The Digested Twenty-first Century (18 page)

1999:
To the House to escape the children, who are keeping me awake. John Prescott soon puts me to sleep. Bumped into the Man in the lobby. We have made a huge error over Bosnia and he is in thrall to the US, so I asked him about the Masons and Murdoch. ‘Any minute, Claud,’ he said. I told him I had had enough of chairing the select committee. ‘Then I’ll give you a non-job as parliamentary under-secretary, Chip.’ Things are looking up.

Digested read, digested:
Diary of a Nobody.

Where do I start? I’ve never written a book before and how do I begin to tell you about my life? Especially as I’m only 32 and haven’t done very much. In fact, I’ve just realised you may not actually have purchased this book and are just reading the first page to see if you’re interested. I’m guessing you’re not overly impressed so far, but then I’m not that bothered as I’ve already banked more than £1m as an advance and there’s no chance of the book earning out.

To be honest, I’m a bit all over the place. My gorgeous wife Jules, the most gorgeous talented wife in the world, was due to have a baby in a week’s time and I had been planning to get the book knocked off before the birth but she’s gone into labour early so I’m going to have to get a bit of a bend on and bash it out before they both come home from hospital. Have I told you I haven’t written a book before? What shall I do? Hey, just had an email from my publisher saying that any old drivel will do as long as I make the word count. So is this OK? I really hope so, because I really, really want you to like me.

Hey, that’s one chapter down. This book writing is easier than I thought. So let me tell you a funny story. On second thoughts, let’s just call it a story. My parents were both in the Salvation Army and I knew from the first time I stood on a chair at my sister’s christening that I was going to be a performer. Fascinating. So what else can I tell you? We lived near High Wycombe and we were the happiest family ever.

It may surprise you to know that when I was 11 my parents sent me to secondary school. I wasn’t the brightest kid on the block, but somehow I always had this faith in my acting talents
and when I left school I got a part in the West End musical
Martin Guerre
– definitely up there as one of the best musicals ever written, in my opinion. I was the happiest person on the entire planet as I was working with some of the most talented people I have ever met.

After a year in the West End I got a part in a brilliant movie,
The Church of Alan Darcy
, starring Bob Hoskins. I don’t suppose many of you saw the movie, but it is definitely one of the best films ever made and Bob is one of the most iconic actors of his generation and taught me more about acting than anyone else apart from all the other extremely talented actors I went on to work with later. I should also mention that it was at this time I met Shelley, the most talented and beautiful girl in the world, and we stayed together for eight of the happiest years of my life.

‘Are you sitting down, James?’ It was my agent on the phone. ‘Mike Leigh wants you to star in a film alongside Alison Steadman.’ Can you believe it? Me, working with Mike and Alison the two most talented people in the world. Ever. I was like, ‘Yes. When can I start?’ it was just such a totally mind-blowing experience working with such talented people and I wondered if I would ever get to work with such talented people again, but luckily I got to work on Fat Friends and Teachers with some more of the most talented actors and directors in the world. Ever, ever.

Would you believe it, I then got a call saying would I like a part in
The History Boys?
Hello! Alan Bennett, Nick Hytner and the National. Try and keep me away! It really was the happiest two years of my life working with the most talented people in the history of theatre ever and I was so thrilled when Alan sent me a letter saying Dear _______, Thank you for working on
The History Boys
. You are the best actor ever. Yours, Alan.’

While I was starring in
The History Boys
, my good friend Ruth,
the most talented woman ever, and I knocked up a pilot for
Gavin & Stacey
over a weekend and getting that series commissioned and working with Matt Lucas and Rob Brydon, two of the most talented actors I have ever met, was the happiest time of my life. Sadly Shelley and I had split up by then, but luckily I almost went out with Lily Allen. Well, I would have done if she’d fancied me! What a talent she is!

I have to admit success may have gone to my head and for a year I wasn’t as nice as I should have been. But then I met Jules and my agent suggested doing some work for Comic Relief to improve my image and I haven’t looked back. And, best of all, Jules and the baby are back from hospital and my editor says I have exceeded my word count by 5,000, so job done.

