Friends Like These: My Worldwide Quest to Find My Best Childhood Friends, Knock on Their Doors, and Ask Them to Come Out and Play (21 page)

“The
Peepy Cheeks?
” I said, slightly alarmed. It didn’t really have much of a pub ring to it.

“The, er… the Samuel Pepys,” said the man, with a little laugh. “Calling it the Peepy Cheeks is a… kind of joke. We
all
say it round here.”

Cameron must have the time of his life with this lot. But I didn’t want the man to feel bad. So I said, “It is a very good
joke, and one which I will use myself.”

He seemed to feel a bit better after that.

*   *   *

“Hi,” I said to the lady behind reception. “Does Cameron Dewa work here?”

She tapped his name into her computer.

“Yes. He’s in IT. Would you like me to phone him?”

“No… but… could I leave him a note to collect?”

She frowned slightly, but said, “Okay.” I took my backpack off, got out a piece of paper and a pen, and started to write.

HELLO

CAN YOU COME OUT TO PLAY?

I’LL BE IN THE PEEPY CHEEKS…

I figured that was mysterious enough to catch his attention, but familiar enough for him to know that this was not an elaborate
mugging. And I figured that by not saying, “Hi! It’s Daniel! I knew you twenty years ago!,” there was less chance of him getting
weirded out and deciding against showing up.

I handed it over to the lady, who had an envelope ready, and I noticed her glance at it. And then at me. I thought about what
I’d written, and realized that, yes, it did indeed sound like some kind of homo-erotic invitation. Perhaps this lady thought
I had a thing for IT consultants, and spent the vast majority of my days traipsing around the banks of London tempting men
out to play, based solely on the promise of seeing me in my peepy cheeks. I wondered whether I should tell her the real reason
I was leaving an anonymous note for one of her IT guys, but she’d already popped the note in an envelope and started dialing.

Christ! She was dialing Cameron!

“Hello… Cameron? There’s some kind of…
message
for you down here.”

And I don’t know what she said next, because I was out the door.

But at least I knew he was
in!
I knew that Cameron Dewa was somewhere inside the building in front of me! It was exciting.

But I didn’t want to see Cameron yet. Not right this second. It didn’t feel right invading his territory like this after so
long. What if he got embarrassed? What if he didn’t actually want to see me after all these years? What if he thought I was
someone else? I wanted meeting up to be
his
choice, as well as mine. We should meet on neutral ground, and the Peepy Cheeks represented just that.

I started to walk away… but then couldn’t quite do it. Cameron was
on his way.
On his way, to collect my dubious message! What would he look like after so long? What would he be wearing? How tall would
he be? Would I recognize him?

I glanced back inside the building. He’d probably be there any second. I hid behind a lamp-post and started to stare at the
people milling around the reception area. Maybe I’d stay just long enough to catch a glimpse. Long enough to make sure he’d
been given the right envelope.

Thirty seconds passed. No one had come down yet.

Another thirty.

Hmm.

And that was when I started to drift off…

In 1988, when Cameron and I were enjoying the heights of our friendship, the world was a very different place. There were
no winters in the late 1980s… just long and hazy summers followed by Christmas Day and then the summer again. The Berlin Wall
was yet to fall. Iraq was a country only four people had ever heard of, all of them living in Iraq. And Phillip Schofield
was the most famous man on the planet.

Schofield, Britain’s foremost children’s television producer, was every where. This was his world, run by him, featuring him,
celebrating him. He was on TV every day. He was on posters on bedroom walls up and down the country. A typical edition of
Fast Forward
magazine, which I found in the Box and to which both Cameron and I subscribed as children, has no fewer than four thousand
mentions and eight hundred pictures of Phillip Schofield within its 32 small pages.

Fast Forward
was ahead of its time, a publication I couldn’t wait for each week. With its insightful interviews (“If you were a biscuit,
what biscuit would you be?”) and its understanding of the important things in any twelve-year-old’s life (Andy Crane, Timmy
Mallet and the crazy new phenomenon of “mountain” bikes), this was a magazine it was impossible to do without. It was
vital.

It could do hard-hitting facts:

10 Completely Amazing Facts About Nathan Moore From Brother Beyond!!

Number 4: He once came in second in a dance competition when he was 14.

It could do heartwarming, celebrity interviews:

“I see old pictures of myself and I’ve got green smudges around my eyes and a flick hairdo and I just scream.”

That’s Kylie Minogue, next to a photograph of herself with
blue
smudges around her eyes and a perm so tight she could survive a fall from another planet.

And it could do exclusive, you-heard-it-here-first gossip:

“An exclusive bit of goss has reached our ears here at FF. Tony Robinson—Baldrick in the
Blackadder
series—has been involved in mega secret talks with film chiefs who have been so impressed with his role as Private Baldrick
in
Blackadder
that they definitely want him to take over from Michael Keaton as the next Caped Crusader in the Batman movies!”

It seems incredible now that that never happened.

