My Booky Wook 2 (21 page)

“How do you feel now? Any better?”

“Yes, I feel a bit better I think, Paul.”

“Good. And how do you feel when you think about her?”

“Erm … I still feel a bit of a twinge in my stomach when I think about her.”

“Well that’s not good, that sounds like it could be emotion. We’ll soon get rid of that. Have you ever seen her looking ugly?”

I conjured the vision of this Venus. “No, Paul, she’s never looked ugly,” I sighed.

The line fell silent and for one terrible moment I thought Paul was stumped, that true love was a force too powerful even for Paul McKenna’s incredible abilities, but he had one more ace in the pack. Drum roll please …

“OK. I want you to imagine her head on a dog’s body.”

The next day Lucy Lawless, Xena: Warrior Princess, was having a barbecue. These are the kind of sentences that make a mockery of actors claiming that making films is just a craft, a job – like being a carpenter and making tables. A carpenter would rarely be asked the question “Xena: Warrior Princess is having a barbecue on Saturday with Mike from Neighbours and Uncle Monty – are you coming?” “No, because I will be making tables.” The only carpenter who would be unimpressed by that invitation is Jesus or possibly Karen.

The Warrior Princess’s barbecue took place at a Beverly Hills pad, a bungalow that looked like David Hockney had painted it, spread out over acres with a Japanese ornamental pond and a giant indoor aquarium where Xena’s kids kept tarantulas and lizards. I arrived with Sharon, remembering two important things: a bunch of flowers for the hostess and to imagine Teresa Palmer’s head on a dog’s body.

To be honest I quite like dogs, so the technique wasn’t that helpful, and she looked amazing that day. Cool she looked, in the garden when me and Shaz arrived. I squeezed Sharon’s hand and palmed off the bouquet. “God, look at her, Sharon, she’s incredible,” I said. “Even with that dog’s body.”

“Go and talk to her, you idiot. Use that personality you’re always on about.” I glared at Sharon and had we not been at a posh barbecue I would have spat at her, which was one of the main ways we communicated. After hours of watching Teresa and pretending to listen to other people I decided to employ the old “be nice to kids to attract women” technique. Luckily the mandatory Mexican housekeeper had brought her son to work. He was about four and a likeable sort of cove. I’d been pulling faces and such like and shooting him with an imaginary gun for ages and he was lapping it up, but as yet Teresa hadn’t noticed my incredible, unaffected rapport with children. I had to up the ante. So I pretended to be a sort of monster-stroke-gorilla creature and chased after the mite and swept him up into my arms with a terrifying roar. “That should do the trick,” I thought. The kid was bellowing with laughter so there was no way she could ignore this move. She looked over, check-mate. But what’s this? Instead of cocking her head to one side and giving me a gooey smile she looked sort of, well, horrified. Well, that wasn’t on the menu. I glanced down at the pocket Pablo I was swinging about between my legs to learn that what I’d taken to be gleeful chuckling was in fact, uncontrollable crying – and not just from his eyes. The melody of his tears was being backed up by the treble of his terrified piddle. “Blast. This kid is blowing my game with his unscheduled waterworks.” I tried to cheer him up with another mock shooting but the lad was inconsolable. Luckily his mum stepped in, shot me a glare and marched off with a tearful tot. I was back on track, no harm done except the wee-wee I was wiping off on to the back of one of Xena’s deckchairs.

Teresa made for the bathroom. I seized the opportunity and caught up with her by the time she’d reached the tarantulas. “Kids, huh?” She looked confused.

“Kids,” I repeated. “I love ’em.”

“Well, you’ve a funny way of showing it,” she said, frowning a beautiful frown.

“Yeah, I’m complicated,” I muttered, staring off into the distance where the child’s sobbing could still be faintly heard. Beautiful girls spend their lives getting chatted up, so to get past their defences you need some pretty potent artillery. I gave her hair a pull. “Fancy coming for dinner?”

“What? I’ve heard about you, mister.”

“Yeah? What have you heard? That I’m a rogue? A heartbreaker?”

I had a good speech for this kind of approach, but before I could embark she interrupted. “No. That you’re a prat.”

