My Booky Wook 2 (8 page)

I asked him to come on 1 Leicester Square and the 6 Music show and he came on both and was well funny. I saw a side to him that I was unaware of – I think we all know he can be a bit of a wag and can dart out a one-liner when required, but he was funny in a daft way – he did voices, VOICES. Plus he was camp and silly. He obviously enjoyed coming on the radio show and, ridiculously, became a regular feature. He’d just stroll over from his nearby home and join in. He elevated the radio show and effortlessly made it more special. He stayed involved to the very end.

From the get-go that show had a propensity for aggravation. It was oftentimes daft and gentle, with music-hall banter and light ribbing, but Lesley loved me and gave me lots of room – so I took that room. We began to wind up the newsreaders, throwing to the news in a childish fashion, goading them into including daft words in the news. I went too far and started claiming that during the news I’d be under the desk, interacting in an intimate manner with the newswoman as she racily recited massacres and football scores. She was a bit upset. Another time, my mate Ade who’s in a wheelchair was refused entry into a nightclub and I mounted an on-air campaign to condemn them – which, while good hearted, put the BBC in a difficult position legally as the club could not respond to Ade’s allegations.

These skirmishes were minor – nothing was to get in the way of my inexorable rise, everyone was talking about me, I was living like a teetotal Bacchanalian. It was time for me to make a pilgrimage, for all this success was built around comedy and I am a comedian. Yes, there is an unusual degree of tacked-on glamour and pelvic thrusting, but under the hairspray and hysteria I am but a joker, and it was time for me to return to every stand-up’s Jerusalem – the Edinburgh Festival, the festival at which I’d been arrested, attacked and hospitalised, where I’d fought it out at late-night bear-pit gigs and gouched on smack on stage, and once employed, Fagin-like, a tearaway gang of local children to promote my show. Where, once clean, I’d toiled to earn the respect of my peers and laboured over my craft till I could go toe to toe with anyone. Now it was time for me to take Edinburgh by storm, to stand above it like the castle, to light the sky like the Hogmanay rockets. I was returning as a star, to show them what rock’n’roll comedy is all about. I was going to tear it up, show ’em where I’m from, go crazy. I was ready for anything they could throw at me.

†

They complained about those kids. And they weren’t crazy about the heroin either.GILDED BALLOONTo Russell Brand

Pablo Diablo22 August 2000Dear Russell BrandI have been made aware of several incidents involving the children you have working for you. Firstly I must point out that it is against employment law to employ minors in any capacity and that the Gilded Balloon does not allow children to work in any of its venues or areas.There was an incident on Monday when items were taken from the Production office. You were informed of this and those involved have been barred from the administrative areas.I have now had further complaints from Venue Managers of the same children causing a nuisance in and outside of venues. This has involved the throwing of items at people queuing for shows and abuse being given to staff and customers of the Gilded Balloon. This is unacceptable.I must therefore insist that these children are no longer admitted to any Gilded Balloon venues or public areas and that you cease to employ them - illegally - to do flyering for you.I am sorry to have to take this action, but they are causing a great nuisance to staff and customers alike and I would appreciate it if you could advise them to no longer come to the Gilded Balloon.I hope that I do not have to take this matter furtherYours SincerelyMick Bateman

General Managercc. Karen Koren, Artistic Director

No Means NOooo

There’s nothing more tragic than being in Edinburgh on 1 September, the day after the festival, or indeed in the first few days of August before it starts. Because of my inability to be punctual, my unmanageability and my lack of planning, I’ve experienced both the bookends of the month of August when Edinburgh pulls you into its cultural embrace; a cerebral carnival, not a carnival of just decadence. There is such a strong sense of unity in the city, a common manner of purpose, ad hoc venues hastily formed from dentists’ waiting rooms and people performing on street corners. But “the day after”, like the post-H-bomb TV movie that goes by that name, Edinburgh is bereft and eery or like Emily’s shop when Bagpuss has gone back to sleep – still nice, but where’s the magic? Edinburgh in its post-festival slump probably doesn’t have the agonising pathos that Bagpuss had– nor does it raise so many questions, like: why was a little girl trusted to run a second-hand shop? How come Bagpuss could turn inanimate objects into dancing mice and pompous woodpeckers just by waking up? I don’t want to get all “Joseph Campbell”, but that’s what Jesus did with Lazarus. Where’s Bagpuss’s gospel? Probably never penned because, as Matt once wisely observed, the woodpecker bookend Professor Yaffel is a handicraft doppelgänger of that Godless stick-in-the-mud Richard Dawkins. Whenever Bagpuss was delighting the gallery with some unlikely thesis on a bottle or a ballet shoe, claiming them to be rocket ships or Minotaur mittens, Yaffle would coldly high-jack these flights of fancy – “Rocket ship? Why that’s nothing but an old bottle. A Minotaur’s mitten? It’s a dirty old shoe. Islam? It’s inherently violent.” Why can’t Professors Yaffle and Dawkins just let us all enjoy a nice story? I expect Dawkins would say that it’s because he opposes ignorance, especially where it causes war and bloodshed. Well, I happen to think people cause wars, not ideologies, and were we to be united by one, drab godless dogma we’d be murdering each other over who ate the last croissant within an hour.

