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Jan. 15th, 2011 03:00 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
loonyandproud[nick / name]: Leah
[personal LJ name]:![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
cws_eat_chs
[other characters currently played]:
The Master :: Doctor Who ::neverendingbeat
Chris Skelton :: Life on Mars ::justcautious
[e-mail]: malea.botor@gmail.com
[AIM / messenger]: moralsremitted
[series]: Takin’ Over the Asylum
[character]: Campbell Bain
[character history / background]: At some point, Campbell left school. Also at some point, he was diagnosed as being bipolar and ended up in St. Jude’s Asylum. I’m tempted to combine these two events. He left school at around 15 or 16 when he ought to have been taking GCSEs. I imagine he’d been losing interest in school for a while and had possibly been having difficulty with the serious onset of bipolar disorder and ended up going to St. Jude’s for a couple of years for treatment.
The show starts when he’s 19 and has clearly been at the asylum for a little while, as he’s pretty settled in. He has a pretty firm grasp of the scheduling and traditions of the place, as well as knowing the names of basically everyone. Besides that, he’s made friends with Fergus.
Campbell is the second person to meet Eddie when he first shows up at St. Jude’s. He tells Eddie about what the patients generally do and shows him the radio station. Eddie doesn’t work out that he’s a patient until the head nurse shows up and sends Campbell off to take his meds. Later, when Eddie has his first proper show at the asylum, Campbell is one of the few to actually listen to it, and really enjoys it. He decides that the station has a lot of potential and Eddie needs to keep going. In short, he becomes instantly obsessed and starts coming up with loads of ideas for it, writing jingles, inventing publicity stunts, and asking Eddie for his own show. He spends the night recording jingles and getting Rosalie, a woman with OCD, to clean the entire hospital radio studio.
The next day, he starts off with his first stunt, which is to offer to play any request that they actually have in the record library. Shortly after, Eddie allows Campbell to participate in his next show and when the mixing desk blows, Fergus comes and fixes it, thus saving the show. He cleans up after the show.
Somewhat later, Eddie starts schooling Campbell on the basics of the job, teaching him how to use the mixing desk and to put on records. Campbell picks it up fairly quickly, quickly enough that Eddie lets him have his own show the following day, just as his dad arrives to have a talk with him. He tells Campbell that the doctors have told him that he’ll be let out the next week and wants to know if Campbell has any plans. Campbell, of course, names a bunch of short term things, and his dad asks him if he’s going to do his exams. He wants Campbell to be more down to earth. When Campbell says he doesn’t know what he wants to do yet, his dad tells him to stop being so daft, and the whole thing escalates into an argument. His dad says that they’ve “never had a loony in the family before [Campbell]”, Campbell accuses his dad of being a worthless road sweeper, and they part rather angry with each other.
Despite this, Campbell is soon back to being enthusiastic about his own show, enlisting Fergus to help him advertise for it. And when it comes to it, Campbell’s actually quite good at it! He calls it the “most fun he’s ever had without being manic” and once Eddie tells him he was good at it, he decides he wants to be a professional radio DJ. Which makes him even more obsessed with radio, saying he’s going to gain experience at the hospital radio with Eddie and get all of the things he needs to be a DJ. He says he’s going to use the radio to get proper stations to come to him, rather than writing letters to them.
Next, Campbell sells all his cigarettes to get money for Fergus to buy him proper headphones just like Eddie’s. But his dad comes back and tells him that his DJ thing is just another of his ridiculous dreams like being a popstar. He tells Campbell that he has to go and live in Perth with his aunt to take adult classes or else he’ll have Campbell sectioned, which would mean that Campbell would be controlled by the hospital, and not be able to leave. So during his next show, Campbell pretends to have an attack of mania so that he’ll be recommitted. And his plan works: he gets to stay for another 6 to 10 weeks.
Campbell’s first big publicity stunt is to go and play music out in public while getting people to sign a piece of paper, saying he should be a professional. However, he doesn’t invite anyone from the press, and therefore doesn’t end up in the papers. Plus, he misses his own show.
When the hospital says they don’t have any money to fund the radio station with, Campbell decides to run a fundraiser for the hospital’s Mental Health Week Open Day. With help from Rosalie, he organises a loony lottery with prizes and gets Spike Milligan to show up and actually manages to get the press to show. After which they write an article.
A few days after the fundraiser, the radio stations still haven’t written to Campbell, but he refuses to send them demo tapes of himself, because it would be “grovelling”. As for the new mixing desk that Fergus went out to buy, they aren’t allowed to install it, even though Fergus is an electrical engineer, because he is technically a patient and therefore doesn’t count as “qualified”. And because they never get around to doing anything at the hospital, it looks like they’ll never get it. However, Radio Scotland actually contacts Campbell for an interview with him and Eddie after he writes them a letter, although they get ushered out fairly quickly and told they’ll get offered a slot as soon as one’s available. Campbell decides that the best way to get a job is to play Radio Scotland off of Radio Clyde. He tells Radio Clyde that they had a position with Radio Scotland, but it doesn’t get them a job there, so he decides to go and tell Radio Scotland that they had a job with Radio Clyde. Which works: they get a pilot with Radio Scotland.
Meanwhile, Campbell helps Fergus come up with ideas for fake jobs to pad out his CV, as he’s being released shortly. They even get Eddie in on it to pretend to be his former boss. However, in order to pad out her own career, a doctor at the hospital decides to stop him from getting a job so that she can research him. This sends Fergus over the edge and he jumps off the top of the hospital, killing himself.
