"h.e.l.lo again!" Patrick called cheerily. "We were wondering if we might hear the Bloomsbury monologue this time?"
I sat and delivered.
"Thank you!" said Patrick. "Thank you ... I think ..." He conferred with John Gale, nodded his head and looked down as if seeking inspiration from the floor. From where I stood he seemed to be whispering to the carpet. "Well, yes ..." he murmured. "I think so too." He looked up towards me with a smile and said in a louder voice. "Stephen, John and I would be very pleased to ask you to play the part of Tempest for our production. Would you like to do that?"
"Would I? Oh, indeed I would!" I said. "Thank you. Thank you so very, very much."
"That"s excellent news," said Patrick. "We"re delighted. Aren"t we?" he added, to the carpet.
There was a sort of scuffling and scrabbling, and a figure rose from behind the seats where it had been crouching out of sight. The long, lean form of Alan Bennett unfolded itself with an apologetic cough. "Oh, yes," he said, brushing dust from the knees of his grey flannel trousers, "quite delighted."
Patrick noted my bewilderment. "Your agent was kind enough to mention to us that Alan"s presence had made you a little nervous, so this time round he thought it might be best to conceal himself."
Such consideration from a hero was almost more than I could bear. Naturally, being an a.r.s.e, I expressed my grat.i.tude by not managing to express any grat.i.tude at all. To this day I do not think I have ever properly thanked Alan for his grace and sweetness that afternoon.
Crises of Confidence Alan Bennett has a huge advantage over most of us in that his shyness is known about and expected; indeed it is one of the qualities most admired in him. It proves his authenticity, modesty and the cla.s.sy distance he naturally keeps from that creepy media gang of loud, confident, shallow and self-congratulatory w.a.n.kers to which I cannot but help belong and which the rest of society so rightly despises. n.o.body seems to expect me to be shy, or believes me when I say that I am. I cannot blame them. I seem to move with such ease through the world. I was reminded of this only yesterday afternoon. I was a guest on the CBS programme The Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson The Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson. Craig is the Scottish comedian who has now become, in the opinion of many, myself included, the best talk show host in America. He told me, as he began the interview, that back in the eighties, when he had been a regular on the British comedy circuit, he had always regarded me as almost unnaturally calm, sorted and in control, to the extent that he was in a kind of angry awe of me. I ought to be used to being told that, but yet again it brought me up short. Never, at any point in my life, can I remember feeling that I was any part of a.s.sured, controlled or at ease. The longer I live the more clearly one truth stands out. People will rarely modify their preferred view of a person, no matter what the evidence might suggest. I am English. Tweedy. Pukka. Confident. Establishment. Self-a.s.sured. In charge. That is how people like to see me, be the truth never so at variance. It may be the case that I am a Jewish mongrel with an addictive self-destructive streak that it has taken me years to master. It may be the case that my afflictions of mood and temperament cause me to be occasionally suicidal in outlook and can frequently leave me in despair and eaten up with self-hatred and self-disgust. It may be the case that I am chronically overmastered by a sense of failure, underachievement and a terrible knowledge that I have betrayed, abused or neglected the talents that nature bestowed upon me. It may be the case that I doubt I will ever have the capacity to be happy. It may be the case that I fear for my sanity, my moral centre and my very future. All these cases may be protested, and I can a.s.sert their truth as often as I like, but the repet.i.tion will not alter my "image" by one pixel. It is the same image I had before I was a known public figure. The image that caused a delegation of college first-year contemporaries to visit me in my rooms and demand to know my "secret". The image that satisfies and impresses some, enrages others and no doubt bores, provokes or irritates many more. I would be a tragic figure indeed if I had not learnt to live with that persona by now. Like many masks this smiling, placid one has become so tight a fit that it might be said to have rewritten the features of whatever true face once screamed behind it, were it not that it is just a mask and that the feelings underneath are as they always were.
What I want to say about all this wailing is not that I expect your pity or your understanding (although I wouldn"t throw either of them out of bed), but that perhaps I am the one actually offering pity and understanding here. For I have to believe that all the feelings I have described are not unique to me but common to us all. The sense of failure, the fear of eternal unhappiness, the insecurity, misery, self-disgust and the awful awareness of underachievement that I have described. Are you not prey to all those things also? I do hope so. I would feel the most conspicuous oddity otherwise. I grant that my moments of "suicidal ideation" and swings of mood may be more extreme and pathological than most have to endure, but otherwise, I am surely describing nothing more than the fears, dreads and neuroses we all share? No? More or less? Mutatis mutandis Mutatis mutandis? All things being equal? Oh, please say yes.
This is a problem many writers and comedians face: we possess the primary arrogance that persuades us that our insights, fixations and habits are for the most part shared characteristics that we alone have the boldness, insight and openness of mind to expose and name: we are privileged thereby, or so we congratulate ourselves, to be spokesmen for humanity. When a stand-up comic describes nose-picking or peeing in the shower or whatever it might be we can interpret our laughter as a "me too" release which itself triggers more laughter: we laugh again because our initial laughter and that of the person sitting next to us in the audience proves our complicity and shared guilt. This much is obvious and a truism of observational comedy. On top of it there can also be laid, of course, that conscious game comics play in which they shuttle between those common, shared anxieties and ones that are very particular to them. And here I suppose we laugh at how different different we are. How similar, but different. How the comic is living a more extreme life of neurosis and angst on our behalf. A kind of "thank G.o.d I"m not we are. How similar, but different. How the comic is living a more extreme life of neurosis and angst on our behalf. A kind of "thank G.o.d I"m not that that weird" laughter is the result. When a comic or a writer has established their credentials by revealing how much of what they do or feel is something we also do or feel, they can then go further and reveal depths of activity or feeling that we may not share, that might revolt us or that perhaps we weird" laughter is the result. When a comic or a writer has established their credentials by revealing how much of what they do or feel is something we also do or feel, they can then go further and reveal depths of activity or feeling that we may not share, that might revolt us or that perhaps we do do share but would much rather not have dragged up into the light. And of course, comics, being what they are, appreciate that point. share but would much rather not have dragged up into the light. And of course, comics, being what they are, appreciate that point.
