My Booky Wook 2 (30 page)

The word “entourage” simultaneously aggrandises and undermines the peculiar troupe that accrued around Nik and I. A family, a band, a gang. The value and charm of which, like so much, cannot be truly appreciated until it is irrevocably altered by something beyond human control, like a hurricane or love. Each individual, in their way flawed and hopeless, but unified perfect in their chaos. The success we were enjoying was a culmination of the efforts of these ratbags; and in terms of live stand-up we were approaching the pinnacle.

The O2 was the climax of an incredible tour. Tens of thousands saw me, the show got great reviews. On the night, Universal sent a crew and some of the Apatow people to shoot a piece at the end of the gig of me as Aldous Snow performing songs, so there would be footage to use in Get Him to the Greek, which I would shortly be starting. This concert footage, like the stuff we’d shot with popstars at the previous year’s MTV VMA awards, would be cleverly used to authenticate the “world of the film”, to make it look legit. Loads of my mates and family came, it was a real buzz, and famous friends turned up: David Baddiel, Matt Lucas and Dave Walliams and, gratifyingly, Jonathan and Jane Ross – who loved it. Incredibly, to provide entertainment while I was off stage after finishing my set and making the “earth-shattering transformation” into Aldous Snow (which Matt maintains involves simply “wetting down” my hair), my mate from Sarah Marshall, Jason Segel, came on stage and performed with Jack Black. It was a remarkable night. It signified a triumphant return after the scandal, it was the biggest stand-up gig of my career – the biggest gig you can do in Britain – when three years earlier me and Gee were performing in front of thirty people above pubs. It even led into my first leading movie role by virtue of the songs. After in the green room my mum and John Noel were dead proud, and all my mates were buzzing, but I had the feeling of emptiness and fear which, I understand, is common in comedians after shows. Gee said he remembers the two of us being sat in the dressing-room together after and me quietly saying, “What now, mate? What now?” That night, after all the hoop-la and glory, I went back to the house and felt like I did as a teenager before any of this happened. The cat was out. Adrenalised and wide awake I sat on my bed alone.

†

Boner Fido

To be sung to the tune of Lionel Bart’s “Food, Glorious Food”

Sean “Puff Daddy” Combs,He is in our movie.When he’s in the mood,He can be quite groovy.But which name should you use?When you have to address him,What if you balls it right up?Then you’ll fuckin’ upset him!He’s Sean “Puff Daddy” Combs,“Puff Daddy” Combs, “Puff Daddy” Combs.

That’s the song I kept singing throughout the filming and rehearsal of Get Him to the Greek, in which I starred alongside Jonah Hill and, notably, Sean “Puff Daddy” Combs. Obviously I never sang it in front of him in case it annoyed him; I would just wait for moments where, for my own amusement, I could sing this jaunty, humorous ditty. Of course now that I’ve printed the lyrics in a book I’ve exposed myself to reprisals and made the quietly clandestine months utterly pointless. No matter, I’m sure, if he reads it, he’ll appreciate it. That’s a gamble I’m willing to take. He is a fascinating character, who I think, alongside Madonna, has understood and exploited the modern notion of celebrity better than anybody else. He is a producer, a rapper and a brand. In my time working with him he was mostly introspective and quiet, focusing on the movie and the umpteen other projects, records, vodkas and clothing labels that make up his empire. There were two notable occasions when he unleashed the magnetism and colossal will that has got him to the top, and here they are.

Judd put on a dinner for all the cast and prominent crew members in an LA restaurant so that we could get to know each other better. I was about an hour late and everyone was there already, except Puffy, who eventually arrived about three hours late, which for a dinner is really late as most dinners don’t last that long. I don’t think this one would have, but we had to elongate it to wait for Puffy. When he arrived it was like he was the Silver-Surfer riding the tide of his own charisma, his lateness was completely irrelevant as he went round the table charming everyone with a phosphorescent gleam. Judd chuckled, Jonah Hill guffawed and Nick Stoller, the director, bumped fists in the whitest way imaginable and demonstrated his Black Power salute, which he bravely, insanely and deliberately made resemble a man operating a glove-puppet. Puffy loved it, it was well funny. When it came to my turn to be dazzled he went all out, inviting me on a trip to Vegas. I hate Vegas. The desert, like the ocean floor, is not for man. It belongs to nature, life does not flourish or belong in that barren, neon citadel of all that is unholy. “What happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas!” I fucking wish it would. I wish the whole damn place could be evacuated and used by the French for illegal nuclear missile tests.

