Bit of a Blur (29 page)

Then two men were pulling me out of bed by my feet. I was naked. God, I felt awful. What was happening? I kicked but they kept pulling and they were shouting now.

‘
Messieurs, s’il vous plaît!?
’

‘Room is finish!’ said one.

‘Fine. I’ll take it for another night.’

‘Is finish!’

‘
Moi, je n’ai pas fini. Moi! Je payerai
.’

‘Is all full.’

‘You’re telling me it’s awful, it’s a disgrace, mate.’

‘
Non, monsieur
. All. Full. Full.’

That was it: boom to bust in twenty-four hours. Dragged out into the corridor by my feet. One of them went back to get my stuff while the other one stared at me. The girls had gone. The speedboat was making someone else’s day today. I was wrecked, knackered and homeless. There wasn’t a vacant room within a hundred miles. How are the mighty fallen. I didn’t call anybody. I went back to live in England immediately. Nobody loves you when you’re down and out, baby.

In Monaco this time, things were on more of an even keel as I was with friends. There was something vaguely familiar about those cars flashing round and round in circles at high speed and volume. When they’d finished they threw champagne everywhere. As soon as the race was over, the sky filled with helicopters. It was gridlock up there.

We all walked to the beach. Anne said the gaffer, Prince Albert, was going to be there. I asked Mungo what I should be doing if I had a royal encounter. Mungo knew all about etiquette. He had shown me four different ways to tie a tie the previous evening. Then he had explained who made the best ties in the world and why they were great and where to get them. Then he’d kicked my ass at Perudo again. I felt like a small but favoured boy. With regards to any Albert activity, he said that it was an informal occasion so it would be quite relaxed, but it would be good manners to stand if we were introduced, not to shake his hand until offered, to let him lead the conversation and to refer to him as ‘sir’. It all sounded sensible.

Monte Carlo’s one small beach is reserved for its senior players. It is fastidiously maintained. It’s more of an open-air restaurant where you eat lying down. Anne and Mungo’s pitch, with its loungers and parasols, was permanently reserved and it neighboured the royal enclosure. Sure enough, Good Prince Albert was there and he and Anne were deep in conversation. I was introduced and I stood up and it all went very well. Then Damien’s brother Bradley arrived. Part of Damien’s charm is that he is not from a privileged background. He’s more of a home-grown king, a triumph of merit and charisma, which have their own nobility. I love Damien’s family. Bradley is a Formula One fanatic and he was having the best day of his life. He was very drunk and excited and he was dripping from the sea. ‘Foookinell, did you see them bazongers? Them were beauty.’

‘Ah, Bradley, this is Prince Albert of Monaco.’

‘Fokinell, alright mate. Did you see them tits?’

Prince Albert of Monaco was smiling.

August was a holiday. I spent the first week in the Colony and then I flew down to Land’s End to see Fanny. She’d come back from New York to stay with her parents. I terrified her poor mother. I drank all the brandy and knocked all the delicate things over. I had trouble on the way back, getting caught out by bad weather. I’d checked the forecast thoroughly, but the forecast got it wrong. I wasn’t qualified to fly in cloud. There was fog behind me and the cloud ahead was lower than the hill-tops. I was in a blind panic and considering putting out a Mayday. I knew very well that the average time an untrained pilot retains control of the aircraft in cloud is less than three minutes before spiralling into the ground. I heard someone say on the radio that he was above the cloud at fifteen hundred feet. There was no way forward or back. The only way was up. I was flying at five hundred feet and at a normal cruise climb I figured I’d be in cloud for two minutes. I just had to keep the nose up and the wings level and watch the airspeed. Sounds easy, but I’ve never been so scared, not even being chased down an icy road by a hundred of Magnea’s boyfriends. Not even close. Time stood still in the greyness. You can’t trust your sense of balance in cloud. Only the instruments can tell you what’s happening. I tried to do everything slowly but my mind was racing, my heart was whirring and sweat was teeming from every pore. Suddenly, as if someone had turned the lights on, there was brilliant sunshine everywhere. It was like being born again. I swore to do an instrument rating. I landed at Bournemouth and stayed with my mum and dad for a couple of days. My dad said he was concerned about how much I was drinking. Still, we went to the pub and the landlord wouldn’t let us pay for anything and kept bringing new whiskies for us to try. He didn’t want us to go home at closing time and kept bringing forth older and grander whiskies. By the time we sailed out at two a.m. my dad was singing ‘Roll Out the Barrel’ and agreeing that it wasn’t easy to stay out of trouble.

