10 You pass off being scruffy for being eccentric
9 You pass off being drunk for being creative
8 You pass off being an angry pain in the ass for being misunderstood
7 You pass off not eating for being fit and lithe
6 You claim contentment is for the unambitious
5 You see responsibility as the badge of the dull
4 You mistake standing in a bar for hours on end talking shite for having a good time
3 You only have relationships with people based around alcohol
2 You are genuinely surprised when people disappear to go home
1 You think that anyone who goes to the pub all day, every day, may actually have something to offer the world
I MIGHT NOW HAVE UNWITTINGLY EMBARKED upon the most rudderless stage of my still relatively young life but at least I no longer owned the radio station, which suddenly felt more like a plus than a minus. After just over two years at the helm of a major business, a weight of which I had hitherto been unaware seemed to lift off my shoulders, leaving me instantly feeling lighter.
Gone for ever were the days when I needed to worry that we were spending too much money on new equipment or vastly expensive poster campaigns that seemed to have little or no effect. I could also forget about the fact that we were paying immense amounts of money to several very average broadcasters to do little more than tell the time and announce a competiton every now and again.
In many ways I was freer than I had ever been before. I had all day every day after The Breakfast Show untouched, TFI was still flying and I was now perceived as a whizz in business (except of course by the people who really knew what business was about). And all this before I turned thirty-four.
So where does such a heady cocktail of success and opportunity leave a guy? Well, in my case it left me as high as a kite after coming off air every morning, in the middle of one of the most exciting cities in the world, with no more work to do and a truckload of disposable income burning a hole in my bank account.
It’s obvious now, when I look back at those days, that I was destined to go off the rails.
How about this for a clue?
Meticulous planning would go into my ‘recreational’ activities after the show each day and I convinced myself that in spite of these ‘plans’ I still had a hold on reality. But it was the almost frightening level of attention to detail that should have alerted me to the fact that there might be the beginnings of a larger problem here.
It was almost as if the producer in me had been enrolled by the devil to ruin my life as efficiently and comprehensively as possible.
I would begin my post-show programme of preparation for the day with a trip to the gym. Ironic, given what was to follow, but in my mind the fitter I was, the more unhealthy a lifestyle I could get away with. I would work out for all I was worth for an hour every day, followed by a forty-minute in-and-out sauna session, rounded off with a sleep in the relaxation room – it was a very posh gym.
The relaxation room was a big circular space lined with white leather recliners, all of which were arranged in semicircular rows facing a huge fish tank. There was suitably soft lighting and subtle, ambient music that seemed to come from nowhere and the room was dominated by a huge planetarium-style curved ceiling that came fully into view the instant you pushed back on your chair.
It wasn’t difficult to drift off in such a soporific atmosphere unless one of the larger club members had drifted off before you and had settled into a period of full-on, fat-neck snoring. This could be very debilitating when it came to trying to sleep, although it did raise a smile on the odd occasion when one of these chaps snored so loudly they woke themselves up with a jolt.
Snorers permitting, I used to have around an hour’s sleep in the relaxation room; very deep, very rejuvenating sleep, or at least that’s what I convinced myself it was – enough to last me for the rest of the day.
After the magic kip, I would jump under a cold shower, get dressed and I was all set. This routine made me feel brand new, come lunchtime and, regardless of what I may have been up to the night before, I was more than ready to go again.
See what I mean? While the rest of the world was at work every day, I was preparing myself to get perfectly wasted and slowly but surely dealing myself out of the game.
After leaving the gym, lunch would begin. I’d usually rope in a few pals for company and we would start with a cold beer before moving quickly on to the wine, white or red, it really didn’t matter.
A couple of glasses in and that protective alcohol-induced soft haze would descend slowly before my eyes like an invisible film, insulating me from the real world. As it took effect, smiles became bigger, conversation flowed more freely and the concept of time became almost non-existent.
This weird time factor was the most fascinating aspect of what alcohol used to do for me, or to me, if you like. The hands on the clock lost all meaning. It was this disconnection from reality that I enjoyed the most. I saw booze as my key to the ever-elusive philosophy of living in the moment. Living in the ‘now’, as they say in all those books and not having to worry about the before or the after. Simply focusing on being in the present, except of course – it’s not that simple.
I’m not excusing my drinking or trying to justify it, I’m merely trying to explain what it felt like. I remember taking various drinks on board, and waiting for these periods of cerebral protection to kick in. With the thought of this safety blanket wrapped around me I could look forward to forgetting about the growing muddle of things in life I didn’t understand – or perhaps more accurately, didn’t want to face. Within a couple of hours I knew I would be free.
This pattern of behaviour became almost pathological, no matter what was going on in the rest of my life, whether it was the afternoon or evening, raining or sunny. In fact I dread to think of the number of beautiful, God-given days I lost to the allure of booze.