It is common enough to hear this kind of routine: "You know, ladies and gentlemen, you know when you"re sat watching television and you stick your finger up your a.r.s.e and wiggle it about? ... No? Oh, right. It must be just me then. Sorry about that. Oops. Moving on ..." Well, with an average stand-up comic talking about physical things like peeing in the shower and nose- or a.r.s.e-picking it is easy enough to see the distinction between what is communal and what is individual. But those are discrete identifiable actions of which one is either "guilty" or not. Some people pee in the shower, others do not. I have to confess that I do. I try to be good and refrain from doing so in somebody else"s shower, but otherwise I am guiltless about what seems to me to be a logical, reasonable and hygienically unexceptionable act. I also pick my nose. I will stop the confession right there for fear of embarra.s.sing you or myself further. You can decide whether to put the book down now and say to the vacant air: "I too pick my nose and pee in the shower." Plenty of people do neither. They are likely, I hope, to forgive those of us who are less fastidious in our habits. But in either case whether or not they do is not susceptible to interpretation. But feelings feelings ... I may know whether or not I pick my nose but do I really know whether or not I feel a failure? I may be aware that I often feel bleak and unhappy or filled with nameless dread, but am I right to interpret these feelings as a sense of moral deficiency or personal inadequacy or any such thing? The root of the feeling may after all be a hormonal imbalance, heartburn, a triggered unconscious memory, too little sunlight, a bad dream, anything. As with colour sense or pain sensitivity we can never know whether any of our perceptions and sensations are the same as others". So it may very well be that I am just a great big cissy and that my miseries and worries are nothing compared to yours. Or perhaps I am the bravest man on the planet and that, if any of you were to experience a tenth of the sorrows I daily endure, you would scream in agony. But just as we can all agree on what is red, even if we will never know if we each see it in the same way, so we can all agree can"t we? that no matter how confident we may appear to others, inside we are all sobbing, scared and uncertain for much of the time. Or perhaps it"s just me. ... I may know whether or not I pick my nose but do I really know whether or not I feel a failure? I may be aware that I often feel bleak and unhappy or filled with nameless dread, but am I right to interpret these feelings as a sense of moral deficiency or personal inadequacy or any such thing? The root of the feeling may after all be a hormonal imbalance, heartburn, a triggered unconscious memory, too little sunlight, a bad dream, anything. As with colour sense or pain sensitivity we can never know whether any of our perceptions and sensations are the same as others". So it may very well be that I am just a great big cissy and that my miseries and worries are nothing compared to yours. Or perhaps I am the bravest man on the planet and that, if any of you were to experience a tenth of the sorrows I daily endure, you would scream in agony. But just as we can all agree on what is red, even if we will never know if we each see it in the same way, so we can all agree can"t we? that no matter how confident we may appear to others, inside we are all sobbing, scared and uncertain for much of the time. Or perhaps it"s just me.
Oh G.o.d, perhaps it really is is just me. just me.
Actually it doesn"t really matter, when you come to think of it. If it is just me, then you are reading the story of some weird freak. You are free to treat this book like science fiction, fantasy or exotic travel literature. Are there really men like Stephen Fry on this planet? Goodness, how alien some people are. And if I am not not alone, then neither are you, and hand in hand we can marvel together at the strangeness of the human condition. alone, then neither are you, and hand in hand we can marvel together at the strangeness of the human condition.
Celebrity Aside from University Challenge University Challenge, the BBC"s transmission of The Cellar Tapes The Cellar Tapes was the first time I had appeared on national television. I don"t count was the first time I had appeared on national television. I don"t count There"s Nothing to Worry About There"s Nothing to Worry About, which was inflicted only upon viewers in the north-west ITV region.
The morning after The Cellar Tapes The Cellar Tapes was aired on BBC2 I went for a walk along the King"s Road. How ought I to treat those who approached me? I switched on a sweet gentle smile and practised a kind of "Who? ... was aired on BBC2 I went for a walk along the King"s Road. How ought I to treat those who approached me? I switched on a sweet gentle smile and practised a kind of "Who? ... me me?" gesture that involved looking behind me and then pointing with questioning disbelief at my own undeserving chest. I made sure, before setting out, that there were pens in my pocket as well as some artfully random sc.r.a.ps of paper for autographs. Would I write "Yours sincerely" or "With best wishes"? I decided that I should try each a few times and see which looked better.
Photo call in Richmond Park for BBC version of The Cellar Tapes. The Cellar Tapes.
The same: ultimately a git with a pipe stuck in his face.