Digested read, digested:
You’ll have to try a lot harder than this…

Spring 2009 was beautiful. I was emotionally and sexually happy. But then I noticed a change: my orgasms, which I had always previously timed at 22 minutes 47 seconds, had petered out to a pitiful 13 minutes and two seconds. I immediately barged my way to the head of the queue to see Dr Deborah Coady, the world’s pre-eminent vulvaologist. Dr Coady shook her soft light brown hair that falls to her shoulders and sighed deeply.

‘I regret to say that several millennia of patriarchal oppression are causing your vagina to lose consciousness,’ she said. ‘But if you agree to a simple 38-hour procedure, I can restore your Inner Goddess.’

Within minutes of coming round after the operation, I heard a
faint whisper speaking to me from between my legs. ‘On behalf of women everywhere,’ it said, ‘I thank you for giving me back my voice. So tonight, Naomi, just for you, I’m going to sing ‘I Believe I Can Fly’.

My mascara began to run as I wept plangent tears of joy while I tried to locate my reborn G-spot with my perfectly manicured index finger. ‘Left a bit,’ groaned my Inner Goddess.

I checked the stopwatch and smiled: 21 minutes and 39 seconds. My vagina was back in business. I owed it to her and womankind to celebrate her recovery by writing her biography.

As I began my research – I cannot recommend the findings of Dr Pfaus’s MRI scans of the cervix too highly – I began to make some remarkable discoveries. A vagina that is neglected can easily fall into a deep depression; indeed, I encountered several that had self-sealed in an act of suicide. Meanwhile, a pampered vagina is capable of acts of great creativity. It is a little-known fact that Edith Wharton wrote the House of Mirth with her clitoris. And while it is true that the vagina may sometimes become addicted to her own happiness, this is something society ought to celebrate, rather than control with a strict 12-step programme that insists on submission to a male God.

Throughout history, men have sought to subjugate the vagina through whatever means they have available and as Dr Nancy Fish, whose luscious auburn curls cascade dreamily over her angular shoulders, points out in her seminal work,
The Vagina Songbook:
‘The Delta Blues actually originated from the Venus Delta, as women began to protest at ‘Waking up in the morning/With a penis in my bed’.’

I had experience of this directly when a male friend, whom I shall call Neanderthal, offered to host a party in celebration of my vagina. ‘I’ve made some vulva-shaped pasta that I’ve named cuntini,’ he laughed. I gasped as I noticed he was also serving
champagne out of deliberately phallicised bottles and had not even had enough respect to circumcise the sausages. My vagina went into a three-year spasm during which I was unable to do anything except write to Ban Ki Moon and insist that verbal insults to the vagina be considered a war crime.

To say I was astounded by the degree to which the Goddess Array (as I now choose to call my vagina) reacts to oppression is an understatement, not least when I conducted my own experiment on mice with Dr Here Shite, whose neat bob perfectly offset her generous smile. You should have seen the look of terror on the rodents’ faces as we shouted: ‘Watch out for the pussy!’

Many decades of detailed exploration of the inner contours of the Goddess Array ensued, until I was finally able to conclude that a happy vagina is one that is equally respected by men and women. And as I pondered this brilliant conclusion, I lay back in the Greek countryside where I was on holiday, and realised that the Earth was a Goddess, too. The hills enveloped me in their bosomly embrace and the trees bowed down to my vagina and cried: ‘Come, Yoni.’ For three hours, 57 minutes and 28 seconds, I did as they commanded.

Digested read, digested:
The Holy of Holies.

Lady Thatcher was not a woman prone to self-examination and so it was with great humility I accepted the task of protecting
her legacy while maintaining a veneer of even-handedness and objectivity. Margaret Hilda Thatcher was born in 1925, the second daughter of Alderman Alfred Roberts and his wife, Beatrice. Her elder sister, Muriel, who has never previously spoken of Margaret, remembers that her mahogany desk was always tidy. Her dentist, Geoffrey Marks, recalls her having near perfect molars. Margaret did not get on well with her mother and there was a terrible family row over whether she should study Latin.