The first time I went up to Edinburgh I arrived two days early, which is embarrassing, like arriving at a party early or misjudging the mood and touching a date’s thigh or calling your teacher “Mummy”. If I call a teacher “Mummy” now, it is a part of a cheeky little sex-game – not a kindergarten blunder – I think sometimes my sexual pursuits are like time travel: I Quantum Leap back into my past to try and unravel some perceived slight or wrong. “Hmm, those teachers didn’t respect me – I’ll drag a few back to my chamber, that’ll remedy the wrongs of the past.” I’m like Marty McFly hurtling “Back to the Future” to paint in a new present. He seemed to have an unusual interest in sex with his mother for the protagonist of a children’s film – he couldn’t keep his hands off her. What on earth were our young minds supposed to glean from that? Time travel is possible and by the way have you noticed what a lovely arse your mum’s got?

So it’s a drag to arrive at the festival early, but at least there’s hope. Not like the day after the festival, when it’s all gone, like looking into the eyes of someone who no longer loves you, all the more empty for how full it once was. In the middle, however, it’s amazing and exciting, and in Booky Wook – the hit autobiography (now a major motion picture in my mind) – I mentioned the excitement of the first time I went up there as part of a play with students from Webber Douglas and performed my first ever stand-up. I went there the next year with Nigel Klarfeld and it built. My first Edinburgh after becoming famous was an altogether different experience. That year Ricky Gervais literally overshadowed everything, he was performing at Edinburgh Castle for eight thousand people and caused a lot of acrimony and jealousy. But I didn’t really mind it myself, I just thought, “Ricky Gervais will be up in that castle, it doesn’t make that much difference, some military thing goes on there usually – the Tattoo, and I don’t mind that either, just bombast and pomp, a needless display of antiquated power.” There’s an easy joke to do here along the lines of “and the Tattoo’s a bit pompous an all” but I admire Ricky and his success. However, the structure of that sentence does demand that I at least draw your attention to the potential for that quip.

This time I was going to Edinburgh glistening with notoriety because of Big Brother and tabloid guff and being on Jonathan Ross. The previous year I’d had a cult following; girls would turn up, giggly and available, and boys would nod. There was a buzz about me, and famous people were in the audience; but this year, 2006, I was famous.

I was playing a run of one week of gigs, seven nights in a fifty-seater theatre at the Assembly Rooms and four in this thousand-seater venue and that was the biggest room I’d done – the Edinburgh International Conference Centre. The little fifty-seater room had been initially booked early in the year, then the thousand-seater had to be added. On four of the nights I’d do a gig at the small venue, then go down to the Conference Centre.

The first night as the intro music played I heard the crowd scream. This had never happened before, and Nik and I turned to each other and registered this shrill gear-change. It’s very odd when you realise that you are the unknowing participant in millions of relationships and that the natural conclusion of these bizarre non-consensual marriages are teenage girls hollering or a teenage boy blandly asking you to recite a few words out of context – the catchphrase. In my case they could not be more daft. Here are some: “Ballbags, dinkle, if anything, ’citing.” Out of context they aren’t that funny and, in truth, there is no context that could justify them. Once you’ve said the catch-phrase, what then? Where do you go to, my lovely? In front of fifty people you can cater to the natural appetite for repetition, but across town in the enormous Edinburgh International Conference Centre, no longer a cult comic in a cosy den but a prowling digi-god in front of screaming (what is that?) fans? Man, I love that screaming. Truly I wish I could have them all, I wish I could take that crescendo to a fluid conclusion because for a lot of my life that acceptance, that yearning, has cradled me, papering over the cracks of my maudlin, porcelain adolescence. In their howls I found the teeth to fit the wound. An audience behaves entirely differently as numbers increase, like a mob with diminished responsibility. Those shows were thrilling. Nik said that was when he knew we were getting through. People were paying money and turning up and screaming. Luckily I am a highly disciplined man who would never exploit this crazy new resource, this oestrogen goldmine.

