Nerd Do Well (34 page)

It was while on this trip that I forged another of the most significant friendships of my adult life, with a mercurial Northern Irish stand-up, rave bunny and bar-room philosopher called Michael Smiley. I had been aware of Michael for a few years, having first seen him delivering frenetic and oddly absorbing field reports for the magazine show
Naked City
. There was something magnetic about him. Occasionally, you will see someone on television for the very first time, and such is their charisma and presence, you assume they have been around forever and somehow just avoided your attention. This was most certainly the case with Smiley; he had a confidence, an assurance, even a slight air of danger about his persona that gave the impression he had been drafted in from somewhere else, a place where he was king.

A year or so later, I found myself on the same bill as Smiley at the Cosmic Comedy Club in Fulham. I had gone along with Nick Frost in tow, to perform at one of the hellish Christmas party bashes, which sapped the soul but made sense financially. Usually, comedy clubs are filled with people who have paid specifically to see a night of comedy, but at a Christmas party bash the audiences were merely out on a ‘works do’ and it was a hard job diverting their attention to the stage, particularly when where they really wanted to be was back at the office, drinking red wine out of paper cups and trying to persuade Tina from accounts to photocopy her vagina.

Nick and I both recognised Smiley from
Naked City
and exchanged a few pleasantries in the artists’ holding area (an empty upstairs bar). Smiley is not the type of man to suffer fools gladly, and knowing him as well as I do now, I can only imagine what he must have thought of this fresh-faced little smarty-pants student comic and his even younger Essex sidekick.

I saw him again in a bar in Edinburgh the following year and offered a quick hello, which I think he returned with a surly nod. We were both at the festival performing one-man shows. Smiley had become a fixture at the fringe having come second to Dylan Moran in the annual ‘So You Think You’re Funny’ new-act competition (I went out in the heats), whereas this was my first time performing a one-hour show and I felt like a first-year at a big comprehensive. Scouts for a number of Antipodean comedy festivals, including Adelaide and Melbourne in Australia and Wellington and Auckland in New Zealand, were trawling the venues for potential acts to fly over and both Smiley and I eventually made the grade.

The following February my agent informed me that Smiley and I would be on the same flight to Sydney and gave me his mobile phone number to coordinate meeting at the airport. I was very impressed by this – after all, it was 1996 and cellular phones were still something of a luxury. I called the strange, futuristic series of digits and arranged to meet Smiley at Heathrow, along with a number of other acts, including Andrew Maxwell, Simon Munnery and Sean Lock. Thrown into this strange adventure and bonded by the uncertainty we faced, Smiley and I began to warm to each other.

When we arrived in Australia, any cautious circling was abandoned in favour of excitable giggling at this exotic new land. The weather was beautiful, the landscape beguiling, the girls were uniformly gorgeous – and what’s more, every household in Adelaide was permitted by law to cultivate nine marijuana plants for personal use. Something about the culture shock and the psychological impact of being geometrically opposed to our lives back home sent us into a spin of hedonistic fervour. Suddenly I found myself relishing my status as a single man and I felt happy and liberated, as though I had been given the chance to start my adult life all over again. I went slightly insane, throwing myself into new experiences. I did a bungee jump, got a tattoo, grew my first beard and had a lot of sex. In the two and a bit months since she’d dumped me, it was the first time I actually felt glad that Eggy Helen had given me the elbow.

We spent most of our days down at Glenelg beach with the increasingly close-knit band of comics and friends we had made along the way. On one occasion, having indulged liberally in the local recreational herb, a sticky and pungent strain of marijuana, I found myself stood silently in the sea with a number of other comics including Smiley and Maxwell, the warm, blue water gently lapping against our hips as we stared into space, every one of us unspeakably happy but somehow struck dumb. After a minute or so of blissful, hazy peace, I lifted my head to my compatriots and uttered a simple devastating truth: ‘This is our job.’ We remained in a circle for another five minutes before we eventually stopped laughing.

On the surface, Smiley and I in particular were seemingly totally incompatible as friends; our respective credentials read more like a gay version of
Lady Chatterley’s Lover
. He was a working-class Northern Irish tough nut, who was married and divorced with two kids and a wealth of life experience that might make a less resilient man feel as though the world owed him a living; whereas I studiously played the fresh-faced, middle-class university graduate who had always had it comparatively easy.