In response to Fergus’s death, Campbell decides that he’s not going to bother hiding the fact that he’s bipolar, and instead, he’s going to “flaunt it”, stating “We are loonies, and we are proud!” He comes up with an idea for their pilot with Radio Scotland that involves Eddie, as “Doctor Boogie”, naming the title and years of release for various oldies. Campbell brings a bunch of props with him and creates an over-the-top ridiculous pilot, upon which the woman in charge, Paula Kinghorn, is impressed and asks Eddie in for a meeting on Thursday.
When Eddie goes to the meeting, he’s told that those in charge all liked his and Campbell’s pilot, but they were all a bit concerned about Campbell being bipolar, and that it would make him unreliable. Paula asks Eddie if he’ll consider taking the position alone, but he refuses it. She takes him at his word and decides to let both Campbell and Eddie take over for a DJ who becomes incapacitated.
After that, Paula calls Eddie to arrange a meeting for lunch. But the woman in charge of St. Jude’s realises that they need another treatment ward and the radio station is a luxury they can’t afford. So they decide to close down the hospital radio station, which inspires Campbell to try and stage another fundraiser: a radio-thon. But Eddie, who will get fired if his name appears in the papers again, refuses to help. Campbell goes off to do it with Rosalie. They get all of the patients to join in and perform a party piece for the fundraiser. But with the station still getting closed by builders, Campbell decides the only way to save the station is to lock themselves in, refuse to leave, and invite the press.
At Eddie’s lunch meeting with Paula, she says she enjoyed his show, and there’s a slot coming up with a radio DJ leaving. However, everyone she’s working with decides that the Gold Show, the slot coming up, would be better with one person, and they decide they want Campbell for it. Initially, Campbell refuses, and says they’ll search out other stations, but Eddie insists that he take the job.
For the station occupation publicity stunt, Campbell locks himself in with Rosalie, and then, last minute, Eddie shows up, climbs in through the window, and is there with them for the final showdown, ending up with all of them in the paper getting dragged out by the police. At the very end, Campbell has settled in with his slot at the radio show.
[character abilities]: What Campbell is really good at is talking. This leads to an ability to be a smooth talker on the radio, which, combined with his ability for brainstorming, makes him a rather effective DJ. Additionally, he is good at lying, complete self-confidence, and marketing himself. He seems to mainly lose all of these abilities when he’s talking to his dad.
As for more useless abilities, he can compose at least a little bit, play guitar fairly decently, and do nearly passable accents.
[character personality]:
Campbell has a tendency to be friendly to absolutely everyone (unless he’s decided he has a reason to disdain them), and take almost every situation in stride. However, he can get out of hand quite easily. For one, his taking everything in stride tends to turn into assuming one course of events and then living as if there is no question that that will happen, without taking anyone else into real account. When he decides that he and Eddie are going to be a professional radio DJs team, he barely listens to anything Eddie says. He looks up to him a ridiculous amount, in that he starts to try and model himself after Eddie: getting the same kind of headphones, and painting his name on them in the same way, and specialising in the same style of music. But if Eddie tells him that something’s impossible, that it can’t be done and they’ll never make it, Campbell ignores him entirely and goes on conning his way into things and pulling Eddie along. He idolises him, which means that anything Eddie says that doesn’t fit into the image Campbell has of him, he just ignores and pretends not to hear.
This leads into another point on Campbell: his idealism. He doesn’t really think of the world in a realistic manner. He’s convinced things are going to go right most of the time, which means he gets truly crushed and sulky when they don’t. He doesn’t try to get any jobs grounded in the real world; he doesn’t even really consider the fact he might need one. The same goes for any further education. As far as he is concerned, his dad will go on supporting him as long as he needs and he can go on trying to become an actor, or a star jockey, or a rock star, or a pro DJ. It does mean that in order to continue living in his fantasy world, he will do anything it takes to keep on getting his way. Setbacks can only make him sulky for a certain amount of time. Before long, he’s come up with some sort of scheme to keep him on the path he wants. For instance, when he’s decided he wants to be a pro DJ, but his dad tells him that he has to either go to his aunt’s in Perth and take adult courses, or else he’ll be sectioned, he starts out by yelling, and flinging things, and then flopping about and sulkily starting to smoke again. But before long, he’s pretending to have an attack of mania so that he can be re-committed to the hospital for another 8-10 weeks without getting sectioned, so that he can pursue his dream for that entire time. To Eddie, or another rational person, he’s clearly only putting off the inevitable, but Campbell is so convinced that he can fulfil his dreams that he just thinks of it as buying himself time to achieve what he always knew he could.
Campbell is overall friendly, but he can be unapologetically rude if someone tries to prevent him from something he wants, or if he just doesn’t like somebody. His friendliness often takes the form of his natural idealism and enthusiasm spilling over the sides of his own goals and into everyone else’s. If he likes a person, and they want something, he is convinced that they’ll get it, or should get it because they are clearly such an utterly deserving person. As for his rudeness, it mainly pops up whenever it looks like he’s not getting his way. He can be extremely sarcastic, especially when he’s doing something he thinks of as nice for Eddie, and Eddie sees it as him going over the top. He manages to get an interview for him and Eddie with Radio Scotland, and get them interested, but instead of just letting it stay at that, he decides to pretend he’s got an offer from another radio station and play them off each other. Which, considering Eddie has been trying for 15 to 20 years to just get an interview at all, is ridiculously risky. But the more Eddie tells Campbell to just let it be, the sulkier and more sarcastic Campbell gets, saying he’s got them another interview, if that’s okay with Eddie. He doesn’t know when to stop, which means that any attempt to curtail him is seen as trying to push him down and ruin his life. As for just not liking someone, this applies to Stuart, the nursing assistant at the hospital, who uses a ridiculous amount of unnecessary violence to control the patients, which naturally means that Campbell doesn’t like him at all. At one point, he pushes Stuart and asks him how low an IQ he needs for his job. Of course, he’s horrible at fighting, and Stuart overpowers him easily, but it doesn’t seem to stop Campbell. He’s very big on acting without thinking very much about what he’s doing.
