By 1993 Peter’s Friends had come out, Fry and Laurie had had a second series, and I had written my first novel, The Liar, and a collection of journalism, essays and other scraps called Paperweight.
I am an irregular diarist, but the months leading up to the completion of my second (and favourite) novel, The Hippopotamus, and the delivery to my flat of its galley proofs were well covered by me. I offer them to you because I think they recapture better than my memory ever can the hectic, intensely busy and fractured nature of my life back then. That it was leading to a catastrophic explosion I did not realize. Perhaps it will be apparent to you as you read. I have remained loyal to the intentions laid out in the first entry and have not altered or added, except for the sake of respect for those who would rather be kept out or have their identities masked. From time to time footnotes have been added for the sake of clarity.
I’m going to be 36 tomorrow: three dozen, a quarter of a gross. A very factorable number, but otherwise nothing special. Nonetheless it seems a good time to restart my diary. (First resolution: no going back and altering this chronicle. No reading back, no emendations, no retrospective editorials. It must come out of me absolutely in one. Otherwise, what’s the point?) Ha! ‘Oh, what’s the point?’ … the last words in Kenneth Williams’s diary, just published and just skimmed through by me. I’m mentioned once in the index, a reference to an appearance on a Wogan that KW guest-presented. ‘Stephen Fry OK’, that’s my reference. An epitaph. Listening to Strauss’s Alpine Symph. while writing this. It’s on Radio 3 as a prom. Rather wonderful version by some Russian conductor I’ve not heard of.* Introduced in traditionally hushed tones by James Naughtie. Naughty James sat next to me at the John Birt Cup Final lunch earlier in the year. Nice chap.
Lazy day today. Very lazy: like all the days I’ve spent recently. Having such a reputation for hard work is satisfactory and bolsters my amour propre but it is such a lie. Spent most of the day polishing off the seating-plan for tomorrow’s birthday dinner. How can it take that long? Well, I’ve decided to do anagrams for the guests’ names. Here’s a list, with explanations:
• Henry F. Pest – Me
• Lacey Easy-Fleece – Alyce Faye Cleese (wife of John Cleese, Okie psychotherapist)
• Irma Shirk – Kim Harris (darling friend from Cambridge)
• Lady Orlash – Sarah Lloyd (wife of John)
• Mercie H. Twat – Matthew Rice (sweetie designer and splendour)
• Sonia Wanktorn – Rowan Atkinson
• Katie Labial-Scar – Alastair Blackie (friend of Kim, agent, and my gardener)
• Martie Badgermew – Emma Bridgewater (wife of Matthew Rice, designs crockery)
• Jones Leech – John Cleese
• Maria Sillwash – Sarah Williams (producer, currently back with Nick Symons)
• Harold Clit-Shine – Christian Hodell (assistant of Lorraine)
• Julie Oar – Jo Laurie (wife of J. H. C. Laurie)
• Coke Toper – Peter Cook
• Reg Gowns – Greg Snow (friend from Cambridge)
• Slim Noble – Simon Bell (Oxonian layabout and charmer)
• Nik Cool – Lin Cook (wife of Peter)
• Dolly John – John Lloyd (producer of Blackadder etc.)
• Mario Nolan–Hitler – Lorraine Hamilton (my agent)
• Miss Nancy L. Soho – Nicholas Symons (old Cambridge chum producer of Bit of F&L)
• Antonius Stanker – Sunetra Atkinson (wife of Rowan)
• Eli Cider – Eric Idle
• Uriah H. Glue – Hugh Laurie
Anyway – spent all fucking day working out those anagrams (Alyce Faye Cleese way the hardest – all those bloody E’s and Y’s)* while I should have been working on the nov. Satisfactory in its way. In the background Radio 3 (not music this time but the Test Match – England won can you believe it? Never doubted them. Atherton clearly good captain; he’ll have his hellish moments in the years to come, but a sound fellow) while I strained my verbal skills on this useless anagrammery which will probably annoy the guests tomorrow anyway. No bloody fun in the world any more: no one doing mad silly things, no one playing practical jokes or organizing stupid parties with games and tricks like they did in the 20s. Even melancholy Virginia Woolf (heard Dame Edna on Kaleidoscope† a year or so back: ‘Darling Virginia, a woman with whom I have so much in common, except of course that I can swim.’) even she and her set used to love practical jokes. Everyone’s so sodding serious and ordinary now.
God knows whether the seating plan will work. If Simon Bell is sober it’ll help. Well I’ll report the day after tomorrow.
Talking of the morrow, although my birthday, I seem to have filled it up with interviews to publicize Stalag Luft,* endless TV magazines and similar.
Bottle of wine at my elbow, Kanonkop, a S. African claret mimic, not enough tannin. Strauss’s storm is brewing up, all those flutey interjections seem borrowed from Rossini’s Wm. Tell overture or I’m a Flying Dutchman.
Well – thirty-six then. Usual cliché of searching for grey hairs in the mirror. Some individual white flecks around the temples, but it’s hard to tell whether they’re real or a trick of the light.
The whole morning given over to publicity interviews for Stalag Luft at the Groucho. Endless stream of women from TV Quick, TV First, TV Super and TV Cunty all wanting to talk about my celibacy. ‘Surely you must fantasize? Surely you must meet people and … fancy them?’
Basically, they want to know what pictures go on in my mind when I masturbate. Had the same thing a few weeks ago when I went to dinner at Ken and Em’s. Ken got a bit in his cups (it doesn’t take more than a glass with him) and he was all, ‘Come on, darling, what do you think about when you wank?’ Em tried to slap him, but I bet she was too intrigued really to mean it.
Very pleased that my dreams and fantasies aren’t too out there. I mean, only today the papers are full of this Michael Jackson thing. Some woman apparently reporting him for abusing her son. Let’s face it, whoever doubted that Jacko was a boylover? My God, there’s going to be a fall there if they find anything at his ranch. Porn, film, whatever … poor deranged sod, I don’t think his own childhood fell far short of abuse in its way.
Then – the party. Everyone turned up. Everyone got me presents though I told them not to. The anagrams seemed to tickle them all too. Most people in a good mood and seeming to enjoy it, even Rowan managed to last to the end.* I sat next to Jo Laurie and Alyce Faye Cleese, I put Hugh down the other end near Eric and John C. Peter Cook in great form, talking about Derek and Clive which is about to be re-released, most people lightly drunk by the end. The bill came to almost exactly £1,000, which is reasonable, I would say. Damn good tuck. Did I mention earlier that it was at 190 Queensgate, run by Antony Worrall Thompson, who was there and joined for a drink earlier on? Turns out he was at school with John Lloyd. Home with Simon Bell, whom I gave a whisky before he eventually left.
Voice-over with Hugh this morning, for Energizer batteries. Hugh in good form, which is always a treat. A fun one and a half hours. Bumped into Norman Beaton before going into the sound studio. Mad old duck, rather a fan. Wants us to write a sketch for him to be in. Hum.
Afterwards a lot of leisurely shopping down Cecil Court. Bought an original Vanity Fair print of Gillette as Holmes and a signed photograph of Basil Rathbone. Don’t ask me why. Might make a good present. Also got hold of a copy of Ricky Jay’s book Learned Pigs and Fireproof Women which I have been after for ages.*
Eventually got home in time to read a little before popping out to the Institute of Directors in Pall Mall just around the corner. This was to meet a man by the name of Robin Hardy who is producing a film called Bachelors Anonymous (nothing to do with the Wodehouse story of the same name). He wants me to play the second lead and to DIRECT it. Flattering and pleasing that he can be confident enough to give such a relatively big movie to a first-time director, but there is a problem. Firstly, is the script good enough? He has written it himself from a novel called Foxprints by Patrick McGinley. Really rather fascinating, but needs improvement so as not to look misogynistic or just plain silly. The major problem though, is WHEN. I have got to try and finish the novel soon. Then I spend from October to January writing with Hugh for A Bit of F&L series 4. Then we make the thing, six weeks of studio, rehearse/record. That takes us to the end of March. John Reid will, I assume, want to go with the Elton musical next and the BBC will make noises about filming the adaptation of The Liar. There is no chance I could start pre-production prep on Bachelors until end of June, which would mean shooting it in September, over a year from now. Mad to think my life is that booked up. And where does that leave a second script for Paramount and Hugh’s film Galahad? WHY is my life always like this, and why am I complaining about it?
He seems a reasonable fellow, this Hardy. Strange place to meet, the IoD. He fits it well, having a rather box-wallah version of an upper class accent. He did, on the other hand, write and direct The Wicker Man, a great classic. I feel it odd that I’ve never heard of him. Lorraine (Hamilton) is running a background check to see what she can see. Perhaps it will be a good thing to do, direct a film. I feel I can. I lack a lot of common sense, always have done, but I think I’ll keep my head above water with a good operator, a good First and someone like Dougie Slocombe to light the film. Lor … what to do, what to do. Just aren’t enough hours in the frigging day, are there, Stephen old love?
Parents are going to arrive at any minute. Father’s birthday. I’m taking them to the premiere of Ken’s Much Ado tonight at the Empire, Leicester Square and then to a party at Planet Hollywood of all places. So I’ll do this entry now, rather than tonight when they’ll be hanging around the flat.
Actually spent most of the day doing no more than preparing for their arrival. Hiding all the Euroboy videos, tidying up, trotting over the road to Fortnum’s to buy fruit, flowers, tea things and so forth. Spent a merry hour in Hatchard’s buying books. Got Alan Clark’s diaries (signed) for Father, as well as the new Bill Bryson, as he likes him and a biography of Einstein (not the salacious one). For myself I rounded up a lot of books on theology … mostly beginner’s stuff. All this reading of Susan Howatch recently has got me interested in knowing more about the subject. I don’t believe in God of course, but I sometimes think I want to believe. And then there’s that foolish vision of myself as a bishop, sermonizing and saving the poor old C of E from itself. So fond of the C of E. The ‘broad backed hippopotamus’ as T. S. Eliot called her. So much better a liturgy … and the music! Russell Harty* once confidingly said to me, while playing hymns at the piano (he had a perfect ear and could play anything you named that he knew), ‘I don’t think I could ever love anyone who didn’t love English hymns.’ Mind you being a roamin’ cat-lick his last lover the sweet Jamie O’Neill can’t have known much Anglican church music.*
Appalling arrogance of me to think that I would be a good church leader without a concomitant shred of faith. Very Henry Crawford.† Mind you, probably a better life than my other footling fantasy, Fry the politician, Fry the scourge of the Right and the hero of the Chamber.
Also, bought a first novel called In the Place of Fallen Leaves, simply ghastly title but Roger, the sweet old queen at Hatchard’s, recommended it.‡
Still haven’t been able to face my own novel. I’m banking on being able to work when I get to Grayshott on Saturday, but how is one to tell? I’m always assuming that words will come and that I’ll be able to get down that tunnel of concentration when I put my mind to it, but there’s so much to do and I do desperately want it to work. If I don’t finish it this year it’ll spill over into next and then what happens to the idea of directing, or the TV version of The Liar, or the Elton John thing, or Galahad or God knows what else besides.
I’ll report on Much Ado tomorrow. I’ve seen it already, at a preview cinema months ago. Really enjoyed it then, but perhaps it’ll be less fun in front of a bigger audience and now that I have expectations. Hugh made a good point about how Ken on film sometimes does this thing of laughing and throwing his head back and slapping people on the back when wit is being offered. He did it in Peter’s Friends and he does it in Much Ado, clearly encouraging his cast to do the same. Especially of course, the blissful Brian Blessed who roars like a speared ox through most of his scenes. Hugh’s theory is that actors laughing prevents audiences from laughing and that this is perhaps true of screen or stage tears as well. Rather a convincing idea. And no doubt the Branagh haters and Ben Elton* haters will be out in force anyway. I’m so lucky that I don’t seem to be quite so despised as they do. Mind you, not as admired either, which is only right. I suppose people think of me as some kind of reliable old thing, rather than as a threat. Ken and Ben are certainly threatening, those who dislike them regard them as the kind of yappy Jack Russells who leap up and spunk all over your trouser crease. The snobbery in Britons makes them believe that I, on the other hand, however rude or leftie I may seem, am fundamentally sound and reasonable, like a trusty labrador.
Frankly, I’m too lucky. Filled in a Guardian questionnaire the other day. In answer to the question ‘When and where were you happiest?’ I answered, ‘At the risk of tempting providence, I’m pretty chipper at the moment, as it happens.’ Tempting prov. is right. Even now, in Plum’s immortal phrase, Fate must be lurking around the corner quietly slipping the horseshoe into the boxing-glove. Shit, there goes the doorbell, here are the parents.
Well, they arrived yesterday, admired the flat and seemed in good order and spirits despite a visit to their accountant. Impossible to imagine how things are with them. They just carry on as always, the business continuing in its gentle way, Mother doing the VAT, Father exercising his extraordinary mind. I am more certain that that man could have been absolutely anything he wanted to be in the world than I am of almost anything else. The gloss of complete admiration may well have worn off in some regards. There’s no question that he seems curiously unsophisticated to me now, but his mind is still a remarkable thing.
Anyway, after teaing them and cocktailing them we sallied forth on foot for the Empire Leicester Square. Unbelievable crowds … a greater number, according to today’s papers, than turned out for the opening of Jurassic Park, which says something for Ken and Em. We approached, naturally, from the West, only to discover that the crash barriers were arranged such that we had to walk all the way round and enter from the Charing X Road end. Highly embarrassing. Many cries of ‘Steve!’ and applause as I trotted the gauntlet, parents in tow. I suppose it must have been strange for them, really, to walk with me and know that everyone there was cheering their son and knew who he was. Lot of posing for the paparazzi outside the doors and then I managed to get inside. Naturally, the really smart ones were indoors, including Richard Young, who really is extraordinary. He instantly sidled up and said, out of the side of his mouth, ‘Those your parents, then?’ I said, amused, ‘Yup’ and he asked for a shot with them. I reckon that man could tell, instantly, if two people enter a party, whether or not they are sleeping together. Remember that Greek saying? ‘It is easier to hide two elephants under your arm than one pathic.’
After Richard there were endless TV crews. God knows how many showbiz and local news programmes there are these days.* All wanting pre and post screening comment. (Oh, dear me, on TV as I type this there’s a documentary about a man with cystic fibrosis going on in the background. Sounds of a great quantity of mucus expression going on.) Up at the party there was a sprinkling of theatrical knightage, Sir John Mills and Mary, who both kissed me sweetly. Johnny kissed my mother, which was divine of him. Dickie, now Lord, Attenborough was there and Sir Peter Hall. A couple of Peter’s Friends stalwarts, Alphonsia and Tony S.,* and of course Ken and Em, the latter looking divine, the former surprisingly like Noel Edmunds. Kim Harris turned up with Hugh. Kim looks absolutely zonked. A few months ago, Ken rang up and asked me to rewrite Frankenstein. It was exactly when I was shooting off to Texas to make an episode of Ned Blessing, a new Western series for CBS. (I played Oscar Wilde, directed by David Hemmings of all people). I told Ken I couldn’t do it, but suggested that he try Kim. Well, it seems Kim has turned out well, but is being driven like a dray-horse by Sir Kenward. Just as well I said no, I suppose, though it would have been fun to meet Robert de Niro. I hope Kim is alright. One worries when he gets so tired.
Eventually the reception broke up to go into the cinema and we watched the movie. Speeches by Stephen Evans the Renaissance Films supremo and Ken. The film was even more moving the second time around. Still thought that Michael Keaton and Ben were a little out of their depth, but Em was staggeringly good (of course) and Ken fabulously likeable and witty. I hate the way I’ve been influenced by the critics: as I watched I started to notice flaws in the lighting and background action. Brian Blessed’s heartiness and the general laughing and merriment now grated a little. Nonetheless a wonderful movie and what a reaction! The whole place stood and cheered for ages. A genuine spontaneous standing ovation. It made me cry, I’m afraid to say. Ken really is a mensch and a half.
The party afterwards was at Planet Hollywood, which I hadn’t visited since that bizarre opening party with Bruce Willis, Schwarzenegger et al. Parents still excited and merry. Richard Briers, who is about the kindest man in the universe, stopped and chatted to them for ages. They were the only people in the room for him. I do hope I’m not a starer-over-the-shoulder type person, but give whomever I’m talking to my full attention as Dickie B does. Mother and Father are the same. The only difference was that Dickie toned his language down a bit: normally he starts every sentence with ‘Fucking hell love,’ no matter whether he’s bumming a cigarette or admiring a building. After next standing about with Richard Curtis and Emma Freud for a bit we were invited over to the area where Ken and Em had booked a table. Chatted a lot to Paul Boateng the MP, who was in merry form and wearing rather startling clothes. Cozed a bit with Slatbum* and his boyfriend Mark, who’s just won a Drama Desk award in New York. They met on Me and My Girl years ago.† Rather touching. Dan Patterson turned up, despite a recent operation. Anthony Andrews has absurdly petite hands and feet (sounds like a clerihew) and ludicrous Prince Charles mannerisms, but otherwise seems a very charming cove. There was an unbelievably choice young man with blond hair with whom I exchanged smiles.
At half past one or so I managed to tear the parentals away and we sloped off back home. Still an enormous crowd outside the place when we left. Lots of photography and signing before we could get away.
Now we’re back to today. Arose at nine-ish, said goodbye to M and P and joined Hugh for a VO. Alliance and Leicester radio commersh. In Tottenham Court Road bought a load of jockstraps, trainers and so forth ready for Grayshott. Watched a video when I got home: a film called The Living End, billed as ‘an irresponsible movie’. It’s about a couple of guys, both HIV+, who decide to let the world go hang and jag about the States, fucking and shooting. Sort of Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer for the smart gay set. Witty, neatly done, despite abominable sound-recording. At three I wandered about Soho, fetched up at the Groucho where Simon Bell (surprise, surprise) was propping up the bar, had a couple of glasses of wine and biffed off to Magmasters for another VO.
I rang Johnny Sessions to see if he felt like hitting the West End this evening, but he was having another of his old chums to dinner, plus wife, so I’ve decided to stay in with a bottle of Fleurie and some videos. Just watched the original episode of The Sweeney and must now decide on another. But tomorrow, ha! tomorrow sees a new Stephen. A hardworking, concentrating, novelizing, non-drinking Stephen.
Jo Laurie rang to say goodbye. Her new baby will be hitting the straw while I’m away. She told me Kim was okay, just healthily tired. But one day, one day, I am going to hear that he is ill and I am going to know what that ‘ill’ means. It’s impossible to believe. Fuck it, he’s 35 and there’s a time-bomb inside him. It’s all just happening too, the Frankenstein, the relationship with Alastair which seems so good. Makes you vomit, doesn’t it. God blast AIDS.
Spent a merry hour writing notes for my brother Roger, who’s going to be borrowing the flat with his wife and my two nephews Ben and William. Arranged with the manager of Planet Hollywood that they could barge the queue with my special celebrity card (eugh!) which I left for their use.
Showed on the map where it was and where the nearest shops were. Hope they have a good time.
Well, for heaven’s sake.
Grayshott Hall, once, apparently, the home of Alfred Lord Tennyson, is now a ‘Health Retreat’, featuring spas, hydros, gyms, golf, tennis, badminton (it’s beginning to sound like that speech of Lucky’s from Waiting for Godot), swimming, snooker, scrabble, bridge and the lord knows what else besides.
