More Fool Me (27 page)

Car at Haslemere amazingly not towed away, so I was back at Grayshott in time for a nutritious lunch. A chappie told me that Imelda Staunton was staying, so I arranged to meet her at the cocktail hour, 6.00.

Heat treatment and massage at 3.00. Actually took my clothes off this time! Mustn’t do exclamation marks, it’s so Adrian Mole. That’s all Mummy’s fault, she does them in letters to the milkman, everything ‘Thank you!’ and so on.

The less efficient masseur, Steve, did the business, must remember to ask for Peter next time. Got back to the room, worked on
The Thaumaturge
, which seems to be coming along okay and dipped down for revivifying cocktails with Imelda and her mother, Bridie, an Irish poppet the spit of Imelda. Cocktails, you should understand, comprise either cucumber or tomato juice, but actually that’s fine. Imelda, who’s eight months pregnant, was telling me all about Jim Carter, her man,
^*
and his nightmare shooting on a film of
Black Beauty
for Warners. All the horses misbehaving and that kind of thing. Peter Cook’s in it too.

Anyway, then dinner and now, before I hit the mattress (not like a Mafioso fortunately), a video. I collected an armful from the flat. Time I think to enjoy Jeremy Brett once more, this time in ‘The Dancing Men’, one of the best Holmes stories. Sleep tight.

WEDNESDAY, 1 SEPTEMBER 1993 – GRAYSHOTT

And a pinch and a punch to you.

Doing this diary must be good for me, I had an inspiration last night after writing yesterday’s entry. I suddenly saw that of course the thaumaturge is not David, but
Simon.
I had thought all along that David, the pure poetical son of the Logan family would be the miracle worker, but of course it must be the apparently dull, ordinary, less intelligent or sensitive boy. That’s the poetic truth as opposed to the poetical one. There’s a sense in which I’m saying my brother Roger is the miracle worker of
our
family, not me and I think that’s true. He’s decent, no, more than decent, he’s
good
, decent in the way Tom Wolfe means it in
Bonfire of the Vanities
, he’s hard-working, he’s loyal, he’s true, he’s … well he’s what makes man great. Sounds sententious put like that, I suppose. The key to it in the novel though means that at least some kind of twist or surprise can be guaranteed. Everyone was fooled by Davey (who deliberately allows Jane and Ted to believe that
he’s
the one).

Talking of the diary, this being the first of the month, I’ve decided I will print out an entry at the end of each month. This will guarantee that I can’t go back and change things. That’s the devil of a computer-kept diary, it looks impersonal and there’s no assurance that it hasn’t been tarted up. When I get back to London, I will print out all of August, it only started late in the month, of course.

Usual nine holes. Got a birdie! Yippee! My first. I was playing the six iron as Brendel plays a Bösendorfer today. Usual steam business followed by a massage from Peter, who is infinitely better than Steve. I have asked the desk if I can always have him, there should be no problem. Then I had a consultation with the Sister. I have lost 8 pounds in the time I’ve been here. Eight pounds. Unbelievable. I only arrived halfway through Saturday (hogged a load of sandwiches on the road on Saturday morning anyway), three and a half days, over two pounds a day. I won’t be able to keep it up at this rate, but still. Not bad, eh?

In the afternoon (Sister’s advice) I had a holistic massage. All kinds of bollocks from Janice the masseuse about energy and channelling and healing and so forth, but I have to say it was a wonderful feeling. An hour and a half of intensely gentle, yet intensely deep massage. Felt very woozy afterwards, but then keyed up and raring to go.

Imelda and Bridie joined me in the Light Diet Room for dinner and we chatted about this and that. Since then I’ve been working at the nov. Spent most of this evening trying to write a poem that David Logan (who’s aged 15) could have written. Tricky. Can’t be too sophisticated, but no point if it’s too childish. Takes bloody ages, poetry. Can’t wait to get back to dialogue and description. I need words by the thousands!! Oh no! More Adrian Moling!!!

Nighty night.

THURSDAY, 2 SEPTEMBER 1993 – GRAYSHOTT

Well, usual thing really. Nothing too outrageous to report. Nine holes in the morning. Started badly, but really began to hit the ball well (yawn, yawn, yawn) and felt good about the game. Came back, steam room and massage as per usual. Lots of work, then lunch. Some work after lunch then decided to take half an hour off to play another 9 holes. Really genuinely actually frankly properly hitting the ball. Very exciting. On the ninth, the pro was walking past as I hit the ball from the tee, spang on line with pin, right onto the green. ‘Good shot,’ he said. From a pro!