The first people I pa.s.sed as I made my way up Blacklands Terrace were an elderly couple who paid me no attention. Foreigners possibly, or the kind of Chelseaites who thought it smart not to have a television. A young woman came towards me with a West Highland terrier on a lead. I added an extra 10 per cent of soupy modesty to my sweet gentle smile and awaited her gasps and shrieks. She and the terrier pa.s.sed right by without a flicker of recognition. How very strange. I turned left at the King"s Road and walked past the Peter Jones department store and twice around Sloane Square. Not one person stopped me, shot me a sideways glance of admiring recognition or favoured me with a single puzzled stare that told me that they knew the face but couldn"t quite place it. There was simply no reaction from anyone anywhere. I went into W. H. Smith"s and hung around the periodicals section, close to the piles of listings magazines. To pick up a Radio Times Radio Times people had to ask me to step aside; obviously and by definition these persons must have been television watchers, but my features, by now set into a wild, despairing grin, meant nothing to them. This was most strange. Television, everybody in the world knew, conferred instant fame. One morning you do the weather on BBC1, the next you are besieged at the supermarket checkout queue. Instead I had woken up to find myself anonymous. I was still nothing more than another face in the London crowd. Maybe almost no one had watched the Footlights show? Or maybe millions had, but I possessed one of those bland, forgettable faces that meant I was doomed never to be recognized. Surely this was unlikely? I had told my face a lot of tough and unforgiving truths in the past, but I had never accused it of being bland or forgettable. people had to ask me to step aside; obviously and by definition these persons must have been television watchers, but my features, by now set into a wild, despairing grin, meant nothing to them. This was most strange. Television, everybody in the world knew, conferred instant fame. One morning you do the weather on BBC1, the next you are besieged at the supermarket checkout queue. Instead I had woken up to find myself anonymous. I was still nothing more than another face in the London crowd. Maybe almost no one had watched the Footlights show? Or maybe millions had, but I possessed one of those bland, forgettable faces that meant I was doomed never to be recognized. Surely this was unlikely? I had told my face a lot of tough and unforgiving truths in the past, but I had never accused it of being bland or forgettable.
I pulled a compensatory BBC Micro BBC Micro magazine from the shelf and left. As I was trailing disappointedly back to the flat I heard a voice behind me. magazine from the shelf and left. As I was trailing disappointedly back to the flat I heard a voice behind me.
"Excuse me, excuse me!"
I turned to see an excited young girl. At last. "Yes?"
"You forgot your change."
Here are the first lines of Love"s Labour"s Lost Love"s Labour"s Lost: Let fame, that all hunt after in their lives, Live register"d upon our brazen tombs, And then grace us in the disgrace of death.
That is the King of Navarre"s opening speech, the one Hugh had such trouble with in the 1981 Marlowe Society production. It is a fine sentiment, but nothing could run more counter to the way the world thinks today. It certainly seems that all still hunt after fame, but how many are content for it to come only in the form of a tombstone inscription? They want it now. And that is how I wanted it too. Ever since I can remember I had dreamt of being famous. I know how embarra.s.sing an admission this is. I could attempt to dress it up in finer words, imputing and inferring intricate psychological grounds, implicating and adducing complex developmental causations that elevated the condition into a syndrome, but there is no point dressing it up in fine linen. From the first moment I was aware of such a cla.s.s of person existing, I had wanted to be a celebrity. We are forever telling ourselves that we live in a celebrity-obsessed culture; many hands are daily wrung at the supremacy of appearance over achievement, status over substance and image over industry. To desire desire fame argues a shallow and delusional outlook. This much we all know. But if we clever ones can see so clearly that fame is a snare and a delusion, we can also see just as clearly that as each year pa.s.ses a greater and greater proportion of the western world"s youth is becoming entramelled in that snare and dazzled by that delusion. fame argues a shallow and delusional outlook. This much we all know. But if we clever ones can see so clearly that fame is a snare and a delusion, we can also see just as clearly that as each year pa.s.ses a greater and greater proportion of the western world"s youth is becoming entramelled in that snare and dazzled by that delusion.
We have in our minds a dreadful picture of the thousands who audition so pitifully for television talent shows and whose heads seem always to be buried in garish celebrity magazines. We feel sorrow and contempt for the narrow dimensions of their lives. We excoriate a society that is all surface and image. Teenaged girls in particular, we suggest, are slaves to body-image and fashion fantasies, they are junkies on the fame drug. How can our culture be so broken and so sick, we wonder, as to raise up as objects of veneration a raft of talentless n.o.bodies who offer no moral, spiritual or intellectual sustenance and no discernible gifts beyond over-hygienic eroticism and unthreatening photogeneity?
I would offer the usual counters to that. Firstly, the phenomenon simply is not as new as everyone thinks it is. That there are more outlets, pipelines, conduits and means of transmitting and receiving news and images is obvious, but read any novel published in the early part of the twentieth century and you will find female uneducated characters who spend their spare moments dreaming of movie stars, tennis-players, explorers, racing-drivers and barnstorming aviators. You"ll find these dreamy shop-girls and head-in-the-clouds housemaids in Evelyn Waugh, Agatha Christie, P. G. Wodehouse and every genre in between. The propensity to worship idols is not new. Nor is the wrathful contempt of those who believe that they alone understand the difference between false G.o.ds and true. In the story of the Ten Commandments I was always on the side of Aaron. I liked his golden calf. Biblical colour plates for children showed it garlanded with flowers, revelling idolaters dancing happily around it, clashing cymbals and embracing each other with wild, abandoned joy. The music and the hugs were clinching proof (especially the cymbals) in the minds of the Victorian ill.u.s.trators that Aaron"s followers were debauched, degenerate, decadent and doomed to eternal d.a.m.nation. With the party in full swing, Moses returns with those fatuous tablets tucked under his arm, dashes them petulantly to the ground, melts the golden calf and grinds it to powder, which he mixes into a drink that he forces all the Israelites to swallow. Next, being such a holy man of G.o.d, he slays 3,000 men before hauling his vengeful a.r.s.e back up Mount Sinai to get a second batch of commandments. I think we can celebrate the fact that we now live in a culture, flawed or not, that instantly sees that, while Aaron may be a weak voluptuary, his brother is a dangerous fanatic. The gilt bull beats the guilty bulls.h.i.t any way you choose to look at it. We humans are naturally disposed to worship G.o.ds and heroes, to build our pantheons and valhallas. I would rather see that impulse directed into the adoration of daft singers, thicko footballers and air-headed screen actors than into the veneration of dogmatic zealots, fanatical preachers, militant politicians and rabid cultural commentators.