Overall, Campbell is pretty naïve. He thinks that because Eddie has a job at the hospital, it means he is a professional DJ and is the absolute authority on the matter. Even though, of course, his optimism clashes madly with Eddie’s pessimism and results in him copying Eddie exactly except for Eddie’s reasonability. He’s somehow convinced that the only reason Eddie isn’t in the big leagues yet is because Eddie just hasn’t bothered trying yet, and he doesn’t even stop to consider that it might be because he’s mediocre. This also applies to the dream worlds he persists in living in, and the fact that he rarely considers monetary issues, except for money as a sort of vague concept: something he should have loads of any day now. He’s also rather self-absorbed: he always comes first, and considering others is secondary or non-existent if it’s directly contradictory to what he wants. He’s not very empathetic. He’s really a pretty immature person. And he’ll lie to someone’s face if it means getting what he wants. He’s not above trickery like pretending to have an attack of mania to get to stay at the hospital without being sectioned, or lying about having a job elsewhere to put pressure on a person to get a job from them.
Campbell and being bipolar: Campbell's specific sort of bipolar disorder is mainly mania-related, although it occasionally must swing into depression, as he mentions being given "uppers for when [he's] down". However, for the most part, or at least for the entire time we see Campbell, he's in a nigh-constant state of hypomania, a state that's more manageable and less intense than full-blown mania. When he's at St. Jude's, they regulate his medication intake, so he's less likely to have any manic episodes.
Campbell's entire personality is very strongly shaped by his hypomania. It probably has a lot to do with his quick-thinking and talking, and it definitely has something to do with how often he changes what it is he wants and with his enthusiasm. Additionally, his tendency to be a little bit self-involved could be related to his hypomania as well (though, of course, it also might have something to do with him being a teenager). He seems to be pretty idealistic and out of touch with how the world works on his own.
The extremes of manic and depressive episodes have been described as unpleasant and in the case of the mania, occasionally scary by people who are bipolar, so Campbell does have a certain amount of incentive to stay on the medicine. When he's pretending to have a manic episode in the show, he pretends to be inclined towards jumping out the window to see if he can fly. He says that mania is "knowing you can [do anything]", and it clearly makes him a danger to himself. However, the unpleasantness of his episodes hasn't stopped Campbell from thoroughly embracing the fact that he is a "loony". He wouldn't want to ever take a medicine that, say, completely levelled him out and blocked his hypomania. To him, that's a massive part of who he is.
Bipolar people describe a condition called 'racing thoughts', which is a series of really quick thoughts, uncontrollably switching through to other thoughts. It makes it very difficult for the individual to concentrate, often, or it results in a sort of creativity. With Campbell, it has a lot to do with his tendency to come up with ideas and plans on the spot, one after the other until one sticks. It also is why he does a lot of leaping before he looks.
As for his feelings, Campbell being so often hypomanic means that he's generally pleased, or irritable. His mood doesn't tend to go down unless the episode lets up a bit, or, though we've never seen it, when he goes into a depressive episode. At that point, he'd probably feel hopeless, useless, listless, and tired. It would be a real effort for him to do anything.
[point in timeline you're picking your character from]: A couple of months after the end of the series. In January.
[journal post]:
[Accidental Audio Post]
[The audio cuts in in the middle of a sentence spoken quite quickly in an enthusiastic and very Scottish male voice.]
--but I willnae keep you waitin’ any longer, so here’s th—
[A pause.]
Actually, I may have to keep you waiting just a wee bit longer, Gold Boppers, because I think I might have gone loonier than usual, being as I cannae see the studio anymore. I’ve lost my cans too, and the record and the mic and…the chair I was sitting in and it’s a very detailed hallucination, actually, cos I cannae feel or hear anything real any more either.
It’s all been replaced, though, I’ve no just gone blind and deaf and unless the nice men are already here and dragging me back to St. Jude’s I bet you’re all sitting there on the edge of your seats, wonderin’ what it is I’m seeing, or what’s gone wrong with me now, or maybe you’re just writing another angry letter to tell Radio Scotland that [He puts on a deeper, more English voice] Campbell Bain really isn’t suitable for the post and should be removed before he damages equipment that he cannae see. [He speaks normally again.] But I don’t care about you, I care about the first lot, and I can tell you all that it looks like I’m in a city square now, sitting on a park bench. Nowhere in Glasgow, I havenae seen this sort of fountain anywhere before, so I must’ve invented this one.
[Another pause.]
And I cannae feel the mic anywhere so either I’ve knocked it sideways now, or I’m no in the studio anymore and I’m talkin’ to myself in a hospital bed. … [Quietly.] I hope they don’t sedate me. I could easily be more interestin’ than Neighbours, goin’ on like this. Well, at least as interesting. Close second. Better than Myra the Catatonic, at least.
[The feed stays on but the man doesn’t talk anymore.]
[third person / log sample]:
Campbell’s latest plan starts with a phonecall to his dad.
Or, very nearly his dad. After all, it’s not his fault if he called home and his dad wasn’t there. Not his fault if his dad’s off being a road sweeper, or a ‘Foreman with the Cleansing Department’. It just happened to be the time he felt like calling, that’s all. He leaves a message with his mum, telling her that yes, he knows he’ll be out in two weeks, yes, he sends his love but what he could really go for is her and his dad listening to the radio, tomorrow at 2:00, Radio Scotland. And no, it’s not his daft talk, he really thinks they’ll hear something they’re interested in.