Lesser men would’ve been swayed but you’ll get nowhere in life if you can’t skip past a few superficial insults like Alan Devonshire evading a clumsy right-back. “Let’s go for a walk and see if we can’t get past a few of these terrible misconceptions.” Blessedly there was a trampoline in the garden and Teresa and I clambered on; it was one of those ones with mesh round it like a cage-fighting ring. Like all Australians she was incredibly fit and agile so she leapt like a sexy gazelle. I nearly broke my spine trying to match her. Soon, though, the rhythmic bouncing and its obvious carnal parallel coaxed us into flirtatious union. That girl looked good on a trampoline. Her cleavage, her boobs, which I tried to ignore, were more hypnotic than anything McKenna had battered me with. Plus she was really sweet and funny and tormented me as we jumped higher and higher, and for a minute I forgot myself and it was lovely, just to be with a pretty girl, smiling, mucking about, crashing the heavens as we bounded. Other people soon turned up to pop the bubble, but by then it was too late. We’d bounced right into a romance. In the car on the way home I was drunk on it all.

“It’s a shame, though,” I said to Sharon, “that the film Big uses a trampoline to indicate the commencement of an affair when Tom Hanks takes that woman home – it undermines it.”

“Russell, you idiot. This is real life. You can’t go back and do the barbecue again because your trampoline scene lacked originality.”

The next day was the premiere for Adam Sandler’s film You Don’t Mess with the Zohan, and this was where I’d next see her. I was in the right state of mind because I’d had a quick session with McKenna in which he’d brainwashed me into being a heartless psychopath, so I was able to cope. That night she was a Hollywood actress at a film premiere; she was just wearing a dress that was made out of ivory or whalebone or something that ought to be banned. She was cruelly beautiful.

I tracked her at the after-party at the famous Teddy’s nightclub. Completely single-minded, my breath slowed as I watched her.

“Hold my coat,” she said defiantly as I moved in.

“I’m not really that sort of person,” I smiled.

She pushed it into my hands. “You are now.”

All else faded, the chatter and light receded as I edged closer to her. She looked at me across her drink with those eyes. “Are you always going to live like you do?” she enquired. “All these girls, all the promiscuity?”

“I hope not,” I replied, holding her gaze, emboldened by my sense that the moment was at hand.

“Don’t you want a family? Children?” She’d obviously forgotten that little boy I’d traumatised the previous day. Good.

“I would like to one day, yes,” I said, drifting closer to her mouth, imperceptibly on each syllable. She was moving closer too. These are the times that make it bearable. Perhaps this girl might bring salvation. I am tired of the unsettling whirl, perhaps I can rest here in her eyes.

“Do you think you’ll ever change?” she asked me with breathtaking sincerity, and for the moment I was safe. I fell into the kiss.

“I’ll change for you,” I whispered. And I did. For a week.

†

It’s always funny till someone gets hurt. Then it’s just hilarious.Bill HicksThey sicken of the calm that know the storm
- Dorothy Parker

They Never Forget

If the quest for true love, the pursuit of the ideal partner I’d craved as a lad, before I grew into a clichéd hell-raiser, remained perplexing, at least my career looked to be in good shape. Forgetting Sarah Marshall was doing well in the States and our decision to head for the Hills looked shrewd. As ever, though, I was impatient for more success and notoriety, so when Dan Weiner, our new Canadian PR pal, a jittery, charismatic, Jewish pogo stick of enthusiasm, floated the idea of me hosting the 2008 MTV VMA awards, Nik and I thought, “Why not?” As I observed with the NME Awards, these shows can give an entertainer an anabolic career boost, but as with steroids there are risks. Steroids give you terrible mood swings and, in a twist worthy of Goethe, shrink your prickleberry. So think carefully, bodybuilders, before making that pact. Were there a drug that shrivelled the bicep but sent your privates hurtling to the floor like a greedy flesh drill then I’m sure sexual athletes everywhere would be struggling to open jars and dragging lolloping goolies about like dead dogs.

I’d begun performing stand-up at the Roxy on Sunset Boulevard, a smoky little sex den where the Pistols, Bob Marley and the Doors had played. We got MTV execs to come and watch me play there, and they were sufficiently moved to offer me the VMA gig.

This was a big deal, as American readers will know. British readers will be thinking, “VMAs? What in Her Majesty’s name is that?” Well, it’s that big music award show where Michael Jackson went mad and mistook a birthday cake for a lifetime achievement award (which I suppose in a literal sense all birthday cakes are), where Madonna snogged Britney, who herself at a subsequent show writhed around with a white python in a display of phallus worship that Ron Jeremy would have rejected as vulgar. So now you know, it is an event with a certain amount of national significance; more than I’d anticipated.

