The Varnished Untruth (3 page)

That was an era when intelligent men were cottoning on to the idea that if they espoused feminist platitudes bright women would jump into bed with them. It was the new chat-up formula and it worked – except for me. I didn’t get it. See, I’d been battling my inner nerd for many years and was actually happy to be appreciated for my looks – looks I’d worked on in a most dedicated manner. The fact that I had my bosoms enlarged at twenty-one should give you a clue. Looking back on it, I wish I hadn’t, but my own were slightly asymmetrical (I’ve since discovered that is quite normal) and, more importantly, it was the height of the Playboy era; witnessing the cleavage clout wielded by my more buxom, airbrushed ‘sisters’, I naturally (or rather, artificially) wanted my share. I could go on to expound the feminist view and decry the tyranny of the male obsession with the C cup, but that would only bore both of us.

Fact is, in my young life I had learned that intellectual prowess alone did not necessarily translate to a happy life; my own mother (who did not relish her femininity) was a brilliant scientist but she struggled with anxiety, stress and sadness. Ergo, in my twenty-one-year-old imaginings, acquiring a curvier body held the promise of a wonderfully happy, glamorous life – a bit like Elizabeth Taylor’s. Well, in those days, we believed her publicity.

I’m going to tell you all about my childhood in the chapters ahead but, right now, I might as well put it out there that it was far from idyllic. Unhappy parents usually produce unhappy kids, and my impression of my parents was that they struggled in many ways. At home, things could get pretty tense. For most of my childhood I was anxious, over-serious and unpopular; as a teenager I was pilloried for my freckles, my mousy hair and my flat chest.

Oh, please don’t feel sorry for me – at any point in this book – even if you’re a big softy and stories like mine always get you going. See, I’ve more than made up for it. For example, I’m told I eventually got to be a sex symbol. I never really understood what that meant – and still don’t – but apparently I was one. The papers said so. Of course, that was thirty years ago (nowadays I’m only one by default, when someone mistakenly calls me Pamela Anderson – and, to be honest, I’m not quite sure whether to consider myself insulted or flattered). But, back then, the label confused me. Did it mean I represented sex in some odd way? Surely not. I certainly didn’t consider myself to be in the same category as other women labelled sex symbols – Raquel Welch, Ursula Andress, Marilyn Monroe, Joan Collins and Bo Derek. I knew I was small fry. Anyway, wasn’t being a female sex symbol a terrible curse? Once labelled, you had a ridiculously short sell-by date. As opposed to, say, Sean Connery, Warren Beatty, James Garner, Tom Jones, Mick Jagger, Cliff Richard and Burt Reynolds, who could keep their sexual puissance alive long after their fortieth birthdays. One rule for boys, another for girls – not fair. Men still come up to me and say, ‘Oh boy, I used to fancy you on
Not The Nine O’Clock News
.’ Yes, a backhanded compliment, but I’ve learned not to take it as an insult. I simply smile and say, ‘I’m surprised your parents let you stay up that late . . .’

I’ll be telling you a lot more about
Not The Nine O’Clock News
later on, too, but, since we’re talking about bodily attributes, it seems right to mention nudity. I am aware that many viewers were . . . titillated . . . by a couple of outrageous sketches I performed on the show that involved upper-body nudity. For example, there was a spoof ad for ‘Jacques Cousteau bath salts’ in which I was attacked in my bubble bath by a scaly sea-monster. Due to a wardrobe malfunction, producer Sean Hardie had to spend hours in the edit room trying to preserve my honour on that one.

Our ‘American Express’ sketch caused quite a stir, too; I played a car rental salesperson who replied to a customer’s question ‘American Express?’ with the answer ‘That will do nicely, sir, and would you like to rub my tits, too?’ I unbuttoned my blouse invitingly and revealed my cleavage (courtesy of Wonderbra). Cue voice-over: ‘Put your head in between them and go bbl bbl bbl with American Express.’ I never quite understood why at the time, but the
NTNON
boys hooted at that like stuck pigs. I suppose they’d never imagined a girl would actually agree to it. Well, you wouldn’t have caught, say, Emma Thompson doing that kind of thing now, would you? But I didn’t think anything of it. It wasn’t like I’d be letting the side down or anything (did I even have a side?). No, I’d do anything for a laugh.