On the Campbell Bain’s Gold Show, the following day, hoping that they’re listening (although he’s got a really good feeling about it so might as well not hope, right, when you’re almost certain?), Campbell says hello to his parents.
“An’ you thought I’d end up a waster, dad, did yeh no, that this was just another one of my daft dreams?” He leans into the microphone, grinning and saying, “Don’t nobody go and pinch me, then! Here you are, then, dad, this one’s for you.” He switches on The Logical Song and feels very pleased with himself.
Pleased enough that he dares go home for a visit in person, and then, naturally, wishes he hadn’t dared. Borderline mania has its major downsides sometimes, one of them being a tendency to blithely walk into lectures from your dad.
“It’s hardly a real job, though, is it, son?” says his dad, and Campbell boggles at this obvious fallacy. No, he hasn’t considered going to Perth for the adult classes, for Christ’s sake, he has a job with Radio Scotland. Radio bloody Scotland! His dad, typically, refuses to see reason. Alright, no, he probably can’t support himself on the money from one radio show but it’s only a matter of time before he’s made it higher up in the business! Any day now, the higher ups are going to see his potential, listening to him every Sunday, and they’re going to give him two slots. No, three! “You’re a national treasure, Mr. Bain,” they’ll say, shaking his hand and giving him a slot on every day of the week. But of course his dad doesn’t think so. His dad never thinks so. The Perth thing is still on, for two weeks from now when he’s released from St. Jude’s, or sectioning it is, so so much for Plan 1.
Plan 2 is invented on the spot after he goes back to the hospital to pace angrily in his room for about two minutes before yelling “HA!” and upsetting three patients with anxiety disorders. If his dad wants him to prove that he can get a real job in this time of ‘recession’ then he’ll get a real job. He gets Rosalie in on it first, helping him make lists of anywhere in Glasgow says they’re hiring, and then Eddie, to help him write out the first resume he’s ever had in his life. And then he hits the circuit madly, bringing nothing if not enthusiasm to every potential employer. He avoids the menial task places, spots as janitors and the like. He’s not going to end up like his dad. He’s going to do something extraordinary, even if it does have to be retail. Campbell Bain does not lower himself to cleaning for pay. Campbell Bain changes the world, for £4 an hour.
And he must be just as extraordinary as he thinks he is, because by the end of the week, Campbell has a job with a record shop, starting next week. Excellent! No, perfect.
“You can tell dad that I’ve got a job an’ he can take his recession and eat it. No, I willnae be comin’ home for dinner, mum.”
That evening, his dad calls him back. “It’s not a long-term solution, son. Not a career.” What does he bloody want from him? He’s got his career already! It’s being a radio DJ! He’s got his dream, he’s got the real job, and he’s not going to put up with his dad anymore. He can’t have him sectioned, he just can’t.
So, Plan 3: never go home. His dad can’t come and lecture him if he doesn’t know where he is. He’ll phone, of course, no-one can say he’s not being a good son, because he is, model son, but at the first sign of a lecture, he’ll hang up. Problem solved. He goes out looking for For Lease signs and to visit Rosalie at Hillcrest the next day, taking a bit of a hint from Fergus, and escaping. He’s getting out in a week, anyway, it’s not as if it really matters. After spending the day working out a plan with Rosalie (and getting into a fight with a neighbourhood kid who throws things at them and calls them loonies [and very nearly losing the fight, kids these days]) and then arranging meetings over the phone with a few landlords, Campbell is feeling rather cheerful, up until the point where he comes back to the hospital, knocks on the door, and finds his dad waiting for him.
“They said you’d run off,” his dad says, trying to make it sound casual.
“Oh aye,” says Campbell, and then sticks out his jaw stubbornly and adds, “I was looking for a flat.”
“Were you,” says his dad. Campbell can feel what’s coming next. He’ll tell him that he’s young and doesn’t understand things again, or that he’s just setting himself up for a downfall. He does know what he’s doing! He clearly does! It should have been clear enough when he got his dream job, when he finally found something he was properly good at! The fact that he actually went out and got another job is just the icing on the cake! Above and beyond the call of duty and why doesn’t his dad get that?
“Aye,” says Campbell coldly. “I was. And d’you know what? I’m no goin’ t’let you ruin my life!” A patient turns to give him a withering look and walks over to turn the volume of the telly up. “You cannae control me forever, you know! You cannae push me down to end up just like you!”
“Did you find one?” asks his dad calmly, apparently not realising how utterly important and drastic this whole situation is. Campbell opens and closes his mouth a couple of times.
“Er. Well I’ve no actually gone t’ look at them yet,” he says finally. “But I am going! And I’ll find a place!”
“I’m sure ye will,” his dad says, and sighs. “Campbell…are y’sure that this isnae just another one of yer daft fantasies?”
“I’ve never wanted t’do something so much in my life,” says Campbell promptly.
“Aye,” says his dad. “That’s what you say every time. But…a job might do you good.”
Campbell stares at him tensely. “D’y’mean you willnae ha’ me sectioned, then?”
“No. I willnae.”
He’s quiet for a moment and then he yells wordlessly. “Oh, brilliant! Thank you thank you thank you thank you!” The television is turned up to impossibly loud by the ferociously glowering patient. Campbell and his dad move out into the hall.
“Alright,” says his dad. “Calm down or I’ll have tae change my mind.”
Campbell makes a token effort but he’s won! He’s free to do what he wants and for once, he’s absolutely certain of what he wants, without even having to be manic. From, now on, the sky’s the limit, and he’s going to take his DJ career right to the top! He’s going to properly make it in the business: more than just not having to have a second job, he’s going to be rolling in money! One day, everyone’s going to know the name of Campbell Bain, celebrity DJ!
But first, Plan 4: set up a series of interesting traps for the irritating neighbourhood kids at Hillcrest.