Secondly, is it not a rule in life that no one is quite as stupid as we would like them to be? Spokesmen across the political divide from us are smarter than we would have them, mad mullahs and crazy nationalists are nothing like as dumb as we would wish. Film producers, shock jocks, insurgents, journalists, American military all kinds of people we might reasonably expect to write off as mentally negligible have cunning, insight and intellect well beyond what is comfortable for us. This inconvenient truth extends to those on whom we lavish our patronizing pity too. If the social-networking services of the digital age teach us anything it is that only a fool would underestimate the intelligence, intuition and cognitive skills of the "ma.s.ses". I am talking about more than the "wisdom of crowds" here. If you look beyond sillinesses like the puzzling inability of the majority to distinguish between your your and and you"re you"re, its its and and it"s it"s and and there there, they"re they"re and and their their (all of which distinctions have nothing to do with language, only with grammar and orthographical convention: after all logic and consistency would suggest the insertion of a genitival apostrophe in the p.r.o.nominal possessive (all of which distinctions have nothing to do with language, only with grammar and orthographical convention: after all logic and consistency would suggest the insertion of a genitival apostrophe in the p.r.o.nominal possessive its its, but convention has decided, perhaps to avoid confusion with the elided it is it is, to dispense with one), if, as I say, you look beyond such pernickety pedantries, you will see that it is possible to be a fan of reality TV, talent shows and bubblegum pop and still have a brain. You will also see that a great many people know perfectly well how silly and camp and trivial their fandom is. They do not check in their minds when they enter a fan site. Judgement is not necessarily fled to brutish beasts, and men have not quite lost their reason. Which is all a way of questioning whether pop-culture hero worship is really so psychically damaging, so erosive of the cognitive faculties, so corrupting of the soul of mankind as we are so often told.
Thirdly, look at the kind of people who most object to the childishness and cheapness of celebrity culture. Does one really want to side with such apoplectic and bombastic bores? I should know, I often catch myself being one, and it isn"t pretty. I will defend the absolute value of Mozart over Miley Cyrus, of course I will, but we should be wary of false dichotomies. You do not have to choose between one or the other. You can have both. The human cultural jungle should be as varied and plural as the Amazonian rainforest. We are all richer for biodiversity. We may decide that a puma is worth more to us than a caterpillar, but surely we can agree that the habitat is all the better for being able to sustain each. Monocultures are uninhabitably dull and end as deserts.
Against all that it might be said that the quarrel is not with harmless idolatry. The problem, some would argue, is not that everybody worships celebrity, but they want it for themselves. want it for themselves. Online user-generated content and the rise of the talent show and reality TV have bred a generation for whom it is not enough to flick through fan magazines, they want their own shot at stardom. They want, moreover, to go straight to fame and fortune, short-circuiting tedious considerations like hard work and talent. Well, we all know how satisfying it is to recite the shortcomings and hollowness of others especially those who have money and recognition where we have none. It is certainly more pleasurable than inspecting our own shortcomings. I dare say we do live in a cheap age, an age where the things that should have value are little prized and things that are empty of worth are too highly rated. But who on earth could think for a second that this is new to our race? Anyone familiar with Aristophanes, Martial, Catullus, Shakespeare, Jonson, Dryden, Johnson, Pope, Swift ... You get the point. It has Online user-generated content and the rise of the talent show and reality TV have bred a generation for whom it is not enough to flick through fan magazines, they want their own shot at stardom. They want, moreover, to go straight to fame and fortune, short-circuiting tedious considerations like hard work and talent. Well, we all know how satisfying it is to recite the shortcomings and hollowness of others especially those who have money and recognition where we have none. It is certainly more pleasurable than inspecting our own shortcomings. I dare say we do live in a cheap age, an age where the things that should have value are little prized and things that are empty of worth are too highly rated. But who on earth could think for a second that this is new to our race? Anyone familiar with Aristophanes, Martial, Catullus, Shakespeare, Jonson, Dryden, Johnson, Pope, Swift ... You get the point. It has always always been the case, since humans could first record their thoughts, that the "wrong people" have been seen to have arrived at the highest positions. The emperors, kings, aristocrats, ruling cla.s.ses and gentry, the arrivistes, parvenus and nouveaux riches, the financiers, merchant princes and industrialists, the artists, designers, literati and cultural elite, the actors, sportsmen, television stars, pop singers and presenters, they have all been unfairly elevated to positions they do not deserve. "In a just and properly ordered world," the angry ones wail, " been the case, since humans could first record their thoughts, that the "wrong people" have been seen to have arrived at the highest positions. The emperors, kings, aristocrats, ruling cla.s.ses and gentry, the arrivistes, parvenus and nouveaux riches, the financiers, merchant princes and industrialists, the artists, designers, literati and cultural elite, the actors, sportsmen, television stars, pop singers and presenters, they have all been unfairly elevated to positions they do not deserve. "In a just and properly ordered world," the angry ones wail, "I should be up there too, but I am too proud to say so, so I shall carp and snipe and rant with indignation and show my contempt for the whole boiling. But deep inside I want to be recognized. I just want to count." should be up there too, but I am too proud to say so, so I shall carp and snipe and rant with indignation and show my contempt for the whole boiling. But deep inside I want to be recognized. I just want to count."
I was like that all through my teenage years and early twenties. Desperate to be famous but very, very ready, if I didn"t make it, to vent my scorn on those who did. I contend that people like me who burn for fame and recognition are much rarer than the prevailing view would have us believe. I take my brother Roger and his family as my touchstone for all that is sane, sound and decent. They are as modern and connected to the world as anyone else I know. I recall, and I seem to be able to picture it in pin-sharp high-def widescreen 3D detail, an evening at the pantomime in Norwich when I was seven and Roger was nine. b.u.t.tons made his entrance and asked if there were any boys and girls out there who would like to join him up on stage. Roger dropped down in his seat trying his hardest to look invisible. The idea of being up there in the lights in front of a staring audience horrified him. I meanwhile was leaping up and down thrusting my hand into the air desperate, absolutely desperate to be picked. Two boys, eighteen months apart in age, bred in the same conditions and by the same parents. There are many more Rogers in the world, praise be, than Stephens.
