My Shit Life So Far
Read My Shit Life So Far Online
Authors: Frankie Boyle
Frankie Boyle
To all my enemies, I will destroy you.
I don’t think anyone can have written an autobiography without at some point thinking, ‘Why would anyone want to know this shit?’ I’ve always read them thinking, ‘I don’t want to know where Steve Tyler grew up! Just tell me how many groupies he fucked!’ I suppose I’ve just had to assume that anybody who buys this book has an interest in my life story, but I’ve covered myself by including long passages about all the groupies Steve Tyler has fucked.
I’ve been careful not to get too nostalgic. It’s the most retrograde, reality-denying emotion. How long before you’ll be standing at a bus stop hearing someone moan, ‘Say what you like about Saddam, but that country’s gone to hell without him’? Saddam did at least make the trains run on time. It’s just that they were DeathTrains to DeathCamps. To be honest, they were often late but people were too scared to say anything.
There’s a fair bit of swearing in this book. I wasn’t going to put in any at all but then I thought, ‘Fuck it, these readers are cunts.’ I know there’s an argument that swearing should only be used by a writer to underline a point that really demands it, or when strong emotions are in play. I think of this as a particularly English view, resting on the sad viewpoint that not much ever merits strong emotion or opinion. The whole debate
is a bit pointless. I was in a hotel room recently and a show came on where Frank Skinner was talking about swearing on TV. I switched over and had a half-hearted wank. I’m one of about three people in the country directly affected, and I switched over. I would have happily watched Frank Skinner talk about anything else and I had a half-hearted wank over a presenter I know is a lesbian. For which I awarded myself double points.
There’s a genuine BBC directive that says you can’t use ‘fucking’ as a verb but you can use it as an adjective. So now you have to say, ‘Do you know what’s fucking great? Nookie!’ Ian Wright has criticised the BBC for dumbing down. I agree with him, but there’d be more weight to his argument if he’d stayed with the BBC. I’m glad he escaped from the relentless intellectual slide to present
Gladiators
.
This book isn’t entirely accurate. I have changed all the names and occasionally tweaked the order of events. I’ve also lied quite a lot. My favourite autobiography is Clive James’s brilliant
Unreliable Memoirs.
In the introduction he says that all the stuff that sounds true is made up and all the unbelievable bits are true. I’m saying that too, stealing it from him. I also stole his Chapter Four, for anyone who wonders why I went to sixth-form college in Australia. There are a few other instances of plagiarism; they’re mostly just the bits where I’m solving mysteries in Victorian London. Also, there are a couple of blatant untruths. The 1988 Scottish Cup Final was won by Celtic, rather than Dundee United, and I did not rape Tina Turner.
Sadly, there are parts of my life that haven’t made it into the book. In the Seventies I was involved in a top-secret project. I’m not really allowed to talk about it, but it was big. That’s all I can tell you about Operation C. I. AIDS. I went to some CIA seminars to begin with but I can’t remember much about them. All I know is that anytime I hear any of John Lennon’s solo stuff I go out and buy a harpoon. I still have the flask of Michael Jackson’s DNA I stole for Operation Timberlake. His DNA wasn’t hard to get. I dressed up as a schoolboy and hid the flask in my ass. I was also part of the plot to kill Castro, but it was impossible to get near him. I did manage to become his masseur, but even that he makes you do through a catflap with a snooker rest.
Being a special operative was a great job. How many people can say they got to meet all three Paul McCartneys? A lot of people wanted to strangle him after the Frog Chorus, but I was the one who actually got to do it. The CIA recruited me in an operation where they got prostitutes to spike people with acid and find out their secrets. They really had me over a barrel once they knew how much I liked to fuck prostitutes on acid.
There are quite a few drug-abuse stories coming up but I do urge you all to use drugs with caution. For example, never take cocaine before a group-therapy session. It’s really hard to interrupt a discussion on incest with a great idea for a song. Also, never take opium suppositories. I’ve never been in a situation where I thought ‘You know what would make this better? Hallucinating out of my arsehole.’
Another part of my life I’ve not been able to talk about is when I was spiritual adviser to the England football team. I had to leave because I just couldn’t handle their attitude to women. You’ve got to worry when the movie on the team bus is
The Accused
. But you had to admire the simplicity of Sven’s team talks. He’d simply stand in the dressing room and say, ‘There are women out there.’ The team wouldn’t even leave by the door. They’d eat their way out onto the pitch through the dressing-room walls. Then for a while I ran an art project getting sex criminals and serial killers to send their ideas to television companies. It was always something they’d already thought of.