[personal LJ name]:
cws_eat_chs[other characters currently played]:
The Master :: Doctor Who ::
neverendingbeatChris Skelton :: Life on Mars ::
justcautious[e-mail]: malea.botor@gmail.com
[AIM / messenger]: moralsremitted
[series]: Takin’ Over the Asylum
[character]: Campbell Bain
[character history / background]: At some point, Campbell left school. Also at some point, he was diagnosed as being bipolar and ended up in St. Jude’s Asylum. I’m tempted to combine these two events. He left school at around 15 or 16 when he ought to have been taking GCSEs. I imagine he’d been losing interest in school for a while and had possibly been having difficulty with the serious onset of bipolar disorder and ended up going to St. Jude’s for a couple of years for treatment.
The show starts when he’s 19 and has clearly been at the asylum for a little while, as he’s pretty settled in. He has a pretty firm grasp of the scheduling and traditions of the place, as well as knowing the names of basically everyone. Besides that, he’s made friends with Fergus.
Campbell is the second person to meet Eddie when he first shows up at St. Jude’s. He tells Eddie about what the patients generally do and shows him the radio station. Eddie doesn’t work out that he’s a patient until the head nurse shows up and sends Campbell off to take his meds. Later, when Eddie has his first proper show at the asylum, Campbell is one of the few to actually listen to it, and really enjoys it. He decides that the station has a lot of potential and Eddie needs to keep going. In short, he becomes instantly obsessed and starts coming up with loads of ideas for it, writing jingles, inventing publicity stunts, and asking Eddie for his own show. He spends the night recording jingles and getting Rosalie, a woman with OCD, to clean the entire hospital radio studio.
The next day, he starts off with his first stunt, which is to offer to play any request that they actually have in the record library. Shortly after, Eddie allows Campbell to participate in his next show and when the mixing desk blows, Fergus comes and fixes it, thus saving the show. He cleans up after the show.
Somewhat later, Eddie starts schooling Campbell on the basics of the job, teaching him how to use the mixing desk and to put on records. Campbell picks it up fairly quickly, quickly enough that Eddie lets him have his own show the following day, just as his dad arrives to have a talk with him. He tells Campbell that the doctors have told him that he’ll be let out the next week and wants to know if Campbell has any plans. Campbell, of course, names a bunch of short term things, and his dad asks him if he’s going to do his exams. He wants Campbell to be more down to earth. When Campbell says he doesn’t know what he wants to do yet, his dad tells him to stop being so daft, and the whole thing escalates into an argument. His dad says that they’ve “never had a loony in the family before [Campbell]”, Campbell accuses his dad of being a worthless road sweeper, and they part rather angry with each other.
Despite this, Campbell is soon back to being enthusiastic about his own show, enlisting Fergus to help him advertise for it. And when it comes to it, Campbell’s actually quite good at it! He calls it the “most fun he’s ever had without being manic” and once Eddie tells him he was good at it, he decides he wants to be a professional radio DJ. Which makes him even more obsessed with radio, saying he’s going to gain experience at the hospital radio with Eddie and get all of the things he needs to be a DJ. He says he’s going to use the radio to get proper stations to come to him, rather than writing letters to them.
Next, Campbell sells all his cigarettes to get money for Fergus to buy him proper headphones just like Eddie’s. But his dad comes back and tells him that his DJ thing is just another of his ridiculous dreams like being a popstar. He tells Campbell that he has to go and live in Perth with his aunt to take adult classes or else he’ll have Campbell sectioned, which would mean that Campbell would be controlled by the hospital, and not be able to leave. So during his next show, Campbell pretends to have an attack of mania so that he’ll be recommitted. And his plan works: he gets to stay for another 6 to 10 weeks.
Campbell’s first big publicity stunt is to go and play music out in public while getting people to sign a piece of paper, saying he should be a professional. However, he doesn’t invite anyone from the press, and therefore doesn’t end up in the papers. Plus, he misses his own show.
When the hospital says they don’t have any money to fund the radio station with, Campbell decides to run a fundraiser for the hospital’s Mental Health Week Open Day. With help from Rosalie, he organises a loony lottery with prizes and gets Spike Milligan to show up and actually manages to get the press to show. After which they write an article.
A few days after the fundraiser, the radio stations still haven’t written to Campbell, but he refuses to send them demo tapes of himself, because it would be “grovelling”. As for the new mixing desk that Fergus went out to buy, they aren’t allowed to install it, even though Fergus is an electrical engineer, because he is technically a patient and therefore doesn’t count as “qualified”. And because they never get around to doing anything at the hospital, it looks like they’ll never get it. However, Radio Scotland actually contacts Campbell for an interview with him and Eddie after he writes them a letter, although they get ushered out fairly quickly and told they’ll get offered a slot as soon as one’s available. Campbell decides that the best way to get a job is to play Radio Scotland off of Radio Clyde. He tells Radio Clyde that they had a position with Radio Scotland, but it doesn’t get them a job there, so he decides to go and tell Radio Scotland that they had a job with Radio Clyde. Which works: they get a pilot with Radio Scotland.
Meanwhile, Campbell helps Fergus come up with ideas for fake jobs to pad out his CV, as he’s being released shortly. They even get Eddie in on it to pretend to be his former boss. However, in order to pad out her own career, a doctor at the hospital decides to stop him from getting a job so that she can research him. This sends Fergus over the edge and he jumps off the top of the hospital, killing himself.
