A real hard mix
Unable to afford theatre tickets, he used the Internet to help him, particularly to study one-man shows. "YouTube" he tells me "is the greatest tool I've ever used in my life".
Inspired by, amongst others, Denis Leary's performance in No Cure For Cancer, Jake adopted Leary's "hundred percent [energy] hundred miles an hour" technique for one of the narrative strands of Spank House in which he plays all the characters linking together the scamming scripts with other storylines.
"It took me three years to write this using the scripts... there's urban myths but there's absolute truth in there as well... It’s a real hard mix."
Post–recession and with greater public awareness of spank house operations, such activity seems to be significantly diminished but for Jake there are stories still to be told.
There is sufficient material for a sequel and he could broaden out the story for a mixed cast since his own experience showed that the highest earners on the floor were the girls. He does have some reservations though about working with actors who are "full of self–importance".
"Those guys [in the spank house] were arseholes, but they were arseholes to your face", he says.
Even if there is no immediate sequel to Spank House, Jake has another writing project lined up and he also hopes to get more acting work, knowing now that this is the career that he wants to follow for the rest of his life. "I'd happily sit down and write you ten plays in a row" he smiles.
Jake talks engagingly but energetically, careering back and forth between thoughts like a pinball, not always being completely consistent in what he says. This gets me wondering.
"Everything I've told you is the truth... Except the lies" he says in Spank House, in which he plays a version of his younger self. Being too polite to ask him if he has been lying, I settle for asking him if he has a short attention span.
He doesn't deny it; instead he deflects my approach and admits to having a "short entertainment span". About the play he says "I wrote [it] in the way that I would go and see it. It's fast, it's exciting, it's black comedy".
He goes on "It's not glorifying anything; it's entertainment, interesting. You can't predict it." A bit like our conversation then.
Spank House plays The Jack Studio from 9 to 13 September.