I arrived for lunch and found myself in what I subsequently discovered to be the ‘Light Diet Room’, where salads and a gently cooked poussin seemed not unconscionable. At 1.30 I had an appointment with ‘Liz’ who checked my blood pressure, weighed me (16 stone and a lot, yuk) and asked me what sort of ‘treatments’ I required. Everything here is a treatment. If you had sex with one of the waiters it would be called an erotic treatment. Drink (alcohol treatment) is not offered here, no bad thing, there is a smoking room, complete with card tables and so forth, which hasn’t been made impertinently uninhabitable, which is something. I haven’t volunteered for any particular treatments, though reflexology is something I’ve had before and is rather relaxing and splendid. I might, for the hell of it, try smoking hypnotherapy too. And there’s some kind of men’s ‘facial’ which teaches you how to shave. Come to think no one has ever taught me to scrape the face and for all I know I’ve been doing it wrong all my life. Included in the price, £150 p.d.* there is a ‘heat treatment’ (steam room, hot box or sauna) and a Swedish massage. Reminds me of Shrublands, the health resort you see in Never Say Never Again† but not quite so grand. I book myself a ‘deep tissue massage’ which sounds potentially painful for 10.00 am tomorrow.
Actually the place is quite pleasant. Mostly women here. Everyone is encouraged to go round the place in dressing gowns and tracksuits all day, so no formality, which is a blessing. I suppose the fellow guests are what you would expect, rich Totteridge Jewry, executive wives and thin girls who certainly have no need of this kind of regime. My room is pretty spartan actually. I applied this afternoon for a suite should it become available. Started work on the novel anyway, which, let’s face it, is the point of being here. I don’t know … I really don’t know. I am going to have to plan it out, and that’s a fact. I know how bad I am at planning. Never did any with articles, with essays at Cambridge or school, but in this instance it’s got to be done. There are so many threads. The novel has to be about the redemption, if that isn’t too ghastly a word, not of the hero, Ted Wallace (that’s his current name, anyhow, though I’m getting annoyed with having to avoid the inelegant ‘said Ted’) which everyone will think it’s about, but rather of those around him. He’s a poet and knows that poetry is chthonic not ethereal. Of earth and water not fire and air. It’s also seemingly about Purity and the Operation of Grace and horrifically dull and off-putting Bridesheady things. But that isn’t my problem, my problem is structural. I have to find a way of pulling together the past and present and getting the characters introduced properly.
At the current pace, the novel won’t get to the half way stage till I’ve written 100,000 words. I’m quarter of the way to 80,000 which is an acceptable novel length, but it looks as if this is going to be longer, which is the last thing I want. And there’s nothing worse than reading a novel where you sense the writer has speeded up towards the end. I’ve got to remain true to the idea of it. One of the problems with The Liar was my lack of confidence that people would be interested enough in Healey and Cartwright and so I shoved in all the spying crap, which, in fact, most people found less interesting than Adrian in love. I mustn’t make the same mistake again.
Anyway, I wrote for a few hours, then dined on plaice and vegetables, washed down with plain water and followed by fruit. Came back to the room, couldn’t work any more, watched some dreadful Brian Dennehy film called The Revenge of the Father. Tomorrow, massage and a quick nine holes before breakfast excepted, must see me At Work.
Not much to report. Up at 7.30, breakfast was a mess of cottage cheese, All Bran and coffee. Whether or not the coffee here is decaffeinated I can’t really tell, which I suppose means that it doesn’t matter. Played 9 holes on the golf course. No hole is longer, which suits me, than 150 yds. Tried out for the first time the ‘Killer Whale’ which John Lloyd* gave me as a thank you for doing his South Bank Show comedy spesh. Sliced it, which is a first for me as I usually slice.†
Had my massage after that. I didn’t realize you were supposed to arrive half an hour earlier for the ‘heat treatment’ so I missed that. Kept my swimming trunks on all the time under my towel. All the fat men with hairy backs (who all resemble Ari Onassis and Picasso) waddled around slapping their bellies and showing their acorns, but I was damned if I was going to. I’m not having some For Women magazine telling the world about my cock length.
Had the Swedish massage, which was nothing special and went back to the room to work. Making some progress, but I need a breakthrough, there’s no question about that. The chances of my finishing this novel for publication in the spring are remote in the extreme.
Spoke to the front desk about changing the room, I’ll be moving into more luxurious quarters tomorrow.
Yup. I’m in Room 5, now. It has coffee-making equipment, a mini-bar containing mineral water and skimmed milk, complimentary flowers and fruit basket and all the things one has come to expect in one’s life these days, tee-hee.
They sent me a letter telling me about the new room rate, this suite is £298 per night as opposed to the old rate of £195, but what the fuck. In this letter they said, and I quote ‘We are now requesting all guests to refrain from smoking in the bedrooms however, the functions of the Billiard and Smoking Rooms have not changed.’ What a fucking nerve. Some slatternly skivvy has gone and squealed, by which I mean some plump, curranty sweetness of a chambermaid has informed the management of my ‘in-room self-administered tobacco treatment’ … thing is I’m turning into that character Ted Wallace in my frigging novel, it’s not like me to call chambermaids slatternly.
Another nine holes this morning and then waddled off in my dressing-gown to experience the steam-room effect. Horrific place. Some old boy sweating it out next to me said it was newly installed. He’s a regular, must be rich as Croesus. It’s like a sauna, but to be frank, not quite as unpleasant, as the humidity is exceptionally high. A minute takes a quarter of an hour to pass. Horrifying. Still contrived to keep my bathers on, though. Everyone must be beginning to talk about my strange modesty … much better massage, however. Chap called Pete, I’ll try and stick with him.
Midway through the afternoon I genuinely despaired with the novel. I’ve changed its working title to The Thaumaturge as much to annoy the critics as anything. I came within an ace of packing up and moving either back to London or to some country house hotel where I could drown my sorrows in lonely jugs of claret. Then, two things happened. Firstly a man came in with an ashtray and said I was welcome to smoke in the room, they must have seen me nipping down to the smoking room and billiard room every half an hour and taken pity. And then I had an idea. A whole chapter that I’ve written should be in the form of a letter from Ted to his goddaughter Jane. It may not work out fully, but it’s driving me along a little. Wrote a couple of thousand words after that. Still not enough, but let’s hope it’s a good sign. Have to go to London tomorrow, chiz. A VO for Compaq computers. I’ll drive to Haslemere, get on a train and hope to be back by two-ish. Wonder if I’ll be a naughty boy and guzzle sandwiches on the train. Nothing but chicken and fish and fruit and veg. so far. Night, night.
Well, frankly. Rose with the lark, lark rise under candlewick you might say. Drove like stink to Haslemere, parked the car and discovered that I’d left my wallet back in the room at Grayshott. Fortunately, God knows how or why, I’d got my cheque-book with me. Avoided the queue for the tickets and jumped straight on the 08:06 to London. Sat all of a quiver in a second class smoker wondering what the issue would be. A ticket conductor arrived some time after Woking (Lord, Home Counties place names have such negative evocations, don’t they) and I explained the posish. Thank God for fame, he recognized me and seemed tickled pink (as did my fellow passengers, regular commuters to a man, and I mean man), said something about it being a good way of making his quota (there’s a surcharge, natch) and waddled off.
Fetched up at Waterloo at 0900 precisely and, having not a bean to my name (well 40 odd pence) I walked all the way over the bridge, along the Strand and to St James’s. Halfway up the Strand I remembered that Roger, Ruthie, Ben and William were all staying in the flat. Thought they may have left for Norfolk but arrived to find plenty of traces. Assuming they were out for brekker at Fortnum’s or somewhere I left them a note and hared off to Lexington Street where the Voice Over was. The sweet girl at the Tape Gallery, the studio, cashed a cheque for fifty quid, thank God. The VO for Compaq Computers (yah, boo) was booked as a two hour session, but I finished it to their satisfaction in twenty-five minutes. My internal clock going great guns. They wanted each of the VO’s to last 18 seconds and I duly obliged first crack out of the box with each of the seven scripts. Scuttled back to the flat, Breda the cleaner was there, but no sign of R & R. Hung around for an hour in case they showed and then got a cab back to Waterloo.
Car at Haslemere amazingly not towed away, so I was back at Grayshott in time for a nutritious lunch. A chappie told me that Imelda Staunton was staying, so I arranged to meet her at the cocktail hour, 6.00.
Heat treatment and massage at 3.00. Actually took my clothes off this time! Mustn’t do exclamation marks, it’s so Adrian Mole. That’s all Mummy’s fault, she does them in letters to the milkman, everything ‘Thank you!’ and so on.
The less efficient masseur, Steve, did the business, must remember to ask for Peter next time. Got back to the room, worked on The Thaumaturge, which seems to be coming along okay and dipped down for revivifying cocktails with Imelda and her mother, Bridie, an Irish poppet the spit of Imelda. Cocktails, you should understand, comprise either cucumber or tomato juice, but actually that’s fine. Imelda, who’s eight months pregnant, was telling me all about Jim Carter, her man,* and his nightmare shooting on a film of Black Beauty for Warners. All the horses misbehaving and that kind of thing. Peter Cook’s in it too.
Anyway, then dinner and now, before I hit the mattress (not like a Mafioso fortunately), a video. I collected an armful from the flat. Time I think to enjoy Jeremy Brett once more, this time in ‘The Dancing Men’, one of the best Holmes stories. Sleep tight.
And a pinch and a punch to you.
Doing this diary must be good for me, I had an inspiration last night after writing yesterday’s entry. I suddenly saw that of course the thaumaturge is not David, but Simon. I had thought all along that David, the pure poetical son of the Logan family would be the miracle worker, but of course it must be the apparently dull, ordinary, less intelligent or sensitive boy. That’s the poetic truth as opposed to the poetical one. There’s a sense in which I’m saying my brother Roger is the miracle worker of our family, not me and I think that’s true. He’s decent, no, more than decent, he’s good, decent in the way Tom Wolfe means it in Bonfire of the Vanities, he’s hard-working, he’s loyal, he’s true, he’s … well he’s what makes man great. Sounds sententious put like that, I suppose. The key to it in the novel though means that at least some kind of twist or surprise can be guaranteed. Everyone was fooled by Davey (who deliberately allows Jane and Ted to believe that he’s the one).
Talking of the diary, this being the first of the month, I’ve decided I will print out an entry at the end of each month. This will guarantee that I can’t go back and change things. That’s the devil of a computer-kept diary, it looks impersonal and there’s no assurance that it hasn’t been tarted up. When I get back to London, I will print out all of August, it only started late in the month, of course.
Usual nine holes. Got a birdie! Yippee! My first. I was playing the six iron as Brendel plays a Bösendorfer today. Usual steam business followed by a massage from Peter, who is infinitely better than Steve. I have asked the desk if I can always have him, there should be no problem. Then I had a consultation with the Sister. I have lost 8 pounds in the time I’ve been here. Eight pounds. Unbelievable. I only arrived halfway through Saturday (hogged a load of sandwiches on the road on Saturday morning anyway), three and a half days, over two pounds a day. I won’t be able to keep it up at this rate, but still. Not bad, eh?
In the afternoon (Sister’s advice) I had a holistic massage. All kinds of bollocks from Janice the masseuse about energy and channelling and healing and so forth, but I have to say it was a wonderful feeling. An hour and a half of intensely gentle, yet intensely deep massage. Felt very woozy afterwards, but then keyed up and raring to go.
Imelda and Bridie joined me in the Light Diet Room for dinner and we chatted about this and that. Since then I’ve been working at the nov. Spent most of this evening trying to write a poem that David Logan (who’s aged 15) could have written. Tricky. Can’t be too sophisticated, but no point if it’s too childish. Takes bloody ages, poetry. Can’t wait to get back to dialogue and description. I need words by the thousands!! Oh no! More Adrian Moling!!!
Nighty night.
Well, usual thing really. Nothing too outrageous to report. Nine holes in the morning. Started badly, but really began to hit the ball well (yawn, yawn, yawn) and felt good about the game. Came back, steam room and massage as per usual. Lots of work, then lunch. Some work after lunch then decided to take half an hour off to play another 9 holes. Really genuinely actually frankly properly hitting the ball. Very exciting. On the ninth, the pro was walking past as I hit the ball from the tee, spang on line with pin, right onto the green. ‘Good shot,’ he said. From a pro!
Back to the novel, it continueth. I’ve done an exhaustive word count. 30,034 words so far. That means I’ve written 9,174 since I’ve been here. That’s an average of 1,529 per day, which isn’t frankly enough to get the thing finished when I want it finished. But, and it’s a but the size of Hyde Park, I am sure I am writing more each day. It started slowly, after all, so perhaps things aren’t going too badly. Do wish I was in Norfolk, though. I’d’ve had the thing finished a fortnight ago if I could have been in Norfolk. And I’d’ve saved myself the three or four thousand pound bill I’m going to get for this little lot (let alone the gigantic cost of the building work that’s being done): by fuckery it’d better be worth it.
Heigh ho. Fry and Laurie on in half an hour. Might as well catch it. Sleepums wellums.
Well, watched F&L all right. Not bad, actually. Laughed in places, but Christ I wish I didn’t always wear such a smug expression. My face in repose always looks as if it’s smirking which is peculiarly repellent.
Usual thing this morning: nine holes (a step back in competence this am, but made up for by a screamer at the ninth again), steam, massage, lots of writing and then, as a treat, a Flotation and Facial in the afternoon. The Float is a strange bath, barely long enough for me to lie in, filled with salts so that the water takes on the buoyancy (and viscous consistency) of the Dead Sea. You go into an ante-room, shower, smear Vaseline over any abraded skin, bung wax in your ears like Odysseus and then lie down and float. There is an open intercom with a floozy at the desk in case you panic or something. Music (well, I say music, whale song in fact, as you might have guessed) is then played which, on account of the earplugs and something else besides, Boyle’s Law* possibly, you can hear best with your ears below the level of the water. You have control over the light switches too. The idea is that you bob there, completely buoyant, utterly blind, listening to bull whales telling cow whales to get their knickers down. I sort of enjoyed it while it happened and did feel good afterwards. Next treat(ment) was a facial, actually just a big plug for Aramis products (scalp revitalizer, cucumber face mask, that sort of tosh). Lovely feeling to have your face woman-handled, though. Like being made-up for film or TV without the silly gossip and drivelling on about horoscopes. The popsy also shaved me, which is always pleasurable.
Then, basically, back to the nov. I’ve now decided to call it Other People’s Poetry, which the publishers will hate, if anything, more than The Thaumaturge. I stupidly gave Sue Freestone, my editor, the working title What Next? a few months ago and she loved it. I think it’s too junky or possibly Joseph Heller-y (not that JH is junky). Sounds like the kind of title people give books that they are desperate to become best-sellers. Not that I am desperate for anything else, naturally, but it’s also a hostage to fortune as far as critics are concerned. ‘What next indeed, Mr Fry? A proper novel we hope, snicker, snicker …’
I wrote over 3,000 words, anyway, which is an improvement. Mind you, I’ve written 7,061 words in this diary so far, which is an average of (as you can surely work out for yourself) 588.416666 per diem; time which you might believe would be better spent novelizing. Actually though, I feel this diary, if nothing else helps prime the pump (that must be drivel because I always write it after I’ve been working, well, you know what I mean).
Well, bed time. Cricket tomorrow and my first real food for ages. Lost nine pounds so far, don’t want to put any on. Must be careful not to drink too much.
Bedly beddington now.
Went up to London for to see the cricket. Bloody good match. Sussex v. Warks. Nat West final, Lord’s. Settled by the last ball. Warks needed 2 runs from the final delivery to score a winning 322. Actually, one run would have done, as they’d lost fewer wickets, but in any case a humdinger. Was so dark by the end I’m amazed the batsmen could see the ball. Just shows what gamesmanship there is when they appeal for bad light when things are going against them. Went because Will Wyatt invited me to a BBC box. Mostly full of corporation figures, Roger Laughton, Michael Checkland* etc. But spent most of the match as the ham in a playwright sandwich. David Hare to the left, Simon Gray to the right (in every sense). David turns out to be a manic Sussex fan. Poor man: for the first time I really warmed to him as he sat gnawing his knuckles and turning into a closer and closer simulacrum of Munch’s The Scream. His tonsure was purpling with passion. All this seemed to matter far more to him than the opening next week of his new play, Murmuring Judges. Turns out he is also working for Scott Rudin. We compared notes on the impossibility of getting in touch with him. Scott’s office has been ringing my London number daily as usual, as if they know I’m away in Grayshott. Scott himself is in Venice for the film festival, so it’s rather pointless my ringing back anyway.
Simon, whom I haven’t seen in a pig’s age looks frankly bloody awful. Rheumy, weeping eyes and squashed pug’s face in no way enhanced by a deep tan. The thick hair with its characteristic flick looks no longer boyish, simply the-portrait-in-the-schoolroom-ish.* He’s been in Greece, the island of Spetses, writing a novel of all things for Mark McCrum’s brother Robert at Faber’s. Still drinking clearly: Simon not Robert McCrum. Confessed to some guilt about leaving Beryl and gave me the lowdown on how Eddie Fox trampled on the possibility of taking the revival of Quartermaine’s Terms† into the West End. The best ever prod of QT Simon thinks, but Fox scared of being compared to his original performance, despite his mother’s firm statement that the revival outshines it. Amazing thing is that Simon is still very very prolific: as well as the novel there’s a new play waiting, a couple of radio plays just written and two films for Verity Lambert’s ‘Cinema Verity’ (ho, ho) outfit.
David Frost turned up a little late: he’d just got in from Moscow where he’d been interviewing Mikhail and Raisa Gorbachev. I swear that man still talks and acts as if he’s just left Cambridge and is desperate to make a name for himself in television. Wonderful really. Can’t help adoring him. It’s been a week of Frost on TV lately, as it happens, coinciding with the issue of a fat First Volume of autobiography and at least five TV programmes about him. He tells me that the one being shown this very night, ‘Frostbites’ (ho, ho), which is a compilation of interviews over the 30 years, includes a section of one he did with me earlier this year. He leaves early to edit the Gorbachev material.
John Sullivan, author of Citizen Smith, Only Fools & Horses etc. is also amongst those present. We swap stories about Nick Lyndhurst and David Jason. I’ve just been filming with Nick all June doing the Stalag Luft film for Yorkshire TV. Bill Cotton is here too. He tells a story of how he is in a train compartment with Peter Sellers, Tommy Cooper, Barry Cryer and Dennis Main Wilson.* Dennis is telling one of his stories when Tommy gets up to go to the loo. After about ten minutes they start wondering where Cooper has got to. Sellers and Cryer get up and go down the corridor to the lav., which is locked. They bang on the door. No reply. Worried, knowing that TC is well-sauced, they search for the ticket conductor. ‘Mr Cooper’s in there,’ they say. ‘Can you open the door somehow?’ The conductor does so. Tommy is sitting on the bog, lid down, trousers up. He gives them his signature creased eyebrow look of worry and asks ‘Has Dennis stopped talking yet?’ No good unless you know D.M.W. of course, but we did.
The match takes up most of our attention from then on. I’ve been a good boy, combining food like Hay himself and sticking only to one sipped glass of red and a small vodka and tonic. As the ante-penultimate over is about to be bowled I ring up the cab company and order a taxi to be waiting outside the Grace Gate so that I can go on to Hugh and Jo’s for dinner, where Ben Elton will be, having just returned from Oz. Simon asks if he can borrow my phone to do likewise.