Before our time in Australia had ended, Smiley and I had agreed to share a flat together. Since I was living on Nick’s floor in the aftermath of my break-up with Eggy Helen and Smiley found himself similarly transient, kipping on various sofas around west London, we resolved to start house-hunting as soon as we returned. This experience later inspired some of the details of Tim and Daisy’s homeless exploits in
Spaced
, a show in which Smiley would eventually play the protean rave-pixie by the name of Tyrone ‘Tyres’ O’Flaherty.

A few months after we found a flat in Kentish Town, Nick joined us. Having finally given up the ghost on his deserted flat in Ivy Road, he found sanctuary in our spare room, a cell, which soon became affectionately known as ‘the crab pit’. By a variety of incidents and accidents, the three of us had been drawn together from wildly disparate backgrounds under one roof to forge an enduring bond that had become nothing short of brotherly.

Michael and Nick were both best men at my wedding to Maureen and are both godfathers to my daughter. It sounds like I’m waxing fatal again, but I’m not; it comes back down to my whole dubious science thing. We might not know we are seeking out the people who best enrich our lives, but somewhere on a deep, subconscious level we absolutely are. Whether that bond is temporary or permanent, whether it succeeds or fails, fate is simply a conflagration of choices that combine with others to shape the relationships that surround us. We cannot choose our family but we can choose our friends, and we do, sometimes before we have even met them.

Hanging from the end of Canterbury’s outstretched arm was Ben from Century (an imprint of Random House Publishing) a look of terror on his stricken face.

‘B-But . . .’ Pegg stammered.

‘If you put me down, I’ll explain it all,’ Ben rasped, his face reddening further.

Canterbury lowered the publisher to the ground. He staggered slightly and clutched his bruised neck like a fairy. More of Lord Black/Ben from Century’s goons had gathered at the door and were hammering incessantly to get in.

‘Stand down,’ choked Black. ‘Everything’s fine.’

‘Are you sure, Ben – I mean, Lord Black?’ said a voice of muffled concern.

‘Yes,’ Ben insisted, sinking into a chair and putting his head in his hands.

‘Why?’ Pegg said simply.

‘I did it for you!’ muttered Ben.

‘For me?’ Pegg said incredulously.

‘I knew you didn’t really want to write a biography,’ Ben sighed. ‘You seemed so reluctant. I thought perhaps you might require some inspiration and what better inspir ation than an adventure? I thought perhaps the book might write itself. So I kidnapped Ms Burdot’s dog –’

‘Monsieur Pooh?’ gasped Pegg.

‘Oui,’ faltered Murielle, her eyes brimming with desperate tears.

‘I threatened to kill him unless Murielle stole the Star of Nefertiti from the Museum of Egyptian Antiquity.’

Pegg’s eyes flitted over to the chastened French lovely. She looked at him pleadingly. He knew how much she treasured her Pooh and understood in that moment why she had done what she had done. He caught himself hoping that her deceit had only been partial and that she hadn’t faked it, particularly the orgasms which had seemed really real.

‘I knew that you knew that I possessed the tablet of Amenhotep IV,’ continued Ben, ‘and I also knew that you knew the awesome power of the two antiquities combined. It was a simple case of playing off your innate sense of right and wrong and of course your weakness for beauty.’

Murielle and Pegg exchanged a glance and something eased between them.

‘And what of Lord Black?’ Pegg asked, making sure all the loose ends were tied up neatly.

‘Oh, I have always been Lord Black,’ smiled Ben. ‘Supervillainy is a lucrative sideline. Do you have any idea what I get paid at Century? I mean, it’s good but it’s not brilliant. It’s the authors that earn the big bucks, and what do they do, really?

‘Write books?’ offered Canterbury.

Ben scoffed, ‘You’d be surprised how few of them do. Particularly the money-grubbing celebritwats with their self-indulgent journals of narcissistic twaddle.’

‘You’ve got a Porsche!’ Pegg argued.

‘It’s second-hand,’ countered Ben, triumphant at winning the argument but slightly disappointed that he didn’t have a new Porsche.

‘So all the dastardly acts of wickedness perpetrated by Lord Black were all down to you?’ Pegg enquired helpfully.

‘Not all,’ said Ben, regaining something of his foreboding malevolence. ‘There is one last great wickedness. You see, I decided halfway through this wonderful stratagem that such a story was wasted on an oaf like you. I should do what I’ve always felt I could do better than any of you philistines – I’d write the book myself and earn enough money to buy a new Porsche.’