It’s interesting for me to see the things people choose to get offended about and the things they let slide. Earlier this year I had to quit my
Daily Record
column over a moral disagreement. We disagreed over whether it was OK to make jokes about a dead child molester. It’s not that I wasn’t a fan of Michael Jackson—I was a big fan when I was 8. I didn’t know it at the time, but I was his ‘type’. For his London concerts Michael Jackson advertised for children in wheelchairs or with missing legs. What parent would agree to that? Look what happened to kids who could run away! Those tickets sold out in minutes. An interesting attitude we have to paedophilia in this country: ‘We don’t want paedophiles round here…unless they’ve really worked on their choreography.’
We can all learn something from Michael’s life. For example, it looks like oxygen tents are a big waste of money. Apparently when the news of his death broke, Jackson’s father rushed
straight to the hospital just to check if the medics needed a hand with beating Michael’s chest. The man may be gone but he has left a musical legacy that will be around for hundreds of years. As will his face.
There’s a really grim pro-censorship lobby that seems to be thriving at the moment. The
Daily Mail
and these religious maniacs must be stopped. They won’t rest until all telly has been cleansed. Until there’s no swearing and
Walking with Dinosaurs
is exposed as the heretical lie it is. They’ll be Walking with Creationists—‘Our story begins 7,000 years ago when God created the earth—exactly like it is today. Here’s a Tyrannosaurus rex, being buried by God to test our faith.’ These are the same nutcases who complained that having Fiona Bruce present
Antiques Roadshow
was disgraceful and encouraged lustful thoughts. Presumably while all wanking like an incarcerated rapist on ecstasy.
It’s been interesting to write a book and work without the hands-on censorship of TV and radio. Amusingly, amidst all the horror of the world, I was censured this year for daring to make a joke about Israel. I think it was, ‘I’ve been studying Israeli Army Martial Arts. I now know sixteen ways to kick a Palestinian woman in the back.’ I was pulled up about this as civilians were killed by Israeli troops in Gaza. This was on a show called
Political Animal
on Radio 4. That’s where producers like to focus the edginess in their shows into the title.
But what I find incredible is that the Israelis say they can build housing in the West Bank because the Palestinians
weren’t productive enough with it. So if a bunch of settlers start building flats on your back patio you’ve only got yourself to blame. For fuck’s sake plant some marrows before it’s too late. People say nothing can solve the Middle East problem. Not mediation, not arms, not financial aid. I say there is Something. Atheism. Suddenly everyone would be looking at each other thinking, ‘What the fuck were we doing? That was insane! Why are we all wearing these ridiculous hats? Were we drunk?’ Also, you could eliminate the problem of suicide bombing overnight by making everybody wear spandex. Good old Israel. They’re the South Africa that it’s not OK to call cunts. Mind you, I don’t understand the Palestinians either. If they hate Israel so much why don’t they go form their own fucking country?
It’s not like I don’t get offended myself. I was horrified last year when some people said the floods were God’s judgements on homosexuals. That’s an outrageously offensive thing to say, especially when everyone knows that God’s actual judgement was AIDS. But it’s often the most innocuous jokes that make TV bosses go nuts; there really isn’t any logic to it. Once I made a joke about Prince Harry, saying that now he’d joined the army he could look forward to having an arsehole like a collapsed mineshaft. A woman from the channel literally ran onto the studio floor screaming ‘Nooooo!’ in a strange, slow-motion way and waving her hands in the air like somebody about to get eaten
by a giant bug on
Dr Who
. But don’t feel sorry for Harry. The initiations and rituals in the army must be a light relief compared with those in the royal family. In the army it’s just drinking and getting hit on the backside with a cricket bat. No altar. No lizards from the lower fourth dimension. No having to watch your grandmother dislocate her jaw to consume a terrified homeless teenager. Harry actually has a lot in common with the average squaddy. In that he has absolutely no idea who his real father is.
That said, I don’t really understand the point of the royal princes joining the army. Why send a couple of pampered party boys like Harry or William in to fight? In a war you need a ruthless, merciless killing machine, someone like Andy McNab, or Prince Philip. Prince Philip is the perfect soldier: he likes shooting things and he’s a racist. He’d kill his own daughter-in-law if he thought he could get away with it.