In response to Fergus’s death, Campbell decides that he’s not going to bother hiding the fact that he’s bipolar, and instead, he’s going to “flaunt it”, stating “We are loonies, and we are proud!” He comes up with an idea for their pilot with Radio Scotland that involves Eddie, as “Doctor Boogie”, naming the title and years of release for various oldies. Campbell brings a bunch of props with him and creates an over-the-top ridiculous pilot, upon which the woman in charge, Paula Kinghorn, is impressed and asks Eddie in for a meeting on Thursday.
When Eddie goes to the meeting, he’s told that those in charge all liked his and Campbell’s pilot, but they were all a bit concerned about Campbell being bipolar, and that it would make him unreliable. Paula asks Eddie if he’ll consider taking the position alone, but he refuses it. She takes him at his word and decides to let both Campbell and Eddie take over for a DJ who becomes incapacitated.
After that, Paula calls Eddie to arrange a meeting for lunch. But the woman in charge of St. Jude’s realises that they need another treatment ward and the radio station is a luxury they can’t afford. So they decide to close down the hospital radio station, which inspires Campbell to try and stage another fundraiser: a radio-thon. But Eddie, who will get fired if his name appears in the papers again, refuses to help. Campbell goes off to do it with Rosalie. They get all of the patients to join in and perform a party piece for the fundraiser. But with the station still getting closed by builders, Campbell decides the only way to save the station is to lock themselves in, refuse to leave, and invite the press.
At Eddie’s lunch meeting with Paula, she says she enjoyed his show, and there’s a slot coming up with a radio DJ leaving. However, everyone she’s working with decides that the Gold Show, the slot coming up, would be better with one person, and they decide they want Campbell for it. Initially, Campbell refuses, and says they’ll search out other stations, but Eddie insists that he take the job.
For the station occupation publicity stunt, Campbell locks himself in with Rosalie, and then, last minute, Eddie shows up, climbs in through the window, and is there with them for the final showdown, ending up with all of them in the paper getting dragged out by the police. At the very end, Campbell has settled in with his slot at the radio show.
[character abilities]: What Campbell is really good at is talking. This leads to an ability to be a smooth talker on the radio, which, combined with his ability for brainstorming, makes him a rather effective DJ. Additionally, he is good at lying, complete self-confidence, and marketing himself. He seems to mainly lose all of these abilities when he’s talking to his dad.
As for more useless abilities, he can compose at least a little bit, play guitar fairly decently, and do nearly passable accents.
[character personality]:
Campbell has a tendency to be friendly to absolutely everyone (unless he’s decided he has a reason to disdain them), and take almost every situation in stride. However, he can get out of hand quite easily. For one, his taking everything in stride tends to turn into assuming one course of events and then living as if there is no question that that will happen, without taking anyone else into real account. When he decides that he and Eddie are going to be a professional radio DJs team, he barely listens to anything Eddie says. He looks up to him a ridiculous amount, in that he starts to try and model himself after Eddie: getting the same kind of headphones, and painting his name on them in the same way, and specialising in the same style of music. But if Eddie tells him that something’s impossible, that it can’t be done and they’ll never make it, Campbell ignores him entirely and goes on conning his way into things and pulling Eddie along. He idolises him, which means that anything Eddie says that doesn’t fit into the image Campbell has of him, he just ignores and pretends not to hear.
This leads into another point on Campbell: his idealism. He doesn’t really think of the world in a realistic manner. He’s convinced things are going to go right most of the time, which means he gets truly crushed and sulky when they don’t. He doesn’t try to get any jobs grounded in the real world; he doesn’t even really consider the fact he might need one. The same goes for any further education. As far as he is concerned, his dad will go on supporting him as long as he needs and he can go on trying to become an actor, or a star jockey, or a rock star, or a pro DJ. It does mean that in order to continue living in his fantasy world, he will do anything it takes to keep on getting his way. Setbacks can only make him sulky for a certain amount of time. Before long, he’s come up with some sort of scheme to keep him on the path he wants. For instance, when he’s decided he wants to be a pro DJ, but his dad tells him that he has to either go to his aunt’s in Perth and take adult courses, or else he’ll be sectioned, he starts out by yelling, and flinging things, and then flopping about and sulkily starting to smoke again. But before long, he’s pretending to have an attack of mania so that he can be re-committed to the hospital for another 8-10 weeks without getting sectioned, so that he can pursue his dream for that entire time. To Eddie, or another rational person, he’s clearly only putting off the inevitable, but Campbell is so convinced that he can fulfil his dreams that he just thinks of it as buying himself time to achieve what he always knew he could.
Campbell is overall friendly, but he can be unapologetically rude if someone tries to prevent him from something he wants, or if he just doesn’t like somebody. His friendliness often takes the form of his natural idealism and enthusiasm spilling over the sides of his own goals and into everyone else’s. If he likes a person, and they want something, he is convinced that they’ll get it, or should get it because they are clearly such an utterly deserving person. As for his rudeness, it mainly pops up whenever it looks like he’s not getting his way. He can be extremely sarcastic, especially when he’s doing something he thinks of as nice for Eddie, and Eddie sees it as him going over the top. He manages to get an interview for him and Eddie with Radio Scotland, and get them interested, but instead of just letting it stay at that, he decides to pretend he’s got an offer from another radio station and play them off each other. Which, considering Eddie has been trying for 15 to 20 years to just get an interview at all, is ridiculously risky. But the more Eddie tells Campbell to just let it be, the sulkier and more sarcastic Campbell gets, saying he’s got them another interview, if that’s okay with Eddie. He doesn’t know when to stop, which means that any attempt to curtail him is seen as trying to push him down and ruin his life. As for just not liking someone, this applies to Stuart, the nursing assistant at the hospital, who uses a ridiculous amount of unnecessary violence to control the patients, which naturally means that Campbell doesn’t like him at all. At one point, he pushes Stuart and asks him how low an IQ he needs for his job. Of course, he’s horrible at fighting, and Stuart overpowers him easily, but it doesn’t seem to stop Campbell. He’s very big on acting without thinking very much about what he’s doing.