I was in Edinburgh with Matt Morgan and Trevor Lock as we were making the 6 Music radio show. We were staying up there in a flat that wasn’t quite big enough for my rapidly expanding ego; it was above a trendy urban bar which could comfortably accommodate seventy people. After the Conference Centre gigs, Icarus-high and with Herculean hubris, I would invite the entire audience back to this bar. I’d say, “We’re going to have an after-party now, it’s going to take place downstairs from my house,” then I’d give the address of the bar. This tiny poncey drinking den would be stuffed like a foie gras goose disgorging people pâté on to the pavement outside. Then I’d wander downstairs like a toff with a willy for a cracker and guzzle down the best bits. Of course when one starts treating the bar below as a kind of harem/wine cellar it’s pretty bloody obvious that some universal adjudicator will soon step in to give your bloated “ballbags” the kicking they deserve. But this was no time to contemplate lurking karmic consequence, I had carousing to do.

Now, I find myself writing one of those passages that makes me look a bit of a bastard, and this is my book (y wook) so I’m entitled to give a good account of myself – Lord knows, once this is out there back in the clutches of the snides, I’ll have no right of reply, so let me get my justification in now – while I own the page. I get accused of “banging on about sex” a lot – well, there’s a few reasons for that. One is that people (journalists) are always asking me about it. They’re right pervs – “How many birds? How many orgies? Gissa look at your helmet.” I, being polite, especially when fame first came a-calling, would acquiesce to these requests – particularly the helmet one. Soon, though, I realised that chatting about birds – if not done carefully, i.e., using the word “birds” – makes me look bad. But I’m not bad, I’m analytical, self-obsessed and randy but, to paraphrase John Lennon, “I’m not the only one.” I even worry about the Kate Moss chapter that opens this book – is it indiscreet? Will she mind? I hope not, because to be honest the whole affair was a tidal wave of flashbulbs and adrenalin, and I just felt like I was at Thorpe Park and had managed to get off the ghost train in the middle of a tunnel and see how the celebrity caper worked.

The other reason I harp on about the how’s yer father is that it’s bloody interesting and confusing and along with violence and death one of the more captivating elements of our experience on this dirty little circle. I also talk quite a lot about football and cats, but these are not topics that define our species. Of course sex is not a straightforward topic, not for me, not for any of us, and the injection of fame and availability was about to produce some diabolical consequences.

Alan Yentob, a man in his fifties, former BBC Director of Programmes and cultural commentator, came along to the final Bacchanalian late-night gig that concluded the Edinburgh run, then joined us backstage afterwards. Then, insanely, this rather demure and sophisticated gentleman was invited to our after-party. As you know, our after-parties consisted of little more than an ill-disciplined, over-excited sex-pert pied-piping strangers off a street and onto a nearby duvet. I imagine the kind of after-parties Alan Yentob must be used to include canapés and harpists and a chap performing close-up magic; well, at our do, the canapés would’ve been kicked off the tray by Matt, Trevor would weep at the genius of the conjurer and I’d get the harpist pregnant.

Once out of what was surely Alan’s first minibus, we romped on to the street. “Right, this is the after-show party, Alan – oozing from the bar.” The audience spilled like a slick from a tanker run aground. I skidded off. “See you later, Alan,” I brayed, then wandered into the bar and started chatting up girls.

One of the things I ought work on is my extreme distillation of seduction. I have created a seemingly irreversible dichotomy between love and sex, so if I’m romantically involved with someone I’ll spend all sorts of time chatting them up and talking to them. But if I only want to sleep with someone I approach the affair like a harassed secretary confronting a bothersome franking machine. I don’t think of it as being particularly curt or anything, I just think of it as efficient, like nature should be, like evolution is. One night we had a party upstairs, we didn’t invite any men so it was me, Trevor and Matt and about twenty girls in sectarian pockets loose in our flat. Alan Yentob was nowhere to be seen, he was probably scrubbing a cormorant clean somewhere.