Maybe the childish desire for attention I felt then is all of a piece with my childish desire for sweet things. The desire to be famous is infantile, and humanity has never lived in an age when infantilism was more sanctioned and encouraged than now. Infantile foods in the form of crisps, chips, sweet fizzy drinks and pappy burgers or hot dogs smothered in sugary sauce are considered mainstream nutrition for millions of adults. Intoxicating drinks disguised as milkshakes and soda pops exist for those whose taste buds haven"t grown up enough to enjoy the taste of alcohol. As in food so in the wider culture. Anything astringent, savoury, sharp, complex, ambiguous or difficult is ignored in favour of the colourful, the sweet, the hollow and the simple. I know that fame to me, when I was a child, was much like candy-floss. It looked magical, it was huge and dramatic and attention-grabbing. It is tempting to write here and now that, like candy-floss, fame turned out to be little more than air on a stick and that the small part of it that has substance was cloying, sick-making and corrosive to me, but I shall keep such thoughts, if I truly have them, for later. I am, thus far in my story, not famous at all and I cannot yet tell what fame is like only that it is a condition I long for.
In fact, I think few people are really obsessed with being famous in the way that I was. Most recoil at the thought, squirming down in their seats like my brother at the very idea of public exposure. They might consider from time to time what fame would be like and conduct thought experiments in which they feature on a red carpet being lit by flashbulbs, but that is no more than the normal fantasy of opening the batting for England or volleying the championship point at Wimbledon. For the most part, most people are mostly for a quiet life out of the public eye and have a mostly sane understanding of how peculiar fame must be. They are sensible enough not to judge all celebrities as alike and civil enough not to despise people because they have committed the crime of being a pop singer, a golfer or a politician. Most people are tolerant, wise, kind and thoughtful. Most of the time. People like me eaten up with ambition, simmering with resentment, white-hot with neediness at one moment and sullen with frustration and disappointment the next, we are the ones who obsess about fame and status, and it gives us nothing but dissatisfaction, vexation and horrible doses of heavy angst.
All this is embarra.s.sing for me to admit. Those in my line do not own up to such vulgar, cheesy and undignified yearnings. It is all about the work work. If your work happens, unlike insurance, accountancy or teaching, to bring celebrity in its train, or riches, then so be it. You aim for the game bird of accomplishment; fame and fortune just happen to be the feathers it flies with. Yeah, right. We know these worthy precepts, I echo and endorse them. But the needy child that hid within the tweedy man screamed to be fed and the needy child, as always, wanted what was instantly satisfying and instantly rewarding, no matter how shallow and devious that might make him. Shallow and devious is what I was (and probably always will be), and if you have not yet understood how profoundly shallow and how straightforwardly devious I am, then I cannot have been doing my job right.
Work was coming in thick and fast. The musical, the play, the film script and a thick miscellany of writing and radio a.s.signments to which we might come in a moment. There is no doubt that amongst magazine and newspaper editors, radio, film and TV producers, directors, commissioners and casting agents I was a coming man, a young shaver useful for all kinds of odds and ends. But I was not famous. A few invitations to film premieres and first nights began to trickle in, but I found that I could walk the red carpet entirely unmolested. I remember going to some event with Rowan Atkinson, the press night of a new play, I think. To hear his name shouted out by photographers and see the crowd of fans pressing up against the crash barriers caused the most intense excitement in me, combined with a sick flood of fury and resentment that no one, not one single person, recognized me me or wanted or wanted my my picture. Oh, Stephen. I have clicked on and selected that sentence, deleted it, restored it, deleted it and restored it again. A large part of me would rather not have you know that I am so futile, fatuous and feeble-minded, but an even larger part recognizes that this is our bargain. I cannot speak for others or presume to drag out their entrails for public inspection, but I can speak for (and against) myself. Maybe I was an advance guard for a new kind of Briton: fanatical about fame, addictive, superficial, gadget-obsessed and determinedly infantile. Maybe, to put a kinder construction on it, I was living proof that you could want to be famous picture. Oh, Stephen. I have clicked on and selected that sentence, deleted it, restored it, deleted it and restored it again. A large part of me would rather not have you know that I am so futile, fatuous and feeble-minded, but an even larger part recognizes that this is our bargain. I cannot speak for others or presume to drag out their entrails for public inspection, but I can speak for (and against) myself. Maybe I was an advance guard for a new kind of Briton: fanatical about fame, addictive, superficial, gadget-obsessed and determinedly infantile. Maybe, to put a kinder construction on it, I was living proof that you could want to be famous and and want to do the work, you could relish the red carpet want to do the work, you could relish the red carpet and and relish lucubrating into the early hours, cranking out articles, scripts, sketches and scenarios with a genuine sense of pleasure and fulfilment. relish lucubrating into the early hours, cranking out articles, scripts, sketches and scenarios with a genuine sense of pleasure and fulfilment.
Commercials, Covent Garden, Compact Discs, Cappuccinos and Croissants On top of the major projects in film and television there tumbled in other requests for work of all kinds. Lo Hamilton at Noel Gay Artists fielded these and pa.s.sed them on. I think I understood that I had the option to refuse, to turn down, to inquire further, but I cannot recall that I ever did. When I look back at this time it seems to be a paradise of variety without pressure and novelty without nerves. Everything was fantastically new, exciting, flattering and appealing.