Overall, Campbell is pretty naïve. He thinks that because Eddie has a job at the hospital, it means he is a professional DJ and is the absolute authority on the matter. Even though, of course, his optimism clashes madly with Eddie’s pessimism and results in him copying Eddie exactly except for Eddie’s reasonability. He’s somehow convinced that the only reason Eddie isn’t in the big leagues yet is because Eddie just hasn’t bothered trying yet, and he doesn’t even stop to consider that it might be because he’s mediocre. This also applies to the dream worlds he persists in living in, and the fact that he rarely considers monetary issues, except for money as a sort of vague concept: something he should have loads of any day now. He’s also rather self-absorbed: he always comes first, and considering others is secondary or non-existent if it’s directly contradictory to what he wants. He’s not very empathetic. He’s really a pretty immature person. And he’ll lie to someone’s face if it means getting what he wants. He’s not above trickery like pretending to have an attack of mania to get to stay at the hospital without being sectioned, or lying about having a job elsewhere to put pressure on a person to get a job from them.
Campbell and being bipolar: Campbell's specific sort of bipolar disorder is mainly mania-related, although it occasionally must swing into depression, as he mentions being given "uppers for when [he's] down". However, for the most part, or at least for the entire time we see Campbell, he's in a nigh-constant state of hypomania, a state that's more manageable and less intense than full-blown mania. When he's at St. Jude's, they regulate his medication intake, so he's less likely to have any manic episodes.
Campbell's entire personality is very strongly shaped by his hypomania. It probably has a lot to do with his quick-thinking and talking, and it definitely has something to do with how often he changes what it is he wants and with his enthusiasm. Additionally, his tendency to be a little bit self-involved could be related to his hypomania as well (though, of course, it also might have something to do with him being a teenager). He seems to be pretty idealistic and out of touch with how the world works on his own.
The extremes of manic and depressive episodes have been described as unpleasant and in the case of the mania, occasionally scary by people who are bipolar, so Campbell does have a certain amount of incentive to stay on the medicine. When he's pretending to have a manic episode in the show, he pretends to be inclined towards jumping out the window to see if he can fly. He says that mania is "knowing you can [do anything]", and it clearly makes him a danger to himself. However, the unpleasantness of his episodes hasn't stopped Campbell from thoroughly embracing the fact that he is a "loony". He wouldn't want to ever take a medicine that, say, completely levelled him out and blocked his hypomania. To him, that's a massive part of who he is.
Bipolar people describe a condition called 'racing thoughts', which is a series of really quick thoughts, uncontrollably switching through to other thoughts. It makes it very difficult for the individual to concentrate, often, or it results in a sort of creativity. With Campbell, it has a lot to do with his tendency to come up with ideas and plans on the spot, one after the other until one sticks. It also is why he does a lot of leaping before he looks.
As for his feelings, Campbell being so often hypomanic means that he's generally pleased, or irritable. His mood doesn't tend to go down unless the episode lets up a bit, or, though we've never seen it, when he goes into a depressive episode. At that point, he'd probably feel hopeless, useless, listless, and tired. It would be a real effort for him to do anything.
[point in timeline you're picking your character from]: A couple of months after the end of the series. In January.
[journal post]:
[Accidental Audio Post]
[The audio cuts in in the middle of a sentence spoken quite quickly in an enthusiastic and very Scottish male voice.]
--but I willnae keep you waitin’ any longer, so here’s th—
[A pause.]
Actually, I may have to keep you waiting just a wee bit longer, Gold Boppers, because I think I might have gone loonier than usual, being as I cannae see the studio anymore. I’ve lost my cans too, and the record and the mic and…the chair I was sitting in and it’s a very detailed hallucination, actually, cos I cannae feel or hear anything real any more either.
It’s all been replaced, though, I’ve no just gone blind and deaf and unless the nice men are already here and dragging me back to St. Jude’s I bet you’re all sitting there on the edge of your seats, wonderin’ what it is I’m seeing, or what’s gone wrong with me now, or maybe you’re just writing another angry letter to tell Radio Scotland that [He puts on a deeper, more English voice] Campbell Bain really isn’t suitable for the post and should be removed before he damages equipment that he cannae see. [He speaks normally again.] But I don’t care about you, I care about the first lot, and I can tell you all that it looks like I’m in a city square now, sitting on a park bench. Nowhere in Glasgow, I havenae seen this sort of fountain anywhere before, so I must’ve invented this one.
[Another pause.]
And I cannae feel the mic anywhere so either I’ve knocked it sideways now, or I’m no in the studio anymore and I’m talkin’ to myself in a hospital bed. … [Quietly.] I hope they don’t sedate me. I could easily be more interestin’ than Neighbours, goin’ on like this. Well, at least as interesting. Close second. Better than Myra the Catatonic, at least.
[The feed stays on but the man doesn’t talk anymore.]
[third person / log sample]:
Campbell’s latest plan starts with a phonecall to his dad.
Or, very nearly his dad. After all, it’s not his fault if he called home and his dad wasn’t there. Not his fault if his dad’s off being a road sweeper, or a ‘Foreman with the Cleansing Department’. It just happened to be the time he felt like calling, that’s all. He leaves a message with his mum, telling her that yes, he knows he’ll be out in two weeks, yes, he sends his love but what he could really go for is her and his dad listening to the radio, tomorrow at 2:00, Radio Scotland. And no, it’s not his daft talk, he really thinks they’ll hear something they’re interested in.
On the Campbell Bain’s Gold Show, the following day, hoping that they’re listening (although he’s got a really good feeling about it so might as well not hope, right, when you’re almost certain?), Campbell says hello to his parents.