It’s amazing how difficult it is to get jokes onto TV shows when adverts for abortions are to be shown on television. I wonder if they will use more famous adverts as inspiration. Have a break, have a killed kid. Or the McDonald’s classic, ‘I’m not lovin’ it.’ I suppose the best advert for abortion is just a silent thirty-second shot of Chris Moyles. The first TV advert for the morning-after pill has already been shown. It’s just a clip of the
Teletubbies
and a voice saying, ‘If you don’t want to watch this shit—take the pill!’
Having looked back over my career while writing this, I’ve concluded that show business is a great thing to work in,
particularly if you enjoyed the stories of H. P. Lovecraft. Paul Gascoigne is appearing in a TV show called
Total Wipeout
. This is cruel. I don’t know if you’ve seen Gazza recently but he looks like he emits a high-pitched shriek at 1 am every morning that kills all the insects within ten miles. Judging by the title I assume it’s just Gazza staring at the screen attached to a saline drip, silently whispering the words to ‘Fog on the Tyne’ as someone performs brain surgery on him with an ice-cream scoop. Actually, it sounds like a winner.
Pretty much every celebrity nowadays seems to be a satirical morality tale. When Peter Andre left Jordan she was said to be devastated. Now she’s left with only two massive tits. Peter escaped to Cyprus; it says something when you escape the arguments and fighting by going to an island with UN peacekeepers. But he will of course be entitled to half of Jordan’s assets, so at least he gets a spacehopper out of it. And Kerry Katona announced on Facebook that she is selling off one of her breast implants on eBay in a bid to raise money for charity. One of them? What is she doing with the other one? Letting it look after the kids? I’m surprised Kerry is on Facebook, although I suppose it’s one way she can keep in touch with her children.
It’s easy to lose your sense of perspective in show business. I totally understand why people end up doing things they really shouldn’t. Apart from anything else, people keep offering them money. Nadya Suleman, the mother who gave birth to octuplets earlier this year, was offered £700,000 to appear in a porn film.
Fair enough—she’s had more people inside her than most porn stars. Whoever the male star is, I hope he has GPS or he might not find his way out again. You can’t really describe it as throwing a sausage up an alley; it’ll be more like flicking a grain of rice into outer space. After having eight babies, is a penis really going to do it for her? I think she’ll need a football team in scuba gear armed with ostrich feathers and power tools.
I know show business seems fucking pointless now, like something Hieronymus Bosch coughed into a hankie. Look in your heart, though, you know that it’s going to get worse. We’ll look back on Tom Cruise as a charming eccentric. The actor who replaces him as the No.1 film promotion entity will probably worship a giant serpent, marry Hermione from Harry Potter and lay an egg in her chest.
It’s been fun becoming a micro-celebrity just as the whole idea of fame gets debased by reality-show contestants. Once, getting recognised in the street put you on a par with Grace Kelly. Now it puts you in the same bracket as somebody who attempted to beat the world ferret-stamping record on
Britain’s Got Talent
. Susan Boyle is now so famous that a Croatian TV crew were filming her in Scotland. They wondered which ethnic war could have caused so much desolation. Then a café owner said he saw her face in a slice of toast. So what? Every day I see her face in my toilet bowl. Everyone keeps asking me if Susan Boyle is a relative. Of course not—none of them will ever manage to chisel their way out of that cellar. I suppose we do have things in common; I look ridiculous dressed as a woman too. Come on, Susan Boyle
does look uncannily like Mrs Doubtfire as played by Gordon Brown. She had a lot of people laughing at her because of her looks, but what people don’t realise is that she’s probably one of the best-looking people in West Lothian.
I can’t make too many jokes about Susan Boyle as the British public have taken her to their heart. What can I say? Britain loves a dog. Sorry, underdog. Let’s be honest and say that God broke the mould, just before he made her. Susan claims she has never been kissed. On that evidence alone, Scotland’s alcohol problems are not nearly as bad as previously imagined. OK, so she hasn’t been kissed, but this is Scotland. I’ll bet she’s been fingered on a school trip to Largs. There are probably thousands of Susan Boyles out there who were worried about coming forward in case they got laughed at—and let’s just hope her success doesn’t change that. Still, congratulations to the third most talented Boyle in Scotland. I’m number two and first place goes to my uncle Jim, who can play the flute from four different orifices.