Back to the novel, it continueth. I’ve done an exhaustive word count. 30,034 words so far. That means I’ve written 9,174 since I’ve been here. That’s an average of 1,529 per day, which isn’t frankly enough to get the thing finished when I want it finished. But, and it’s a but the size of Hyde Park, I am sure I am writing more each day. It started slowly, after all, so perhaps things aren’t going too badly. Do wish I was in Norfolk, though. I’d’ve had the thing finished a fortnight ago if I could have been in Norfolk. And I’d’ve saved myself the three or four thousand pound bill I’m going to get for this little lot (let alone the gigantic cost of the building work that’s being done): by fuckery it’d better be worth it.

Heigh ho.
Fry and Laurie
on in half an hour. Might as well catch it. Sleepums wellums.

FRIDAY, 3 SEPTEMBER 1993 – GRAYSHOTT

Well, watched
F&L
all right. Not bad, actually. Laughed in places, but Christ I wish I didn’t always wear such a smug expression. My face in repose always looks as if it’s smirking which is peculiarly repellent.

Usual thing this morning: nine holes (a step back in competence this am, but made up for by a screamer at the ninth again), steam, massage, lots of writing and then, as a treat, a Flotation and Facial in the afternoon. The Float is a strange bath, barely long enough for me to lie in, filled with salts so that the water takes on the buoyancy (and viscous consistency) of the Dead Sea. You go into an ante-room, shower, smear Vaseline over any abraded skin, bung wax in your ears like Odysseus and then lie down and float. There is an open intercom with a floozy at the desk in case you panic or something. Music (well, I say music, whale song in fact, as you might have guessed) is then played which, on account of the earplugs and something else besides, Boyle’s Law
^*
possibly, you can hear best with your ears below the level of the water. You have control over the light switches too. The idea is that you bob there, completely buoyant, utterly blind, listening to bull whales telling cow whales to get their knickers down. I sort of enjoyed it while it happened and did feel good afterwards. Next treat(ment) was a facial, actually just a big plug for Aramis products (scalp revitalizer, cucumber face mask, that sort of tosh). Lovely feeling to have your face woman-handled, though. Like being made-up for film or TV without the silly gossip and drivelling on about horoscopes. The popsy also shaved me, which is always pleasurable.

Then, basically, back to the nov. I’ve now decided to call it
Other People’s Poetry
, which the publishers will hate, if anything, more than
The Thaumaturge.
I stupidly gave Sue Freestone, my editor, the working title
What Next?
a few months ago and she loved it. I think it’s too junky or possibly Joseph Heller-y (not that JH is junky). Sounds like the kind of title people give books that they are desperate to become best-sellers. Not that I am desperate for anything else, naturally, but it’s also a hostage to fortune as far as critics are concerned. ‘What next indeed, Mr Fry? A proper novel we hope, snicker, snicker …’

I wrote over 3,000 words, anyway, which is an improvement. Mind you, I’ve written 7,061 words in this diary so far, which is an average of (as you can surely work out for yourself) 588.416666 per diem; time which you might believe would be better spent novelizing. Actually though, I feel this diary, if nothing else helps prime the pump (that
must
be drivel because I always write it
after
I’ve been working, well, you know what I mean).

Well, bed time. Cricket tomorrow and my first real food for ages. Lost nine pounds so far, don’t want to put any on. Must be careful not to drink too much.

Bedly beddington now.

SUNDAY, 5 SEPTEMBER 1993 – GRAYSHOTT

Went up to London for to see the cricket.
Bloody
good match. Sussex v. Warks. Nat West final, Lord’s. Settled by the last ball. Warks needed 2 runs from the final delivery to score a winning 322. Actually, one run would have done, as they’d lost fewer wickets, but in any case a hum-dinger. Was so dark by the end I’m amazed the batsmen could see the ball. Just shows what gamesmanship there is when they appeal for bad light when things are going against them. Went because Will Wyatt invited me to a BBC box. Mostly full of corporation figures, Roger Laughton, Michael Checkland
^*
etc. But spent most of the match as the ham in a playwright sandwich. David Hare to the left, Simon Gray to the right (in every sense). David turns out to be a manic Sussex fan. Poor man: for the first time I really warmed to him as he sat gnawing his knuckles and turning into a closer and closer simulacrum of Munch’s
The Scream
. His tonsure was purpling with passion. All this seemed to matter far more to him than the opening next week of his new play,
Murmuring Judges
. Turns out he is also working for Scott Rudin. We compared notes on the impossibility of getting in touch with him. Scott’s office has been ringing my London number daily as usual, as if they know I’m away in Grayshott. Scott himself is in Venice for the film festival, so it’s rather pointless my ringing back anyway.

