This Is Your Life (15 page)

It's obviously a hatchet job, I realized – an exposé on my whole scam, now laid bare for the entire country by an investigative reporter I'd foolishly underestimated. ‘He's having a laugh' – suddenly it didn't feel very funny at all. I flicked over the page and started to speed-read the feature, which occupied a double spread:

Confused, I read the sentence again. ‘Onto the stage walks
Jimmy Conway.' What was she talking about? Had she gone mad? It was inexplicable. I read on and discovered that my act had in fact been far funnier than I ever dared hope it could be. My now famous ‘fish' routine was fast becoming the stuff of comedy legend, apparently. For no obvious benefit to herself, Arabella was prepared to lie to millions of people that I had gone ahead with it and got up there and performed. And I was fantastic! I was a triumph! She must have liked me so much that she'd given me the benefit of the doubt when I failed to turn up, presuming that I really was every bit as funny as my American reviews asserted. In which case, why didn't she call to ask why I had let her down? Why wasn't she angry that I had made her leave her dinner party early to rush across London on a rainy Wednesday night to see a stand-up comedy show? And then it dawned on me. Because Arabella hadn't turned up either! That's why there had been no message left after the supposed gig. She had arrived at her friend's house on Wednesday night for a meal, kicked off her shoes and had a few glasses of wine on the sofa. No doubt the meal had been served up slightly later than she'd anticipated and eventually she looked at her watch in the middle of her dinner and just thought, What's it to be – lie to millions of readers or leave now and miss out on a portion of that chocolate tartine with the crème anglaise? Yeah, sod it – I'll just say he was good. ‘More wine over here please, Samantha, and I think I might try a slice of the pavlova as well.'

I looked around the café to see if anyone else was reading the
Sunday Times
and if so to see if they recognized me. I gave a half smile to a cleaner, but she didn't seem to instantly place my face. I read on, almost aghast at the improbability of my success.

I was good looking! It said so in the paper! As for the scruffiness of the great artist, I privately had to concede it was more likely the sign of a person who was just scruffy.

While reeling in shocked delight at this unwarranted praise, I
still found room to be puzzled by some of the comments in this almost perfect profile. Apparently I had admitted that underneath all the jokes I was probably a very sad person, and that I drank Guinness as a way of connecting with my Irish roots. But these were mere quibbles. The piece was prominent, with big pictures, great captions and the profile was so much better than it could have possibly been if we had both turned up to the gig. Now I was somebody. I had arrived. I read the entire piece again, more slowly this time, savouring its idolatrous climax:

‘You bloody liar,' I giggled delightedly, astonished that a journalist on a national newspaper could be so casually and brazenly dishonest. Now I noticed that the entire article never mentioned which comedy club Arabella was at, or who the other comics were – she covered herself by being deliberately vague. It was difficult to categorize all the different emotions I felt reading this profile of myself. Like any great trauma there were several stages. Shock was followed by incredulity, then excitement, then enormous gratitude, which finally gave way to the final stage: pride. Yes, I was very proud of how funny I was. It was all there in black and white. ‘Well, you know, you've deserved it, Jimmy,' I joked to myself. ‘Let's face it, you've put the work in, you've played all the clubs, you've served your time – no one deserves this more than you.'

Arabella sent me a short scribbled note a few days later returning my original photos.

Shucks, yeah, I suppose I was.

27 Elms Crescent,
East Grinstead,
West Sussex,
England

Dear James,

In his song about fame, called ‘Fame', David Bowie asked fame what its name was. I thought about that long and hard today. Then I decided that I didn't have the faintest idea what he was talking about. But the kids from Fame said, ‘Fame – I wanna learn how to fly', and that's definitely true. it would be much easier to do that sort of thing if you were famous.

But becoming a celebrity isn't just about being able to get flying lessons or whatever. It also gives you the chance to do some real good in the world. For example, if a worthwhile cause was having problems raising money, you could come along and go, ‘Hello – let me help! I'm famous, you can use me to
publicize your charity.' And all the girls who work at the charity would be really grateful and feel so lucky that you'd come on board and then the newspapers would take a picture of you shaking a can for the disabled people or whatever, and you might even, sort of stand next to a disabled person to show that you don't mind doing that either. Then you'd be in the paper raising money for charity and everyone would think, ‘Oh, that's good!' I mean, ‘that's good, that charity', not ‘oh that's good, good old James Conway is doing work for charity'. Although there's no point in doing it anonymously, because otherwise you might as well just be an ordinary person shaking a tin in the High Street and that takes ages just to get a couple of quid.