I invented all kinds of rules to convince myself I was still in charge. If I could put off the start to my drinking until at least twelve hours after I had last stopped, then I would deem that a good day, a great day in fact, fooling myself into thinking I had attained some kind of control. Ridiculous, I know, but this was typical of the kind of justification I would cling to.
I also made another ‘rule’ that once I’d had a drink I would not talk about anything to do with business. Everyone knew that when I was out, I was out. They were more than welcome to come and join in, but all talk of work and anything to do with it was strictly off-limits.
With lunch over, the company would often dwindle as most people had jobs to get back to. This is when I would find myself hanging around with strangers while I waited to see who was coming out to play next. I’d put in a few calls to friends who might be up for a drink or two later, before heading off to the fifth-floor bar at Harvey Nicks in Knightsbridge – the perfect venue for an afternoon pick-me-up.
Harvey Nicks bar was always guaranteed to be in full swing by mid-afternoon with ladies taking what they believed to be a well-deserved half-time glass of fizz in a break from another credit-card-melting shopping spree. ‘God help their husbands,’ I used to think, as it was obvious that the vast majority of these wives, mistresses and whatever the others were, probably did little else with their days other than perhaps associated visits to the hairdresser, manicurist and other diversions that cost as much money as possible.
From Harvey Nicks I might move on to Motcombs, a local wine bar and a complete throwback to the eighties, with a cast to match – a more experienced and, dare I say it, more sagacious group of professional drinkers you would be hard pushed to meet. If Ernest Hemingway had drunk his whisky in London, it might well have been in Motcombs.
The guys that patronise this place are a breed unto themselves – an irresistible mixture of saints and sinners, all of them capable of belonging to either group, depending on which way the wind is blowing. From silver-haired songwriters to sport stars of yesteryear, you can never be quite sure who you’re going to bump into when you drop in to Motcombs …
My early evening port of call would be for a couple of cleansing pints of beer at one of Belgravia’s excellent cluster of pubs. I used to convince myself that after what I had been drinking, these pints were the equivalent of water and would help to sober me up, ready for the evening session back in Soho. When I felt enough ‘sobriety’ had been achieved, I would grab a cab and prepare myself for the home straight, where the really serious action would begin.
Just writing all this down makes me wonder how on earth I kept going and, more importantly, why on earth I kept going with such pointless marathons of self-destruction. At any point I could have gone home to bed but I never considered that option. Home to me was where everything stopped, and all there was to do was wait for tomorrow.
And so it continued. After the bars in the late evening, I would take another cab to the clubs, where I would stay until the lights came on and it was chucking-out time. This was invariably somewhere around three o’clock in the morning and yes, I know, I had a breakfast show to do less than three hours later, but I considered myself invincible and somehow I managed to pull it off.
My ability to get blitzed on such a regular basis and yet still be able to host a radio broadcast come 6 am the following morning inevitably gave rise to the suspicion that some additional stimulus might have been part of my daily diet. This not unreasonable conclusion – that I was hoovering up the white stuff in between downing the hard stuff – was, however, entirely misguided.
I think if I had strayed into the world of cocaine and whatever else was around at the time, then I really would have been in serious trouble. The thing is, drugs scare the life out of me, they always have and always will. I have an inbuilt off-switch where they are concerned and I’ve never even dabbled.
The joke is that I was unofficially blacklisted on several occasions because I didn’t ‘subscribe’ to being one of the coke in-crowd. Those who did indulge in this particular vice became suspicious of those who did not and once it became common knowledge I was in the ‘did not’ camp, I was frequently persona non grata in certain circumstances. What they didn’t realise is that I was usually so out of my mind on booze anyway, it would probably have taken half of Bolivia’s national product to register even a mild high where I was concerned.
The bizarre thing is that I was hardly ever offered drugs anyway which, when you think of the circles I’ve moved in, is bordering on weird. Maybe I give off a natural anti-drug signal to any ne’er-do-well who might otherwise think to darken my door, or maybe God thought I was doing just fine ruining myself as it was, without the need for any additional help.
There was one exceptionally polite offer of drugs that I did encounter, however.
A very good and immensely talented friend of mine who liked the odd ‘toot’ was celebrating his birthday, to which he had invited me. Halfway through the night, he beckoned me to the loos where he informed me that another pal had bought him the present of a small ‘wrap’. He assured me that contained within the wrap was the crème de la crème of cocaine and, although he was aware that I did not partake in such practices, he wanted me to know that if ever I was going to have a go, then this was the stuff to have a go with…
For a moment I must confess I was tempted, but again, thank God, I declined.
Alcohol may well have got the better of me at various stages of my life; this is something I completely accept but I’m almost sure, had I ever wandered down the drugs route, I would have been in my box and six feet under a good few years ago.