Sometimes together and sometimes apart, Hugh and I found ourselves inside the world of the commercial voiceover. Neither of us yet had the kind of vocal heft that afforded us the chance to do the really s.e.xy part of the work, the endline that final slogan which was most usually the province of either hard-smoking and-drinking fifty-year-olds like the legendary Bill Mitch.e.l.l, whose vocal chords had the deep, authoritative resonance that carried the advertiser"s message home, or of vocal magicians like Martin Jarvis, Ray Brooks, Enn Reitel and Michael Jayston, who were in such heavy demand that they carried little pagers clipped to their belts so that their agents could push them from job to job at the shortest notice. I remember David Jason, another very busy and talented voice artist, showing me how they worked. They did no more than beep, which was a signal to phone the agent, but I was hugely impressed. One day, I told myself, I would own such an object and I would treasure it always. Somewhere I have a drawer filled with at least a dozen old pagers in a.s.sorted stylings and colourways. None of them is treasured; they were barely used at all.
At our level Hugh and I were required usually to do silly comedy characters for radio ads, a huge new booming industry that was taking advantage of the proliferation of independent radio stations that were popping up all over Britain throughout the early eighties as a result of "second tranche" franchise contracts. It is very beguiling to look back at a period of time and imagine that one was happy then, but I really believe that we were. Life in the gla.s.s booth was simple but presented pleasing challenges. Often an engineer or producer would press the talk-back b.u.t.ton and say something like, "Yeah, that was two seconds over. Can you do it again, shaving off three seconds, but don"t go any quicker." That kind of apparently absurd request starts to make sense after a while and Hugh and I both took great pride in our ability to make good on them. An internal clock starts to build itself in the brain so that within a short time we were both able to say, "That was bang on, wasn"t it? Maybe half a second under?" or "d.a.m.n, at least thirty-five, that one, we"ll go again ..." and be proved right when the engineer played it back with a stopwatch. A trivial skill, the proud acquisition of which some might think a waste of an elite and expensive education, but I know, as I have said, that we were happy. How do I know? Well, we said so. We actually dared to say it.
In those days the studios we found ourselves in most often were those of Angell Sound in Covent Garden, opposite the stage door of the Royal Opera House. Hugh and I would emerge from a session, blink in the bright sunshine of the day, say "Shirt" and walk south-west along Floral Street, crossing James Street until we reached Paul Smith"s. At that time this was the great designer"s sole London presence. Perhaps he had a shop in his native Nottingham, but the Floral Street branch was certainly the only one in London. Like David Jason he is now a knight, but back then Paul Smith was just beginning to achieve a name as the designer of choice for men who were shortly to be dubbed "yuppie". His reputation, unlike that of the yuppie, has emerged unscathed from such a calamitous calumny. In the early to mid-eighties the first noises of what was to be the post-Big-Bang, newly enriched, newly confident professional cla.s.ses were beginning to be heard as they clamoured for stylish socks, shirts, croissants, frothy coffee and G.o.d help us all conspicuous braces. I suppose Hugh and I fell into a subset of this new category.
One morning as we emerged from Angell"s I distinctly remember us having a conversation that went something like this: "b.l.o.o.d.y h.e.l.l, this is the life."
"We are so f.u.c.king lucky."
"Twenty minutes in a studio, not a minute more."
"No rope was older and no money ... moneyer."
"We should buy a shirt to celebrate."
"We should always always buy a shirt to celebrate." buy a shirt to celebrate."
"And then maybe a CD or two."
"And then definitely definitely a CD or two." a CD or two."
"Perhaps followed by a coffee and a croissant."
"Certainly followed by a coffee and a croissant." followed by a coffee and a croissant."
"You know, I bet we will look back on these as the best days of our lives."
"When we"re old, fat, bitter and unhappy alcoholics, we will remember when we would saunter into a voiceover studio, saunter out again and buy a shirt and a CD and go to a cafe and have a croissant and a cappuccino."
We have so far missed becoming alcoholics, and Hugh has never been fat. I am not sure if we are bitter, but we are certainly old-ish, and I think each of us would admit that the realization that we were unlikely to be as happy again was accurate. We really can look back and see those days as perfect. Intensely acute moments of love and parenthood and achievement might, and did, come to one or other of us at different times, but never again would we experience such a period of chronic content. We wanted nothing, we were slowly earning reputations and money without being crushed by celebrity and riches. Life was good. The most unusual aspect of it is that we knew it at the time. If you tell a schoolchild that they are currently experiencing what they will look back on as the best years of their lives, they will tell you, if they favour you with anything more than a black look, that is, that you are talking c.r.a.p.
London was extraordinarily exciting to me. The CDs, cappuccinos and croissants were the acme of sophistication and symbolic of the great social and political sea change that was coming. The process of gentrification that was already beginning to remodel the seedier parts of Islington and Fulham was being contemptuously described as "croissantification" by those alarmed at the incoming tide. The Falklands Conflict had transformed Margaret Thatcher from the least popular prime minister in fifty years to the most popular since Churchill. A surge of patriotism and confidence was beginning to swell in the political seas. It would soon enough become a tsunami of conspicuous spending for the lucky ones who rode high on the wave and a deluge of debt and deprivation for the victims of "the harsh realities of the marketplace", as Keith Joseph and the Friedmanites liked to call monetarism"s collateral damage. I wish I could say I was more politically alert, angry or interested at this time. Smoky, boozy nights up in the bar of the Midland Hotel with Ben Elton had gone a long way towards pulling me out of my instinctive dread and dislike of the Labour party; the sheer vulgarity and graceless meanness of spirit of Margaret Thatcher and so many of her ministers made it very hard to feel any affection or admiration for her, but my eyes were too firmly fixed inwards towards myself and the opportunities coming my way to think much about anything else. If I colaphize myself too drastically for such an unremarkable and venial failing in one so young it would sound unconvincing. After the teenage years that I had undergone, I find it hard to blame myself for taking pleasure in the fruits that the world now showered down upon my head.