The weather cleared, eventually, and the hangovers, and I said I’d take my parents to the Isle of Wight for lunch. My mum is quite a nervous flyer and it was the first time I’d been able to persuade her to come on the aeroplane. At the airport, as I went to complete the pre-flight checks on the Bonanza, I noticed the Red Arrows parked in formation on the apron. When I was happy with the aircraft, I signalled to Kelly and Jason in the terminal to make their way over. As they were getting in I noticed the Red Arrows starting to taxi. It was a stirring sight. They all moved as one. I called the tower.

‘Golf Sierra Tango request taxi.’

‘Golf Sierra Tango, roger. Follow the Red Arrows, please.’

Kelly was sitting next to me and her mouth was gaping wide open as they flowed past and we pulled out behind them. She kept looking from me to Jason and back again. She grabbed my hand and it was pretty spectacular as they reached the runway and rocketed off as one. If you ever meet my mother, you will know her because she is the one telling that story. She tells everyone about that.

I went back to Cannes with Mariella. It took four hours in the Bonanza, due south all the way and not a cloud in the sky. We stayed at the Hôtel du Cap. The film festival had popped like a bubble and disappeared. In high season the clientele comprised bored billionaires’ wives, presidents and royalty. It is said to be the finest hotel in the world. They only accept cash as payment, and there are stories of people taking suites for the entire summer and settling up with briefcases full of bundles. You couldn’t make anything more luxurious. It was so luxurious it had a tranquillising effect. Everyone was in bed by ten, exhausted by the utter tedium of complete perfection. We got drunk on Bellinis and went for a swim in the pools at midnight and it felt like we’d done everything there was to do there.

We left in the morning to find Damien in Provence. He was playing volleyball. His host was slaughtering a lamb. We went for dinner in the world’s most expensive restaurant. From the moment the junior waiter unfolded your napkin for you until the nice lady lit your cigar, things could not have been more tippetytop. Leaving the best hotel with my exalted consort, to arrive at the most expensive restaurant in my own aeroplane, to meet the world’s richest living artist. The next day we flew to Mick Jagger’s chateau in the Loire.

It was going to be downhill all the way from here, surely? This was the top of the hill. What else could life hold? It’s funny, but when I look back I think that period of my life was the bottom of a pit, rather than the summit of Mount Fantasticus. I was a morally bankrupt, pissed fatso with a stupid grin and a girlfriend with a murdered heart.

Will Ricker had a knack with restaurants. He knew where to put them and what fashionable people would want to eat next. He’s nothing like the gentlemen behind the Ivy and Le Caprice who always suggest a saintly otherworldliness, as if they’ve astrally projected down from heaven to keep an eye on how things are going here on earth. Those fellows glide around the tables of their establishments, slightly beyond and above the hubblebubble of lunch and dinner. Will, though, was one of the boys, and gave the impression more of being en route to or from an unmade bed; but every time he opened a new restaurant it filled up with the famous and the fabulous. People tend to get much more excited about seeing Johnny Depp than they do about food, even dessert. The kind of women who get excited about sticky toffee pudding go completely la-la when confronted with a munching movie star. It’s a different order of excitement. Will had some kind of celebrity-invoking juju powers and everybody wanted to be his friend.

‘Alex, buddy.’ He said, he’s Australian, as you can see. ‘Alex, I was watchin’ one of your Blur videos yistidy. Mate, it’s a cryin’ shame. You’ve gotta lose some weight, mate. I’m sindin’ my man round.’

Resistance was futile. A spritely Australian appeared on the doorstep the very next day and brought in dumb-bells, boxing gloves, a bicycle, chest expanders and other instruments of torture. Then he told me to put my running shoes on. I didn’t have any running shoes. I had quite an anti-exercise outlook. I believed that people in bands should concentrate on other, less realistic things, like being decadent and fantastic. But here he was, and it was true that I was starting to look rather frog-like, bulging at the eyes and the neck and the belly. Girls didn’t seem to mind, so I’d been ignoring it. I’d rather been hoping things would sort themselves out, which was the strategy I applied to most crises.