“An’ you thought I’d end up a waster, dad, did yeh no, that this was just another one of my daft dreams?” He leans into the microphone, grinning and saying, “Don’t nobody go and pinch me, then! Here you are, then, dad, this one’s for you.” He switches on The Logical Song and feels very pleased with himself.
Pleased enough that he dares go home for a visit in person, and then, naturally, wishes he hadn’t dared. Borderline mania has its major downsides sometimes, one of them being a tendency to blithely walk into lectures from your dad.
“It’s hardly a real job, though, is it, son?” says his dad, and Campbell boggles at this obvious fallacy. No, he hasn’t considered going to Perth for the adult classes, for Christ’s sake, he has a job with Radio Scotland. Radio bloody Scotland! His dad, typically, refuses to see reason. Alright, no, he probably can’t support himself on the money from one radio show but it’s only a matter of time before he’s made it higher up in the business! Any day now, the higher ups are going to see his potential, listening to him every Sunday, and they’re going to give him two slots. No, three! “You’re a national treasure, Mr. Bain,” they’ll say, shaking his hand and giving him a slot on every day of the week. But of course his dad doesn’t think so. His dad never thinks so. The Perth thing is still on, for two weeks from now when he’s released from St. Jude’s, or sectioning it is, so so much for Plan 1.
Plan 2 is invented on the spot after he goes back to the hospital to pace angrily in his room for about two minutes before yelling “HA!” and upsetting three patients with anxiety disorders. If his dad wants him to prove that he can get a real job in this time of ‘recession’ then he’ll get a real job. He gets Rosalie in on it first, helping him make lists of anywhere in Glasgow says they’re hiring, and then Eddie, to help him write out the first resume he’s ever had in his life. And then he hits the circuit madly, bringing nothing if not enthusiasm to every potential employer. He avoids the menial task places, spots as janitors and the like. He’s not going to end up like his dad. He’s going to do something extraordinary, even if it does have to be retail. Campbell Bain does not lower himself to cleaning for pay. Campbell Bain changes the world, for £4 an hour.
And he must be just as extraordinary as he thinks he is, because by the end of the week, Campbell has a job with a record shop, starting next week. Excellent! No, perfect.
“You can tell dad that I’ve got a job an’ he can take his recession and eat it. No, I willnae be comin’ home for dinner, mum.”
That evening, his dad calls him back. “It’s not a long-term solution, son. Not a career.” What does he bloody want from him? He’s got his career already! It’s being a radio DJ! He’s got his dream, he’s got the real job, and he’s not going to put up with his dad anymore. He can’t have him sectioned, he just can’t.
So, Plan 3: never go home. His dad can’t come and lecture him if he doesn’t know where he is. He’ll phone, of course, no-one can say he’s not being a good son, because he is, model son, but at the first sign of a lecture, he’ll hang up. Problem solved. He goes out looking for For Lease signs and to visit Rosalie at Hillcrest the next day, taking a bit of a hint from Fergus, and escaping. He’s getting out in a week, anyway, it’s not as if it really matters. After spending the day working out a plan with Rosalie (and getting into a fight with a neighbourhood kid who throws things at them and calls them loonies [and very nearly losing the fight, kids these days]) and then arranging meetings over the phone with a few landlords, Campbell is feeling rather cheerful, up until the point where he comes back to the hospital, knocks on the door, and finds his dad waiting for him.
“They said you’d run off,” his dad says, trying to make it sound casual.
“Oh aye,” says Campbell, and then sticks out his jaw stubbornly and adds, “I was looking for a flat.”
“Were you,” says his dad. Campbell can feel what’s coming next. He’ll tell him that he’s young and doesn’t understand things again, or that he’s just setting himself up for a downfall. He does know what he’s doing! He clearly does! It should have been clear enough when he got his dream job, when he finally found something he was properly good at! The fact that he actually went out and got another job is just the icing on the cake! Above and beyond the call of duty and why doesn’t his dad get that?
“Aye,” says Campbell coldly. “I was. And d’you know what? I’m no goin’ t’let you ruin my life!” A patient turns to give him a withering look and walks over to turn the volume of the telly up. “You cannae control me forever, you know! You cannae push me down to end up just like you!”
“Did you find one?” asks his dad calmly, apparently not realising how utterly important and drastic this whole situation is. Campbell opens and closes his mouth a couple of times.
“Er. Well I’ve no actually gone t’ look at them yet,” he says finally. “But I am going! And I’ll find a place!”
“I’m sure ye will,” his dad says, and sighs. “Campbell…are y’sure that this isnae just another one of yer daft fantasies?”
“I’ve never wanted t’do something so much in my life,” says Campbell promptly.
“Aye,” says his dad. “That’s what you say every time. But…a job might do you good.”
Campbell stares at him tensely. “D’y’mean you willnae ha’ me sectioned, then?”
“No. I willnae.”
He’s quiet for a moment and then he yells wordlessly. “Oh, brilliant! Thank you thank you thank you thank you!” The television is turned up to impossibly loud by the ferociously glowering patient. Campbell and his dad move out into the hall.
“Alright,” says his dad. “Calm down or I’ll have tae change my mind.”
Campbell makes a token effort but he’s won! He’s free to do what he wants and for once, he’s absolutely certain of what he wants, without even having to be manic. From, now on, the sky’s the limit, and he’s going to take his DJ career right to the top! He’s going to properly make it in the business: more than just not having to have a second job, he’s going to be rolling in money! One day, everyone’s going to know the name of Campbell Bain, celebrity DJ!
But first, Plan 4: set up a series of interesting traps for the irritating neighbourhood kids at Hillcrest.