Crystal Cube Aside from the individual a.s.signments that had come my way the musical, the film and the offer of a part in Forty Years On Forty Years On Hugh and I wanted to continue writing and performing together. The spanking to our self-confidence administered by Ben"s astounding prolificacy notwithstanding, we still hoped (and somewhere inside ourselves believed) that we might have a future in comedy. Accordingly, Richard Armitage sent us to a meeting at the BBC. Hugh and I wanted to continue writing and performing together. The spanking to our self-confidence administered by Ben"s astounding prolificacy notwithstanding, we still hoped (and somewhere inside ourselves believed) that we might have a future in comedy. Accordingly, Richard Armitage sent us to a meeting at the BBC.
In those days the house of Light Entertainment was divided into two departments, Comedy and Variety. Sitcoms and sketch shows flew under the Comedy flag and programmes like The Generation Game The Generation Game and and The Paul Daniels Magic Show The Paul Daniels Magic Show counted as Variety. The head of Light Entertainment was a jolly, red-faced man who could easily be mistaken for a Butlin"s Redcoat or the model for a beery husband in a McGill seaside postcard. His name was Jim Moir, which also happens to be Vic Reeves"s real name, although at this time, somewhere in 1983, Vic Reeves had yet to make his mark. Hugh and I had first met the executive Jim Moir at the cricket weekend at Stebbing. He had said then, with the a.s.sured timing of a Blackpool front-of-curtain comic: "Meet the wife, don"t laugh." counted as Variety. The head of Light Entertainment was a jolly, red-faced man who could easily be mistaken for a Butlin"s Redcoat or the model for a beery husband in a McGill seaside postcard. His name was Jim Moir, which also happens to be Vic Reeves"s real name, although at this time, somewhere in 1983, Vic Reeves had yet to make his mark. Hugh and I had first met the executive Jim Moir at the cricket weekend at Stebbing. He had said then, with the a.s.sured timing of a Blackpool front-of-curtain comic: "Meet the wife, don"t laugh."
Hugh and I were shown into his office. He sat us down on the sofa opposite his desk and asked if we had comedy plans. Only he wouldn"t have put it as simply as that, he probably said something like: "Strip naked and show me your c.o.c.ks," which would have been his way of saying: "What would you like to talk about?" Jim routinely used colourful and perplexing metaphors of a quite staggeringly explicit nature. "Let"s j.i.z.z on the table, mix up our s.p.u.n.k and smear it all over us," might be his way of asking, "Shall we work together?" I had always a.s.sumed that he only spoke like that to men, but not so long ago Dawn French and Jennifer Saunders confirmed that he had been quite as eye-watering in his choice of language with them. Ben Elton went on to create, and Mel Smith to play, a fictional head of Light Entertainment based on Jim Moir called Jumbo Whiffy in the sitcom Filthy Rich & Catflap Filthy Rich & Catflap. I hope you will not get the wrong impression of Moir from my description of his language. People of his kind are easy to underestimate, but I never heard anyone who worked with him say a bad word about him. In the past forty years the BBC has had no more shrewd, capable, loyal, honourable and successful executive and certainly none with a more dazzling verbal imagination.
Hugh and I emerged from our meeting stupefied but armed with a commission. John Kilby, who had directed The Cellar Tapes The Cellar Tapes, would direct and produce the pilot show that we were now to write. We conceived a series that was to be called The Crystal Cube The Crystal Cube, a mock-serious magazine programme that for each edition would investigate some phenomenon or other: every week we would "go through the crystal cube". Hugh, Emma, Paul Shearer and I were to be the regulars and we would call upon a cast of semi-regular guests to play other parts.
The Crystal Cube, with Emma and Hugh.
The Crystal Cube. The warty look was created using Rice Krispies. True story. The warty look was created using Rice Krispies. True story.
Back in Manchester filming Alfresco Alfresco, we began to write in our spare time. Freed from the intimidation of having to match Ben"s freakish fecundity, we produced our script in what was for us short order but would for Ben have const.i.tuted an intolerable writer"s block. It was rather good. I feel I can say this as the BBC chose not to commission a series: given that and my archetypical British pride in failure it hardly seems like showing off for me to say that I was pleased with it. It is out there now somewhere on YouTube, as most things are. If you happen to track it down you will find that the first forty seconds are inaudible, but it soon clears up. Aside from technical embarra.s.sments there is also a good deal wrong with it comically, you will note. We are awkward, young and often incompetent, but nonetheless there are some perfectly good ideas in it struggling for light and air. John Savident, now well known for his work in Coronation Street Coronation Street, makes a splendid Bishop of Horley, Arthur Bostrom, who went on to play the bizarrely accented Officer "Good moaning" Crabtree in "Allo "Allo! "Allo "Allo!, guested as an excellently gormless genetic guinea-pig, and Robbie Coltrane was his usual immaculate self in the guise of a preposterously macho film-maker.
If I was disappointed, upset or humiliated by the BBC"s decision not to pick up The Crystal Cube The Crystal Cube, I was too proud to show it. Besides, there were plenty of comedy and odd jobs for me to be getting on with in the meantime. One such was collaborating with Rowan Atkinson on a screenplay for David Puttnam. The idea was an English Monsieur Hulot"s Holiday Monsieur Hulot"s Holiday in which Rowan, an innocent abroad, would find himself unwittingly involved in some sort of crime caper. The character was essentially Mr Bean, but ten years too early. in which Rowan, an innocent abroad, would find himself unwittingly involved in some sort of crime caper. The character was essentially Mr Bean, but ten years too early.