One thing MTV still does well is promotion. Nik and I flew to New York to discuss the campaign that would launch the event. In a pop-cultural coup they secured the involvement of saucy snake handler Britney Spears, who’d had perhaps the most eventful year in tabloid history, having been denied access to her children, publicly shaved her head and been photographed using her baby as a pair of driving gloves. Britney and I would make a series of promotional films together. Me and Nik met with big-wigs for a powwow in a skyscraper to iron out the details.

“We want you to be edgy,” said the MTV marketing guru, adjusting his specs.

“OK.”

“But don’t say anything rude to Britney.”

“Right.”

“Be rock’n’roll and dangerous but don’t mention any of the year’s disturbing events … But do be edgy.”

“Well, that’s going to be tricky,” I said. “You want me to be dangerous, rock’n’roll and edgy but not to bring up any of the things that a dangerous, rock’n’roll, edgy type of character might mention.”

“That’s right,” said the exec. “Is that going to be a problem?”

“Well, you’re asking me to walk a bit of a tightrope there.”

The exec nodded. We were all quiet for a bit, and I for one had a jolly good look out the window at the Manhattan skyline and imagined playing Tetris into the gaps in the buildings. This took me approximately one hour, after which I returned to the discussion.

“I mean, chaps …” I began, “everyone’s going to be thinking about those cartoonishly scandalous events – if I don’t mention anything, don’t you think there might be a bit of an elephant in the room?”

Then there was some more quiet and I scanned the premises, which like all media offices was full of toys and trinkets and gimmicks; kidult claptrap.

“What if …” began the exec – let’s call him Kevin because that’s his name – “there was LITERALLY an elephant in the room?”

I regarded him for signs of devilry. “What? A real elephant?”

“Sure.”

“What! You know where to score an actual elephant?”

“Believe me, I can get an elephant.”

“So … I’m gonna meet an elephant?” I was naturally excited. One frequently meets pop stars in show business, but elephants? They seldom make an appearance. There was nothing more to discuss, we had our concept – an elephant.

The day of the promo, back in LA, I’d begun to consider the elephant an icon of forthcoming fortune; after all they provide a symbol for the Republican Party, the head of Hindu deity Ganesh, and are famous for never forgetting – although this last is somewhat spurious as there is no evidence of an elephant ever remembering anything either. Britney was there, fragile and pretty. Just a girl, of course, when viewed away from the circus (although as I keep saying there was one elephant), like an ambassador visiting us from the nation of her own notoriety. “Fame, fame, fatal fame,” said Morrissey. “It can play hideous tricks on your brain but still I’d rather be famous than righteous or holy, any day, any day, any day.” When you meet the famous, be it Kate Moss or Jonathan Ross, Sandler or Britney, their humanity, good or bad, seeps into the encounter and you acknowledge that in fact like all objects of fetish, all icons, they are a reflection of your perception. They are used like saints or gods; here to tell stories, to give us warnings of the perils of success or to be held aloft as examples of contemporary ideals. One figure can be used to represent either extreme, depending on the culture’s mood; David Beckham or Lady Diana can be an example of domestic excellence or individual indulgence depending on the tabloid, depending on the day. But away from the page they become nothing more than people. No more remarkable than you or I.

Whenever there was a break from filming in the vast sound stage where the elephant lumbered and pissed (elephants are just people too), Britney’s people would flock like iron filings to tend her. Sometimes this grooming was functional, to move an eyelash or perfect a lip, but often it was a more primal example of grooming, like the chimps we once were. “There, there,” they cooed with brushes and pads. “It’s going to be alright.”

Britney herself was sweet, untroubled by knowledge of how edgy I was. Or indeed, who I was. She sat brittle and pretty and played along. The highlight for me came when I asked her outright if she knew my name. “Russell Brown?” she said quizzically. The commercials, though, did make an impact and prepared, to some degree, the show’s audience for the prospect of me hosting.

Hosting award shows is hard. Impossible almost, and it is a thankless task. It’s one of the few things left in popular culture for which there are no plaudits. All you ever get is anxiety, criticism and abuse. So I’ve decided right here, right now to hold the world’s inaugural “Best Award Show Host Awards”. It will come as no surprise to learn that I am well represented among the winners. Here are just some of the categories in which I triumph: