I first met Caroline Aherne in the Haçienda. She’d been doing a character called Sister Mary Immaculate on Tony Wilson’s TV show that evening, and he had a nice habit (no pun intended) of inviting his guests to the club afterwards. He’d brought her over, introduced us and, with a sly wink, left.
Caroline was obviously drunk and demanded I sing ‘Regret’ a capella for her, over and over again until I complied. But she was unusual and, of course, very, very funny. She certainly made a big impression. I was single at this point but had been rubbing along rather well with a different girl almost every night.
I was very intrigued by her, a career woman no less. Maybe it was because I’d never met anyone like her before. Say what you like – and I’m about to do exactly that – but she’s a one-off. I should say, of course, that she was a one-off. Caroline sadly died of lung cancer just as I was putting the finishing touches to this book.
She and I got absolutely trashed that first night, setting the tone for the rest of what turned out to be the worst and most tempestuous relationship of a whole lifetime’s worth of tempestuous relationships. We ended up back at mine and later, as she was leaving and I asked for her number, she said, ‘No. I’m not giving you my number. You’ve got to find it. If you want me, you’ll have to find out my number.’
Even more intriguing.
She got the shock of her life when I phoned her a few days later and we went on our first date to CocAtoos Italian restaurant, opposite the Ritz in town.
It was a great date. She was really easy to get on with, and hilarious company. She was in stitches when I got myself locked in the toilet and had to crawl/limbo out through the gap at the bottom of the door. There was no doubt in either of our minds that this first date would be followed by many more. Sure enough, it wasn’t long before we were an item.
I quickly worked out that she was strange. I mean, I knew she was nuts on the first night – and it turned out her whole family was mad as well – but back then being nuts was part of her charm. It often is when you first meet someone; it usually means they’re crazy in every other way, too, which she was. When the relationship gets more intense – as ours did, really quickly – the nuts stuff becomes a problem. Add the fact that Mrs Merton liked a drink more than most, and you’ve got a very combustible situation. In comedy they have a big green-room drinking culture; it’s a very boozy, incestuous world. They drink together, sleep together, bitch about one another behind their backs, while going out of their way to tell each other how great they are to their faces. They’re insecure, paranoid and hypersensitive to criticism.
I met the lot of them. I fitted in perfectly – you name them, the so-called cream of British comedy at the time. I thought they were a right bunch of jerks. And of them all, the worst, most boozy, insecure, paranoid of the lot were the women. I was shocked.
There was a lot of sleeping around in that world. While we were intimate she would delight in telling me who she’d slept with and even where they’d done it, complete with all the gory details, like how she’d make them phone their wives after sex. She loved taking me backstage to mingle with these comedians, with me knowing who she’d slept with. She seemed to have a thing for girls, too. They featured in many of her stories and she loved me taking her to strip clubs abroad, where no one knew her and she could sit transfixed by the girls, getting very close to the action indeed. Put it this way, it came as no surprise when, in 1997, she was pictured kissing Katrina, out of Katrina and the Waves, at some awards ceremony or other. She also went through a phase of wanting me to get a hooker for the two of us, but I told her, ‘No way, love, because if I even looked at that hooker, never mind touched her, you’d go fucking mad.’
The problem was, she was very, very jealous and possessive, and although she used to work with her ex-boyfriend, who in my opinion is a weapons-grade tool, she was controlling when it came to my female friends. A typical conversation with Mrs Merton on return from a hard day’s work, would start with her asking me, ‘What did you do today?’ all sweetness and light.
‘Oh, I was in the studio all day.’
‘All day?’
‘Yeah, all day.’
‘Well, how did you get there?’
‘I went on my bike.’
‘Did you stop anywhere? Did you see anyone? Did you talk to anyone on the way there?’
‘Well no, no, Cara [my pet name for her]. I literally just cycled there.’
She’d go, ‘Right, OK. What did you do at lunchtime? Did you go out?’
‘Did I go out? I can’t remember, love, to be honest.’
‘You can’t remember? You can’t remember if you went out at lunchtime? That’s a bit strange, isn’t it?’
‘Yeah. OK, yeah, I think I might have gone out for a sandwich.’
‘Did you see anyone? Did you talk to anyone?’
‘No, I don’t think so, no.’
‘Oh, OK, and then what did you do?’
‘Well, then we stayed in the studio until quarter to six and then I left and came home, and here I am . . .’
‘Did you see anyone on the way home? Did you talk to anyone?’
It was like that all the time, like being interrogated by the Gestapo. She’d give me a major grilling every night. And woe betide me if my version of events involved interaction with another woman. That would be it. She’d behave as though I were having a full-blown affair, and the screaming, crying and recriminations would start.
I’d take phone calls and she’d listen in on the extension and then ask me who’d rung. This happened when an ex rang to ask me out, and even though I’d declined I didn’t dare tell Mrs Merton, so I made up a story that it was a bloke from Tom’s office.
‘Well, that’s funny,’ she said, ‘because when I picked up the extension I heard a girl’s voice.’
That was it. Mega arguments. Our engagement was off, again. Oh dear, but then it was on again, and like lambs to the slaughter we went and got married in Vegas at the Little White Chapel, with Tom Atencio as my best man.
More than once over those few days he shook me and said, ‘Don’t marry her, Hooky, she’s crazy, too crazy.’ (Which if you knew Tom was funny after some of his consorts.)
But love is deaf, dumb, blind and stupid, so I had great company. We’d flown out to LA for a few days to acclimatise, and I went and met with Jim Swindel at Warner Brothers, just to say hello. But she hated it as soon as she saw the girls who worked for the record company. I had got to know many of them very well over the years, innocently, but she was kicking off all the time.
I remember telling my mother I’d proposed after three months and the only thing she said was, ‘Well, our Peter, marry in haste, repent at leisure.’ How right she was. We connected to Las Vegas and Caroline left her wedding dress on the shuttle bus at the airport, and it took me ages to get it back. I thought, Is this a sign? but it was too late by then and, heart in mouth, we went through with it, being married by a fake Elvis in the Chapel of Love, and we were very happy that night. I remember excitedly phoning our parents to give them the news. They were delighted. Caroline willingly changed her name to Hook even after me telling her it didn’t matter, and that she could keep her name for her career.
Now Caroline often spoken about her demons and how she was a very different person when she was drunk, so a lot of what I’m about to say won’t come as a surprise. But the fact was she could be very demonic, and after the wedding things began to get very weird indeed. We’d go out and get pissed, go to bed, and then she’d wake me up in the middle of the night, perched on the end of the bed, smoking.
I’d go, ‘What’s up?’ and she’d squint through the smoke at me with her evil eyes, and growl, ‘Nobody likes you, you know. You’re all washed up, your career’s over. You’ve got no friends, not one,’ over and over again. I’d swing from anger to fear. It felt like I was being brainwashed.
As it happened, she was right, I didn’t have any friends, but the reason was because she’d done such a great job of cutting me off from them. We only mixed with comics or people from her show. Her friends. I’d go, ‘Fucking hell, steady on, what’s happening here? What’s the matter with you?’
I’d go back to sleep and she’d wake me up and do it all over again. ‘You’re a failure, you are. You’re all washed . . .’
I had left New Order behind me, and though I was beginning to get Monaco together with Pottsy, I was still a long way off seeing the fruits of that particular labour, so I think her telling me I was a failure started triggering several inherent insecurities of my own.
As a matter of fact, what I saw as her jealousy and paranoia was catching. As far as I was concerned, her ex was still in love with her – no doubt about that in my mind – and he used to ring her up at all times of the evening just to make some lame remark about something he’d be watching on telly. I’d come home from work to find him there, apparently ‘writing’, spread out on my sofa, shoes off, like he owned the fucking place. It was driving me mad. God help me if Caroline had come home and found me with a woman in the house, ex or not.
I started going everywhere with her very soon. Being on call for her all the time. One time after filming The Fast Show, she went to bed while I stayed up partying with some of the cast and crew. We heard a knocking at the door and there was Caroline, pissed and raging at me. Back in our room things got even worse. A lot worse. She attacked me, using her nails to scratch at my neck, tearing off my necklace and ripping my top. It was proper shocking stuff. And although she was really contrite the next morning it marked the beginning of some serious screaming-banshee behaviour – putting cigarettes out on my arm, attacking me with bottles, knives, chairs and other assorted furniture. It would be set off by the slightest thing – talking or looking at another woman was a favourite. She’d come at me like a screaming banshee, and if she was pissed it would be ten times worse.
Like I say, she stopped me seeing my mates, and soon after that she began disapproving of me taking drugs too. Fair enough, I suppose. What wife wants her husband hoofing coke all the time? But the weird thing was she started off by encouraging it, like it amused her that I was taking it. ‘Take more, Take more,’ she’d say. Then, like so much else about her, the mood suddenly changed and, without warning, she was really, really anti-drugs.
She slapped me round the face in the middle of the British Comedy Awards aftershow party in front of about thirty assorted comedians, accusing me of doing coke with one of them in the toilets (I was, thanks, Vic). We were staying in the Grosvenor Hotel, my first time there, and I ended up on the bathroom floor all night.
Next morning she was again contrite, and very apologetic, but blamed it on me. ‘It’s because I love you so much,’ she said.
Got a funny way of showing it, I thought.