Leave as soon as the result is clear, having thanked Will and commiserated with David H. Taxi not there, hang around feeling a fool. People approach, but are not too pesky or autograph hungry. Then, amazingly, Nigel Short bounds up! He’s spent the whole day watching the match. He’s about to sit down and face Garry Kasparov for the World title on Tuesday and there he is … I’d be covered in a wet blanket forcing coffee down myself while I sweated over variations of the Maróczy Bind and the Winawer. I suppose he knows what he’s doing. He begged me to come along to the match and say hi. May do. We’ll see. So far I have resisted the blandishments of Channel 4 and BBC2, who are both covering the match. What can I actually say on air? I can’t keep up with Ray Keene as an analyser and I’ll be reduced to a sort of media hack who says clever things about the psychology and witty nonsense about the body language. Pyeuch. There’s a programme on as I write this: Dominic Lawson, Bill Hartston, David Norwood GM and Florencio Campomanes, the President of FIDE. It does begin to look as if Nigel has blown it before it’s started.
Hugh and I revealing our weekend recreational identities.
Mandela Birthday Concert, Wembley Stadium, 1988. About to perform in front of 80,000 people. Not in the least nervous. Oh no.
I felt comfortable and ALIVE.
Incredibly, I still have that shirt. Haven’t burnt it or anything …
Self and Hugh wining, dining and pointing at Sunetra Atkinson.
A bit more Fry and Laurie.
Cap Ferrat with Mrs Laurie.
Cap Ferrat, 1991 – Charlie Laurie, by this time, rightly, bored of my attempts to amuse.
Stripey me.
Self and self the National Portrait Gallery. Maggi Hambling’s completed work.
Next to Maggi Hambling charcoal portrait of me commissioned by the National Portrait Gallery. Do NOT mention the hair.
Maggi Hambling’s National Portrait Gallery picture of me.
Taking pleasure in red wellies: life gets no better, 1990.
Simon totters out and his cab is waiting. Bugger those Computer Cab sods. But Simon, sweetly, suggests I hop into his, so we go first to Tufnell Park before it takes him on to Notting Hill … a long distance out of his way. Blimey … they’d just finished the chess programme and started Blow-Up … I think David* looks better now than he did then. No that’s not true. It’s just that in Blow-Up, as an actor he doesn’t communicate a tenth of his amazing energy.
At the Lauries’ everything hunky-dory. Jo desperate to drop now. She had told me a couple of days ago that Ben and Sophie were going to get married and I completely forgot. Christ I’m hopeless with gossip. Not that that was gossip, but you know what I mean. Other people’s news. Other people’s poetry. (I’m surer than ever that this is the right title and that Sue will hate it.) Sophie is going to come and live in England. Ben thinks April or May for the wedding.
I told him May was traditionally looked upon as unlucky for weddings. Like the colour green. Don’t know what I was thinking. I’m not in the least superstitious and I could see it rather rattled the happy pair. Was I subconsciously being malicious? I’m sure not.
We talked a little about our respective novels. Hugh’s writing a thriller: I’ve read about a third of it and it’s very funny.
Next day: ie today, got up early, trained to Haslemere and had played my 9 holes at Grayshott by half past ten. Toyed with the nov. a bit, but just that one day away has lost me a lot and I couldn’t concentrate properly enough to write anything new, so spent time rewriting and rejigging here and there. Had a massage at 3.00. Steve’s away so it was Willy Blake, well named. He’s a Norfolk friend of my sister Jo and a rather endearingly nonsensical New Age freak. Gibbered on, while rubbing away, about channelling and auras. I asked him if he’d ever seen anyone’s aura himself. ‘No,’ he said. ‘Not a proper aura, but I once saw a very clear etheric sheath.’ Well I mean frankly.
Mostly watched TV after that, the Muse having taken a powder. Then dinner, bit more telly and this diary, really.
Very little to report today. An absolutely bog standard Grayshott kind of a day. Nine holes, slightly disappointing, heat treatment, massage, work, bed. Another nine holes in the afternoon, adequate play. Not much more to it than that I’m afraid.
Much the bleeding same. Sister Jo is back today and I spoke to her on the phone. She and Richard and the baby* seemed to have a good time in France. No vital messages: Greg Snow’s present of a Lesbian Cunt Coloring Book from Florida is being despatched, to which I look forward eagerly. I’ve been invited to the first night of La Bohème at the Coliseum next week, which might be a lark.
Sue Freestone, my publisher, sent a fax saying she is insanely excited that I am getting on with the novel. She seems to think it will be finished as a matter of course. Gulp. Wants to know what ideas I’ve got for the cover. I’m not half way through and she wants a cover. Oh shit.
Spoke to Maggi Hambling† on the phone. She wants two more sittings for her portraits. I have arranged to go over on Tuesday and Wednesday next week.
In the afternoon I watched some of the opening game in the Kasparov v Short match. Both Channel 4 and BBC2 are giving it plenty of air. Channel 4’s coverage is taking populism to new depths. The presenter can’t even let Daniel King or Jonathan Speelman use the phrase ‘queenside’ without jumping down their throats. ‘So that’s the left-hand side of the board is it?’ ‘Yes, that’s right.’ Well it isn’t the left-hand side to Nigel, playing black, is it? She is trying desperately to find dramatic phrases culled from any other arena than chess, to describe what is an intellectual battle utterly beyond her grasp. Or mine for that matter. Granted, it’s a good idea to widen the audience, but treating it like a benzedrine-driven joust between two wild-eyed exponents of gamesmanship is hardly helping.
Sadly Nigel lost on time. He had weathered a storm, a battering in fact, from Garry K, but as he was preparing to make his very last move in time control, his flag fell. Disaster. He must be sick to his soul. It was good that he ended in a position that was at least drawn, but calamitous that he should have lost the game so stupidly. Went to bed in a thunderstorm. Lovely feeling. It wasn’t attacking my king.
No golf this morning: wind blowing hard, grass sodden. Lots of work, now definitely half way through. I’ve written over twenty thousand words in 9 days, which isn’t bad. Unfortunately I won’t get another stretch of time like this. I spoke to Sue Freestone on the phone. She’s coming round next Thursday to look at what I’ve got. My novel, which she still insists on calling What Next? is going to be ‘the biggest publishing event of Spring ’94.’ Great.
Ian McKellen rang too. He wants me to present some bloody Age of Consent* benefit at the London Palladium for Stonewall. Well, not present, just introduce. I’ve also agreed to do a debate at the Cambridge Union on the same issue. All these things are going to take up time I cannot spare. After all, there’s the Sam Wanamaker Globe bash at the Albert Hall too.
Talking of the Albert Hall, I’m going to the Last Night of the Proms on Saturday, after Charles and Carla Powell’s wedding. Well not their wedding, their son’s.
Played golf in the afternoon, during a lull in the weather and a lull in my inspiration. Played like a fucking genius. As I was addressing the ball I just knew that it was going to go long and straight. For the first time in my life I consistently hit overlong and had to go down a club at almost every hole. Birdies and pars and virtually nothing else. Ridiculous because I am the most uncoordinated, least able striker of a ball who ever pulled a club from a bag. But every dog has his day, I suppose. I will probably never play another round like it, so it is as well to be pleased.
The novel steaming along too. Not that it’s anything other than balderdash, but at least I feel as if I’m achieving things. Elements are coming together. So far, however, it is lacking in any passion. I want people to cry at parts of it, and those stages haven’t yet been reached. Gonna be tricky. Ner-night.
Reasonable day. Fair old quantity of work done, over 4,000 words. The post contained Greg Snow’s present from Florida: The Cunt Coloring Book by Tee Corinne. I quote from the introduction. ‘The Cunt Coloring Book published in 1975, was immediately and wildly popular, although many people complained about the “awful” title. Three printings later, in 1981, the title was changed to Labiaflowers and the book virtually died. So much for euphemisms. Welcome once again to the Original Cunt Coloring Book (with a few additions). May you color it with pleasure. The drawings in this book are of real women’s cunts. My love and thanks to the many women who participated with me in this project and to those who encouraged and counseled me. These pages are a celebration of your energy.’
That was from the foreword by Tee herself. There is also a little prefacing essay entitled ‘In The Beginning’ by one Martha Shelley.
In the beginning we come from the cunt, not from some man’s side; and we are washed in the water and blood of birth, not the spear-pierced side of some dying god. In the beginning women made pots and jars shaped like wombs and breasts, and decorated them with triangles, which were symbols of the cunt.
So the first art was Cunt Art. The bones of the dead were laid in jars – perhaps to speed the soul to its next womb? Did the ancient women sing, how delicate, sensitive, delicious, how strong the ring of muscle between one life and the next? There are tribal women today who sing praises of their cunts, how pretty and long and full their lips are, how the hair curls and glistens with moisture.
Well, I mean dahling …
Naturally the pages themselves contain hideous warped oysterish things that look like the result of an explosion in an organ-donor depot. I hope that doesn’t sound misogynistic – a Cock Coloring Book would be just as beastly.
The book even has an ISBN no.* can you credit it? For the rest, there is sadly, no text, just these line-drawn quims.
Otherwise, the only other post was a card from Rory Bremner, asking me to be a ‘guest-writer’ on one of his new Channel 4 shows. Kindly offer but I think I’ll pass.
Rang Kim during the second Short/Kasparov game. He seems to think, with me, that Nigel’s blown it again.† Invited K to accompany me to the opening of La Bohème and Oleanna, the new David Mamet. Still no news from Hugh and Jo L. They must be dropping even now, surely?
Had a reflexology and aromatherapy massage. Not bad. Still feel pretty energized. All my masseuses now seem to be in agreement that I am ‘balanced and relaxed’, which is pleasant.
Spoke to Scott Rudin. He’s pleased I had the session with Terry Gilliam about T’s new film The Defective Detective, but wishes I was harder on Terry about the script. Hyuh! What’s it to do with me? I’ll try and liaise with Scott about my next script for him when I’ve done with the novel.
Sue F. faxed me with a suggestion for the jacket. ‘How about Michelangelo’s David wearing Y-fronts?’ Well, I mean really! A tad homo-erotic, for a novel that is primarily non whoopsy. Thought of a scene today in which Davey will fuck a horse to heal it from some mysterious illness like ragwort poisoning. Could be good.
News just in. Nigel drew the game. Phew. Ho-hum.
Last full day here. Arose in time to do some work, biffed off for the massage and heat treatment and returned to the room to find a message under the door: ‘Please ring Rebecca Laurie, 071 580 4400, Room 101.’ Just for a moment I thought I’d gone mad and then … of course! Jo decided to have a Caesarian today. The child had been up there for too damned long, putting on too much bloody weight. 8lb 13oz. Jo was barely able to walk or breathe. The doctors thought it would probably stay up there for another two weeks, just liked it too much. University College Hospital said they wouldn’t do a section for another fortnight, so Jo and Hugh took the reluctant decision to go private at the Portland. A big bonny baby girl. I shall see her on Sunday.
Plenty of work, then a holistic massage, pleasure as always, followed by a swift nine holes. Some great shooting, some average (as if you care).
Then more work: reached three hundred words shy of the fifty thousand. That means I’ve written just about 30,000 words in the last eleven days. Not bad. I’ve just finished writing the scene in which Davey fucks the horse. My lord I’m going to get some stick for that. ‘So, did you try it out, Stephen? … in the interests of research naturally … hyerk, hyerk …’
It might be dreadful I suppose, we shall see. Wonder what Sue Freestone will think. Final treatment tomorrow will be a facial with which to present a smooth and glossy countenance to the wedding and the Proms. All in all, this has been a truly splendid stay, I’ve lost over a stone in weight. I’ve enjoyed the work once it’s started flowing and I’ve been more relaxed and happier than for years. And I’ve kept off the booze, plenty tomorrow though …
It’s past 11.00 now and I shall hope to be asleep by twelve. Nightly-nightington.
Back in town, one stone two pounds lighter and thirty thousand words to the good. Finished off with a facial yesterday and hit the A3 looking shiny, fit and relaxed. Those fine dryness lines the commercials love so much didn’t have a chance. I challenged the visible signs of ageing.
Arrived in time to zip over to Lipman’s in the lower Charing X Road where I hired a morning suit, my own being stuck up in Norfolk. Then I bought a print at the Chris Beetles Gallery for the happy pair, quick change in the flat before high-tailing it by taxi to the Old Church, Chelsea. Charles and Carla Powell looked in great nick. Well Sir Charles has aged a spot, but that’s hardly surprising as he regularly jets to Hong Kong for half hour meetings with Chris Patten* before jetting back again the same day. Takes a toll. Carla, on the other hand in supreme shape. Spending most of her days in Italy looking after her father. Their son Hugh was marrying one Catherine Young, daughter of Sir William and Lady Young, whoever they might be. He is a director of Coutt’s the bankers but chaps of his background are directors of banks much in the way they might be members of a squash club. Dennis Thatcher was there on the groom’s side, as were poor old Rosemary and Norman Lamont.* Ha! That’ll teach him to be a loyal Tory.
Good service: Schubert’s Ave Maria and Mozart’s Ave Verum, beautifully sung. Good trumpeter in evidence for inevitable Jeremiah Clarke† and Grand March from Aida.
Soon as the service was over I cabbed back to the flat to change for the Albert Hall. Arrived good and early so I could track down Patrick Deuchars who runs the place. He had invited me for the Prom’s Last Night and I had initially turned him down, thinking I’d stay for the wedding reception. It occurred to me last week that this was silly as I really wouldn’t know that many people at the wedding and the L. N. of the P’s would be larkier. So I rang John Birt’s‡ office and said I could come after all. That’s right. John Birt’s office. Like an arse I had thought it was he who had invited me, not Deuchars. John is always inviting me to something after all … Wimbledon, Cup Final etc. His office had said ‘fine, help yourself … no problem. You’ll be squiring Lady Parkinson (wife of Cecil).’ Only then did I realize my bloomer. At the RAH therefore I found Patrick who was highly amused and said not to worry. John Birt when he arrived was similarly tickled, so was able to play the self-lacerating idiot and make them feel good.
Who was there? Well, a load of old Tories really. Michael Heseltine and his wife. They turned out to be enormous fans of J&W. ‘We’ve got a butler who absolutely bases himself on your Jeeves,’ trilled Mrs H. ‘Lah-di-fucking-da, darling,’ as I stridently didn’t say. Peregrine Worsthorne and his wife Lucinda Lambton, who came in the most extraordinary Union Jack frock, Alan Coren and his wife Anne, Terry Burns of HM Treasury, Debbie and David Owen, the latter hot-foot from his notable failures in Switzerland.* Jane Birt and self made up the numbers. I like Jane I must say – American, as is Debbie Owen.
Pretty good time had by all, though the event is significantly less moving in the flesh than on TV. Secretly I felt it all rather anticlimactic, as if I had been expecting some other element that actually wasn’t present. We dined afterwards at Launceston Place, the Owens giving me a lift in their brand new Volvo. Rather comical actually. They argued about absolutely everything. The way to the car, how to get to the restaurant, how to park once there. I said, ‘Well, if you can’t decide how to walk to a parked car, no wonder there’s such hell in Bosnia,’ a bit obvious, but really … U.N. negotiator and he can’t negotiate a one-way system.
Sat at one end of the table flanked by Lucinda and Lady P. She’s all right is our Lucinda I think, in a batty aristo way. A professional enthusiast, and therefore slightly overdone, but I think not a fraud. Home to bed at two-ish, my latest night for a fortnight.
Today I went to the Portland to inspect young Rebecca Laurie, who is stout and sweet. Jo, poor thing is absolutely knocked out, pneumonia, the works. She’s got either a nebulizer or an oxygen mask on at all times. Hugh showed up and seems, for him, rather confident about the novel he’s writing. I bet it’s blissfully funny.
Strange things, private hospitals. You ring a number on the phone and get the answer ‘Room Service …’ I had noticed a TVR parked out the front which had the number plate A1 OB ST, which turned out to belong to Mr Armstrong, the consultant who did Jo’s Caesarian. He turned up too, all jeans, Kickers, navy blue Guernsey sweater, your casual Home Counties weekend uniform.
Then back home and a bit more work on the nov. I think I may be able to do things here. I damned well hope so. Only a thousand words today. A lot of fucking about with the formatting of a couple of faxes that are contained in the novel.
Well, it’s past midnight and I’m for sleepies.
A quiet day. Barely stepped out of the flat. A lot of letters to get out of the way, which I managed. The world has gone wild today on account of the PLO Israeli agreement being signed in Washington. Henry Kissinger and other so-called wise old birds are being very cautious. Not surprising, really. A lot of work to do yet, if right wing Israelis and nationalist Palestinians are to be quietened.
Worked on a different kind of chapter of the novel. The third person narrative of Michael Logan’s upbringing, vaguely based on my grandfather’s life. Where else would I get the idea of a Hungarian grower of sugar beet?
Not much else to report. Still trying to eat well, but it’s so hard not to raid the fridge. Must buy a set of scales, that would help.
Up early to sit for Maggi Hambling again. It started badly, both of us a little nervous. She grew in confidence however, drawing with a stick of charcoal that was roughly the size of a milk-bottle. Amazing implement. Christ it’s a chore standing stock still for so long. Towards the end she played some Ink Spots on the cassette player and wanted to draw me as I danced, a procedure she finds endlessly amusing, as does anyone fortunate enough to witness so rare and unwilling an occurrence. A car came to pick me up at 12.45 to take me to a studio in Islington for photographs for the Radio Times. All to do with Stalag Luft whose screening date they really can’t decide upon. I think it’s back to late October again now, having been the 8th at one point. The photoshoot, by Brian Moody, absolutely sweet guy as a lot of good photographers are I’ve noticed, was followed by an interview. Reasonable outcome I hope. Must say I felt good all through, despite longing to be at the keyboard novelizing. The Grayshott effect still keeping me relaxed and cheerful.
More work in the evening, hours of it. Continuing the chapter in which we go back to Europe to see Michael Logan’s father as a Hungarian Jew.
Another sitting with Maggi. She wanted me to bring a DJ this time, more consonant with whatever image she has of me. As we progressed I realized these sessions weren’t enough for her. She has a large black canvas she wants to paint in oils, and we clearly didn’t have time to get near it. I suggested another couple of sessions and she was clearly relieved. Next week then.
Back home for more work before Kim could arrive to accompany me to the Coliseum for the opening of La Bohème. Helen Atkinson-Wood* rang to ask if I would talk into a cassette for a boy who is a friend of her family. He had a cycling accident and is now in a coma. Turns out to be a huge Blackadder fan. Said I’d do what I can. Naturally I have now discovered that I have no recording facilities here.
Kim arrived looking well and smart and we shogged off to St Martin’s Lane. What a disappointment! Dreadful production, simply dreadful. The work of Steven Pimlott. Chorus abominably handled, no interval, which enraged Kim who thought it made the thing stink structurally. He knows it better than me, so I took his word for it: very short evening even without interval. I would otherwise have assumed that the opera itself was a structural mess. The Rodolfo was ghastly, barely audible above the band, and the whole thing sounds so foul in English. Mind you, I wept like a baby at the end, who couldn’t? Saw Melvyn Bragg there: he’s lost a ton of weight and looks twenty years older for it. His chubbiness was what gave him the boyish, almost cherubic look for which he is famed. Jeremy Isaacs* present also, and Anna Ford and Frank Johnson and assorted Mediahadeen. Kim and I went to The Ivy afterwards. Saw Harold and Antonia, Mike Ockrent (also looking older for weight-loss)† and Tim Rice, mercifully at full weight.
Back in time for bed.
Sue Freestone today! Great nerves. Final checks, then a print out. She read half before we went to Green’s for a quick oyster or two. Then back to finish. She seemed immensely pleased. Great relief. No real criticism. I worked on her as regards the title Other People’s Poetry and she seems to be warming to it.