Ironically, the one fully naked Bristol seen on
NTNON
was not mine. It was displayed in a sketch called ‘Baby on the bus’, which opened with a woman walking down the road apparently unaware that she had one large naked bosom emerging from her blouse. When someone points this out, she looks down, turns pale, and exclaims, ‘Oh no! I’ve left my baby on the bus!’ I have no idea who the woman was but, even today, I have to put up with people bringing it up, kind of slyly, as if to say: ‘Don’t act too stuck-up because I’ve seen one of your tits.’ I have an answer for that, too: ‘You’re a bit slow, big boy. Rent Mel Brooks’
History of the World Part One
and you’ll see both of them.’

You know, until yesterday when I was going through some old press cuttings, I’d completely forgotten about another public boob flash of which I’m guilty. It occurred on the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) when I appeared in a period TV drama based on a Norman Lindsay novel called
Redheap
. The sighting was extensively covered in the newspapers:

Seriously? Well, it was 1972 and, back then, Australia was a pretty conservative place.

Although I privately saw myself as a toothy, short-waisted, pear-shaped munchkin with an unfortunate facial profile, I realized that, with the right make-up, hair and lighting, my looks got me a lot of attention on
NTNON
. But I worked darn hard as well, and very often disguised myself with unflattering wigs and teeth. Case in point – I donned a particularly unattractive wig and huge pair of glasses, not to mention fake teeth made from a polystyrene cup – to portray Janet Street-Porter. It was a cruel look. In fact, I think she’s really a very appealing, interesting woman, and I feel sorry that, since it’s when Billy and I met, she has had to endure the clip of that sketch being played again and again. The idea of the sketch was that ‘Janet’ was interviewing Billy, saying, ‘What I don’t understand is – how can people understand your accent?’ But Billy turns the table on her by acting like he doesn’t understand her (‘Sorry?’). While we were taping, my fake teeth kept falling out, which made Billy crack up. I was rather shocked at his response. I thought he was being very unprofessional. See, I’d had excellent acting training at the National Institute of Dramatic Art in Sydney and had done a huge amount of theatre so I was imbued with performance discipline. But Billy just kept giggling and didn’t care, so we had to do the scene over and over again. Nevertheless, I was very taken with him, in a womanly way. I didn’t see him again for about a year after that and, by then, both our marriages were ending so we had the opportunity to be together . . . I couldn’t possibly have known that, thirty odd years later, we’d be having Christmas dinner together with our children and grandchildren.

My husband is just wonderful, isn’t he? Well, not always. He gave me a paper weight for Christmas. What every girl dreams of. Not just any old paper weight – one with a beautiful blue bird painted on it. ‘What bird is that?’ I asked, a bit mystified. ‘A great tit,’ he grinned pointedly, ‘just ONE great tit.’ Despite his questionable sense of humour, I’m still a fan. And, there I was, sitting at the other end of the table with an immobile, marble face that scared the grandkids, and trying not to put any strain on my stitches. I was still high because only sixty hours earlier, I’d been in the pre-op room with Dr Bev savagely pulling at the poppers on my gown. ‘Ooh, I do love having my clothes ripped off,’ I smirked. The drugs were definitely working. But Dr Bev had heard it all. He calmly picked up a large blue marker and started drawing on my body.