The one thing you’d have to say about her was that she didn’t have a private face and a public one. The unpredictable and volatile Caroline I knew was pretty much the same whether she had mates round or was at the British Comedy Awards or it was just the two of us behind closed doors. Years later, when we split up and the comedy community closed ranks tight around her (my first experience of ‘Golden Goose Syndrome’, where the least-talented cluster round who they think is the most talented, hanging on for grim life), I used to think to myself, All you lot know exactly what she’s like, you two-faced bastards.
If anyone came round to ours it would kick off. It wasn’t like you could anticipate the exact problem – you just knew there’d be one. It got so it was easier not to have anyone over, my family included, which suited her down to the ground. She used to say her ideal man was an author who stayed at home all day writing alone in his study. It was as though it were her ambition was to cut me off from the rest of society.
We’d bought a beautiful house in Didsbury on Parrs Wood Road, very secluded, and it should have been a dream house, but she made it hell for me, giving me the third-degree every time I got home from work. I’d tell lies to cover up innocuous truths, like the fact that my doctor was female, but she’d find out and I’d be up shit street. It got so that I’d drive home and sit outside in the car for ages, working up the courage to go inside and get a grilling, the fury of which would be determined by how much she’d already had to drink.
Never marry an actress. You never know what role they’ll be playing when you get home.
One time we went out to a gig in town. There were loads of people at this gig, loads of Manchester heads. Mark E. Smith was there, the Inspirals, the Roses – it was a big gig and I said to her, ‘Right, you stay there, I’ll go and get you a drink.’ I went to the bar, came back, and she had a right face on. I was like, ‘What’s the matter with you?’
‘Nothing,’ she said.
Later I went to get more drinks, came back, she had even more of a face on. ‘What’s the fucking matter?’ I was saying, ‘What have I done?’
‘Nothing.’
Go to the toilet, come back, fuck me, it was like World War Three. She stormed off, went home. So of course I had to go home too, where I was going, ‘What’s the matter with you? Will you tell me what’s the fucking matter?’ until at last she exploded and said to me, ‘Every time you went to the bar, Mark E. Smith came over and said, “He’s shagging loads of birds behind your back, you know?” ’
I thought, Oh God, you fucking wind-up merchant, Mark. I’ll fucking kill you the next time I see you. That’s why she freaked, because, accidentally, he’d found her Achilles heel.
Another time, after a night out with Keith Allen, I returned to the hotel only to discover that she’d been through my briefcase and taken scissors to the contents of my Filofax (hey, it was the 90s), ripping up pictures of my kids, cutting up my clothes, destroying everything she could.
I loved her, though, that was the thing.
She was so funny. God, she was funny. Used to do an amazing impression of me as well, wearing my clothes while she did it, and when she had money she was dead generous, too. She didn’t have any at first and I was glad to help her and her family out, even paying for central heating for her mum’s house one particularly bad winter. Once, when she’d made it, she caught me looking at a Harley-Davidson and then had it delivered for my birthday. As long as she was sober, she could be really sweet and she was always apologetic after her violent outbursts, ashamed even.
David Walliams had a relationship with her after me, and so much of what he described in his autobiography rang true: the drinking, the weird tormenting abuse, the insecurity.
She used to need complete silence to learn her lines for Mrs Merton (she was nearly blind in one eye due to retinoblastoma as a child, and it had heightened her sense of hearing), so I’d carefully retreat to the back bedroom, right at the other end of the house, to do my ironing, and put on the headphones listening to Kiss 102 while I did it.
As a single father I had learned to iron out of strict necessity and my tip to doing it successfully is to buy the most expensive iron you can afford. John Lewis have the best selection. At times I have paid over £350 for one. It really does make life a lot easier. Putting a drop of Olbas Oil in the water will clear your sinuses a treat for the evening too. I mainly did mine in the studio, with the clothes hung all round the control room. Pottsy would say, ‘It’s like Johnsons the bloody cleaners in here.’
Caroline, who hated dance music with a passion, even more so when she realised I had a taste for it, would come storming in, ripping off my headphones, telling me I was disturbing her by tapping my foot.
Now, I doubt I was even tapping my foot. And I’m damn sure she couldn’t have heard it if I was. She knew I was in the room listening to dance music, and she was that domineering and controlling she couldn’t stand that fact.
I don’t think she liked animals, so I guess I should have been suspicious when she offered to look after my cat, Biba, while I was away, to save me putting her in the cattery. When I got home, no cat.
‘Where’s Biba?’ I asked.
‘Oh,’ she said, like butter wouldn’t melt, ‘I didn’t think you were looking after it properly so I gave it away.’
I’d had that cat for fourteen bloody years – Ian Curtis used to stroke her – but I was so browbeaten by then that I just let the issue drop, my shoulders drooping even further towards the floor. (Years later a bloke came up to me: ‘My mum’s got your cat, she loves her!’ Biba was twenty-one by then so at least I know she went to a good home.)