At 5.00 I trotted off to the Lauries’ to inspect Rebecca again and deliver my nebulizer, which Jo and Hugh feel they ought to have on hand, given Jo’s recent pneumonic state. Stayed for supper and Die Hard 2.
Frustrating morning wandering up and down Regent Street and Mayfair looking for a tape-recorder. Maddened by being ignored by the five or six staff at Wallace Heaton in Bond Street. Can’t kick up a fuss or they’d think I was annoyed because of ‘who I am’. Eventually had to go all the way to 76 Oxford Street, where I got a Sony Professional Walkman. Wrote and delivered a monologue as Melchett for the boy in the coma, printed out the novel thus far for Anthony Goff my lit. agent and got a taxi to deliver the tape and the manuscript. Anthony said on the phone that Sue sounded frankly ecstatic about the work so far. I MUST NOT LET THIS DIVERT ME FROM CONCENTRATING.
Then, down to work. It all seems to be coalescing in my head, and as always when things are apparently going well, elements I had put in the novel frankly on spec early on in the writing, when I had no idea what the plot was doing or what the outcome would be, suddenly make absolute sense and look natural and right, as if I had always known they should be there. What does that mean though?
Heigh ho.
Mostly work, as usual. Had an idea that each chapter should be headed with a verse from Eliot’s poem ‘The Hippopotamus’. It seems so appropriate. I know the poem is really supposed to be about the C. of E., but it fits the character of Ted to see him as an apparently mud-baked hippo who is in fact more likely to rise and be washed by the angels and martyrs than anyone else. Should the novel itself be called The Hippopotamus? Is that over-egging the pudding?
Skipped around St James’s and the Burlington Arcade, trying to find a present for Alastair’s b’day. Ended up getting a rather splendid dressing-gown at Turnbull & Asser. £390 odd but worth it. Kim and he held a party at their place in Dalston. Nick and Sarah were there, but Hugh never showed. Trevor Newton back from his year’s sabbatical in Australia, teaching at Rochester again. He seemed good, if a tad subdued and self-conscious. Strange: at Cambridge he was infinitely more urbane and polished than any of us, but since he’s become a dominie he’s grown away from London; it must be hard for him now that Kim is doing well writing for Ken B. and Greg Snow (also present) is getting on with things as a writer. Why a schoolmaster should feel inferior … yet we know they do. We are the ones who should feel inferior.
Kim and I talked a bit about Oscar. K is getting on with the screenplay for Ken. They showed the Peter Finch film this afternoon, I was writing, so I’ve recorded it to watch tomorrow. Bet he’s unsurpassably good: it’ll only depress me to see him.
I had some lines of coke for the first time in months and months. Weird having that old feeling coursing in the blood again. A large hammer of guilt was banging away in time to the accelerated beating of my heart. All that health and weight loss at Grayshott and now I was guzzling pink champagne* like a beast. That’s the trouble with the old nose-candy: it may suppress your appetite but it sure as hell increases your intake of alcohol. Still, one night in five hundred can’t be fatal. Fuck me, it’s appealing stuff though. Simply too gorgeous and delicious to be trusted. I could fall back into my old ways oh so easily.
Stayed and chatted for much longer than I otherwise would as a result of the Charlie. Ian, Ceri and other of Alastair’s Oxford friends made up the majority of the guestage. Quite fun. Got back at two-ish. Not an excessive amount of leg-thrashing, skin-twitching insomnia. Probably clocked out at three.
Awoke at 11.00-ish feeling worse than I have for ages. But not a massive hangover. Knew I’d be able to work when it came to it. Took things easily and wrote two and half thousand words … not as good as I have been, but that’s understandable under the circs.
Watched the Peter Finch Oscar. Christ he was excellent. Terribly moving. The witty lines excellently thrown away. How will I ever beat that? Lionel Jeffries splendid too.* Very painful.
So far we have 69,009 words for the novel. Have written a diary entry for the queeny character Oliver Mills who gets ‘cured’ by Davey rather as the horse did. Decided against actually writing the scene itself.
The thing seems to be taking shape. Oh God, it’s so hard to tell any more. When you’re inside something for so long, what do you really know about it?
Humpy-hip. Beddly-poos.
More work. What else can a chap do? Again, seems to be proceeding all right. But Christ knows if it means anything.
My taxi returned from the garage, new radio and cassette fitted, the kind with a removable front. They’ve done a lovely job on the cab itself, but the fucking radio is dead. Boo.
At six-ish Kim came round, with a line of coke for us each to enjoy before the theatre. While he was chopping up I printed out the horse-fucking scene for him to read. He seemed to take to it well: really liked it I think.
Fortified artistically and nasally, we trolled to the Duke of York’s for the first night of Oleanna. Rather ordinary first act, which disappointed me and then – kerboom! – the thing exploded and you had the ordinary nature of the pre-interval set-up reinterpreted in front of your eyes. Wonderful stuff.
Never seen so many people streaming out of a theatre talking. Everyone had something to say. I discovered that I was sitting next to Edwina Curry of all people. She, naturally, had very firm ideas about it all. Piffle, as you would expect. ‘He failed her.’ What, so he deserved to lose his wife, house and job, did he? What would Edwina’s life be like if she was punished for a sexual indiscretion of that kind?*
We avoided the party afterwards and wound our way to the Brixtonian in Neal’s Yard, where Alastair’s friend Ian Poitier was having a birthday party. A sweet poppet from the W. Indies, Ian was at Oxf. with Al. and says he’s a cousin or nephew of the great Sidney. We left there, however, and went to the Ivy actually to eat. Bumped into Simon Gray who, natch, hated Oleanna. Then home for kip.
Sat for Maggi again all morning. She has started the big oil now and I hope will be done by Friday. It’s fun but intense. Nipped back home for a spot of work and then off to Mount Street to see Dougie Hayward the tailor to be measured for a suit. He’s going to make a dark blue job. Never had one that colour before, but it could work. He makes for Michael Caine and John Cleese (who recommended him) very much the man of the 60s along with Tommy Nutter, tailoring for Terence Stamp and those kind of people. Not sure my bulk will bring out the best in his snipping, but we’ll see.
At seven-thirty, after a lot of heavy writing, which went pretty well I think (did the scene in which Davey persuades the fourteen year old with a brace on her teeth to give him a blow-job) I taxi-ed to Ben’s flat. He’s in a bit of a state, poor love. His psoriasis is spreading vilely. He’s trying this Chinese figure, Tong, who did so well for Jo Laurie, but so far no success. He’s told Ben to steer clear of yeast, which means no beer, which Ben hates. But if tension is a cause, then it’s amazing Ben hasn’t got it worse, frankly. Neil and Glenys Kinnock came round and we walked to the Bombay Brasserie. Both N & G in excellent form. I was delighted and amazed to hear that they had come to the same conclusion as me, which I would never have dared raise otherwise, thinking it sacrilege … viz. it’s time the Lib Dems and Labour got to-bloody-gether and prepared to kick the Tories out. Very good fun.
Trailed back home at one-ish.
A frustrating day, if the truth be told. Not enough chance to work. David Tomlinson* had invited me to lunch at Carluccio’s restaurant in Neal Street. Wonderful place, fabulous funghi, good wine and the company of David, Richard Ingrams, his assistant at the Oldie Isabelle, and Beryl Bainbridge, who’s always a lark. But too much incredibly fine whisky. Woozily wandered home and got into the cab to go for a costume fitting for the Juvenal thing I’m doing next week. Cabbed back, fell asleep for half an hour and then had to get ready for the theatre. Went to see Simon Donald’s new play at the Donmar The Life of Stuff: started badly but perked up. Very much a young inexperienced playwright’s work, but full of heart and shocks and some wit (mostly derivative and inconsistent if the truth be told). Was with Lo and Christian (Simon’s a client of Lo’s) as well as someone called Sarah and her boyfriend Dominic Minghella, brother of Anthony, also a writer apparently. They’ve built some whole new complex by the theatre called Thomas Neal’s, sort of mall really. We dined at a new Mezzaluna there, part of the same chain you find in LA and New York. Then off home again.
More productive day. 77,000 words done! Gosh I hope it’s all right. Did a VO for Matchmakers at 11.00, with John Junkin of all people. Stout fellow, friendly, not sour, curmudgeonly and feeling passed over like so many his age … Barry Took etc.
I’m writing this at 4.45. Have to shower and change for the premiere of The Fugitive. I’m taking Alyce Faye: sending a stretch limo round to pick her up, the works. It’s at the refurbished Warner West End, thence we go to a party at the Savoy, though we’ve also been invited to a party Michael and Shakira Caine are giving, so we might pop there first for an hour or so. I’ll tell you all about it tomorrow, Daisy Dear. (Daisy is short for Daisy Diary, it’s what the character Oliver Mills calls his diary in The Hippopotamus – that’s definitely the title, I’m sure of it now). Must go and dress for tonight. Tell you about it tomorrow.
Well, last night was amusing enough. The limo that arrived was longer than a cricket pitch and whiter than a cricket boot. Alyce Faye highly amused. We had a voddie together and then hit Leicester Square. Absolutely thousands of people. What are they all doing? Most peculiar. In the foyer, hundreds milling about and, on TV screens, an in-house Ent. Tonight style show with comedian Andrew O’Connor, some bint called Amanda and good old Iain Johnstone all conducting interviews, with street people, celebs and film people respectively. Highly embarrassing. We went in and took our seats early. Only to discover that actually we were in cinema number 5, out of 11. The Fugitive was being shown in 9 of them. We were not in the same one as Princess Di and the A list. Feel acutely embarrassed and hope Alyce Faye isn’t affronted. Doubtless John Cleese, had he come, would have been in amongst the big nobs. They are showing the TV celeb show on the screen. Insane. Baz Bamigboye appears and says that only the nobodies would have turned up this early … glunk.
Anyway, film happens: damned good thriller. Tommy Lee Jones absolutely top hole. We streak for the exit. See a big white limo passing, but being moved on to do another circuit. I go out to stop it. Huge cheer from crowd.
It’s not our limo. I walk back to the foyer: huge laugh from crowd. Get trapped by a genuine TV crew and chat to the interviewer for a bit. Limo comes and we go. Weird feeling being pressed upon at all sides. People think it might be Madonna inside.*
We go first to the Hyde Park hotel to Michael Caine’s and Marco Pierre White’s new restaurant. We’re in time for wine and friandises … very fond of Shakira Caine. Michael is fine, but seems a bit pissed. Very sharp man in his own way but often cross and bitter. What he has to be resentful of I can’t quite guess. I think he still feels the British class system held him back. Seeing that he and Sean Connery are far and away the biggest film stars we have produced since the war, with maybe the exception of Richard Burton who’s hardly aristocratic either, I don’t quite get it. But Caine can do no wrong in my eyes. He was Harry Palmer in The Ipcress File for heaven’s sake.
We get back in the limo and head for the Savoy. More interviews on camera and then I’m left in peace. Gobble some lobster, command a table and some wine. Chat to Mo and Iain Johnstone. Michael White† and Jerry Hall pop by. We decide to leave. Home by 2.00.
Why does one attend such things? Well, it’s honestly the only time I ever go to a cinema. You can just about guarantee that people will behave at premieres and they certainly won’t ask for your autograph or giggle. I don’t think I’ve got many more in me though.
This morning up early, not hung over, another sitting with Maggi. Goes all right. Leave her place after four solid hours of standing and drive off to do some shopping for dinner on Sunday. Did I mention that Nigel Short and his wife Rhea and Dominic and Rosa Lawson and Kim Harris are popping in for dinner then?* Can’t shop tomorrow because I’m off to Cambridge.
Anyway shopped and got back to the flat. No real concentration enough to work on the penultimate chapter, which is where I’m at. The Ryder Cup has started, for one thing. Oh – Manchester has lost its Olympic Bid.† No real surprise. Absolutely typical John Major failure, however. Australia, the Lucky Country …
Anyway spent most of the afternoon half-watching the golf and going back to clean up and rewrite the last few sections. 78,685 words. Lumme. When I think back to how depressed I was on the first Monday at Grayshott. How within an ace of calling it all off I was … not that it’s necessarily any good what I’ve got. I have to keep reminding myself of that.
Well, it’s 11:03 now, best be making an early night of it. We’ll chat tomorrow, ‘if I’m spared’ …
Strange kind of a day. Had agreed, somewhere back in the mists of time, that I would drive to Cambridge and appear in a kind of ‘celebrity’ University Challenge game, hosted by Bamber Gascoigne. It was for the Alumni Weekend, which rather American sounding thing is an innovation. I arrived in time to do some shopping before the lunch. Bugger me Cambridge gets crowded these days: it’s almost an unworkable city now. You have never seen such crowds, and if London had to put up with that kind of traffic there would be riots. Riots. Bought some books on equine anatomy and health to see if I can get Lilac’s disease right in the novel. Also finally bought Donna Tartt’s Secret History which everyone has been going on about and I suppose I ought to read. No sign of a book called Trainspotting which Simon Donald had told me to catch up on. By a Scot called Irvin(e) Wels(c)h I think the name is.
Got to the Grad Pad* in time for the lunch. I was on the Vice Chancellor’s table, opposite Bamber and Germaine Greer and wedged between a couple of dons. Nice guy called Harcourt, Australian economist, on my right, zoologist called, I think, William Foster on my left. Sebastian Faulks was there too, which is good because I’ve just started on his novel Birdsong. Our team was completed by Valerie Grove.
The actual game was played in the Lady Mitchell Hall on the Sidgwick Site. Needless to say we trashed them. Germaine Greer said to me afterwards ‘Jeez, you’re so competitive’ which I thought was highly revealing. She’s a good stick though, for all that. It’s clear in her conversation however that she still feels the need to prove herself all the time, which given her intelligence and confident eloquence is odd. No it isn’t. We’re all like that, eloquent or not. We just show it in different ways. Kept back for a few interviews and the like, one for CAM magazine, some graduate thing, and another for Varsity.
Drove back home listening to Day 2 of the Ryder Cup. It’s going to be fucking close. Bit of telly, some small amount of work on the novel. London is not as good as Grayshott …
Ner-night.
Up fairly late, tiny bit of novelizing, but most of the day spent chewing my nails at the Ryder Cup. We lost, boo-hoo. All a bit embarrassing, because it was down to Barry Lane chucking a three hole lead and turning it into a one hole loss all in the course of the last five holes. Also Costantino Rocca fucked up. All a bit of a shame. More English Majorite loss and gloom.
In the afternoon prepared dinner, just about got everything ready in time for Kim, Dominic Lawson, Nigel and Rhea Short and Dr Robert Hübner. Nigel in tremendous spirits considering he is on the brink of another famous English defeat. Well, not yet on the brink, but he was seriously outplayed by Kasparov on Saturday. A good evening though. Kim on good form, we talked a little about the chess. Then we got into a stupid argument with the rather vain figure of Hübner on the subject of whether or not things are altered by one’s perception of them. He was poo-pooing any kind of thinking which veered from his Ding an sich Germanism. Bit of a prat, if the truth be told. After all, Schrödinger was just as German.* And Heisenberg. And they proposed that things are certainly altered by our perception. Certainly at the quantum level.
Kim and I promised we’d go next week to one of Nigel’s games. I suspect we’ll make it Saturday, when he’ll be white and have a chance. They left and Kim and I stayed up for another hour. Kim had to shog, because tomorrow is the first day of Frankenstein rehearsals at Shepperton.
Day of some novel writing, but I’m finding it so hard to finish. Over 80,000 words done: never thought that day would dawn … but two chapters from the finishing post. Very hard to get them right. Didn’t step out of the flat once. Rang a vet in Newmarket whose name was given to me by the Royal College of Veterinary Surgeons. Didn’t seem to have much of a clue about an illness that could be misdiagnosed. Pathetic. I’m going to have to find a vet I can take out to dinner so I can explain it properly.
Watched Robbie’s new series, Cracker, damned good stuff. He’s on excellent form, really good. Not overacting, just perfect. Then wrote this. Highly dull, I’m afraid.
Time for boo-boos.
Oh Nigel. Oh Nigel, Nigel, Nigel. He missed a win. He missed his first great win. Oh damn, damn, double damn. Just been watching it on TV. He could have had Kasparov right there on the ropey-rope ropes. He fluffed it. Poor sod, he must be sicker than sick. He made a gigantically wonderful queen sacrifice and should have won. It’s so clear that he should have won. Even I could fucking see it. Blastly damington. What a year for British sport. Is there a chance we can beat Holland to get into the World Cup finals? If there is it’s far from a fat one. Poo and miz and boo and horridy-horridy-horrid.
Another day spent entirely in the flat. Not a breath of outside air. Getting unshaven and foetid so I lit some joss-sticks or ‘incense sticks’ as everyone now insists on calling them, but the novel proceeded better today. Now up to round about the 86,000 words mark. Man from the Newmarket vet rang today and suggested timpanic colic, which can be diagnosed as spasmodic colic which is worse. Might suffice, we shall see.
I shall watch Tales of the City which starts in half an hour on C4 and then go to bed. Boo-hoo.
90,113 words! Had a sudden and depressing realization last night at one in the morning that everything I’d written yesterday was wrong. Well, not everything, but nearly. I realized the final chapter had to run on immediately from the previous. Yesterday I’d set it the following morning and had the show-down in which Ted reveals the fruits of his researches taking place after lunch. As it is, it now takes place at dinner, which I think is better.
Got up early-ish, worked a bit and then did a voice over at ten. Got back, buying a pair of Doc Marten’s on the way, and wrote till 6.00. Had a meeting with Dave Jeffcock at the Groucho Club at 6.30. He’s producing the Juvenal thing I’m doing tomorrow and Friday and which, dear Daisy Diary, you will hear all about. Wish I wasn’t doing it, though. I could bloody finish the novel this week otherwise. Drank one and a half glasses of red wine. No more. Came back, titivated a bit and counted the words. The novel is now longer than The Liar already. As if that makes a fucking bit of difference, Stephen, you total arsehole.
Really enjoyed Tales of the City last night. Damned fine. Followed by a highly depressing documentary on ITV about child abuse. The horror of it all.
John Smith has won his vote on OMOV today, thank Christ. Very, very close. The TUC loses its block vote.
Heigh ho. Better go and learn my lines.
HORRIFIED POSTSCRIPT: after doing this diary entry I decided to do some backing up of work on The Hippo. After my return from the Grouch I had worked for 2.5 hours rewriting the work of the day. Saved the wrong file and overwrote the rewrites, if that makes sense. So I might as well have stayed all night at the Grouch. Lost all my rewriting. Piss and fuck.
Well, bugger me with a cocktail onion, what a day. What a day. Up earlyish and then a walk to the Groucho Club where the BBC had set up base camp.
The programme is called Laughter and Loathing, it’s presented by Ian Hislop and purposes to analyse and document satire. Programme One, pilot and first ep., is all about Juvenal, played by me. Well, as you can imadge, the only way to play Juve is to get yourself dolled up in a toga and pace the streets of London, declaiming satires. No point doing it in a Tuscan Doric decorated studio looking like a historical figure. Juve was very much now and in the streets. There can be nothing in the world more embarrassing than standing outside the Bank of England in a toga, with a camera crew on a long lens miles away, shouting irate verse into a hidden radio mike. Tourists think you’re a guide of some sort, punters who recognize you come up and nudge you or hound you for autographs. Unspeakable shame. Add to this a pair of thin boot/sandals and the rainiest late September day in living memory and you have a recipe for disgrace and horror. Filmed all morning in the City, Bank underground station and, mercifully, in the Conway Hall.
