More Fool Me (36 page)

Time for the pre-court lunch. Sat next to a bit of an ass, can’t remember his name, usual rubber chicken and split mayonnaise. Bless them. Then, at 2.00, it couldn’t be put off any longer, time for Court. I dropped off three times: the first time Jim Duncan, by my side woke me up; the next two times I was awoken by a change of voice or something else. There really is nothing on earth so arse-paralysingly drear as a committee of academics discussing university business. The only time I really perked up was to repudiate a letter written by an oncologist asking how the University could morally justify the setting aside of smoking rooms to ‘feed student addictions’. Per-lease.

The court wound up in record time after two hours, and I had an hour to kill before my appointment at 5.00 to address the freshers. We went to ‘Pete’s Bar’ upstairs in the association building and drank some scotch. Lots of studes clustering round: all very charming. Then at 5.00 in I went to the ‘Dead Club’ where hundreds of little freshers had assembled to hear their rector speak. I had only been told this was to happen this morning, so no chance to prepare: all busk therefore. I told them that there was nothing on earth less appealing than a young person putting on a hard cynical face and trying to look as if they saw through everything and knew the world for what it was. I told them it was their duty every morning to check their faces in the mirror and to make sure that they looked lovely and open and kind and smiley.

A full hour of talking: think it went all right. Then another hour in the bar before the dinner that had sweetly been laid on in my honour by the students themselves. They had drawn lots to see who could attend, because they wanted to keep the numbers manageable. As always there seemed to be some deep desire amongst the
corpus studenti
to get me completely hammered. It was my job to circulate around the table so that I sat with every group for a fair length of time. They were all very sweet actually and welcoming. At last, tottering and with the help of a couple of lines in the bog, I was escorted by Jim and Dougie (Ayesha being off her face by this time) to the station. Another huge whisky and then the train pulled in. We’re talking 10.55 pm by this time. Managed to sleep straight away, which despite the lines (both railway and stimulant) is something of a miracle.

TUESDAY, 16 NOVEMBER 1993

Woke up in Euston at 7.00. Cab to St James’s and bed for two hours before struggling up again for a Voice Over. What a business. Got back at eleven, time for opening post and a cup of coffee before a cab to Whitfield Street for a four hour photography session for
The Hippo
cover and publicity materials.

Not too bad: charming snapper called Colin Thomas and Mark McCullum and Sue F.
^*
were present, all old chums. Tried various poses, emerging from a bath with suds, that kind of thing. Hope it isn’t all too vulgar. The book is not entirely of that nature, after all. At least
I
don’t think it is …

Left at half-three-ish, me desperate to get back to the flat and prepare my speech. In the cab back to St James’s I realize I’ve left my coat at the studio: it contains my keys.
Arse.

I borrow the wonderful local barber’s phone and we ask Colin T. to shove it all in a cab instanter. Sue and Mark and self then repair to the Red Lion pub for a half of Guinness and so forth. Cab turns up, I’m back in business.

The speech is all right I think. I don’t have time to learn it, however, so I’ll read. Not ideal, but suck it. At six forty-five-ish Alyce Faye turns up looking absolutely
stunning
in a Starzewski frock of limitless elegance and beauty. We have a gin and tonic and then pop in the car for the Odeon Leicester Square. Big crowds, natch. We are welcomed by a very charming old biddy called Shirley who takes me and Alyce F. round backstage. A lot of pacing about behind the screen from me as the trumpeter heralds warm up their instruments and the screen in front of us shows the celebs and eventually, the royal party arriving.

After the fanfare and national anthem I go out on stage and make my speech of welcome. Talk about the Cinema and Television Benevolent fund and their ‘work’. Seems to go well. Then escorted round to my seat in the royal box for the film itself, which I have to say I liked a great deal. Very
written
, but none the poorer for that. Intelligent and humane for the most part and containing quite simply the best child performance I have ever seen. Really a brilliant boy called Nick Stahl: quite remarkable, as good as Jodie F. in
Taxi D
. Mel Gibson too, a fine performance and well directed. Not a big film, or a possible cult film, but a
good
film: to be proud of.