In 1941, Margaret bought her first pink uplift bra which she wore when reading the poems of Rudyard Kipling. She also bought a skirt for £3 16s to celebrate her admission to Oxford to read chemistry. There, she met her first male friend; one hesitates to call Neil Findlay a boyfriend, though I have ascertained to my satisfaction they once went to the ‘flicks’ (her word, I should never be so vulgar). Upon leaving Oxford, she went to a Conservative party conference in Llandudno, where she came to the attention of the Dartford constituency that first adopted her as a candidate. At about this time, realising she was on the rise, she palmed off her new dreary farmer beau, Willie Cullen, on to her sister Muriel to whom she once paid the singular compliment of saying, ‘You are the only person I know who is more rightwing than me.’

Even though Margaret was defeated at the 1950 election, she did far better than anticipated and decided she ought to marry Denis Thatcher, a man to whom she was not particularly attracted, but had the advantage of both a minor public school education and sharing her fondness for a tipple. They honeymooned in Estoril where Margaret observed many Jews. Margaret was very fond of The Jew, observing that ‘The Jew is a natural trader’, an empathy that stood her in good stead when she was selected for East Finchley.

The arrival of twins, Mark and Carol, took both Margaret and Denis by surprise, but they reacted with characteristic pragmatism. A next-door neighbour, Brigadier Arbuthnot, remembers Margaret handing them over to a nanny, while muttering ‘that’s the last we’ll hear about those brats for 500 pages until Mark gets lost in the desert’. ‘It was an act of tremendous love,’ the nanny later said, when I twisted her arm.

Margaret was universally acknowledged to be the most attractive of all the women in parliament in 1959 and her sexual charisma would later work to her considerable advantage, not least for Tory grandees such as myself who are still aroused remembering the occasional sightings of Matron’s stockings. She was much taken aback to find herself in opposition in 1964. ‘I’m not a natural attacker,’ she explained with her customary insight.

She first went to America in 1968 where her good manners were much commented on and, having failed to attend the funerals of either her father or mother, she was much perturbed to find many Marxists working within the Department of Education when the Conservatives returned to power. She was deeply hurt by the sobriquet Milk Snatcher and blamed Ted Heath for fostering the politics of consensus.

After the 1974 election, it became clear to Margaret that Ted had to go. It is hard to understate her bravery in putting herself forward against him, as so many people have testified to me and, faced with the prospect of ‘a filly or a gelding’ as leader, the Conservatives stepped into the unknown.

It was still far from clear whether the country would accept a woman prime minister and it was her stylist Gordon Reece and her advertising guru Lord Saatchi who came up with the brilliant idea of keeping her away from the cameras as much as possible.
The strategy worked and in May 1979, she strode into Downing Street with the immortal words, ‘Where there is discord, let me drive a permanent wedge.’

Of the final 300 pages, almost anyone who is remotely interested in monetarism, Ireland and the Thatcher government will have read them countless times before, though I shall attempt to add nuance by saying ‘on the one hand this’ and ‘on the other hand that’. I can confirm, though, that while she had a deep distrust of black Africans, she was not racist. In private, she only made jokes about the Germans and the French.

How the country roared with laughter when Margaret said, ‘You turn if you want to. This lady’s not for turning’ but her good humour aside, she could be steely when required. Several people I have interviewed remarked that she could be quite critical. Yet she felt her criticism was justified and as she was right about almost everything, history may find in her favour. Mine will, certainly.

Margaret was greatly displeased that Ronald Reagan did not back her unequivocally over the Falkands crisis and felt that Francis Pym was pusillanimous as foreign secretary. She also reported that the deaths of British servicemen caused her the worst moments of her entire life, a reaction that showed her characteristic natural maternal sympathies. Unfortunately, there was no space in this volume to record Carol Thatcher’s comment of ‘Are you kidding?’

Ultimately, the Iron Lady was proved right to hold firm and, as the Argentines surrendered, the clamour went up: ‘Rejoice. There’s another volume to come next year. It’s a licence to print money.’

Digested read, digested:
The Dead Thatch Bounce.