The evening was taken up with this party: brainchild of our prod./dir. Dave Jeffcock, the idea was that in the Gennaro Room of the Groucho a load of celebs and liggers would turn up for a free party in which self would be filmed (still in toga) being rejected and cold-shouldered by these media types. This would be edited with a VO of self reciting a Juve satire in which the poet complains about being a reject who has to go to smart parties and be ignored, just in order to eat. As we started filming the mood came upon me and – eheu fugaces – I asked Liam Carson whether or not he might be able to find me a couple of grams of Devil’s Dandruff. This he duly did and I spent most of the party slightly wired. The guests included Clive James, Jeremy Paxman, Charles Kennedy the leader of the Liberal Democrats, a man who likes a drink, Angus Deayton, Danny Baker and Melvyn Bragg, the latter turning up with Cate his wife. The filming finished and I stayed on for a while.
Danny introduced me to a man with long hair that I realized was Rob Newman of Newman and Baddiel infamy. They had been a year or two below us at Cambridge but we never knew them. This frightening pair have been so rude about everyone I love and like that I assumed that he would snub me. In fact he was rather sweet and naturally I told him that I thought his show, currently on BBC2, was splendid. Haven’t actually seen any of it and am sure it isn’t quite my tasse d’oolong.
After this played Perudo* with Liam and a couple of other degenerates and flew off home when I realized that Tina Time had stolen some hours from me and it was twenty past one in the fuck-mothering morning.
Not ending September as I began it. Wine, coke, late nights. Shucks.
Pinch, punch – yeah, yeah, yeah. Another supremely embarrassing day, filming in Soho and Covent Garden in a toga and rain. Used up the lunchtime buying birthday presents for Nick Symons and Griff Rhys Jones, both of whom had parties tonight.
Finished filming at 8.00-ish and biffed off to Primrose Hill for Nick’s party. Hugh was there and Paul Shearer and Kim and Alastair. Helen Napper and Jon Canter too. Had a gram and a half left over from the previous night.
Nick’s party finished at eleven thirty and I cabbed it to Clerkenwell for Griff’s. Usual suspects present and incorrect. Angus, Phil Pope, Helen A-W, Clive Anderson, Nick Mason (drummer from Pink Floyd) those sort. Mel Smith in US filming, but his wife Pamela in attendance. Got coked and drunk and at three-ish managed to retain the sense to call for a cab which I shared with Simon Bell to the centre of town: dropped him in Soho and fell into bed. Oh dear, Stephen, what a case you are.
Up at 10.30, in no mood to work. Filled in time watching videos and then Kim arrived to accompany me to the Savoy Theatre to watch Nigel playing Gazza Kasp. We cabbed it after a cup of tea and arrived half an hour early. Sat in the front row and chatted. Rhea, Nigel’s wife fetched up and we watched the first three quarters of an hour unfold. Nigel was white and it developed, as always, into a Najdorf Sicilian, with Nigel playing the Fischer favourite, Bishop c4. Kasp unwound a piece of preparation beginning with Nc6, and had taken 11 minutes to Nigel’s 52 by the time we left the hall and went to Simpson’s in the Strand where the grandmaster’s analysis room was. Most of the GMs in agreement that Nigel was in trouble. Kim had accurately predicted the course of the game and reckoned that Nigel stood all right, considering how taken by surprise he was. Tony Miles, ex-England #1 was presiding at the roundtable of GM’s and making bitter foolish remarks about N’s play. Dominic Lawson explained how completely asinine and childish Miles is. He cannot bear the fact that Short is so much better than him and has always beaten him. At one point he laughed out loud at a move of Nigel’s which was absolutely necessary, precise and accurate. Really sad. He’s spent some time in a funny farm, so one mustn’t hate. Speelman turned up and was friendly. Chatted to Ray Keene and others. Nigel managed a draw and acquitted himself well over the board. Beaten in preparation perhaps, but excellently played.
Alastair then arrived and we had a drink and stepped over to Joe Allen’s for dinz. Saw Maggi Hambling and, of all people, Amanda Barry* sitting at a table with Percy, Maggi’s terrier. Then came home, drank a bottle of red wine and wrote this.
Now must bed myself. Off to Wyton† tomorrow for Jo (sister) and Richard’s christening party for my nephew George.
Drove to RAF Wyton. You have to report to the guardhouse and get a chit which you stick on your dashboard. Found Jo and Richard’s quarters. Arrived same time as Roger, Ruthie, Ben and William. Ben and William v. affectionate and sweet. Jo looking fearfully well and George bouncing fit to bust. Splendid fellow. None of the usual stickiness you expect from these family affairs.
Almost frighteningly English. The X’ening itself took place in the church on the station, a rather cute little affair with shiny rafters. Simply ghastly ASB (Alternative Service Book) form of Christening. Even the Lord’s Prayer was tampered with. Nice padre, but v. low. Came back for buns and cake.
Got away sharpish and returned to London, spot of TV and bed.
Well, a day spent entirely in the flat once more, and a day that has seen me finish the novel. Well, I say that, but when is a novel ever finished? I dotted the point final as the French say at round about six-thirty and ever since have been combing through the main body, rewriting. I suspect the length will be round about 96,000 words when we’re done (Stephen, you are such a size queen).
Stopped off to watch the second ep. of Robbie Coltrane’s Cracker, even better than the first, simply spot on. This was followed by News at Ten with all the pictures of Moscow’s new October Revolution. It’ll all drift into dim memory in a fortnight or so, but what a day … tanks blasting holes in the side of the Parliament building, hundreds killed. Could it happen here, we wonder?
Only worrying thing is that I somehow succumbed and opened a bottle of wine at nine-ish, most of which I’ve consumed. Really must get into the habit of passing through a day without any alcohol.
Heigh ho. Up earlyish tomorrow please, Stephen, and perhaps it will all be really, really, really done.
Ner-night.
FINISHED … well perhaps there’s more work to do, but I’ve printed it out, sent a copy to Hugh Laurie and feel that it’s out.
Immediately rang Sue, but she’s at the Frankfurt Book Fair and so I won’t send it to her until tomorrow or Monday even as she won’t be back for the rest of the week. Rang the Lauries though and have cabbed it off to Hugh.
God knows what it’s like. Feel hot and cold about it.
The evening saw a dinner at W. H. Smith’s headquarters in Holbein Place off Sloane Square. Sir Simon Hornby, the chairman had invited me to dinner. Turned up in time, after a couple of lines, still left over from Liam’s kind sale on Thursday. Drove the taxi. Interesting people there: the Roux bros., Hugh Johnson the wine writer, Edward Cazalet, Plum Wodehouse’s grandson and others. Strangely serendipitous going to a Smith’s dinner on the very day I finished the nov. They served Chateau La Tour and Meursault. Highly enjoyable, I got very drunk indeed.
Spent the day sorting out all the correspondence that had built up over the weeks since I’d been concentrating on The Hippo. Then I posted it and went shopping. Had lunch with Lo and Christian at the agency. Then … walked to Mortimer Street and bought an Apple Newton. Wow! What a piece of kit. It’s going to take a little time before it can read my handwriting, but this is the way technology is going, no question.*
In the evening went to Victoria Wood’s concert at the Royal Albert Hall. Met up with Hugh and Ben Elton: Ben’s manager Phil McIntyre is the promoter of VW and arranged a good box for us. Afterwards we trotted off to the Bombay Brasserie (where Ben and I and the Kinnocks dined the other night) and spent a wondrous evening chatting. Hugh is reading Ben’s novel as well as mine at the moment, so I’ve got a fluttery tummy. Especially as I’ve suddenly lost confidence in The Hippo and wonder what on earth I was at writing such a hard-to-define novel.
Hugh came round this morning to start writing on the next series of A Bit of Fry and Laurie: no two week holiday after the intensity of The Hippo and all else. Come to think of it when did I ever have a holiday? We didn’t get much done, but it was so good to have him here. In the afternoon, Griff Rhys Jones rang up to invite me to a poker game at the Groucho.
After Hugh left I wandered to the G and the game happened. You have never seen so much coke in your life, how Griff resists it I do not know. XY was there too and the white powder simply flowed. I played poker pretty well, despite some very bad hands and managed to exploit what little luck I had. The effect of the C and a lot of red wine began to take its toll on me (but on no one else) and towards the end of the evening I (embarrassingly) threw up out of the window onto Dean Street below. Liam had a look and said there was no one there, no policemen, no unfortunate victim of the chunder. Shame, indignation and horror. It reminds me of the time when I was with *insert names of huge rock star, huge acting name, huge producer name here* in the back office of the 24 hours café in Kingly Street and we decided to have a Longest Line Competition. Each of us chopped out a line, mine being the longest. But the point was we had to take it up in one. A vile version of the shot-glasses down-in-one horror. On that occasion I took the line up my nose, it must have been seven foot long, but thin, hoovered it up, and as I got to the end of the table opened my mouth and let out gallons of pure, bright red vomit.
Not quite as bad as that this evening. Everybody very nice about it, but what a humiliation. Struggled home somehow.
Quieter day. Hugh arrived late and we worked a bit. I wrote a sketch of appalling double entendre quality* and then he left. Played with the new Newton, watched a few videos and then went to bed.
Bought some French videos to watch actors for the movie Bachelors Anonymous that I’ve been asked to direct next year. The Lauries invited me to dinner and I popped over. Nigel Short lost his match today, for the first time for weeks. Big shame. Came home, got a bit drunk and wrote up these last few days. Forgive my brevity of late.
Ner-night.
Woke up good and dominically† late. Had a lunch at the Ivy with John Reid, Elton John’s manager, and Arlene Phillips the choreographer. They had asked me some time ago to see if I couldn’t come up with a narrative framework for Elton’s songs, with a view to putting on a West End Show. I wrote the book in February/March this year. Reid and Arlene like it, John R. has just come back from LA where he showed it to Bernie Taupin, Elton’s lyricist who, as I suspected, did not like AT ALL. Accused it of being cliché-ridden, which is true, but inevitable for a West End/Broadway musical, and Elton’s early life of transgressive sex, excess, drugs, rock and roll was frankly cliché-ridden. Still John and Arlene want to go ahead, so I’m to ring Sam Mendes tomorrow, as John likes the idea of his being the director. John, who’ll produce, will see Sam when John gets back from Hong Kong next week. As well as being Elton’s manager, he’s also Billy Connolly’s (and until a month or so ago, Barry Humphries’).
Well, it may or may not take. The story is full of gay stuff, which will at least make it different. It’s unhip and uncool, which is what Taupin dislikes, naturally. Taupin thinks of himself as some kind of hep Village guy from the 60’s. Sort of Neurotica-Beat generation cool dude poet. Still trying to escape the fact that he’s a Lincolnshire farm lad gone middle-aged and millionairoid.*
Came back, watched TV and wrote this. Still haven’t watched any French stuff to see what I think of French actors for Bachelors Anonymous. Hugh round again tomorrow for more F&L writing. Glunk.
I’m a bit behind diary-wise and I’m writing this later. Damned if I can remember what happened today. Wrote with Hugh in the morning and afternoon and then what …?
More writing with Hugh during the day and then popped over to the Groucho to see if I could find some coke to ingest before dinner at L’Escargot with Pnina my second cousin’s wife and Liora, her daughter. They were alright actually, could have been a lot worse. Desperate to know what the rest of the world thought of Israel’s peace moment with the PLO. L’Escargot just recently reopened and Jimmy Lahoud, the new owner, was absolutely thrilled to see me there and stood me cognacs and all the rest of it. Okay evening. Walked home nearly sober.
Strange day. Wrote with Hugh up until about 5.00 when Mother came round to pick up a copy of The Hippo which she wants to read. We gossiped for a while and then I had to change for the evening. Tristan Garel-Jones had invited me to dinner. Arrived first at his Catherine Place address. Highly bonhomous cove, far too civilized to be a convincing Tory. Other guests included the Chancellor of the Exchequer, Kenneth Clarke, the Chief Whip Richard Ryder and assorted sprigs of the nobility, chiefly female (Leonora Lichfield, Jane Grosvenor that kind of thing). Had damn good chat with them all and raised the subject of tomorrow’s debate at the Cambridge Union, viz. the age of consent. Tris was all for a free vote if ever it gets to the House of Commons, Richard Ryder (Ma and Pa’s local MP in Norfolk as it happens) was being very tricksy about it. This horrific shite that the government have been spewing about ‘family values’ recently, since Blackpool in fact, may mean that they are not interested in things like justice and equality at the expense of the blue hair vote.
Left the dinner early because Griff had invited me to a card game at the Groucho. Eventually it took place: rather knackering business, lots of C. Managed to struggle home at two-ish.
Had to be up very early in time for the Today programme on the consent and Cambridge debate issue. Felt like shit, as you can imagine after the excesses of the evening before. Eventually, after a great deal of hanging about, I got to the studio where Anna Ford and Brian Redhead were at their microphones. I was to deliberate with a Conservative MP, David Wilshire, a sponsor of the Clause 28. In fact he said nothing I disagreed with: he made a libertarian point about it not being the law’s business to interfere with what people do in private and left it at that. No debate to speak of at all.
Got back and dozed until Hugh arrived for writing. Spent a lot of the day not writing but thinking about what I was going to say in the evening.
Jon Plowman turned up at 12.30. He and Bob Spiers, I hope, are going to produce and direct respectively the next Fry & Laurie.* We lunched at Langan’s, once we had tracked down poor Bob Spiers who was lost and wandering desperately around St James’s. I think they would be perfect those two and I believe Hugh thinks so too. Highly amiable and capable of delivering much higher production values. Lunch was fine and fun. Mostly gossip, but we agreed that we should proceed.
Sir Ian McKellen (or Serena McKellen as Kim told me he should more properly be addressed) showed up at about half-four, as did Michael Bywater who is on the opposition benches, opposing the motion ‘This House Believes in an Equal Age of Consent for Homosexual and Heterosexual Acts’. Poor old Michael agreed to do the debate without knowing that he was going to oppose. Claims he can’t think of anything to say against the idea.
Drove to Cambridge, traffic in London bad, arrived a little late for the pre-debate drinks and dinner. There was already a hell of a queue leading into the union building.
Dinner was fine: not a culinary excitement, but fine. The President was an elegant girl called Lucy Frazer and to my left was a sporting chappie called something or other, he was from King’s and reading Theology. Why have I forgotten his name already? Also there was Tristram Hunt, who is the son of the Hunts who live plumb spang next door to Hugh and Jo Laurie. Simply a poppet, he was speaking on our behalf.*
Anyway, eventually time to debate: we marched into the chamber, with Newsnight cameras on our heels. HUGE cheer for me. They just wouldn’t stop, it was awfully sweet. Felt like blubbing. The President got things off to some kind of start, and Tristram Hunt opened the debate for us. Four speakers on each side, Tristram, Serena McKellen, Angela Mason (of Stonewall Group) and self proposing, and two undergraduates (including the one whose name I’ve forgotten), Stephen Green of the Conservative Family Campaign and Michael Bywater opposing.
Tristram put the case pretty ably, bless him. Our first undergraduate opposer was a cheery Scottish conservative, classic stout gingery politico. He was an indication of things to come, for it was clear that he did not believe in the position he had to take up at all. Serena then spoke, quite wonderfully, very moving indeed, ending up with a recitation from Housman’s poem about the laws of God and man. Then the student whose name I can’t remember: he was so disrespectful to the idea of the motion that Stephen Green got up and walked out! ‘I’ll come back when he’s finished’ he said. Highly entertaining.
Angela Mason next, she’s the very extraordinary lesbotic campaigner who runs Stonewall. Used to be a member of the Angry Brigade, narrowly escaped conviction at some bombing trial. Oo-er. She was, as you would expect, dull and uninspired as a debater.
Then Stephen Green. What a ghastly and unfortunate specimen. Simply HOPELESS performance. Witless, graceless and useless. Didn’t even try and present his real point of view, which is that he abominates anything to do with whoopsidom. Instead he tried to make some feeble, pettyfogging legal point about the age of consent which made no sense at all. He presented his book The Sexual Dead End some magisterial work, we are given to believe, outlining the dreadfulness of being a bottomite. Poor man. Sat down to, at the most, polite splatters of applause.
Then it was time for the floor debate. Oh yes, Stephen as usual, has to wait and wait and wait before he can speak. Undergraduates on this side and that spoke. Finally it was my turn. I had jotted a few things down on the back of an envelope as it were during the debate, but otherwise entirely busked, which is definitely the best way of doing things I think. Told them all about Cambridge and what kind of a place they were attending, the history of its alumni and what they stood for: contrasted this with the adulterers, closet cases and corrupt canters who get up at Tory Party Conferences and dare presume to talk about ‘family values’.
The long and the short of it was that I got a standing ovation, which made me all trembly. They just wouldn’t stop applauding me and cheering and all the rest. Very exciting. Michael Bywater spoke next and said he opposed the motion because he believed that the age of consent should not be equal: heterosexual love was far too complex and difficult a thing to allow 16 year olds to engage in it. Homosexual love was fine: it was a matter for equals and those who know each other and should happily be set at 16. He ended by saying ‘I’m sitting with the faggots’ … crossed the bench and sat with us.
Well, as you can imagine, we carried the day. 693 votes to 30. Of the 30 it was mostly those who found the queue into the Aye door too long and voted by filing through the No. Was kept for at least an hour signing autographs in a great crush of undergraduacy. For the large part not the most bouncily charming bunch: ‘Rory’, ‘Nicole’, ‘John’ would be shouted at me as an order paper was put under my nose to be signed. Very few pleases or thank yous. One can overlook a lot by imagining that they were shy or nervous, but generally speaking a disappointing set. There is no point in being shiny, attractive, intelligent and young unless you beam it out, whatever your gender, to those older than you.
Eventually managed to get through to the room where drinks were supposed to be served. Bar had closed by that time, natch. No bad thing, since I was driving home. This we did once Serena, Michael and a couple of others could be prised away. I got home and to bed by about two-thirty. Long day. Little sleep lately.
Woke up early enough to do a Voice Over at 9.00 … really that’s so many late nights now, I’m beginning to think all the work of Grayshott is being undone. Pretty feeble ads for Croft sherry. Got back in time for Hugh to come round and we stuck at it all day. Anthony Goff (my lit. agent) rang to say that he really loved The Hippo, which was a huge relief. I do honestly think he meant it.
Robin Hardy came round at 5.30 and we chewed the fat on the subj. of Bachelors Anonymous. I told him that Thierry Lhermitte was my certain favourite for the lead. He seemed to think this was a good idea and promised to try and see if he could book him. At 7.00 I biffed to the Groucho to see if I could spot a dealer of any kind. BW introduced me to a chap called Jethro who sold me a gram. Then I loped off to Hugh’s and Jo’s for dinner. Alastair and Kim were there and we had a jolly dinner before I ripped off home again, by way of the Grouch. I am back to my bad old ways with a vengeance.
Signing tour. Up early for a car to Euston station, where I met Rebecca Salt of Mandarin books and we got on the train for Chester. Late, unfortunately, trouble at Watford. This meant we were late for Chester and only just arrived in time for my ‘performance’. This involved a reading and chat on stage at the Gateway theatre. Read the Sherlock Holmes story from Paperweight* and then took questions. Very good fun, really: seemed to go well. Then we grabbed a late lunch and signed some stock in a couple of bookshops in the Chester ‘Rows’. Beautiful city, quite entrancing. Car from Chester to Liverpool where we signed again and leapt on a train for London. Did some fatuous IQ test for Esquire magazine on the way.