I drove up to stay with Rowan and his girlfriend, Leslie Ash, in between visits to Manchester for the taping of Alfresco 2 Alfresco 2. The house in Oxfordshire was, I have to confess, a dazzling symbol to me of the prizes that comedy could afford. The Aston Martin in the driveway, the wisteria growing up the mellow ashlar walls of the Georgian facade, the cottage in the grounds, the tennis court, the lawns and orchards running down to the river all this seemed so fantastically grand, so imponderably grown-up and out of reach.
We would sit in the cottage, and I would tap away on the BBC Micro that I had brought along with me. We composed a scene in which a French girl teaches Rowan"s character this tongue-twister: "Dido dined, they say, off the enormous back of an enormous turkey," which goes, in French, "Dido dina, dit-on, du dos dodu d"un dodu dindon." Rowan practised the Beanish character earnestly attempting this. In any spare moment in the film, we decided, he would try out his "doo doo doo doo doo", much to the bafflement of those about him. It is about all I remember from the film, which over the next few months quietly, as 99 per cent of all film projects do, fizzled out. Meanwhile, journalism was taking up more and more of my time.
Columnist Britain"s magazine industry started to boom in the early to mid-eighties. Tatler Tatler, Harper"s & Queen Harper"s & Queen and the newly revivified and the newly revivified Vanity Fair Vanity Fair, what you might call the Princess Di sector, fed the public appet.i.te for information about the affairs of the Sloane Rangers, the stylings of their kitchens and country houses and the guest-lists of their parties. Vogue Vogue and and Cosmopolitan Cosmopolitan rode high for the fashion-conscious and s.e.xually sophisticated, rode high for the fashion-conscious and s.e.xually sophisticated, City Limits City Limits and and Time Out Time Out sold everywhere, and Nick Logan"s sold everywhere, and Nick Logan"s The Face The Face dominated youth fashion and trendy style at a time when it was still trendy to use the word trendy. A few years later Logan proved that even men read glossies when he launched the dominated youth fashion and trendy style at a time when it was still trendy to use the word trendy. A few years later Logan proved that even men read glossies when he launched the avant-la-lettre avant-la-lettre metros.e.xual metros.e.xual Arena Arena. I wrote a number of articles for that magazine, and literary reviews for the now defunct Listener Listener, a weekly published by the BBC.
The Listener Listener"s editor when I first joined was Russell Twisk, a surname of such surpa.s.sing beauty that I would have written pieces for him if he had been at the helm of Satanic Child-Slaughter Monthly Satanic Child-Slaughter Monthly. His literary editor was Lynne Truss, later to achieve great renown as the author of Eats, Shoots and Leaves Eats, Shoots and Leaves. I cannot remember that I was ever victim of her peculiar "zero tolerance approach to punctuation"; perhaps she corrected my copy without ever letting me know.
Twisk was replaced some time later by Alan Coren, who had been a hero of mine since his days editing Punch Punch. He suggested I write a regular column rather than book reviews, and for a year or so I submitted weekly articles on whatever subjects suggested themselves to me.
By now I had bought myself a fax machine. For the first year or so of my ownership of this new and enchanting piece of technology it sat unloved and unused on my desk. I didn"t know anyone else who owned one, and the poor thing had n.o.body to talk to. To be the only person you know with a fax machine is a little like being the only person you know with a tennis racket.
Cryptic in Connecticut One day (I"m fast forwarding here, but it seems the right place for this story) Mike Ockrent called me up. Me and My Girl Me and My Girl was by this time running in the West End, and we had all been thrilled to hear that Stephen Sondheim and Hal Prince had been to see it and had written to Mike expressing their admiration. was by this time running in the West End, and we had all been thrilled to hear that Stephen Sondheim and Hal Prince had been to see it and had written to Mike expressing their admiration.
"I told Sondheim that you have a fax machine," Mike said.
"Right." I was not sure what to make of this. "I see ... er ... why exactly?"
"He asked me if I knew anybody who had one. You were the only person I could think of. He"s going to call you. Is that all right?"
The prospect of Stephen Sondheim, lyricist of West Side Story West Side Story, composer of Sunday in the Park with George Sunday in the Park with George, Merrily We Roll Along Merrily We Roll Along, Company Company, Sweeney Todd Sweeney Todd and and A Little Night Music A Little Night Music, calling me up was, yes, on the whole, perfectly all right, I a.s.sured Mike. "What is it about exactly?"
"Oh, he"ll explain ..."
My G.o.d, oh my good gracious heavens. He wanted me to write the book of his next musical! What else could it be? Oh my holy trousers. Stephen Sondheim, the greatest songwriter-lyricist since Cole Porter, was going to call me up. Strange that he was interested in my possession of a fax machine. Perhaps that is how he imagined we would work together. Me faxing dialogue and story developments to him and him faxing back his thoughts and emendations. Now that I came to think of it that was rather a wonderful idea and opened up a whole new way of thinking about collaboration.
That evening the phone rang. I was living in Dalston in a house I shared with Hugh and Katie and I had warned them that I would be sitting on the telephone all night.
"Hi, is that Stephen Fry?"
"S-s-speaking."
"This is Stephen Sondheim."
"Right. Yes of course. Wow. Yes. It"s a ... I ..."
"Hey, I want to congratulate you on the fine job you did with the book of Me and My Girl Me and My Girl. Great show."
"Gosh. Thank you. Coming from you that"s ... that"s ..."
"So. Listen, I understand you have a fax machine?"
"I do. Yes. Certainly. Yes, a Brother F120. Er, not that the model number matters at all. A bit even. No. But, yes. I have one. Indeed. Mm."
"Are you at home this weekend?"
"Er, yes I think so ... yup."
"In the evening, till late at night?"
"Yes."
This was getting weird.
"OK, so here"s the deal. I have a house in the country and I like to have treasure hunts and compet.i.tions. You know, with sneaky clues?"
"Ri-i-ght ..."