But mostly, like I say,
Fast Forward
was about Phillip Schofield. What makes him tick. His thoughts and philosophies. Whether he watches
Neighbours
or not (“Yes”). It seemed that
Fast Forward
magazine was certain that, like the Bible before it, it was vital to the state of the nation that these facts were passed
on down the generations; that Phillip Schofield’s every whim and wistful glance down a lens was communicated to the children
of the world, so that we may prosper and grow in a safer, better, cozier world. These facts… these were the things we all
needed to know to survive junior school in the 1980s. Phillip Schofield trivia was like knives are now.

But then, one day, a new man came into my life, in a way I just wasn’t expecting. A man who would become so important to me
over the next year or two that everything would change absolutely. I was to become obsessed. Utterly and totally
obsessed.
Within a year, every inch of my bedroom wall—and I employ no exaggeration here—would be covered in pictures, articles, posters
and artwork of him. I would have a number of T-shirts with his face on them. I would come to the conclusion that this man
was the coolest, kindest, most talented and wonderful man the world had ever produced. Cooler, kinder, and more talented and
wonderful than even Phillip Schofield. And even now, I do not use those words lightly.

The man’s name?

Michael Joseph Jackson.

Within a matter of days, 90 percent of the Phillip Schofield trivia stored in my tiny brain would disappear—some of it, unbelievably,
forever
—in favor of MJ facts. Height! 5
10.
Shoe size! 10 (European size 42). Favorite color! Red.

My signed Phillip Schofield photograph was relegated to the bit of my wall hidden by my desk, just above a picture of a Smurf
and a photo of my nan.

I could not believe I had never heard of Michael Jackson before.

And I had Cameron Dewa to thank for it.

I had been staring at the window of the Dutch Rabobank with wide, vacant eyes for nearly five minutes. I’d been lost in thought
and realized I was simply staring at a reflection of myself. I snapped out of it and focused my eyes on what was behind it…
to notice, with some degree of horror, that it was the receptionist’s face. She was looking back at me with what looked like
real concern in her eyes. She’d been joined by a man in a suit who was also looking at me, now. He’d just made a phone call
of some description and started to talk to the receptionist without taking his eyes off me. I smiled at them and nodded, as
innocently as I could manage, but then caught sight of myself again. I was a man with a backpack hiding behind a lamp-post
outside an international bank staring intently at the receptionist just minutes after handing over what I’d imagined she’d
thought
looked like a homo-erotic invitation but which
now,
in this new and sinister light, looked far more like a
coded warning.

I tried to look nonchalant, and put my hands in my pockets, before realizing that if an armed response unit had been dispatched
this was
exactly
the kind of thing they’d be waiting for. I whipped them out of my pockets again, possibly too quickly to look entirely normal,
then started to whistle, before breaking into a jog.

Behind me, all I could hear was the whir of CCTV cameras as they rotated to catch me.

Inside, a small internal voice was shouting, “PEG IT!”

I’m ready to admit something to you now. Something I wasn’t sure I’d be able to do. But telling you about the Cameron days
makes me think it’s all right…

There was one extra name in that address book, which I didn’t mention before. One extra name I’d included on this unofficial
list of great mates. One extra name I’d put down there, along with a picture and an address. An address I had written to on
more than one occasion.

The World of Michael Jackson

PO BOX 92873

Encino, CA

USA

I had written to Michael Jackson to invite him to Loughborough. It would be the school play soon, and I’d thought perhaps
he might like a free ticket (I know people). As it turned out, the closest I would ever get to Michael Jackson was walking
through the town center one evening and experiencing the heart-stopping delight of spotting him in the bargain bookshop on
the corner. “There he is!” I thought. “He’s in Thompson’s Bargain Books! He must have read my letter and decided he needed
to see
The Princess and the Pea
!” And as I walked closer, and took in the cruel and devastating truth—that this was just a waxy cardboard cut-out to promote
his new book
Moonwalker
—my heart hit the floor, and I felt more disappointed than I thought it possible to feel. I boycotted Thompson’s soon after.
Mainly because they told me I couldn’t have the cut-out.

The obsession had started after Cameron had been round my house and suddenly pulled a battered C-60 tape from the trousers
of his turquoise cotton tracksuit.

“This is my brother’s,” he said. “Have you heard of
Thriller
?”

I shook my head. I wasn’t all that interested. My main interest was recording the theme tunes to my favorite shows by placing
a tape recorder next to the telly and hitting Record and Play at precisely the right moment to avoid the announcer’s voice.
I had
The A-Team, The Littlest Hobo, Grange Hill, Streethawk, Wac-a-day, Air-wolf,
everything. I had no time for this other, childish stuff.

But then Cameron flipped open the cassette player and pressed Play. And in that moment everything changed. This was the most
incredible music I had ever heard! It told a story! There were sound effects! What the hell was it?

“There’s a video,” said Cameron.

“A
video?
” I’d said, wide-eyed.

“My brother has it. All these dead people come alive and they start dancing. Like this.”

He did a little zombie dance.

This sounded too incredible to be true.

“And Michael Jackson turns into a wolf and he starts dancing like this.”

He did another little dance.

I
wanted to do that!
I
wanted to dance like a little wolf!

“And there’s this other album,” he said. “Called
Bad.
”

“Why’s he called it
Bad?
” I asked.

“Because ‘bad’ means ‘good,’” said Cameron, wisely.