The Mrs Merton Show would be a huge hit for her and she’d been hearing the music me and Pottsy were writing as Monaco at home, and saying it was great, and that we should have a spot on the show.
She told the producer at Granada, who wouldn’t say boo to her goose, ‘I’d like Hooky to do a spot. He can play one of his songs every week.’ So the guy goes, ‘Yeah, that’s a good idea,’ but was obviously thinking, Not on your fucking nelly, because although me and Pottsy were signed up under the impression that we were going to get to play one of our tunes every show (fantastic for us as Monaco, great exposure) we got kicked off for another popular band every week. We’d been stitched up completely. All we did was the stings like a bunch of wankers.
A ‘sting’ is a short piece of music five to twenty seconds long that has some kind of personal resonance with the guest that, hopefully, the audience will recognise: e.g. for Sylvester Stallone you would play the Rocky theme; for George Best you’d play ‘Best and Marsh’ by New Order. Usually, the cornier the better.
I kept thinking, How has my world come to this? I’ve headlined Glastonbury, and here I am doing stings on fucking TV for shitty B-list celebrities (who, I might add, for the most part were absolutely lovely, particularly Carol Vorderman. I got some shit that night, I tell you).
The money was amazing and we were paid £30,000 a season between us, with me getting £1,000 extra for being the bandleader. It was money for old rope, it really was.
I will say one thing, though, television is a tough, rotten medium. It makes rock’n’roll look like kindergarten. One foot wrong here, mate, and you’re toast, you were out and your career was over too. I witnessed various merciless ostracising of many individuals for the smallest perceived slights. It was absolutely terrifying. Talk about ruled by fear, this lot made ISIS look fair. Luckily for me, my reputation had preceded me and they were terrified of little old Hooky.
Another great thing about being a well-known musician was that I didn’t need them and they knew it, they couldn’t fuck me about. I could just tell them all to fuck off like a musical Vinnie Jones. There was a strict pecking order and luckily my reputation and Caroline’s love put me nearly at the top of it.
So the shows were OK for me, and there were many weird moments with the guests that were quite entertaining. She was a right diva on set and had everyone running around after her, but they all loved it. One night we were out for drinks and someone said, ‘What do you think of Caroline when she’s dressed as Mrs Merton, Hooky?’
‘I think I actually prefer her as Mrs Merton. She’s nicer, such a sweet old lady,’ I said, only joking (though it was true).
Oh my God, did I get it for that. I nearly got a bottle over the head for saying I preferred her as a nice old lady.
We struggled on for nearly three years. At one point Caroline convinced me I needed therapy and I ended up going to see a very well-known and well-regarded therapist in Manchester. This guy was great. Once I’d poured my heart out he agreed with everything I said. I was flabbergasted. He then told me to bring her in so he could talk to her. The next session was for the two of us and he gave her a right dressing down, telling her she had to change, how it was her behaviour that needed moderating. ‘You need to learn some respect, young lady,’ he said.
I shit it. Even though I was glad of the back-up I knew the ramifications would be swift and merciless – and so it proved. They started in the car on the way home and continued for days. I was an abused husband and it’s embarrassing, and you feel ashamed, and you can’t tell anyone. I needed help.
Now I know, reader, that you’re thinking, Hang on, he was the nutter, the tough guy whose reputation preceded him, how had it come to this?
I did wonder myself. It happened slowly and I was eager, maybe too eager, to please the woman I loved. I’m watching a very close friend go through exactly the same scenario now and it sends shivers down my spine.
Absolutely heartbreaking.
In my opinion her father was like this with her mother. When he got terminal cancer we visited him in the hospice and Caroline became embroiled in an argument with other family members. They took things into the corridor, leaving me alone with the dad, who was very ill by now. I’m sat there looking at this stranger and he’s looking at me, and then he does this weird throaty sound that I can only describe as a death rattle, and he dies right in front of my eyes. God forgive me, my first thought was, Oh no, she’s going to fucking kill me for this! I had to go outside and break up the fight to tell them the poor bastard was dead.
It never got better, and I can remember there being two instances where I felt weird as I was driving around. I thought, What is this feeling? It’s strange? It was happiness.
I was distressed to realise that I had felt happy only twice in three years, as fleeting as that. For the rest of the time I was walking on eggshells, absolutely terrified. Then, to cap it all, Iris did an exposé on me for the Daily Mail: ‘Peter Hook Serial Love Cheat’, the headline read. I could just imagine the rest of New Order choking on their fucking cornflakes with that one.
Iris rang me, crying, to tip me off. ‘They tricked me, Pete, the reporter was so nice. I didn’t even get paid.’
Caroline stayed strangely silent.