I always think that the more you put into something the more you get out of it. Except those fraudulent pyramid-selling schemes, of course. You're better off putting less into them, or nothing at all in fact if you know they're a swindle, which many of them are, sometimes deliberately. But the point is that far too many people these days take out more than they put in. They take out all their money, and things . . . no, not money, because they have to earn that. They take out all the nice things they buy, except then I suppose they are not really taking them, they are purchasing them legally. Well, whatever it is they are taking out, they are not putting as much of it back and it's not on. As a famous person it will be up to you to set an example to show everyone how good you are. Because when that Fame finally comes knocking on your door the temptation will be to drive around in your flashy car and buy yourself expensive things and go to parties where everyone thinks you are great, but you shouldn't just do all that, you should also put a couple of hours a week aside for thinking about people less
fortunate than yourself. Which with a bit of luck should be just about everyone by now.

Mine sincerely,
Jimmy

‘I didn't know you were bullied at school, dear,' said my mother on the phone that incredible Sunday morning.

‘I wasn't.'

‘It says here in the
Sunday Times:
“Jimmy Conway sipped his beer, almost as if the memory was too painful. ‘I first learnt the craft of comedy as a teenager. I discovered that I could deflect the aggression of the school bully with a well-timed joke, and so for me comedy became a matter of survival in the playground jungle.'” Mind you, you're right about the jungle, darling,' she continued without drawing breath, ‘the time I spent picking burrs out of your school jumper and they never pulled up the bindweed it always looked such a mess round the gates, but that's state education for you I suppose, encourage the weeds as well as the roses, I wanted to send you private they had much nicer grounds at Charterhouse but your father wouldn't hear of it after the money we'd spent on Nicholas who rang this morning they're back from the Dordogne they're having trouble with planning permission for the farmhouse but that's the French for you, obstructive by nature like de Gaulle with the Common Market. . .'

The habits of a lifetime are not easily surrendered and despite my sudden increase in status she still found herself moving straight onto the subject of my elder brother. I had got used to this over the years. If my mother's butterfly brain should find itself settling for a second on the comprehensive bindweed of her youngest son it would then immediately flit off and settle on the richer nectar of the privately educated prize bloom that was Nicholas. But on this day an incredible thing happened. She fluttered back again and settled on me!

‘Nicholas saw the piece in the newspaper as well, everyone's very excited about this secret career you've developed, darling,
I'm so glad you had a word with Billy Scrivens like I said. One of Nicholas's friends rang him and asked if he was any relation of Jimmy Conway, how about that? We're all very proud of you, dear!'

How about that, indeed! All the years that I had been Nicholas Conway's younger brother: ‘Any relation of Nicholas?' people would always ask me, ‘Oh yes, you're Nick Conway's little brother aren't you?' and now Nicholas had been asked if he was any relation of mine. Yes! Yes! Yes! Finally I had sat on his head and let rip a stinker! Dad had a brief word; the success of his younger son seemed briefly to have cheered him up but he quickly returned to his usual subject of conversation: ‘Did Mum tell you George Howe's had another stroke? He can't have much longer I should think.'

‘OK, Dad, lovely to talk to you . . .'

‘And Arthur Lloyd has got to have a triple heart by-pass. Not many people survive those . . .'

I felt a slight pang of guilt at allowing this deception to extend to my own family, but it was not enough to make me feel I had to put them straight. Obviously there were some people I was more comfortable about deceiving than others, and when I thought about this I realized that ultimately it came down to levels of resentment. The more I resented someone, the easier I found it to lie to them, but a certain measure of resentment was required in all cases.

One of the first people I had lied to on this journey was my older brother. Obviously I resented him, but I imagine this is perfectly normal behaviour: isn't it exactly what successful siblings are for? My parents' adoration of him brought resentment by proxy which allowed me to mislead them as well.
Sophie's Choice
would have been a very short film if it had
been our family captured by the Nazis. ‘Mrs Conway, only one of your children may live and you must make that choice.'

‘OK; Nicholas please.' The End.

Nicholas had towered over my childhood and twenty-five years later continued to metaphorically fart on my head by outperforming me in every single department. His life story was one of uninterrupted success, wealth and happiness; unless of course you happened to read his entry on
Friends Reunited
, which recorded a catalogue of abject failure, bankruptcy and prison. He still hadn't discovered what I'd written on his behalf. Actually
Friends Reunited
had provided me with a whole new supply of people to resent. I'd forgotten about many of my classmates but this website meant I could look them all up and resent them all over again. ‘Jamie Kerslake – Database manager for software company in Reading. Married to Denise; two girls aged 2 and 4.' It's like, all right, you big show-off, you don't have to go on and on about it. Many of my classmates had made me feel inferior when I was a child – even my imaginary friend got better exam results than I did. They ought to create another site called
Imaginary Friends Reunited
– it would be nice to see what he was up to. I expect he's in computers as well. Everyone else seemed to be.