Went straight to the Groucho and hung around for a while. Jethro showed up and I bought 2 grams. Finally fell into bed in some kind of a state at 3.00.
Lunch with Ferdy Fairfax† in Clapham. Charles Sturridge and Phoebe* showed up, Robert Fox† those sort of people. Rather fine affair, hearty Sunday lunch food, lots of children, very bright sunny autumn day, splendid.
Home at 6.00 watched telly and went to bed sober and early.
Press launch of Stalag Luft, screening and photo-call and all that. Took place at the Imperial War Museum. Watched it. Think it’s alright. Hard to tell. It’s a good story, so it should work well. I was fat, naturally. Nick Lyndhurst and I had to fend questions from the press. They were all dead keen to know about the Elton John musical, much to the distress of the poor popsy from the press office. Tore myself away at one thirty, just in time to get home before Hugh showed up at 2.00 for writing.
Met Chris Pye of Anglia and Anthony Horowitz, the writer, for drinks and a chat about a new detective series they want me to do. At the Groucho, naturally. Who was there but David Reynolds, the producer of Stalag Luft and some colleagues? They had been there since the screening finished. TV people, crumbs. Meeting went okay, then John Sessions showed up with some actress who plays a nurse in Casualty.
Home a bit pissed and fell into bed. What a week.
Up and just about capable when Hugh came round. Jo (sister) popped over from Huntingdon to lunch with me and James Penny, my ‘personal banker’. They use some phrase like ‘wealth management’ that makes me so embarrassed I could scream. We lunched there. Dear, dear. Have you really come to this, Stephen? All very flattering. You are ushered in by Jeeves-dressed Messengers, all striped trousers and tail-coats. There was Bruce, the manager of the Langham Street branch where I had banked before, and there was James Penny, who looks about 10, but knows his financial onions and his commercial shallots.
Downstairs in one of the dining rooms we lunched and supped burgundy while Penny told me that my money was useless as cash and that I really should do things with it. Gilts, he felt. I have always been dodgy about all this. If I earn the money I don’t see why I then have to make money out of money. But you know what it’s like, they look at you as if you’re mad. So I suppose I’ll sink something into shares, something into gilts. The good thing is that I can afford to stop working and travel the world for a couple of years or whatever, if I felt like it, without worrying about taxes for the previous years.
The private bank is open from 8.00–8.00 and can make any ‘arrangements’. If I want cash they bring it to me on a salver …
Came back to write with Hugh. He’s written a couple of fabulous songs lately. He left and I toddled to the Groucho for a meeting with Alex Hippisley-Cox (sic) a girl who will be doing the publicity for The Hippo. She likes the book, which is great. People at Hutchinson who’ve read it seem to think it’s better than The Liar, which is wonderful – if they’re right. Stayed on upstairs to watch Norwich beat Bayern Munich 2-1 … unbelievable. Wonderful stuff. A goal from Jeremy Goss that will live long in legend and song. Spike Denton, the Radio London film critic was there, and Rory McGrath and Charles Fontaine the owner chef of the Quality Chop House. Spotted Jethro and nipped off to do some rather decent coke I’m sorry to say. This is going to have to stop soon. Home at 2.00.
Up reasonably early to go to Doug Hayward, the tailor, for another fitting. The blue whistle and flute is emerging. Hugh was round a bit late, looking at new cars and tiles for my kitchen with his wife Jo who’s designing it, bless her from crown to toe.
Wrote during the day as usual, then stayed in till 10.00. Watched a video of Bill Humble’s Royal Celebration, which was directed by Ferdy Fairfax. Very good performance from Rupert Graves. Watched a vid. of Monday’s episode of Cracker, Robbie really is giving the performance of his life. Fabulous.
At 10.00 off to the Groucho, I’d agreed to play Perudo with Keith Allen for some programme he’s making in which he’s being followed around London for a day. Silly but fun. The cameras whizzed about us: God knows what they saw.
Voice Over at 9.30. With John Gordon Sinclair. He seems in fine shape. More writing with Hugh all morning and then at 7.00 I arrived at the Tallow Chandlers’ Hall for a Bowyer’s Dinner, guest of old John Perkins. Most extraordinary evening. Never been at a Livery Dinner before. A lot of City figures in ermine and gowns. Fairly clear that they would never otherwise have been able to earn the right to such accoutrements, for these were bears, so far as I could see, of very little brain. A lot of pompous people in spectacles for the most part. Simply dreadful. But Perkins is such a nice man. There was the whole business of the Loving Cup and so forth, and a load of exceptionally bad oratory.
Perkins had to be back in Norfolk, so we left round about tennish and I got dropped at the Groucho for a card game. Played poker with Griff and Rory and others for about three hours and ingested rather a lot of the old Bolivian marching powder.
Writing in the morning and afternoon. Quick pop off to the Grouch for supper. Had a long chat with Bob Mortimer of Reeves and Mortimer fame. Turns out they’ve got a signing gig tomorrow as well, also to Leeds, but at a different time. Bumped into Z, who is worried that his C habit has been going on for too long. Takes it during the day. Bad idea. Got home reasonably early a little chastened by the thought of Z, but cheered too, to think that I wasn’t in such a parlous state as he was.
Up earlyish for King’s X station. Train to Leeds, signing. Car to Sheffield, signing. Car to Nottingham, signing. The latter had such a big queue that it was as well that it hadn’t been the first or I would have been late for all the others. Lots of people, all very friendly. Think Paperweight in paperback is doing really well, which is so heartening. Home by half past nine. Watched a bit of telly, fell into bed sober and knackered after a heavy week.
Up at 11.00, which was really 12.00 because the clocks went back today. Spent the day preparing for the Palladium gig. This is a benefit for the Stonewall Group, part of the age of consent campaign which the Cambridge Union had been about as well.
Got to the Palladium round about half past six. Ian McKellen was organizing the affair and the usual suspects turned up, Jo Brand, Julian Clary, Pet Shop Boys and so forth. I had invited Christian Hodell to come along and mix with the merry throng. He seemed to enjoy himself mightily.
At the end of the show, walking to the party, I discovered my cab had gone from the street where it had been parked. Christ I hope it was towed away, not stolen. We strolled on Christian and I to the Edge in Soho Square. I took about an hour of it before the press of people finally wore me out and I walked home and tumbled into bed after a couple more lines and some diet coke. What an arse I am.*
Before I go any further, I must register Gary Wilkinson’s 71 clearance to beat Steve James to a quarter final place in the Skoda Classic. I know this looks naff, but it was one of the great sporting contests. You, dear reader, will wonder why on earth I am going on about such a strange thing as snooker, but as the old saying has it, ‘you had to be there’. Four incredible hard final reds and an on-their-spot-clearance to follow. I was happy to witness such a moment.
Work with Hugh then lunch with Max Hastings at Wilton’s. Max arrived late, and at the neighbouring table while waiting I bumped into Don Black* who was meeting John Barry, to whom I was introduced. Barry happens to be something of a hero, so I was v. excited to meet him. He turns out to be a very down-the-line Yorkshireman, weirdly thin fingers and hands, and very charming. Lots of gossip about Saltzman and Broccoli from the Bond days.
Max arrived and told me that if I demanded 200,000 a year he would happily pay me to provide a column. This is a strange position to be in. I could say ‘yes’ and 200 grand would be mine. We nattered about the Tories and he said that Major, whom he fairly regularly sees, is a paranoid figure who believes his current unpopularity is entirely down to a conspiracy of a) Thatcherite mavericks and renegades and b) media enemies. Even if Major is right this attitude should be hidden. A real leader would surely kick arse and establish himself? We also chatted about Lamont’s bitterness over his sacking. When it was time to leave the restaurant we discovered that Lamont was sitting at the neighbouring booth. Whoops! Don’t think he was listening. Max turns out to be genuinely anti-Murdoch. He thinks him a completely evil and appalling man. Why isn’t this made more plain in the pages of the Telegraph? Murdoch has announced his intention to destroy the Telegraph within the next five years.
Got back to the flat at 2.40 and wrote some more stuff, then Hugh left. Slept for an hour before driving off to Fulham for dinner with Matthew Rice and Emma Bridgewater, his wife. Chap called Jonathan Cavendish was my neighbour at table, he produced Into the West and The Severed Bride and so forth. Turns out he’s doing an Oscar Wilde movie with Alfred Molina. Bollocks. Home in time to watch video Cracker and Film ’93. Barry Norman wonderfully vituperative about Dirty Weekend, which is clearly drivel like every Winner movie. Time for bed.
Voice Over in the morning, just redoing the old Croft LBV port thing. Hugh and I worked again during the day and then at 8.00 I toddled over to the House of Commons to dine with an MP.
This man had written to me last month telling me how much he loved The Liar and inviting me to dine with him. Intrigued I accepted. But …
If this is the quality of MP that the Tory party is relying on then I am happy to say that they are not long for this world. Absurd looking man with the oddest manner you’ve ever seen. Sounds very ungracious after I have eaten his bread, but truly … Very right wing in a thoughtless, ‘I made it by the sweat of my brow’ kind of way. Anyway, went and had a line in the loo.*
Spent the morning being painted again by Maggi H. Not too clever at 8.30, but I warmed up and started to enjoy it. She finished off by doing two drawings of me asleep, which was wonderful! She is the most extraordinary woman. Her company is more stimulating than cocaine, but her gruffness of manner and hard glare are apt to frighten off those who don’t know that she has a heart of marshmallow. She would probably retch at me saying that. Being painted by a true artist is an extraordinary experience. She’s so athletic: all the time I heard the snap of breaking charcoal or the sweep of it on cartridge paper and the stamp of her feet constantly (and unconsciously it seems) readjusting her stance as, like an athlete or a cheetah, her body moved while her eyes and head kept deadly still.
Home via the Groucho, where I was supposed to meet Jethro. Unfortunately he was late, so I left without him or any C. Back at the flat Jo and Charlie were there, Charlie typed out a message for me on the computer and was generally a poppet. He’s five now. Weird to think that unless I top myself, OD or get run over by a bus, I’ll live to see him make 25.*
Tried to sketch up† after they went, not easy. Went off to the Groucho again to meet Jethro … missed him again as I had to get back in time to meet Anthony and Sue F. for a dinner party to celebrate the delivery of The Hippo, which they really seem to like. I felt a bit odd, wine and ciggies tasted strange in the mouth.
They were interested in the planning and structure of the novel and I told them that I had been writing this diary through some of it and that it would show how late certain key ideas came to me … Simon’s role for instance and lots else besides. They genuinely didn’t believe me. ‘It must have all been in your head …’ Perhaps it was, but I was buggered if I could get it out, as a glance through September will show.
Bed at half past one. Too many armagnacs.
Up feeling v. queer. Simply not well at all. Fluey and peculiar. Lurched over to Gresse Street for a VO. Managed it somehow and then staggered back to receive Hugh for a day’s work. Not very capable for most of the day, but I managed to bang down a couple of sketches: slept for two hours on the sofa round about mid-day. That helped a little I suppose.
At six thirty I trotted over to the Paris theatre (just two minutes walk, God bless where I live) for the News Quiz. Me and Alan Coren v. Richard Ingrams and Peter Cook. Alan and I won convincingly, the biggest win of the series, 20 points to 6. Quite a lark really, I managed to say the word clitoris a number of times, which is always pleasing. Then struggled over to the Groucho to see if some poker and coke wouldn’t help push me out of my flu. Funnily enough it did. Won convincingly and we broke up at 12.30-ish, highly civilized. Met a fellow called, intriguingly and very Soho 50sly Nick the Basque. Home and asleep by 1.00.
Felt very bouncy and much improved by the time Hugh came round at 10.30. Worked and fiddled at sketches and then, at 6.00 Robin Hardy came round to go through the script of Bachelors Anonymous, the idea being to see if there was any chance of working out a rough and ready schedule. How many days shooting in France, how many in studio, how many on location, that kind of thing. Pleasant enough time chatting it through until 9.00. Then I bunged myself over to 2 Brydges Place for a dinner with Ian Brown,* Alfredo† and Cosmo Fry. Turned out that on Booker night Roddy Doyle and party had come over after the award to continue their celebrations. Then who turned up but Salman Rushdie? On his own. Highly risky you’d’ve thought.*
Pleasant dinner, followed by two rounds of Perudo. Then, bother it, it was 2.00 suddenly. And I have to be up at the crack tomorrow to take a train to Bath. Poo.
Struggled out of bed at 7.30 after three hours sleep, into a car driven by some maniac who wanted to tell me about his idea for a novel, ‘I asked if I could be given this job specially …’ I dare say I’ll hear from him again some time.
Was being towed around by a girl called Alex Lankester, who seemed very sweet; the usual pretty leggy thing that they employ for these gigs. That sounds very sexist but it can’t be a coincidence, surely? We arrived in Bristol and were met by a charming Reed Publishers rep called Andrew Whitaker. Snatched a cup of coffee in the Bristol Waterstone’s and went out to meet the queue. A lot of signing, but very friendly. The manager said it was a record attendance, most books sold in such a session ever.* Gratifying. Then we went off to another Waterstone’s in Bristol where I was interviewed by a TV crew and signed some stock.
Then we drove off to Bath where the queue was astronomical, really wore my hand out. Two very strange psycho-fans turned up. Trembling, barely able to speak, one of them said ‘oh my God, I’m coming, I’m coming.’ Whoops. Finally got through it all, biffed off to W. H. Smith’s to sign some stock and then back to London.
Arrived at 7.00 in time to snadge over to 2 Brydges Place again for Kim’s birthday party. Highly agreeable. Chatted to Shawn Slovo† a lot and to Jo Laurie and Kim and lots of other poppets. Greg was on excellent form and Hugh left at one point to pick up his nephew Hugh Lassen from the airport and bring him back on his motorbike. Rather snazzy for a 17 year old, I should imagine, being whisked through town on the pillion of a Triumph by your famous uncle. Left at 1.00-ish and tumbled tired but stupid, into bed.
The American Peter’s Friends poster.
Peter’s Friends publicity shot. From left: Emma, self, Hugh, Rita, Alphonsia – it’s clear I’m thinking about the Time Out critic.
Full cast of Peter’s Friends, 1992. From left: Rita Rudner, Ken Branagh, Alex Lowe, Emma Thompson, self, Alphonsia Emmanuel, Imelda Staunton, Tony Slattery, Hugh, Phyllida Law.
Publicity still for Hysteria, 1992. I have no words.
Self.
Labour Party fundraising gala. Next to Dickie Attenborough and Melvyn Bragg.
Sir Paul Fox, the Prince of Wales, self, Alyce Faye Cleese: premiere of The Man Without a Face.
With Alyce Faye Cleese at The Man Without a Face premiere.
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 …
It was all going to fizzle out into a placido domingo* … got up very late, shopped a little, got the papers and the New Avenger’s tapes and snuggled in for the day.
Then Kim rang to remind me that I had left a bag behind at Brydges Place. He and Al would pop round some time to deliver it to me. Fair enough. Then of course, it gets later and later in the afternoon, so Kim and Al suggest we meet at Joe Allen’s for the handing over of the bag.
No sooner sat down at Joe’s than the waiter brings me an enormous Armagnac, courtesy of a rather cute young boy sitting elsewhere. Kim and Al very amused. We chat, we chew the fat, we nibble dinner and time passes. The little chap comes over to our table. About eighteen I suppose and very sweet.
‘I’m sorry to be gauche,’ he says … pronouncing it ‘gorsh’ rather divinely. We’ve all done that with words we’ve only seen written down: mı¯sl’d and ímpious for example instead of misléd and impı¯ous. He hands me a note and trots out. The note gives his name; he admires my writings and stance on the age of consent and gives a telephone number. Do call. Oh my.
Alastair drove me home and I invited them in for a drink. Alastair didn’t want to but Kim did so we cheerfully bade him farewell and stayed up for hours and hours. We can talk forever, which is so happy-making.
And so the month ends.
Up in time for a Voice Over. Sanatogen Multivitamins ‘Do you feel all right?’ Good bloody question. Struggled back in time for work with Hugh only to discover that the Spectator needed my copy for the diary today. Had completely forgotten the whole damned thing. Agreed months ago during a Spectator lunch that I would do the Diary column for a couple of weeks. Therefore spent most of the day writing that instead of a sketch. I’m a bad bunny. Got it done anyway. Think it’s OK.
Dreadful news broke about River Phoenix dying. Mortifying. So adored him. I remember changing a line in Peter’s Friends to make a mention of him. When Emma’s character in the movie tries to seduce me I tell her that I’m sort of bisexual but that I don’t do anything with anyone at the moment, but if I did, she would be ‘right there at the top of my wish-list along with Michelle Pfeiffer and River Phoenix’. Always got a huge laugh. Such a sweet boy. Looks as if his death might be drug-related, which is bizarre because I always thought he was a terribly straight sort of chap, all environmental concern and poppety prudishness. Oh cripes. I remember choosing him as a pin-up for the Oldie. ‘Yum yum’ I had written … And there on the wall is a photograph of him, just above the desk where Hugh works when we’re sketch writing. I’m looking at him now, so earnestly beautiful. Running on Empty my favourite film of his. I love all Sidney Lumet’s work and he brought out the absolute best in the Phoenix who will never rise from the ashes. Oh dear, I’m actually a bit damp eyed. Bit like when Bobby Moore died earlier this year.
In the evening hastened to the Garrick for a dinner given by Lord Alexander, the chairman of the Nat West Bank. This had been arranged courtesy of Charles Powell. Arrived in good time to be greeted by Lord A, Bob as he is known to his chums. Thoroughly charming fellow: his wife Marie I had sat next to at Charles and Carla’s wedding, or rather the wedding of their son Hugh. She’s a lawyer with a lovely soft Irish voice and nice soft views to go with them. Then Dennis Thatcher turned up and a strange woman called Bishoff, very nice, but oddly shy or neurotic or something.
Dennis, I have to confess I took to enormously. Right wing, natch, but very wonderful. Much better read than I had ever imagined. Loves history, knows a great deal about it too and was, I think, pleased to talk to someone of my age who wasn’t pig ignorant. Went so far as to describe me as a ‘brilliant conversationalist’. Lumme.
Home reasonably early. Few lines, bed.
Up early and round to the Lauries’. We are to drive off and inspect the kitchen of my house in Norfolk. Jo has been superintendent in charge of a massive rebuilding project, of a kind that would make a Pharaoh think twice.
Hugh accompanies and we drive through a grey day to West Bilney. Amazing job has been done so far, I just didn’t recognize anything. The carpentry, the roof lowering, the floor. Incredible. Simply incredible.
Spent a few hours there chatting to Brendan the builder. The architect Nigel Harding hasn’t made provision for facilities for rubbish. Stupid little details, but fantastically important. I compile what I’m told is a ‘snagging list’. Cannot believe Jo L’s skill, commitment and kindness in giving me all this time and talent. Wound our way back, via A.J.’s family restaurant and an enormous burger.
Back at the flat waited for Sam Mendes to come round and talk about the Elton John musical. He likes the script but wouldn’t want to work on anything unless it was much more interesting and dangerous and sharp. Quite right and makes me feel a prune for being involved in the thing as it stands. He’ll talk to John Reid. If I had a couple of months to make it far more original then he would have loved to have done it. The swine is absolutely right. Not a swine of course. Thoroughly good man. Still only 28 and one of our best directors. Handsome too and brilliant at cricket. Tchah! Some people.