“Wanna come to Vegas?”

“Yes. I’d love to. I’d love to come to Vegas. Coming to Vegas is what I’d love.”

So there it is, I was going.

“Thanks, Sean … Diddy … Puffy … Puff.”

I was never quite sure what to call him and it seemed uncool to ask. As time went on I worked out a “name hierarchy”. Calling him Sean, I believe to be, like suicide, the coward’s way out. Mr Combs isn’t on, obviously. I like Puffy but I think I read that he changed it from Puffy to Diddy, which incidentally is the hardest one to pull off. In time I noticed, however, that a lot of his mates called him “Puffy” or “Puff ”, so once the ol’ confidence was up, I started calling him that. Not at this dinner though.

Puffy, with incredibly poetic specificity, demanded that I show up late for the private jet he would organise to take us to Vegas. “I want you to show two hours late. No! Three hours late. In an eight-foot-long silk scarf.” He paused then cried out, “FUCHSIA! The motherfucking scarf should be fuchsia! And I wanna see it trailing across the runway behind you!” What an insane request. Where would I get a fuchsia scarf at this late notice?

In the event I got a gold cowboy hat and hoped for the best. Ricky Hatton was fighting that weekend in Vegas against Manny Pacquiao, and I, IDIOT THAT I AM, said that I’d sort us out tickets.

“That’s cool,” said Puffy. “You score the tickets, I’ll grind out the jet.” That’s by no means verbatim but it is the gist and style of what he said.

“Sean, you can rest assured that it will be no problem getting those tickets,” I lied.

“Make sure they’re ringside. I can’t be sitting in no punk-ass bullshit seats.” Similarly, that may not be verbatim but it was certainly the gist and vaguely the style.

“Sean,” I said. “Sean, Sean, Sean, Sean, Shawny Sean. You don’t know me well yet, mate, but I am connected all over Vegas, a place I LOVE, incidentally, so you needn’t worry one iota about these tickets –we’re going to that bout, and what’s more, we shall have the time of our lives.” That is what I said – verbatim.

And so began the frantic quest to get tickets to a highly sought-after boxing match taking place in less than forty-eight hours. I know Ricky Hatton “a bit”, but Noel Gallagher’s good mates with him, so I started nagging him about it. He said he’d try, he got me Ricky’s number, but, guess what? It turns out that Ricky was a bit preoccupied on the days building up to the biggest fight of his career and wasn’t answering his phone. Shit. Puffy calls.

“Yo, how’s it going with them tickets?”

“The tickets? How’s it going? It’s going well. Very well. Very, very well. Very, very, very, ver-y …”

He interrupts, “You got ’em?”

“Not as such, no. BUT, I am a hair’s breadth away from getting them, so worry not.”

Eventually, after enlisting everyone I’ve ever met to pursue an objective that I don’t actually, in my heart of hearts, want to achieve, through Dan Weiner, hornet of enthusiasm who pursues PR like a vocation, we got some tickets. But they weren’t good enough. Fourth row.

Puff explained that if you’re seen on TV sat too far back you look a bit of a prat. So he sorted the tickets himself, which made me feel a bit embarrassed. When the day arrived me and Nik, my plus one, headed to Burbank to catch the private jet to Vegas with Puff Daddy – which is not a sentence I envisaged myself writing when I was a crack-head. To be honest I didn’t envisage myself writing any sentences, I could barely hold a pen. We’d arranged to meet Big Danny O’Leary out there so that I’d have a bit of an entourage, although secretly we were all mates.

The plane journey was pretty good, Puffy is a remarkable host and knows how to create a vibe, although I regretted wearing the cowboy hat as it made me look like a thin Chippendale, and I didn’t have the courage to be three hours late. I think we were actually a bit early.

On private jets they do your passport on the plane and you can use your phone at all times. Plus there’s no customs or security and you can have music on, not that crap they play usually. The safety announcement is essentially a gesture and the feeling that you could have it off with the stewardess is heightened even further than usual. In Woody Allen’s film Zelig the protagonist laments that his father’s words to him on his deathbed was the advice “Always try and fuck waitresses.” I would extend this creed to include stewardesses, masseuses and bystanders. Puffy’s entourage, or “mates”, depending on how you look at it, were a nice bunch. A couple of big blokes were his security, he had about four assistants and a couple of people who were not working. One of them, Tracey, has become a proper friend of mine as a result of a spiritual chat we had in the dawn aftermath.