As soon as it was over I was whisked downstairs to meet the P.o.W. He was very matey and said to me ‘You
did
write that speech didn’t you?’ I said, ‘indeed I did, sir.’ He said, ‘Mel Gibson asked me if you had written it yourself, and I said indignantly, “of
course
he did!”’ Introduced him to Alyce Faye and they chatted a bit about Cleese and
Frankenstein
.

We got in the car after HRH had gone and went all the way to Planet Hollywood where the party was. Stayed for a voddie and then to the Ivy for dinz. Parties are so ghastly at Planet H. really. Nice dinner in fact. Chatted for a while. Alyce Faye said that she (and John) thought my short writings were better than my novels. I was very stung by this. I sensed that
The Liar
was just the sort of thing that Cleese would not like, because, despite, or perhaps because of, his comic genius he does not seem to understand the profound truth that comic things are more serious than serious things. More serious and truer. It’s part of his guilt at being a comedian, and reflected in his absurdly high doctrine of abstract spiritualist writing like the
Tibetan Book of the Dead
, Gurdjieff, Coelho and that kind of bogus baloney. If he had ever read a true mystic like the Author of
The Cloud
or Mother Julian he would know that abstraction and unearthed thinking are foreign to true spirituality. I tried to get some of this across. I don’t know if she understood. Annoyed with myself for being so stung, however. Bed lateish.

WEDNESDAY, 17 NOVEMBER 1993

What a strange day. It began early. Horribly early. It began with
The Big Breakfast
for Channel 4. I had agreed that I would go on to help plug Perudo. Cosmo Fry had asked and I, softy that I am, had consented. Felt a bit grumpy on the way to … god rot it … 
Bow.
I knew that when it was over I would have to charge off in another car to go all the way over to Wandsworth for another sitting with Maggi.

Once we arrived though, the frantic and friendly spirit of the programme cast all gloom away. You’d have to be very churlish not to be engaged and charmed by the silliness of the show’s spirit. I played a little Perudo with Chris Evans the presenter and did some links. I gave a ‘Showbiz Tip’ about how to speak in cold weather without steam or vapour coming from your mouth. The technique is to suck an ice cube. They liked this very much and for the next link I was shown sucking some ice. I took it out of my mouth and – you’d better believe it – lots of vapour streamed out. Very stupid I felt.

Car took only fifty minutes to get to Maggi’s in the end. Pretty good session in fact, probably the last this year. Maggi told me an amusing story about Margi Kinmonth, cousin of old schoolfriend Patrick Kinmonth. (This is going to be confusing: a Margi and a Maggi …) I’d met Margi at Ferdy Fairfax’s
^*
lunch not so long ago, anyway it turns out she’s doing some kind of documentary with Dawn French. The purpose of this doc. is to show how wonderful it is to be fat. This will help Dawn sell her collection of clothes for the larger woman, as well as pushing this idea that being overweight should not be seen to be a stigma. Patrick had had a bit of a tiff with Margi about this previously: he had ventured the opinion that fatness is not wholly desirable and that there are sound reasons why we usually find it unpleasant to behold in both others and ourselves. Margi wouldn’t hear this and trotted out all the usual ‘Fat Is A Feminist Issue’ arguments. Anyway, that’s by the by. Margi yesterday approached Maggi Hambling and asked if Maggi H. would allow herself to be filmed while painting Dawn as part of this fatumentary.

Maggi, who is an artist and not like others, replied that a) she never allowed cameras to shoot over her shoulder while she worked and b) she usually paints women nude, but that presumably that would be what Dawn wanted? Well, slight ums and ahs from Margi K. at this. Nude? Um, as in
naked
? Well, says, Maggi, not deliberately trying to rootle out hypocrisy, surely the whole idea of this is that it’s a celebration of
flesh
and plenty of it? Great gulps of embarrassment from Margi K. Poor old Dawn: if she refuses to be painted nude with her tummy spread out like a pool of lava she will look as if she doesn’t really mean what she is saying. On the other hand, one can’t really blame her for preferring to keep her clothes on, can one?

I, being far less beautiful than Dawn, kept my clothes very firmly on and we spent a merry four hours together.

At one o’clock a car came containing Rebecca Salt to take me off on a signing tour around town. What a week.