Simon, whom I haven’t seen in a pig’s age looks frankly bloody awful. Rheumy, weeping eyes and squashed pug’s face in no way enhanced by a deep tan. The thick hair with its characteristic flick looks no longer boyish, simply the-portrait-in-the-schoolroom-ish.
^*
He’s been in Greece, the island of Spetses, writing a novel of all things for Mark McCrum’s brother Robert at Faber’s. Still drinking clearly: Simon not Robert McCrum. Confessed to some guilt about leaving Beryl and gave me the lowdown on how Eddie Fox trampled on the possibility of taking the revival of
Quartermaine’s Terms
^†
into the West End. The best ever prod of
QT
Simon thinks, but Fox scared of being compared to his original performance, despite his mother’s firm statement that the revival outshines it. Amazing thing is that Simon is still very very prolific: as well as the novel there’s a new play waiting, a couple of radio plays just written and two films for Verity Lambert’s ‘Cinema Verity’ (ho, ho) outfit.

David Frost turned up a little late: he’d just got in from Moscow where he’d been interviewing Mikhail and Raisa Gorbachev. I swear that man still talks and acts as if he’s just left Cambridge and is desperate to make a name for himself in television. Wonderful really. Can’t help adoring him. It’s been a week of Frost on TV lately, as it happens, coinciding with the issue of a fat First Volume of autobiography and at least five TV programmes about him. He tells me that the one being shown this very night, ‘Frostbites’ (ho, ho), which is a compilation of interviews over the 30 years, includes a section of one he did with me earlier this year. He leaves early to edit the Gorbachev material.

John Sullivan, author of
Citizen Smith
,
Only Fools & Horses
etc. is also amongst those present. We swap stories about Nick Lyndhurst and David Jason. I’ve just been filming with Nick all June doing the
Stalag Luft
film for Yorkshire TV. Bill Cotton is here too. He tells a story of how he is in a train compartment with Peter Sellers, Tommy Cooper, Barry Cryer and Dennis Main Wilson.
^*
Dennis is telling one of his stories when Tommy gets up to go to the loo. After about ten minutes they start wondering where Cooper has got to. Sellers and Cryer get up and go down the corridor to the lav., which is locked. They bang on the door. No reply. Worried, knowing that TC is well-sauced, they search for the ticket conductor. ‘Mr Cooper’s in there,’ they say. ‘Can you open the door somehow?’ The conductor does so. Tommy is sitting on the bog, lid down, trousers up. He gives them his signature creased eyebrow look of worry and asks ‘Has Dennis stopped talking yet?’ No good unless you know D.M.W. of course, but we did.

The match takes up most of our attention from then on. I’ve been a good boy, combining food like Hay himself and sticking only to one sipped glass of red and a small vodka and tonic. As the ante-penultimate over is about to be bowled I ring up the cab company and order a taxi to be waiting outside the Grace Gate so that I can go on to Hugh and Jo’s for dinner, where Ben Elton will be, having just returned from Oz. Simon asks if he can borrow my phone to do likewise.

Leave as soon as the result is clear, having thanked Will and commiserated with David H. Taxi not there, hang around feeling a fool. People approach, but are not too pesky or autograph hungry. Then, amazingly,
Nigel Short
bounds up! He’s spent the whole day watching the match. He’s about to sit down and face Garry Kasparov for the World title on Tuesday and there he is … I’d be covered in a wet blanket forcing coffee down myself while I sweated over variations of the Marocszy Bind and the Winawer. I suppose he knows what he’s doing. He begged me to come along to the match and say hi. May do. We’ll see. So far I have resisted the blandishments of Channel 4 and BBC2, who are both covering the match. What can I actually say on air? I can’t keep up with Ray Keene as an analyser and I’ll be reduced to a sort of media hack who says clever things about the psychology and witty nonsense about the body language. Pyeuch. There’s a programme on as I write this: Dominic Lawson, Bill Hartston, David Norwood GM and Florencio Campomanes, the President of FIDE. It does begin to look as if Nigel has blown it before it’s started.