicians
► PPL, the music licensing company that collects royalties on behalf of 42,000 performers, says 90 percent of them earn less than £15,000 (US$24,196) a year.
► The Performing Rights Society, which processes payments for songwriters and composers, says 90 percent of the people on their books earn less than £5,000 (US$8,067) a year.
Visual artists
► Average weekly income for a visual artist: £521 (US$841) (average figure based on highest and lowest earnings. Source: Office of National Statistics, 2009).
► Amount paid for works sold at the annual Affordable Art Fair in London: £50 to (US$81) £3,000 (US$4,839) (of which a percentage may go to an artist’s gallery).Source: The Guardian
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