Went with him to the Groucho and we bumped into Griff there. Griff and I proposed and seconded him for the Grouch and we wandered in for sustenance. Old Jim Moir was there (aka Vic Reeves) and he joined us for merriment. Bought a couple of grams from Jethro and wandered home in rather a wired condition to watch Stalag Luft as it aired. Then bedness and blankness.
Hugh called in early this morning to report sick: or rather Jo did on his behalf. Flu, sinus, that kind of nonsense. This has left me with the day to myself. A chance to ‘clear my desk’ of plenty of correspondence and other dribble. A sketch didn’t come though, so I biked off a mock sketch to Hugh detailing how difficult it is to write a sketch.
A car came at sevenish to take me to Alyce Faye Cleese’s. We’re off together to The Canteen, the Marco Pierre White restaurant, as guests of Michael and Shakira Caine. Arrive in time for a glass of wine with A F. Cleese himself is ‘tired’ as always and not up for fun and larks … hence my role as walker to A F.
We arrive at Chelsea Harbour and I watch glued at the bar as Norwich keep Bayern M. to a 1-1 draw and go through 3-2 on aggregate. Yippee. Michael and Shakira join us … Michael grew up in North Runcton, near King’s Lynn so he harbours a secret love of Norwich City. Then David and Carina Frost turn up and we watch until the match is over. David was a fine footballer as a youth and trialled for Norwich, so he supports them too. Good dinner. I sat between Carina and Shakira. The latter is absolutely delightful, and almost impossibly beautiful. Carina is just as delightful in a quite splendidly batty way. Terribly enthusiastic about all her friends. Get quietly sozzled. Just one line in the bog, otherwise full behaviour. Tomasz Starzewski* was at another table and full of beans. Told him to be sure and turn up to the Perudo evening. Home at one-ish and straight to bed.
Up fit and ready for the day thanks to the previous night’s moderation. Jo phoned in to say that Hugh would be staying in bed most of the morning and joining me for an afternoon’s Alliance and Leicester VO.
So I had to face Chris and Jeff from the Labour Party on my own. H. and I have agreed to do a Party Political broadcast for Walworth Road.† Jeff Stark is the director. We’re doing it because it’s actually rather a fun script. Jeff wants us to play all the parts in it, but I think it’s best if we don’t. For a start it’ll be less work on the day and there is also the extra element of comedy to be considered that some good and unexpected luvvies will be able to add.
Brimped off for the VO. Hugh looking a bit pale and yucky, a bit drawn and wobbly. All went okay and I returned to the flat to climb into my best bib and tucker. Zimmed round to Emma’s house. I am her date for the preview of Remains of the Day which also opens the London Film Festival. Em being made up by some private m/u artist, so I drink and chat to her. She then climbs into the most stunning top I’ve ever seen. Its quality is somewhat shat on by the news that it is Armani and costs £6,000. Not even a dress, for the lord’s sake. Em hasn’t bought it, you understand, they’ve lent it to her. This is what happens when you win an Oscar. Into the limo and ho for the Odeon Leicester Square. Huge crowds as always, somewhat amused to see me instead of Ken dismounting. Em, like Princess Di, leaps for the crash barriers and chats to the waiting throng. I stand on one leg looking like an arse until she joins me. Bit of posing for the paps, and then inside. Em has to wait downstairs because she’ll be appearing on stage for the opening speeches and so on. I go up and find myself next to Jenny Hopkins, wife of Tony (also starring in the movie) and Greta Scacchi. Film highly enjoyable, perhaps a leeetle too long, but some stunning performances from Em and Tony. Then we trot off to the Café Royal for the party. Manage to get a line in the loo before joining the table where Kim and Shawn Slovo are already there. Slovo hated it, natch and Kim was less than thrilled I think. Hugh Grant and his ravishing lady are present. I quiz him on Four Weddings and a Funeral which he has just made. He loathed doing it, thinks he’s crap in it and wanted to punch Mike Newell most of the time. Bet he’s brilliant though. Also asked him about the rumour that Madonna wanted to shag him. Turns out it’s true. James Fox also present: what an absolute sweetie. Adorable chap. Very good in the film too, in that wonderful mournful weak way he has.
Sir Dickie (Lord Dickie, I beg his pardon) came up and took both my arms and gazed lovingly into my eyes in that way he has and told me I must see Shadowlands … usual suspects also present included Kenith Trodd,* Ben Kingsley and assorted baggages. Walked home pissed but reasonably cheerful round about the two o’clock mark.
Voice Over at 10.00 for Biactol, followed by writing with Hugh all day until biffing off to the Garrick for a drink with Robin Bailey.† He had rung me up with some story about a taxi driver whose first wife had been a waitress at the Chelsea Arts Club: a painting of her hung in the bar. Would I as a member take Robin to see if it was there? I said yes, let’s dine there. He suggested meeting first at the Garrick for a snort.* He turned up over an hour late. I think he’s gone a bit potty. Incapable of anything other than weird conversation, acting out pretend bitterness at his career. Bit sad. We dribbled off to the Chelsea Arts and awaited Johnny Sessions who was to join us. He arrived, thank God and injected some sanity and wit into the proceedings. Drunken dinner which I hated: had forgotten what a ridiculous place the C.A.C. is. Good initials. Home late.
Robin Hardy came round at 10.30 and we worked for hours on the script of Bachelors Anonymous. Ended up feeling more cheerful about it than I had for weeks. Managed to persuade him to cut a number of dodgy scenes and take a more serious view of the love story. Then shopped a bit at Fortnum’s and spent the evening in front of the telly. Mm. Sober and sweet at bed-time.
Up at 11.15 just in time to climb into a suit for Sir Charles and Lady Powell to pop round and pick me up. We were all going to a lunch at Josephine (née Hart)† and Maurice Saatchi’s house in Sussex. Very grand. The world and his wife were there. Nicholas Soames, bless him, and his intended, Serena, Melvyn Bragg, Simon Callow and his friend Christopher,* Sir Norman Fowler, Michael Howard the Home Sec., John and Jane Birt, Alan Yentob, Christopher Bland,† Paul Johnson, Simon Jenkins, Gayle Hunnicutt, Alastair Goodlad, Grey Gowrie, Pamela Harlech and others too splendid to mention. Wine and chat flowed, all rather good fun. Signed a copy of Paperweight for the Saatchi child, Edmund, who is eight and very bright clearly. Josephine told me she had gone into his room last night and found him reading P’weight. He asked ‘Mummy, what does “biopsy” mean?’ Sweet.
Rode back with the Powells again and home in time for telly and bed. Without coke again. That’s two nights in a row. It’s becoming a habit.
Hugh couldn’t come round today: meetings for his advert next week. I messed around doing correspondence and sorting things out generally. Voice Over in the morning, followed by a researcher popping round for the Clive Anderson I’m doing on Thursday. While chatting to her Alyce Faye rang up and asked me whether I would like her tickets for The Meistersingers currently wowing them at the ROH. I squeaked Yes! with great excitement, said to be a great production. Immediately rang up Johnny Sessions to see if he could come. Starts at 5.00 of course. He replied with equal alacrity and I spent the rest of the day in a fever waiting for the tickets to be biked round. Bathed and climbed into a suit and Johnny appeared at 4.00. We cabbed in to the Garden and ordered our first interval drinks. Sir Kenneth Bloomfield (Bromfield?) was there: a governor of the BBC, Ulster Civil Servant. I’d met him at Birt evenings, proms that kind of thing. Simon Hornby* also present.
Then the music drama itself. An absolutely knock-out production by Graham Vick, with Bernard Haitink on unbelievable form in the pit. Just sensational. Thomas Allen a fabulous Beckmesser, possibly the best acting performance in London at the moment, never mind the singing. And John Tomlinson a sensationally dignified and wonderfully voiced Sachs. Oh, I can’t tell you Daisy dear, the best evening I’ve had in years and years. One forgets just what a great man Wagner was. This was Art, this was total magical real uncompromising Art. Genius is, I’m afraid, the only word. Unparalleled genius.
We stumbled out into the light and headed for Orso for our dinner. Ned Sherrin was there, natch, chatted to him awhile and chewed the fat. I tried to explain to Hegel to Johnny: he said it was fascinating but that he knew he would forget every detail of it the moment I had stopped speaking. I know what he means. That’s why I love talking and teaching: the act of reproducing ideas out loud reinforces them in the head. If, every time you read a complex book or idea, you had to explain it to someone else, you’d never forget it.
We shogged back to my place a little drunk and stayed up for hours. Johnny stayed in the spare room and I fell into bed, unable to sleep till way past four.
Woke Johnny at 8.15 and fell back to slumber. Dimly remember J. bidding me farewell. Jo forwarded me a letter to tell me that a set had become available in Albany. Then other Jo, Jo Laurie, rang to say that I had to go round a bed shop in Chelsea with her to choose 5 new beds for West Bilney. She turned up in a cab with Hugh. Hugh went in to work and I zipped off with Jo.
In an hour I spent £11,750 odd quid on some beautiful beds and six hundred quid on material to upholster one of them. Stunning stuff though.
Then back, through terrible traffic (State visit of TM the King and Queen of Malaysia or somesuch) to the flat. Hugh stayed for a while and then went off to interview a headmaster for the boys’ prep school. I rang the secretary of the Albany trustees and arranged to see it this afternoon. Set up a meeting too with Jethro at the Grouch at 5.00.
Messed about, then the copy-edited proofs of The Hippo arrived and I went through them. Off to the Albany next. I think the set has great potential. I’d need to redecorate quite substantially. Definitely an exciting prospect. No children, no dogs, no noise, no publicity are their rules.
Then to the Groucho for an hour or so: scored a couple of grams off Jethro and popped upstairs for a wine-tasting, which was charming. Back home to meet one Sir Peter Ratcliffe, who is in charge of the charity for which I’m speaking at the premiere of The Man Without a Face next week. He told me all the stuff about the evening and when I was to make my address. ‘The Prince of Wales is delighted that you are speaking …’ all that sort of thing. I’m going to have to be rather good I fear.
Then to the Groucho again, bit more wine-tasting and down Old Compton Street to the Ivy, where I was due to have dinner with Tomasz Starzewski. There was a sign on his doorbell which said ‘9.10 Stephen … gone to the Ivy.’ This rather confused me as my watch assured me that it was only 8.30.
Toddled to the Ivy, no sign of the man. Then he turned up. The sign was left over from yesterday … doh! He thought he had arranged to see me on Monday … in fact it was definitely Tuesday. Anyway, no harm done. Charming evening, all well. He lent me The Witkiewicz Reader. Back home by one ish. Read in bed.
Somehow an incredibly busy day on the phone. Sorting out the Perudo evening on the 17th, who’s to be on my table, that kind of thing. Also, I have taken the more or less momentous decision to go for the Albany set that I saw yesterday. A lot of work needed: forward Jo Laurie and her team, but it could be something, I think.
Rang around the place trying to get references for the Albany Trustees. Banker plus two personal. Tried to get hold of Charles Powell, but he’s all over the place, obviously. Managed to get John Birt’s secretary: she said he’d ring back … which he did pretty quickly. Frankly, whatever else they say about him, he’s always been an absolute poppy to me. Spoke to Carla and she invited me to a black tie dinner she’s holding in honour of Colin Powell, the US Chief of Staff during the Gulf War. She’s a firm friend and is inviting just about everyone in the world, so I’m rather honoured. What a couple.
She told me an extraordinary thing. Paul Johnson, whom I’ve only met twice (and on both occasions he has been rather scowly), and Carla were in their Catholic church this morning, Carla to pray for Nicky her son, who’s having a brain scan (‘too much bonking, darling. I know it. He’s my beautiful son, but he does bonk too many girls.’) and Paul because he’s always in there apparently. Paul said that his wife Marigold, who was with him at the Saatchi’s lunch on Sunday, is a great fan of mine and would love to get to know me better. Paul, on the other hand, when Carla told him that she liked me too, growled ‘But he’s a socialist, isn’t he?’ To which Carla promptly replied, ‘but so were you darling, when you were his age!’ Paul then agreed and said that they should pray for my deliverance from socialism. So. Carla and Paul Johnson get down in a Catholic church in London and pray for me to be converted to Conservatism. Most peculiar.
Carla was howling with laughter as she told me: well, she’s Italian and has a splendid attitude to everything. Dear me, however.
Anyway, she thought Charles would be delighted to write a reference for me. He’s a busy man however, so I might get a back up reference from Max Hastings.
Managed to write a small sketch: Hugh was away all day on a recce for his commercial. Then I turned to the copy-edited version of The Hippo. This has to be in today in order to get the thing fully done in time for proof copies to be out in December. The copy editor (Hugo de Klee … splendid name) has done an excellent job I think. Somewhat pernickity about the shooting scene, but very attentive. So I spent three or four hours going through that and reminding myself of it.
Six o’clock and off to the Savoy to meet Kim before the first night of Eurovision.* We sat and supped Old Fashioneds, said ‘hi’ to Neil Tennant and Julian Lloyd-Webber and others who were there then toddled to the theatre. Jo in attendance, waiting for Hugh, whom she hadn’t seen all day. He fetched up at last, having forgotten all about it and only realized when he had got home and found Melissa their nanny baby-sitting.
The show was about the campest thing you could ever imagine. In fact, not very good. Made tolerable only by one astonishing performance from an actor called Julian Dreyfus.* One to watch without question. The whole ‘drama’ was incredibly amateurish and lumpen in structure. Some excellent farce scenes involving, of all things, the ghosts of Hadrian and Antinoüs, but somehow it was all a bit stupid. It won’t appeal that much to gay audiences because they will have seen it all before at Madame Jo Jo’s and a million nightclubs and gay theatre happenings up and down the country. The person in our party who enjoyed it most, as it happens, was Jo Laurie. She didn’t like it when it started going on about love in the second act, however.
The Ivy afterwards for dinz. I coked up in the loo, which I have no doubt Hugh and Jo noticed. Oh dear I am an arse. I expect there’ll be what I believe is called an ‘intervention’ soon. I keep picturing it. All my friends bearing down on me and me denying everything until my pockets are emptied. Oh the shame. Lots of wine and coffee and home by quarter to one. Then stupidly sat and gazed at the TV while doing the crossword and chopping more lines. Bed by half past two. Stupid. Stupid, stupid, stupid.
Poppy day, seventy fifth anniversary thereof. A day for sitting at home and working. Bad news popped in. The legal secretary of TVS who own the lease on the set in Albany rang up to say that there was a first-comer who has now definitely expressed an interest and she feels duty bound to give him first crack of the whip. Poo. I’ve amassed a startling collection of references, however. One from Sir Charles Powell, one from John Birt and one from Max Hastings. All very splendid. Charles begins his with the typically, but lovably, pompous ‘Gentlemen …’ Heigh ho. Unless this chap pulls out at the last moment or can’t get the right references, it looks as though I shall have to wait more.
Car came at sevenish to take me to the studios for a Clive Anderson Talks Back. Bamber Gascoigne was another guest, plus a chap who gives (and is a walking example of) body piercing. He had studs in his tongue, a massive spike through his septum, one through his lower lip, nipple rings, and, though this was never shown, a Prince Albert. Crumbs. I think I was alright. A very startling reception from the audience, who appeared to be delighted to see me. Much whooping and cheering. Very gratifying, but I should imagine intensely irritating to the TV audience. Spoke a bit about the horse scene in The Hippo and about politics. Did my ‘family values’ stuff, rather hard-hitting but well received from the audience.
Shifted it from the London Studios to the Groucho for a poker game. Griff and Bob (Ringo) and an actress called Caroline. She was very sweet but introduced a game called Anaconda which all but wiped me out. First time I’ve lost that heavily for years. That’ll teach me. Much of cocaine. Bed at Two.
Up very early for a voice over. It was in Oxford Street so I shopped at M&S afterwards. Back for Hugh, some sketch writing and normal business and then I popped at seven round to Quaglino’s for dinner with Alfredo and Patrick Kinmonth an old school chum whom I’ve only seen twice in the last twenty years. He’s a splendour, however. Painter and now theatre designer. Very talented, very sweet. Had a good dinner, courtesy of Patrick who has Quag’s luncheon vouchers, part payment for decorating one of the pillars in the main dining area.
Back to my place for chat. I disappeared into the loo every ten minutes but they didn’t seem to notice and popped off at 3.00; I knew it was okay because for the first time in ages I could sleep in on Saturday as much as I liked.
Awoke at 12.20 feeling much refreshed. Went out and bought some videos at Tower Records, shopped a little at Fortnum’s and then came back to eat and watch telly. Bliss. First time in ages. At six thirty off to the Lauries’ for dinz. Kim and Al and Nick and Sarah. Good fun. I eschewed coking up in their loo, I know they know and I know it upsets them. Home at half past one.
A very busy day spent completing the Spectator diary for next week and writing the speech for the film premiere on Tuesday. Eventually got it all done and then watched a bit of telly before packing and cabbing it to Euston station for the sleeper to Dundee.* Drank a bit of Scotch and ate a couple of sandwiches. Huge mistake. For some reason it gave me the horriblesty pangs of indigestion you can imagine. Bloody nuisance, acid gnawing inside me and the train hammering through the night. Very little sleep.
Next stop Dundee station at five minutes to six. Absolutely bloody freezing on the platform and the train was ten minutes early, so I had to hang around until my welcoming party arrived to take me off to breakfast. The w.p. consisted of Jim Duncan (the Rector’s Assessor), Ayesha the President of the Student’s Association (DUSA) and Dougie the Senior Vice President. Amiable people. Ayesha is actually rather stylish and splendid, the best of the three I’ve known so far. I’m sure she could walk into any job as a researcher for Clive Anderson/J. Ross that kind of thing. Sweet and bubbly. Not a fool either.
Back to Jim’s house, as is traditional, to consume a large breakfast cooked by his dear wife Hilda. Lots of orange juice, black pudding, bacon and so forth. Then there was the usual hour or so of sitting and chatting, catching up with whatever issues are prevalent in the University (none really at the moment, thank God) before our first ‘visit’. I’ve instituted this custom whereby I’m shown round a couple of different departments of the university every Court day. Bit Prince of Walesey, but they all seem to like it, and I find it ‘absolutely fascinating’.
Actually we stopped off at Ayesha’s digs on the way because she had promised her flatmates that I would pop round. They were still in bed as it happened: a couple, blond and gorgeous and tousled and studenty. So sweet. Had a coffee while they degrogged. First port of call was the Accountancy and Business School. Not very exciting you might think, but Bob Lyon the dep. head was amiable and so were all the staff. Met a gang of absurdly UN international graduates: from Sri Lanka, Saudi, Bangladesh, that sort of thing. The computer whizz, a splendid hairy faced wonderment called Roz showed me the computers and we did some internetting, trying to chase a Douglas Adams thread. Coffee in the staff room and more chatting before we slid over to the school of Politics and Social Policy. Very amiable bunch of people. Nothing actually to see there, unlike visits on previous occasions to other departments where one can goggle at medical equipment, labs and so forth, but nonetheless a charming group of people. Rather left-leaning which is rare for Dundee. Charles Kennedy and George Roberston both products of that school, I believe. They weighed me down with books and pamphlets.
Midday now and time to visit the Principal, Michael Hamlin. Not looking too good: bit of fluid retention under the chin and puffiness about the eyes. Not a well man, I fancy. He’s retiring at the end of the year. We chatted for three quarters of an hour, he calling me ‘Simon’ as usual.