Our last night together was at a comedy gig we did with Smug Roberts, me and Pottsy as his punk backing-band. We were sat having a drink afterwards with the landlord and landlady, and I noticed the landlady’s trousers had split at the seam halfway down her thigh, and I put my finger in, laughing. Her husband laughed, too, but Caroline’s face clouded over, and when we got home we had the worst argument ever. She picked up a chair, threw it at me but I ducked, so she picked up a glass and lunged at me, and then she threw a wine bottle, and then produced a kitchen knife, and that was the moment I thought, Oh my God, this has gone too far. I’m going to have to defend myself or she’s going to stab me. I knew we’d reached a new low – something from which we weren’t going to be able to recover, but she came to her senses, thank God, threw down the knife and ran off in distress.
This was it. I slept in another bedroom and she got up the next morning and left.
Later she phoned from her mum’s and said, ‘I’m not coming back, Hooky, I’m leaving. I’m going to kill you if I don’t.’
Nowadays I look back, and I think things were coming to a head because the whole time I’d been with her I’d been working on Monaco, and it was starting to really click; the stuff we’d recorded was great, and she knew I was going to be out promoting it, gigging, and she just couldn’t handle it – not just the jealousy that I’d be outside her control, but the jealousy that I was getting my career back on track.
We split up. But, like everything else with Caroline, it was the worst and messiest split ever. For a start we kept going back to each other. She’d ask me to come and meet her and I’d go into town and we’d slope off somewhere (for sex). It would be nice, but then afterwards she’d start up with the questions and accusations.
One day we were sitting in the car in Wythenshawe Park, near her mum’s, and she asked me if I’d done drugs lately and I was like, ‘Yeah, I maybe had half an E the other day.’ And of course she went absolutely mental. It was madness.
Granada, who produced The Mrs Merton Show, issued a statement then edited me out of a programme done about her life. It was suddenly so public. I felt like everyone knew, as if they were all looking at me and laughing. I took to hiding under a hoodie, hood up, head down. Mentally it got worse. Pottsy and Ken did all they could to help, looking after the kids while I lay in bed unable to move, and Andy Fisher came back as a real shoulder to cry on. Thanks, lads.
But eventually I ended up at the doctor’s. I was diagnosed with clinical depression. And believe me there is nothing more depressing than being diagnosed with depression. It felt as if I’d fallen in a glass-sided dark hole and could not get out. I just kept sliding back down to the bottom, no matter how much I tried to escape.
Prozac followed for weeks (one more thing me and Barney would have in common). When that didn’t work I was prescribed Seroxat.
I’d taken my first Seroxat in the morning at the practice place. We were writing and by the afternoon I was hallucinating. Pottsy had turned into a girl in a shimmering silver dress in front of my eyes (every cloud) but it scared me to death, even more so than the depression.
I threw the tablets away and thought, Right, that’s it. I’m done with that shit now. Funny how a confirmed addict like me could be so scared of prescription drugs. I thought I was on the road to recovery but then the bloody ‘panic attacks’ started. These were really frightening and I went back to the doctor for reassurance I wasn’t dying.
His answer was to give me a book, ‘Panic Attacks for Dummies’ sort of thing, which I thought would be no use whatsoever. But, amazingly, once I knew what they were, I could control them. I still get them occasionally now.
After a while I went to see Twinny, then Bowser, and eventually got my life back. Back to drink and illegal drugs for me from now on. One step forward, two steps back, I hear you cry.
Later Caroline moved out of her mother’s and bought a house not far away. In fact, a hundred yards away, just further up Parrs Wood Road. I had to drive past her new house every time I went anywhere.
Then she’d be ringing up all the time, asking me to come round. I’d say no but go anyway, and she’d be there, with ‘Everybody Hurts’ by R.E.M. on repeat and pissed on Bacardi Breezers, blubbing, ‘Look at all my Comedy Awards. They mean nothing without you.’
I’d be going, ‘Oh fuck off, Caroline, pack it in,’ but we’d have a snog or whatever, and she’d go, ‘Oh, what’s that bruise on your arm? Are those scratches, Peter? Have you been with another woman?’
‘We’ve split up, for fuck’s sake. We can do what we want.’
Then she’d say, ‘I’ve been with someone, I’ve been with a very famous actor – do you want me to tell you who?’
‘Listen, I’m going, I’ve had enough of this. I shouldn’t have come round in the first place, because you’re a fucking lunatic,’ and she’d be shouting the name at me as I was running down the road with my hands over my ears yelling, ‘La, la, la!’ God, she was a nightmare when she was drunk.
Believe it or not, I did get some work done while I was married to Caroline.
A tour with Durutti Column for a start. Knowing I was at a loose end, and being a bit of a fan too, Vini Reilly got in touch and asked me to come to Portugal with him. Caroline persuaded me, saying, ‘I’ll come with you.’
I phoned Vini and said, ‘I’m delighted, when do you want to rehearse?’
‘Do we have to?’ he said.