Fortunately, the press office darlings of Adidas, Puma, Gola, Lacoste, Converse, Reebok and Nike had been bombarding me with trainers and I grabbed a pair from a big stack of unopened boxes, put my cigarette out and took a deep breath. By the time we’d run as far as Trafalgar Square, I was taking much deeper ones. I was in a different world of pain from my accustomed hungover malaise. Chest on fire; heart beating like a machine gun; legs, arms, back aching and needling me with intense agonies. I stumped around the pond in St James’s Park and traipsed back up St Martin’s Lane groaning and bellowing so loudly that heads turned. Jason, my tormentor, didn’t break into a sweat. I was wearing a heart rate monitor. He said he’d never seen it go that high, which seemed to please him immensely. Then he said, cheerfully, ‘Roight, boxin’ toime.’ The gloves that he gave me had seen plenty of active service and gave forth an unforgettable series of stinks as they warmed up. Having destroyed my legs, he set to work on my arms, teasing me exquisitely with phantom punches if I let my guard drop. After a couple of minutes I decided to try and kill him, but I couldn’t get near him. He finished me off with some sit-ups and said he’d see me next week. Next week sounded awfully soon. I asked him if it was really necessary to go through all that every week and he said that, to start with, daily would be the best way to make a difference.

I phoned Will and told him he was a bastard, took a cool shower and sipped some orange juice. Then, quite slowly, I started to feel excellent. My hangover had evaporated. I felt energetic and nimble. I felt weightless, fearless and calm. I was in a genuine altered state, but it was the exact opposite of drinking, which feels great while you’re doing it and horrendous afterwards. I felt so good that I went to the café and had a fry-up.

Jason’s visits became regular. His clientele were the chieftains and queen bees of the city jungle. He knew more famous people than me and he had them all grunting and groaning. Most of them had swimming pools as well, poor souls. He came to me early in the morning, at six-thirty, having already given a fashion magazine editor the works. She followed her fitness training with an hour of yoga, five days a week. I couldn’t tell if that was right or wrong. Directly after me he went to Chelsea and bossed Bryan Adams up and down his swimming pool for a bit, before going to fight with Will Ricker. Will was getting quite fanatical about boxing. I was starting to enjoy the excursions around the park in the peace of the early morning sun. Gradually, we extended the run around Buckingham Palace and Green Park. There were times when I hadn’t slept, but I knew my hangover wouldn’t be as bad if I ran around the parks. That still wasn’t sufficient motivation to get me out of bed, but Jason saw to that. Pretty soon, I started to run on my own as well.

I’d spent about a million pounds on champagne and cocaine. It sounds ridiculous but, looking back, I don’t regret it. It was definitely the right thing to do. It was completely decadent, but I was a rock star, after all, a proper one, with a public duty to perform. The smorgasbord of life’s exquisite delights was my
raison d’être
. I wanted to live life in the moment as fully as possible, and stocks and shares weren’t the ticket. I don’t think I could have enjoyed the full twelve courses of the menu gastronomique with any less of a capital investment. Oddly, if I’d been more conservative, and spent the odd hundred grand, which was probably about par for a successful musician, the rest probably would have just disappeared, but my excesses were so well documented, and ‘key to the image value of the Blur brand’, that the cash I spent formed a kind of advertising campaign and I’m pretty sure I recouped the whole lot, one way or another. Certainly, the accountants managed to claim back the VAT on most of the champagne. If you spend enough money on something, it starts coming back eventually.

Still, I was at a watershed. There is a natural elegance in youthful excess, which gradually turns uglier as one gets older. Uglier and uglier and uglier. Did I want to be chasing women when I was sixty-five, or, worse still, drunk, legless and lonely like Jeffrey Bernard?

No.

The Road of Excess leads to the Palace of Wisdom.

Nothing terribly bad happened when I wasn’t drinking, but the worry was that nothing terribly fantastic happened either. I’d always adhered to Storm Thorgerson’s advice to take a rest from drinking for one day every week. It wasn’t ever easy, but it served me well. Sometimes I’d take a week off, and I’d even gone sober for a whole month here and there. By now, hangovers were unsupportable five-day epics with special effects and I thought I might try to abstain for a whole year. It was quite a big step to take. Being elegantly wasted was kind of my job, and my social life, too, revolved around hedonistic abandon. When I’d stopped drinking in the past, it had been a matter of just hanging on until the time was up, but to spend a whole year in temperance meant that my life would have to change.