‘What about
It Looks Like a Cock
?’ challenged Pegg, referring to the novelty photobook of naturally occurring and man-made phallic symbols Ben had put together with his simpering sidekick, the notorious hunchback Jack Fogg. ‘It sold loads!’

‘I’m talking about a real book, you idiot,’ snapped Ben. ‘A book with a story that has a beginning, middle and end. We’ve had the first two, all we require now is an end – and what a denouement it will be. I’m going to make millions.’

With the speed of a cobra, Ben grabbed the standard lamp by his side, tore out the cable and jammed it into Canterbury’s neck. A surge of electricity coursed through the robot’s body, shorting his primary systems, before he had even clattered to the ground. Ben grabbed for the silver revolver and pointed it at Pegg.

‘All too easy,’ hissed the duplicitous villain/publishing executive, squeezing the trigger.

Pegg was momentarily confused – he was looking into Murielle’s eyes and yet how could this be? She had been on the other side of the room a moment ago and now she was here, her arms clasped tightly around his neck. Her grip loosened slightly and her eyes lost focus. It was then that Pegg realised what she had done and his heart broke in two and then those pieces broke in two so that his heart was in four. Somewhere else in the room he heard Ben fiddling with his pistol, hurriedly loading another bullet into the single-shot chamber. ‘How very impractical,’ thought Pegg, absent-mindedly plucking one of the throwing blades from his combat suit and propelling it into Ben’s forehead. Pegg heard a dull thud and knew his nemesis had croaked.

‘Simone.’ Murielle’s voice sounded distant and strained.

‘Try not to speak.’ Pegg brushed a strand of hair from her eye.

‘I’m sorry,’ she whispered. ‘I’m sorry I lied. If eet means anything, I only told one lie, everything else was true, I promise.’

‘So you weren’t faking it then?’ Pegg asked tentatively.

‘Non,’ Murielle whispered.

‘The orgasms, I mean,’ Pegg pushed.

Murielle smiled and put her hand on the side of Pegg’s face and shook her head. Pegg breathed a sigh of relief, secure in the knowledge that he was still great at sex. Murielle shuddered, regaining Pegg’s attention. She pulled him close and looked into his eyes.

‘I love you,’ she whispered.

Pegg immediately thought of Han Solo but decided not to go for the obvious.

‘I love you too,’ he replied.

Murielle’s body went limp, her eyes fluttered into stillness. Pegg knew she was gone but held her closer anyway, burying his face in her hair. A clank from across the room drew his attention and he lifted his head to see Canterbury pulling himself upright. Relief spread through Pegg’s body; at least his best friend was still alive, at least everything was not lost. For the first time in his life, since he was a baby, he cried. He cried in a way that was acceptable for a man to cry and had been since the mid-nineties.

‘Why do you cry?’ asked Canterbury.

‘It’s an emotional response,’ sobbed Pegg. ‘Fluid leaks from the tear ducts . . .’

‘No, sir,’ said Canterbury softly, ‘I mean, why are you crying now?’

‘Murielle,’ said Pegg, his voice cracking, ‘she’s dead.’

‘My scanners would suggest otherwise, sir.’ Canterbury gazed at Murielle for a few moments, seemingly searching her inner body. ‘Her heartbeat is faint but it’s there. It would seem the bullet glanced off a rib and exited through the soft fatty tissue in her abdomen.’

‘She’s not fat!’ said Pegg defensively.

‘Sir, she’s lost some blood, but if we hurry, we can get her to Hendon Garden Hospital. I’m not a medi-droid but I would wager she’ll make a full recovery.’

‘Really?’ said Pegg, snorting a rope of snot from his upper lip. ‘What about Black’s goons?’ asked Pegg. ‘There must be forty of them between us and the jet.’

‘Not to worry, sir,’ beeped Canterbury. ‘If you’d just give the word.’

Pegg lifted Murielle into his arms and smiled at his mechanical confidant. He opened his mouth and whispered a single word.

‘Toast.’

Nick and I discovered the spoof news show
The Day Today
by complete accident one Wednesday evening in 1994, and instantly become utterly obsessed with it. The feeling of excitement we got from watching that first episode reminded me of the thrill of finding those few minutes of
Vic Reeves Big Night Out
after
Play It Again, Sam
, or the time when I was finally allowed to watch
The Young Ones
.