We did one rehearsal and Vini got bored and refused to do any more. It was quite a productive rehearsal as we even jammed a new track that would be known as ‘Hooky’s Tune’, which he would record later. We flew out to Portugal and I fully expected to play some little club gigs for two or three hundred people, only to discover that Durutti were huge there, and we were playing to venues of five thousand or more. You could have knocked me down with a feather. Thanks to his lack of rehearsals it was very loose, shall we say, for the first few performances.
We took wives and girlfriends: in my case, Caroline, in Vini’s case this girl he was seeing at the time. Caroline got pissed every night and was really obnoxious, being horrible to this girl for no reason, then starting to accuse me of fancying her.
I remember being in a bar and Vini saying to me, ‘Your girlfriend,’ and I said, ‘Wife,’ and he said, ‘Your wife. She’s very difficult, isn’t she?’ And I said, ‘Yeah,’ and he said, ‘But she’s very funny,’ and I went, ‘You should try fucking living with her, mate.’ He said, ‘I’ll get you a gin,’ and went and got me a double.
Plus, of course, I was working on Monaco. I was getting depressed all the time – that’s what the relationship was doing to me – and if it hadn’t been for Pottsy and Monaco then God knows what would have happened to me.
She was doing so well, I’d see her everywhere: on TV, in coffee adverts, on billboards, on the sides of bus shelters, and in the Manchester Evening News almost every night, out on the town with her new friends and boyfriends. It was hell. She even managed to record a bloody radio trailer for Kiss 102, so I couldn’t even listen to that.
For a while I felt like I’d never be rid of her, like she was casting a large and unpleasant shadow over my life, and to try to escape the feeling I started drinking even more heavily. Every day I drank until I passed out, waking up with such bad hangovers that the only way of getting any relief from the pain was to start drinking again.
Caroline and I had split early in 1996, which resulted in me going to live at my mother’s for a few weeks, which is definitely what you should always do if you get into big trouble, go home to your mum. She nursed me back to health. I didn’t tell her about my depression diagnosis, just plotted up in my old bedroom and had a great time being miserable, being waited on hand and foot by my mam. Terrorising, in turn, the pubs in Little Hulton, then the local girls, leaving as a donkey in 1979 and coming back, maybe not a hero, but certainly a minor celebrity, complete with flash car and everything. It really gave me a chance to reconnect with my mother, who took no delight in telling me how seeing me so unhappy had broken her heart. She also told me that my father had died.
I said, ‘What? When?’
‘Ages ago. I did mean to tell you.’
They’d split up when I was five. She still hated him after all these years. My Auntie Jean then went on to tell me that my dad knew I had a habit of going into Salford for a drink at the Swan with the lads every Friday night. He would wait for my car, a silver grey XJS, D505 NBU, to pass him on Regent Road and then follow me to the pub and sit and watch me through the window, sometimes drinking at a table nearby. I never knew he was there. The last time I had seen him was when I bumped into him when I was twenty-one. He offered to take me for a drink but I declined; I was scared of what my mam would say. Before that I had no idea what he even looked like. A great shame, and I regret not knowing him now, very much. But that’s life and he did treat my mum terribly.
Anyway, I didn’t last long in Little Hulton, and when I went back to the Didsbury house it was to the faint smell of Caroline’s perfume and four-foot-high grass on the lawn. She told me that because she knew I wasn’t there, she would come in and just sit in the house for hours. I had to change the locks. Then I found out she’d been going to the Haçienda in disguise and stalking me. This was getting weirder.
Soon I was out every night, renewing loads of old acquaintances, making my apologies for being such a recluse and shit friend to everyone – and having the time of my life . . . again.
One real kick up the arse came in the unlikely form of Pete Wylie, an old mate. I had been invited to take part (£500) in a pilot for a new show called Never Mind the Buzzcocks in London. I needed the money badly, so steeled myself and went. When I got there one of Caroline’s old boyfriends was running it, but the other guest was good old Pete, who then gave me the best afternoon and evening of my life, listening to my problems and resolving them with his usual mix of Liverpudlian common sense and humour. I can’t thank him enough. It marked a real turning point for me. Cheers, la!
One of my other mates was Fran, Francis Carroll, an old friend, who ran a restaurant, the Brasserie St Pierre in Manchester. He and his girlfriend Victoria, who was lovely but as mad as a fish, insisted on setting me up on a blind date.
‘She’s called Becky,’ she said. ‘She’s had a terrible marriage and moved to Manchester. She’s single now and I think you’re perfect for each other.’
We made a date to meet in Prague V in the Gay Village but, unbeknown to me, Becky cancelled when she found out I was in a group. Victoria didn’t tell me and arranged with Becky’s mate Carlos to still bring her to Prague V anyway. It probably explained why she was so surprised to see me when I went over and introduced myself. She was beautiful. For me it was love at first sight.
My first and last time.