First port of c. was Waterstone’s in the Charing X Rd. Good queue, not too many mad people, fairly amiable. Then across the road to Books Etc. for an informal stock signing. Round to Hatchard’s in Piccadilly for more stock signing.
P’weight
is actually number one of all sellers in Hatchard’s at the moment, which is rather pleasing. Afterwards we went off to the Strand: there was a shop there to sign at round about the 5.00 o’clock mark. It being 4.00 Rebecca (and Lynne Drew from Mandarin who had joined us) suggested we pop into the Waldorf for tea. They’d booked a table, knowing there would be this hour gap. I was secretly a bit miffed that they hadn’t got the timing better and indeed the locations. Why not Hatchard’s last so that I could just walk to the flat? Heigh ho.

Curiously the table we were shown to was for six. ‘Ha ha,’ I thinks, ‘plots’. ‘Is this the right table?’ I wondered. ‘Well, you never know who might turn up when you have tea at the Waldorf,’ Rebecca said. Something definitely
up
I reasoned. Sure enough John Potter suddenly walks in, the
capo di tutti capi
at Reed Books. Followed by Helen Fraser, head of Heinemann, and Angela, managing editor. Well, well, well.

It was very sweet: they wanted to feast me for sales of
The Liar
passing the half million mark. I was very touched. But then … 
then
 … Sister Jo walks in too! Quite wonderful and v. touching. They presented me with a leather bound, gold tooled, head and tail-banded, edition of
The Liar.
Very sweet: nearly cried. Gorged on tea and cakes and then Jo and I cabbed it to the flat. Just time to change and bath for the walk to Northumberland Street where the Perudo tournament was taking place. Hugh arrived at seven and off we trotted.

The Royal Commonwealth Hall or Institute or somesuch was the venue. It slowly filled up with all the usual suspects. Plenty of the cool and splendid crowd. Actually mostly sweet. It was in fact round about 8.30 before I could get to the microphone and address the company in the guise of The Gamesmaster. Fairly complicated tournament rules, but everyone playing with great spirit and dash and splendour. I was at a table with Peter Cook and Carla Powell and Alyce Faye and (hurrah!) Jethro, Spike and Jo and Hugh. H. was busy cutting his commercial in his head and went fairly soon. We played informally as we had a bye into the next round.

After nearly two and a half hours half the teams had lost and I was able to announce the pairings for the next round. But by this time it was half past eleven and frankly time to leave with Peter and Lin Cook and Alyce Faye and Tomasz and David Wilkinson and others for Peter’s birthday party dinner, which was in Gran’ Paradiso, Pimlico. Actually, a hell of a shame to have to leave: I would much rather have stayed. I scored a couple of grams from Jethro and B. and would have happily remained. Not to be, however.

The Cook party was fine. Alyce Faye and I talked a bit about J. Cleese, a subject I can never tire of, him being such a comic hero and all. He had not come because he’d just completed a day’s filming with Robert de Niro at Shepperton and felt he’d done badly.

‘Ken was disappointed in me,’ was his verdict. I tried to explain to A F that this was unlikely. Left at 1.15 and bed after the crossword.

Phew! It’s been a strange old time. From the Big Breakfast to the Big Tea, to the Big Dinner. Non-stop since the sleeper to Dundee really.

THURSDAY, 18 NOVEMBER 1993

Not quite such a frantic day. Stayed in most of the morning: Hugh still editing his commercial. At 12.15 Mother popped round to take me out to Fortnum’s for lunch. She is doing something in the House of Commons at 1.45. Something to do with Harriet Harman and a women’s thing. Never quite got to the bottom of it. The state opening today, so traffic in London ghastly.

We had a very pleasant lunch and I put her in a cab at one thirty. Back to the flat: Hugh not able to come round because of editing and so forth. I rang Christie’s because I had heard that a couple of Oscar Wilde letters were coming up for auction: put in a bid of five thousand for the first and fifteen for the second. Couldn’t turn up for the sale itself. Stayed in till six and decided to pop round to the Groucho to see if there would be any poker. Keith Allen and Simon Bell were present so I sat and drank with them for a while, joined by Jim Moir (Vic Reeves) and a couple of others. At eight o’clock Keith, Liam, Simon and I went up to play. Keith’s agent, known as T. kibbitzed happily. I won a fair bit, we all ingested a goodly quantity of white powder and I stayed sensible enough to bed myself at 1.00.