All I remember about the rest of that day was being helped into a car that took me to a recovery facility – let’s call it ‘Tranquility’ – the private post-op facility I was lucky enough to be able to recover in. I know I’m spoiled, but I didn’t think it was a good idea to rely on an irreverent Glaswegian comedian to help me to the bathroom, and remember my pain pills. He’d take one look at my new, swollen knockers and either faint or piss himself laughing. Either way, he’d get an hour or so of comedy material from it, but it would be totally at my expense. Tranquility’s the kind of place that features a ‘grey carpet parade’ of celebrities shuffling along the corridor, under doctors’ orders to exercise their legs to avoid DVT. You could tell from their walking style what kind of procedure each one had undergone: tummy-tuckers were doubled over with a walker, face-lifters kept their chins in the air, boob jobbers kept their arms firmly by their sides – each person accompanied by a pretty nurse ready to assist with an extra helping of Percocet. I recognized at least one person I knew a bit, but tried to hide my own face because I had emerged from surgery with one wide-awake eye and one sleepy one. It often happens because, due to the long-acting anaesthesia, the nerves in the face can become deadened in an asymmetrical fashion. But it’s temporary – at least, that’s the theory. Ooh er, I’d just have to wait and see.

Sharon was the only person I allowed to visit me in Tranquility. She plopped on my bed, brazenly insisted that the warm Veuve Clicquot she’d brought would go perfectly with my already volatile Vicodin/Valium cocktail and announced: ‘Did I tell you, I nearly shagged my cousin?’ Excellent conversation-starter. ‘I wish you had,’ I replied. ‘As a sexologist I would have loved to know if the shattering of such a major taboo would actually enhance or hinder the experience . . .’ ‘But is it really taboo for us at our age?’ she questioned. ‘We can no longer procreate, so . . . where’s the harm?’ ‘Quite right,’ I smiled wickedly. ‘From now on I’ll advise any post-menopausal woman complaining about the unavailability of sexual partners to look no further than their own families . . .’

All right, now I’m fairly sure you’re going, ‘Really? Is she actually being so cavalier about incest? Not sure I want to read any further if that’s where she’s headed . . .’ But, see, it’s just gallows humour. Medical doctors are often privately macabre about death and illness, and Sharon and I – although we’re really decent people (she’s a wife, mother and psychologist, too) – that’s the way we talk to each other and, although shocking to most people, I think it’s so much more fun and authentic than, ‘How’s the pain, honey? You’re so brave. Can I get you a cupcake?’

After they let me out, I had a post-surgery consultation with Dr Bev. ‘I took off an awful lot of skin,’ he said excitedly, showing me some thoroughly gory photos. ‘Sick bag please,’ I said pointedly. He peeled off some of the sterile skin-closure strips and I saw my new navel. ‘What’s that?’ I asked, pointing at a mark just above my pubes. ‘It’s a scab,’ said the nurse quickly. ‘Yes, but from what?’ I asked suspiciously. ‘Oh, that’s your old belly button,’ confessed Dr Bev. Eughhh. ‘If I have this done again,’ I posed, ‘will it eventually become my clitoris?’

Humour, of course, can be used as a defence mechanism, a means of avoiding the real feelings underneath. But, you know that. You’re probably way ahead of me here. When it comes to self-analysis I can be painfully slow. I know, you’d think at my age I’d have a bit more self-confidence, not to mention sense, but I’m afraid I can be remarkably stupid (I may have mentioned this before but you’ll see evidence of this time and time again). Case in point, it took me just one month to start regretting my surgical choices. Three days after Christmas, I flew to Brazil on a writing assignment for
Woman & Home
. I landed in the Bahian coastal town of Porto Seguro on New Year’s Eve and headed for what I soon discovered was one of the noisiest beaches in the world – Beat Beach. Given my fragile physical state, the flight had been far too challenging for me. I’d had the last of my sutures removed on my way to LAX airport; how I wish I could learn not to push myself like that. Lugging my bulky scuba gear (in complete defiance of doctors’ orders – I wasn’t meant to lift even a water bottle), I arrived exhausted and in considerable pain. I can’t emphasize enough how dumb I was to travel so soon after surgery, and how gaga I was on all those painkillers, anxiolytics and antibiotics (I ask you again: ‘What is WRONG with me?’).