Becky and I got on like a house on fire and arranged another date. But when she turned up it was only to tell me that she was going back to her boyfriend. Cursing my rotten luck, I accepted an invitation from Fran and Victoria to join them on holiday in Miami, the plan being to cheer me up. Trouble was, their idea of cheering me up was to spend the entire time at each other’s throats. They started bickering in the airport and were still doing it on the plane.
‘You two are doing my head in,’ I told them. ‘I’m putting the headphones on and watching TV.’
What was on? Mrs fucking Merton.
So we got there and it was a bloody nightmare. We were staying in the Delano Hotel, which was so hip it hurts. Madonna ran the restaurant. Those two were fighting and I was having a rotten time. I remember on the first night going out to a bar, jetlagged, with them arguing, me falling asleep. When I woke up two hours later they were still at it.
In the end I phoned Becky on the pretext of wanting a chat but really to find out how she was doing, and blow me down, it had all gone tits-up with the boyfriend.
‘Come out to Miami,’ I told her.
So she did. We had a great week together, and on arriving home she moved in with me and we’ve been together ever since, and suddenly life was looking good again. Very good – I’d found the love of my life.
Becky was a bit of a party animal when we first got together, which suited me down to the ground. I distinctly remember being in the car one day in the autumn of 1996 and realising that for the first time in almost as long as I could remember, I was actually happy all the time. We have now been together twenty years.
I was with her in November of that year when Bill Wyman opened a branch of his restaurant, Sticky Fingers, in Manchester. We went to the grand opening with Leroy Richardson, who was managing Dry 201 at the time, and his girlfriend Georgina.
Who should be there with her new boyfriend, Matt Bowers, but Caroline? The evening started badly. She saw me with Becky and came over, shouting the odds, drunk as hell. I was going, ‘Why don’t you just fuck off?’ but she just kept screaming at me in front of all the great and good of Manchester, who were gathered to celebrate the opening of this lovely new upmarket burger bar.
Of course, the bit about her screaming at me didn’t make its way into the subsequent news reports of the incident. Nor did the fact that she apparently went back to the new boyfriend and started telling him that I was the one who’d started on her.
There were a load of paparazzi there, of course, and for reasons best known to himself, Matt went over and warned them what was about to happen, saying, ‘Get your cameras ready, lads.’
What happened was that he came over to me, chest out, wanting to have a go.
We were sitting having drinks at this table and to get to us he had to stand on a step, and he got right in my face.
‘Hey, you,’ he says. ‘You can’t talk to her like that now she’s with me.’
I went, ‘Fuck off, knobhead,’ and pushed him off the step. He bounced right back and pushed me and I fell on Fred Talbot, ending up sat on the weatherman’s knee (I had a lucky escape; I think I was too old for him) and I thought, Right, you twat, I’m going to rip your fucking head off. But by now, Leroy had him and was hammering him, beating the shit out of him. Leroy was head doorman at the Haçienda and you should never mess with a doorman because they don’t have any setting other than ‘calm’ or ‘battering’, and he was in ‘battering’ mode.
Me, I was like Scrappy Doo behind him trying to get at this Matt (shouldn’t speak ill of the dead, stomach cancer got him in 1997, but he was out of order that night), and at the same time the photographers were clicking away, turning night into day, thinking this is way better than taking endless photographs of the same old faces from Coronation Street, when someone grabs me from behind and I swung around, kicking out in the dark and making contact – kicking someone hard in the stomach.
It was Caroline. They were both thrown out for starting the fight.
But the next day, the front page of every fucking newspaper in the United Kingdom had a picture of me holding Mrs Merton by the hair and kicking her in the stomach. Because of the flashes it looked like bright daylight, which made it look even worse for me, but on my honour – and everybody who was there, even Caroline and Matt, accepted this – it was a complete accident.
We had a bender at our house after but finished early; there wasn’t much to celebrate. Bowser had asked me if he could put his trail bike in my garage early the next morning, and when the doorbell rang I presumed it was him, storming downstairs in my dressing gown and ripping the door open, hungover to hell, only to be confronted by about fifty journalists and photographers just like that scene in the movie Notting Hill.
For the next three days me, Becky and our friends were holed up in my house, the whole lot of us, with the press camped outside offering us stupid money for our story. Little bits of paper would come sailing through the letter box with ‘£250,000, Daily Mail’ or £275,000, News of the World’ or ‘50p, Pigeon Fancier’s Weekly’.
Inside we were having a ball. We got drugs and beer delivered. We had a right laugh, reliving the fight, laughing at the photographers outside, occasionally the lads venturing out to shake them up a little, push them off their ladders etc. The manager of Sticky Fingers even thanked me for all the publicity. Whenever I went to Sticky Fingers after that, we got free meals.
