More Fool Me (44 page)

Publicity for Comic Relief, April 1991 – m’colleague, Hugh Laurie and Emma Freud, self, Jennifer Saunders, Tony Slattery.

Note where I’m playing from. Total duffer. Inverness, 1994.

Jo and my third nephew, the most excellent George.

Carla Powell checking to see if my beard is real. It is.

I can’t quite explain why I’m sitting like that: I’m going to say in order to keep the jacket smooth …

THE BEGINNING

Let the conversation begin …

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PENGUIN BOOKS

Published by the Penguin Group
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First published 2014

Copyright © Stephen Fry, 2014

Cover photography © Suki Dhanda

All rights reserved

The moral right of the author has been asserted

The extract from
O Tell Me the Truth About Love
by W. H. Auden, 1938, is reprinted by kind permission of Curtis Brown Ltd.

ISBN: 978-0-718-17755-3

VERY NAUGHTY, BUT … IN THE RIGHT SPIRIT

^*
Since I wrote this passage some poor sod of a local radio DJ was forced into resignation for playing an old recording of the song. Oh lawks.

MORAL OR MEDICAL?

^*
In the
real
sense of willy-nilly. Not in the sense of harum-scarum or all over the place.

THE EARLY DAYS

^*
A once common phrase that no one seems to know any more, but is worth looking up.

^*
After three series a BBC executive eventually cottoned on to the terrible truth that the name of Everett’s female vulgarian, Cupid Stunt (‘all in the best
possible
taste’), could be crudely spoonerized. She was forbidden from reappearing. A new, seemingly identical, character called Mary Hinge popped up in the next series. ‘Now you see that’s better,’ said the executive. ‘You don’t need to be smutty to be funny.’

^*
As with smartphones, coke lore had it that storing the damp wrap in rice would eventually dry it out, but it never worked for me.

^*
I haven’t … except to correct hasty typos.

^†
We didn’t.

^*
Technically Anteros, of course, but what the hey?

^†
The second best in central London. The best is, of course, that of the young man memorializing the Machine Gun Corps in Wellington Place. His matchlessly perfect buttocks present themselves to anyone travelling south along Park Lane towards Hyde Park Corner. One never minds a red light there.

^*
Pronounced like the mint you were a long time ago urged not to hurry and Andy the tennis champion.

^†
Moray played the definitive Colonel Bantry all those years ago with Joan Hickson’s equally definitive Miss Marple.

^*
In other words by grape variety – Sauvignon Blanc, Shiraz, Merlot, etc. – as opposed to the confusing traditional British manner of listing by estate without any mention of the grape. This once pioneering approach is now standard practice, of course.

^*
As in Ishiguro’s
The Remains of the Day
, only more lively and convivial.

^*
See
Moab is My Washpot
.

^*
Not to each other. Two separate ceremonies.

^*
Feeble ref. to the Mujahadeen, who were one of the Afghan insurgency forces in the old Soviet–Afghan war.

^*
After all, the royal family have a house not far from me, and Princes William and Harry have been known to pop into one of my favourite pubs in the county: that being the case, some git off the TV is hardly going to cause excitement.

^*
Famous in the wider world for his naked balloon dance. He drowned, aged fifty-five, much mourned by what was then the oxymoronic alternative establishment. His stand-up act was, I need hardly add, staggeringly unfunny in a way that must have taken enormous effort. He himself was astonishingly funny, however. Go figure.

^*
Slimline it may have been called, but it imparted no such thing to my increasing bulk.

NOTES FROM A SHOWBUSINESS CAREER

^*
I once heard someone say they’d really enjoyed the new Hare piece at the National …

^*
I was wise enough to run the manuscript of this book by Hugh to check for accuracy. I am sometimes accused of a good memory, but it is only good for useless things. Hugh’s is both compendious and useful. I quote his response to the paragraph above: ‘… not that it matters, but it was definitely Rowan who did the hoovering. I also distinctly remember him driving to the petrol station – the only place open on New Year’s Day – and coming back with fig rolls, for God’s sake. They might have been there since the previous New Year.’

^*
Not tired enough to sleep, obviously …

LIVING THE LIFE

^*
Ex-President of the Cambridge Footlights. Before my time, but he co-produced our 1981 tour of Australia, magnificently described in
The Fry Chronicles.

^†
Terrifically funny American stand-up comedian. ‘I can’t understand why cosmetics manufacturers make perfumes that smell of flowers. Men don’t like flowers. If they want to attract men they should bring out a scent called New Car Interior …’

^*
For all I know this is deeply unfair, and
Time Out
welcomed us with lavish praise. We were too scared to look. I remember years earlier Rik Mayall opening a
Time Out
to see a review of the second series of
The Young Ones.
‘“Nothing like as good as the pioneering first series,”’ he read, then spluttered, Riklike, ‘but they
hated
the first series. Bastards!’