Fame and money and glamour aren’t the answer. You can’t find spiritual solutions in the material world. I’ve learned this empirically but the knowledge is useless in front of the glare. The chat I had with Tracey in fact was spun around the idea that life is like a game or The Matrix, which is a dangerous analogy to use around me because when I first saw that movie it capsized everything from my philosophy to my dress sense, but the analogy, thankfully, didn’t call for me to don a black coat and stare into the mirror fretting about whether or not I was “the one”, it was actually about the nature of compulsive behaviour and illusions.

Me and Tracey conjectured, the morning after, framed by Puff ’s crumpled entourage in the obnoxious Vegas suite (that’s not a judgement on them, I had the same one a floor down), that the universe, in my extraterrestrial worshipping language or God in his, sets challenges for you, and until you overcome them you remain ensnared on that “level”. For me, for the longest time I was trapped on a narcotic plateau, and until I addressed the problem I could not progress spiritually. Now, clearly, the problem was women. The night before had been testimony to that. Me, Danny and Nik, having become separated from Puff and Jay-Z’s conga up and down the Strip, had wound up at our hotel with some girls.

The fight was not good, Ricky was knocked out in the second round at Caesar’s Palace in front of a largely British crowd. I was stood next to Puffy, behind Jay-Z and was struggling with my new context. It transpires that I’m not really into boxing, and when I saw Ricky being expertly pummelled by the sublime Pacquiao I felt sad and guilty. I wanted to climb into the ring and help him. What assistance I’d be capable of offering under those circumstances is questionable, I think the two men would have whisked me into a smoothie of blood and hair before I could even whip out a Gandhi quote. The feeling of alienation was not helped by Puffy, who seemed to have a soft spot for Pacquiao and was now standing on his seat cheering and whooping. He does create a buzz, ol’ Puff. To be in a fancy Vegas restaurant or entering a club with him and Jay-Z is like living in a hip-hop adaptation of The Great Gatsby. Sometimes though he creates a party atmosphere in a situation which, in my view, could’ve gotten along without one. We were in the hotel lift with an old lady gambler and her dog and Puffy and his razzamatazz turned it into a claustrophobic version of Girls Gone Wild. Except it wasn’t Girls, it was Puffy and a Yorkshire terrier pulling up its dog jacket and barking “Spring Break”.

I overdosed on oestrogen again back in the suite, squirrelling all four girls into my room like a right little greedy guts. It wasn’t even that good. I imagine that’s why the next day I was talking about the excesses around women feeling like a trap.

When it came to the first week of filming on the Greek we were slung with cruel poetry right back on to the Vegas strip and indeed the very same hotel and room as before. My suite, I observed, had a lot of boys’ toys-type trinkets like a pool table and fußball (I hate that word), but also a wipe-clean couch. In fact all the surfaces were wipe-clean. I’m not sure that it is a talisman of success to be staying in a room designed to be covered in sperm. In the front room there was a glass cylindrical shower, like a teleportation device, with lights on the ceiling and floor. At the centre there was a pole for the inevitable pole dancer that you would be bringing back to your suite. This is the ergonomic ideology employed at the hotel. No trouser press or little kettle, no shortbread or mini shampoos, no, a private pole dancing shower. I used it once to shower in, alone. It was the most depressing shower of my life, it was like doing your taxes in Disneyland. The closer I got to the summit of this mountain of indulgence, the more the climb seemed pointless.

The film itself brought more opportunity. By the time this book is out it will have been released and we’ll know if it was a commercial success or not; either way I’ve seen it and it makes me laugh. It looks cool, Jonah is brilliant and adorable, Puffy is a revelation as the self-parodying music magnate Sergio, and Elisabeth Moss and Rose Byrne as me and Jonah’s girlfriends are both hilarious. I loved working with the Irish actor Colm Meaney, who like Alfred Molina in The Tempest exudes qualities that one longs to emulate: diligence, warmth and class.

Making movies is not like watching them. As I’ve explained before, and I don’t wish to sound ungrateful, it’s like a long, boring caravan holiday, and I’d had enough of them as a kid. The performing and the collaborating with talented people are the upside but, for young aspirants out there, if you want to succeed in film-making, don’t study On the Waterfront or Goodfellas while reading Stanislavski, book yourself into a caravan park in Ramsgate for three months and say the same thing twenty times every morning while caked in make-up – if you enjoy that, then Welcome to Show Business.