What’s more, it drew a line under me and Mrs Merton. Or, almost. Me and Becky stayed together, but Matt left Caroline; she moved to London but was still calling me up all the time. One night, she phoned up, three o’clock in the morning as usual, and I was going, ‘Caroline, is that you?’ and she went, ‘I’m so sorry, Hooky.’
‘You’ve got a fucking cheek. Me and Becky are asleep, will you get fucked and grow up?’
She was going, ‘I’m so lonely. I just wanted to say goodbye. I wanted to apologise.’
I said, ‘How did you get this new number? Oh, fuck off, will you,’ and hung up. I said to Becky, ‘We’re going to have to change this bloody number again.’
The next morning we turned on breakfast TV and there she was, being put in an ambulance after an overdose.
The weird thing was that throughout the whole of that fucked-up and toxic relationship, I never saw Tony Wilson once. It was only after Caroline and I had split up in 1996 that I saw him, when I was doing an interview outside the Haçienda and sitting on chairs on the pavement.
Tony was walking past. He stopped. ‘Was she psycho?’ he said.
‘Yeah,’ I said.
‘Thought so,’ he said, and walked off again.
What a shock it was to hear that she’d died at just fifty-two. The phone rang all day with media wanting a comment – I even got trolled on Twitter, twats saying I should have cancelled that evening’s gig out of respect – but I couldn’t in all good conscience join those paying tribute. Yes, I loved her. Yes, she could be very funny, and there were times I felt privileged to have a private audience with such a great comic talent. But she was also a very troubled person, and nowhere did that manifest itself more than in our relationship. Perhaps I brought out the worst in her. Maybe we were like chemicals that become volatile when they combine.
Either way, my mum was right.
Luckily, things were looking up on the musical front, too. Musically Pottsy had encouraged me to do something I hadn’t done for a while, which was play the bass.
‘We need to get it back,’ he said. ‘We need to use it and write around it. Why did you stop?’
And you know what? I didn’t know. I think it was just me trying to distance myself, to put it all behind me.
I went back to the bass and, lo and behold, suddenly it was like a creative dam had burst, and all that had been so effortful before suddenly became easy again. Me and Pottsy worked very hard, taking our time and wanting to get it just right. We were talking about changing the name and the format of the group. Both of us were writing vocal lines and lyrics and singing on certain songs and the talk was whether we should have just one lead singer. I think one lead singer is better for a band, but I liked Pottsy singing and because he was keen to try it we decided, ‘Fuck it!’ we’d have two lead singers. Let’s be different. We decided on the name Monaco and the songs were getting better and better.
We even had a new manager, Steve Harrison, who at that time managed the Charlatans. I had been introduced to him by Caroline the year before. She said, ‘He should be your manager.’ One thing to thank her for. Steve had his own chain of record shops in the Northwest, and negotiated a great deal with Polydor on our behalf.
We had met Paul Adam, the head of A&R, and he really was an old-fashioned record company man in every sense (he would later go on to judge the first Pop Idol TV show). He talked about how he believed in loyalty to the artists and their longevity. ‘It’s all about the music,’ he said, which was very refreshing for me. Revenge had been badly handled and badly managed by everyone, including me, and it was great to be on a label that wasn’t staffed by idealists and lunatics. As an artist now, I do believe it’s the artists who should be mad not the record company.
Our deal with Polydor was £75,000 on signing, £75,000 on commencement of recording and £75,000 on delivery of the record, all recording and promotional costs to be paid by them and recouped off sales.
So a very generous £225,000 advance to set us up, and a deal with options for four more albums, worth over a million in all. Polydor were very supportive, putting a great deal of money and resources at our disposal, and the record was mixed at Mayfair Studios, Primrose Hill, with Alan Meyerson in charge.
I had got on well with Alan on the New Order sessions and was very impressed by the job he’d done on Technique, which Pottsy loved too. It was a complete no-brainer. The one slight hiccup was the record company insisting we live together for the duration of the mixing in an apartment they booked for us in Kensington. Alan was a recovering alcoholic and now I sympathise, I really do – how he must have felt watching us three party constantly hurts me now. (I would suffer from this in 2004: karma, as we say.) He didn’t last long and soon moved out to a hotel, but bore us no malice and turned in a great performance in the studio.
We were very excited and felt very happy about the plans made for the first single release, ‘What Do You Want from Me?’, and accompanying video. It came out and if it hadn’t been Mother’s Day that week and the bloody Spice Girls hadn’t released ‘Mama’ at the same time, we would have got into the top ten.
As it was we went in at number 11, played the song on Top of the Pops and it felt like I was back. From the opening bass motif – Pottsy’s idea, to signal that it was very much me – onwards, it was a Peter Hook moment, and bloody hell, I felt like a drowning man suddenly breaking the surface of the water and gasping at the air. I was driving with Becky the first time I heard it on the car radio, a sublime moment.
Then our recording was interrupted.