Time for the pre-court lunch. Sat next to a bit of an ass, can’t remember his name, usual rubber chicken and split mayonnaise. Bless them. Then, at 2.00, it couldn’t be put off any longer, time for Court. I dropped off three times: the first time Jim Duncan, by my side woke me up; the next two times I was awoken by a change of voice or something else. There really is nothing on earth so arse-paralysingly drear as a committee of academics discussing university business. The only time I really perked up was to repudiate a letter written by an oncologist asking how the University could morally justify the setting aside of smoking rooms to ‘feed student addictions’. Per-lease.
The court wound up in record time after two hours, and I had an hour to kill before my appointment at 5.00 to address the freshers. We went to ‘Pete’s Bar’ upstairs in the association building and drank some scotch. Lots of studes clustering round: all very charming. Then at 5.00 in I went to the ‘Dead Club’ where hundreds of little freshers had assembled to hear their rector speak. I had only been told this was to happen this morning, so no chance to prepare: all busk therefore. I told them that there was nothing on earth less appealing than a young person putting on a hard cynical face and trying to look as if they saw through everything and knew the world for what it was. I told them it was their duty every morning to check their faces in the mirror and to make sure that they looked lovely and open and kind and smiley.
A full hour of talking: think it went all right. Then another hour in the bar before the dinner that had sweetly been laid on in my honour by the students themselves. They had drawn lots to see who could attend, because they wanted to keep the numbers manageable. As always there seemed to be some deep desire amongst the corpus studenti to get me completely hammered. It was my job to circulate around the table so that I sat with every group for a fair length of time. They were all very sweet actually and welcoming. At last, tottering and with the help of a couple of lines in the bog, I was escorted by Jim and Dougie (Ayesha being off her face by this time) to the station. Another huge whisky and then the train pulled in. We’re talking 10.55 pm by this time. Managed to sleep straight away, which despite the lines (both railway and stimulant) is something of a miracle.
Woke up in Euston at 7.00. Cab to St James’s and bed for two hours before struggling up again for a Voice Over. What a business. Got back at eleven, time for opening post and a cup of coffee before a cab to Whitfield Street for a four hour photography session for The Hippo cover and publicity materials.
Not too bad: charming snapper called Colin Thomas and Mark McCullum and Sue F.* were present, all old chums. Tried various poses, emerging from a bath with suds, that kind of thing. Hope it isn’t all too vulgar. The book is not entirely of that nature, after all. At least I don’t think it is …
Left at half-three-ish, me desperate to get back to the flat and prepare my speech. In the cab back to St James’s I realize I’ve left my coat at the studio: it contains my keys. Arse.
I borrow the wonderful local barber’s phone and we ask Colin T. to shove it all in a cab instanter. Sue and Mark and self then repair to the Red Lion pub for a half of Guinness and so forth. Cab turns up, I’m back in business.
The speech is all right I think. I don’t have time to learn it, however, so I’ll read. Not ideal, but suck it. At six forty-five-ish Alyce Faye turns up looking absolutely stunning in a Starzewski frock of limitless elegance and beauty. We have a gin and tonic and then pop in the car for the Odeon Leicester Square. Big crowds, natch. We are welcomed by a very charming old biddy called Shirley who takes me and Alyce F. round backstage. A lot of pacing about behind the screen from me as the trumpeter heralds warm up their instruments and the screen in front of us shows the celebs and eventually, the royal party arriving.
After the fanfare and national anthem I go out on stage and make my speech of welcome. Talk about the Cinema and Television Benevolent fund and their ‘work’. Seems to go well. Then escorted round to my seat in the royal box for the film itself, which I have to say I liked a great deal. Very written, but none the poorer for that. Intelligent and humane for the most part and containing quite simply the best child performance I have ever seen. Really a brilliant boy called Nick Stahl: quite remarkable, as good as Jodie F. in Taxi D. Mel Gibson too, a fine performance and well directed. Not a big film, or a possible cult film, but a good film: to be proud of.
As soon as it was over I was whisked downstairs to meet the P.o.W. He was very matey and said to me ‘You did write that speech didn’t you?’ I said, ‘indeed I did, sir.’ He said, ‘Mel Gibson asked me if you had written it yourself, and I said indignantly, “of course he did!”’ Introduced him to Alyce Faye and they chatted a bit about Cleese and Frankenstein.
We got in the car after HRH had gone and went all the way to Planet Hollywood where the party was. Stayed for a voddie and then to the Ivy for dinz. Parties are so ghastly at Planet H. really. Nice dinner in fact. Chatted for a while. Alyce Faye said that she (and John) thought my short writings were better than my novels. I was very stung by this. I sensed that The Liar was just the sort of thing that Cleese would not like, because, despite, or perhaps because of, his comic genius he does not seem to understand the profound truth that comic things are more serious than serious things. More serious and truer. It’s part of his guilt at being a comedian, and reflected in his absurdly high doctrine of abstract spiritualist writing like the Tibetan Book of the Dead, Gurdjieff, Coelho and that kind of bogus baloney. If he had ever read a true mystic like the Author of The Cloud or Mother Julian he would know that abstraction and unearthed thinking are foreign to true spirituality. I tried to get some of this across. I don’t know if she understood. Annoyed with myself for being so stung, however. Bed lateish.
What a strange day. It began early. Horribly early. It began with The Big Breakfast for Channel 4. I had agreed that I would go on to help plug Perudo. Cosmo Fry had asked and I, softy that I am, had consented. Felt a bit grumpy on the way to … god rot it … Bow. I knew that when it was over I would have to charge off in another car to go all the way over to Wandsworth for another sitting with Maggi.
Once we arrived though, the frantic and friendly spirit of the programme cast all gloom away. You’d have to be very churlish not to be engaged and charmed by the silliness of the show’s spirit. I played a little Perudo with Chris Evans the presenter and did some links. I gave a ‘Showbiz Tip’ about how to speak in cold weather without steam or vapour coming from your mouth. The technique is to suck an ice cube. They liked this very much and for the next link I was shown sucking some ice. I took it out of my mouth and – you’d better believe it – lots of vapour streamed out. Very stupid I felt.
Car took only fifty minutes to get to Maggi’s in the end. Pretty good session in fact, probably the last this year. Maggi told me an amusing story about Margi Kinmonth, cousin of old schoolfriend Patrick Kinmonth. (This is going to be confusing: a Margi and a Maggi …) I’d met Margi at Ferdy Fairfax’s* lunch not so long ago, anyway it turns out she’s doing some kind of documentary with Dawn French. The purpose of this doc. is to show how wonderful it is to be fat. This will help Dawn sell her collection of clothes for the larger woman, as well as pushing this idea that being overweight should not be seen to be a stigma. Patrick had had a bit of a tiff with Margi about this previously: he had ventured the opinion that fatness is not wholly desirable and that there are sound reasons why we usually find it unpleasant to behold in both others and ourselves. Margi wouldn’t hear this and trotted out all the usual ‘Fat Is A Feminist Issue’ arguments. Anyway, that’s by the by. Margi yesterday approached Maggi Hambling and asked if Maggi H. would allow herself to be filmed while painting Dawn as part of this fatumentary.
Maggi, who is an artist and not like others, replied that a) she never allowed cameras to shoot over her shoulder while she worked and b) she usually paints women nude, but that presumably that would be what Dawn wanted? Well, slight ums and ahs from Margi K. at this. Nude? Um, as in naked? Well, says, Maggi, not deliberately trying to rootle out hypocrisy, surely the whole idea of this is that it’s a celebration of flesh and plenty of it? Great gulps of embarrassment from Margi K. Poor old Dawn: if she refuses to be painted nude with her tummy spread out like a pool of lava she will look as if she doesn’t really mean what she is saying. On the other hand, one can’t really blame her for preferring to keep her clothes on, can one?
I, being far less beautiful than Dawn, kept my clothes very firmly on and we spent a merry four hours together.
At one o’clock a car came containing Rebecca Salt to take me off on a signing tour around town. What a week.
First port of c. was Waterstone’s in the Charing X Rd. Good queue, not too many mad people, fairly amiable. Then across the road to Books Etc. for an informal stock signing. Round to Hatchard’s in Piccadilly for more stock signing. P’weight is actually number one of all sellers in Hatchard’s at the moment, which is rather pleasing. Afterwards we went off to the Strand: there was a shop there to sign at round about the 5.00 o’clock mark. It being 4.00 Rebecca (and Lynne Drew from Mandarin who had joined us) suggested we pop into the Waldorf for tea. They’d booked a table, knowing there would be this hour gap. I was secretly a bit miffed that they hadn’t got the timing better and indeed the locations. Why not Hatchard’s last so that I could just walk to the flat? Heigh ho.
Curiously the table we were shown to was for six. ‘Ha ha,’ I thinks, ‘plots’. ‘Is this the right table?’ I wondered. ‘Well, you never know who might turn up when you have tea at the Waldorf,’ Rebecca said. Something definitely up I reasoned. Sure enough John Potter suddenly walks in, the capo di tutti capi at Reed Books. Followed by Helen Fraser, head of Heinemann, and Angela, managing editor. Well, well, well.
It was very sweet: they wanted to feast me for sales of The Liar passing the half million mark. I was very touched. But then … then … Sister Jo walks in too! Quite wonderful and v. touching. They presented me with a leather bound, gold tooled, head and tail-banded, edition of The Liar. Very sweet: nearly cried. Gorged on tea and cakes and then Jo and I cabbed it to the flat. Just time to change and bath for the walk to Northumberland Street where the Perudo tournament was taking place. Hugh arrived at seven and off we trotted.
The Royal Commonwealth Hall or Institute or somesuch was the venue. It slowly filled up with all the usual suspects. Plenty of the cool and splendid crowd. Actually mostly sweet. It was in fact round about 8.30 before I could get to the microphone and address the company in the guise of The Gamesmaster. Fairly complicated tournament rules, but everyone playing with great spirit and dash and splendour. I was at a table with Peter Cook and Carla Powell and Alyce Faye and (hurrah!) Jethro, Spike and Jo and Hugh. H. was busy cutting his commercial in his head and went fairly soon. We played informally as we had a bye into the next round.
After nearly two and a half hours half the teams had lost and I was able to announce the pairings for the next round. But by this time it was half past eleven and frankly time to leave with Peter and Lin Cook and Alyce Faye and Tomasz and David Wilkinson and others for Peter’s birthday party dinner, which was in Gran’ Paradiso, Pimlico. Actually, a hell of a shame to have to leave: I would much rather have stayed. I scored a couple of grams from Jethro and B. and would have happily remained. Not to be, however.
The Cook party was fine. Alyce Faye and I talked a bit about J. Cleese, a subject I can never tire of, him being such a comic hero and all. He had not come because he’d just completed a day’s filming with Robert de Niro at Shepperton and felt he’d done badly.
‘Ken was disappointed in me,’ was his verdict. I tried to explain to A F that this was unlikely. Left at 1.15 and bed after the crossword.
Phew! It’s been a strange old time. From the Big Breakfast to the Big Tea, to the Big Dinner. Non-stop since the sleeper to Dundee really.
Not quite such a frantic day. Stayed in most of the morning: Hugh still editing his commercial. At 12.15 Mother popped round to take me out to Fortnum’s for lunch. She is doing something in the House of Commons at 1.45. Something to do with Harriet Harman and a women’s thing. Never quite got to the bottom of it. The state opening today, so traffic in London ghastly.
We had a very pleasant lunch and I put her in a cab at one thirty. Back to the flat: Hugh not able to come round because of editing and so forth. I rang Christie’s because I had heard that a couple of Oscar Wilde letters were coming up for auction: put in a bid of five thousand for the first and fifteen for the second. Couldn’t turn up for the sale itself. Stayed in till six and decided to pop round to the Groucho to see if there would be any poker. Keith Allen and Simon Bell were present so I sat and drank with them for a while, joined by Jim Moir (Vic Reeves) and a couple of others. At eight o’clock Keith, Liam, Simon and I went up to play. Keith’s agent, known as T. kibbitzed happily. I won a fair bit, we all ingested a goodly quantity of white powder and I stayed sensible enough to bed myself at 1.00.
Car at 7.00 to take me to Shepperton. Hugh and I had agreed to film a Labour Party Political Broadcast. We play a couple of shady tax advisers, Weaver and Dodge who advise a procession of fat cats how to avoid tax. There was Roger Brierley (Glossop in the first two Jeeves and Woosters), Robin Bailey, Jeremy Child and Tim West. The idea was to demonstrate that Tory tax loopholes for the rich could save billions for the exchequer.
At lunchtime Robin Bailey, who hadn’t shot yet, was in a foully cantankerous temper. A cuntankerous cuntmudgeon, in fact … ordering the producer’s assistant and first AD around as if they were skivvies. Hugh took against this hugely and was (rightly) rather curt when Bailey tried to communicate with him. Bailey extremely sensitive to this and not pleased at all. He’s barely sane at the moment and the whole thing was somewhat embarrassing. At last he went. By this time it was apparent that we would be shooting until late. Jo and Hugh had invited Greg, Kim and Alastair round for dinner and Hugh felt put upon, simply because he hadn’t been warned that shooting would take so long. If the Labour Party is as inefficient as this when it comes to running the country, we’re all for the basket as Georgette Heyer characters would say.
At three in the afternoon I learnt that my bid had been successful for the Oscar letters … asked to remain anonymous. Four thousand for the first, thirteen for the second. All told a total of £18,700 with commish. Gulp!
The filming dragged on and on. Jeremy Child a charming fellow, seems to be the absolute archetype of an Etonian baronet, which he is, but clearly – by volunteering for this gig – he does not vote along with most of his class. He told an amusing Jimbo Villiers* story. Jimbo had been talking about Simon Williams who had been having a ghastly time in a play and filming and visiting his mother (since died) in hospital. Driving about four hundred miles a day. ‘I hope he isn’t energizing himself with the ingestion of some kind of comical pastille,’ Jimbo said. Splendid phrase. The time wore on and on: eventually we were released by 11.00. Hugh not best pleased, partly brought on by the knowledge that he had made himself look grouchy. ‘Twenty people now hate me,’ he said. Oh dear. Made me feel guilty for being by and large cheerful all day. Of course nobody hates Hugh. Can’t be done.
Got to Tufnell Park, where Kim, Al and MU* were there and Jo. We stayed about an hour and then MU took us in his car back to my place where we stayed up drinking and coking till 5.15. Naughty.
Up at 1.15, slightly hung over and feeling like a piece of shit. Just time to do one or two things before making it over to the Coliseum to join Kim and Al for the first night of Lohengrin by the ENO.†
They had borne up splendidly after the ravages of the night. The show itself was excellent. Not up to the Meistersingers at the ROH, but still excellent. Fascinating design by Hildegard Bechtler. Worked especially well in the First Act. Slight embarrassment in the third, when the front white curtain wouldn’t fly out and they had to stop. Audience naturally laughed and sniggered. Still, fine night and excellent performances. Very cute young man played Gottfried (or Godfrey as they rather oddly called him). Still don’t really go for the translations.
Supper afterwards at 2 Brydges Place, which was very pleasanty. Had sausages and fried camembert in front of the fire and Rod, owner with Alfredo, gave me a form to become a member, since (embarrassingly) I’ve never actually belonged.
Bed at midnight and a long, long, long, long sleep.
A very very quiet Sunday. As placido a domingo as you could wish. Up round about one-ish: lots and lots of correspondence to sort out and plenty of television to watch. Retired early (well, twelve) and gazed at The Parallax View in bed. Part of BBC2’s ‘it was thirty years ago today …’ Kennedy celebrations. Um, not sure celebrations is the word. Memorial. Oddly, C. S. Lewis died on the same day, but naturally his death was somewhat overshadowed. Interesting idea for a TV play or story: someone whose death, or achievement, or whatever, is completely cast in the shade by a massive, earth-shattering world event.
Voice Over this morning. Some training film with Griff as a manager. Only took fifteen minutes and then I taxied myself to South Kensington to pick up the Oscar letters. Marie Helene, the leading books and autographs popsy, was very friendly, as well she might be after being written a cheque for 18,997 bleeding quid. She also showed me Henry Blofeld’s collection of P. G. Wodehouse firsts and unusuals. Simply wonderful. Simply, simply wonderful. But rather terrifying. They’re going to be sold singly, rather than as a lot, which is a bore, since some of them will go for rather an amount I fancy. Poor old love has come unstuck as a result of Lloyd’s* I gather. A lot of Names must be selling stuff: good for people like me and for Christie’s and Sotheby’s.
Back in time to do some writing with Hugh and then, at three thirty, off to Cambridge for a dinner. Paul Hartle’s idea this. Paul was a young don at St Catharine’s when I was at Cambridge: he’s now Director of Studies in English there. Me, Nigel Huckstep (old chum from Cambridge, but a few generations older), Rob Wyke (ditto: currently housemaster at Winchester), Emma Thompson, Annabel Arden and Simon McBurney† all gathered to reminisce and eat a good dinner in a private room in Cats. Partly to celebrate the fact that Annabel is spending this year as Judith E. Wilson Fellow at Cats. What a Judith E. Wilson Fellow is I never quite understood, but she teaches and lectures and seems to be enjoying herself enormously. Anyway, wonderful dinner, lots of wine and drink, in quantities that only academics know. Glen Cavaliero* showed up in Paul’s rooms for the preprandials. Everyone cheery and on good form. Emma wearing her severely anti-glam Posy Simmonds round spectacles. Got highly squiffed and fell into bed in Paul’s rooms at one thirty. Tomorrow I have to do this Camp Christmas thingy. Yuk.
Up at nine-thirty, a little hung over. Then I struggled over to Queens’ to pop into an undergraduate’s room for coffee. She had written disconsolately that I had done the Cambridge Union debate, but failed to do something or other for BATS† that she had asked me to turn up for. She and a knot of fresher friends stood around goggling at me while I tried to be cheerful and fun. Odd occasion. So squeaky clean and non-smoking and bright-eyed and lecture-attending. Escaped at ten-thirty and headed for London. Was back by midday, where Hugh awaited. We wrote for most of the day and then I cabbed it to LWT (or The London Studios as the place now calls itself) for this Camp Christmas. Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear, oh dear. Horrid idea, why did I ever consent? Had to dress up as Santa and make up all my own lines, without rehearsal. Ghastly and under-rehearsed. Absolutely hopeless. Julian Clary sensibly an off stage voice. Everyone connected with it was gay. Lie Delaria was excellent doing her dyke act, but otherwise it was grim. Good Australian doing a Queen’s Speech, Quentin Crisp filmed in New York, Martina Navratilova phoned in to say hi, Simon Callow and Antony Sher did something strange and then, at the end, I came on being dreadful. Completely hidden in a beard, so no one knew who the hell I was anyway. Lost steam and was simply very very bad. Christ, how embarrassing.
Zoomed straight off to the Groucho to recover. Bumped into Tim Roth of all people. Very fun to see him: he’s over here filming something for the Beeb. Hung around chatting with him and his new wife. Don Boyd and Hilary turned up with Rufus Sewell and I was able to congratulate him on his excellent performance in Arcadia. Seemed a nice bloke, freakily handsome. Played some Perudo and escaped by 1.30. A highly drunken young man in a covert coat kept sitting too close to me … turns out he is the editor of the Sunday Times magazine or somesuch. Also the director Roger Pomfrey kept trying to score coke off me, which I find discomfiting. Relief to escape. On the way out, Greg from Channel 4 (can’t think of his surname) told me that I had really opened a can of worms by writing in the Spectator and then saying on Clive Anderson that there were two gay men in the Cabinet. John Junor had written an article in the Mail on Sunday saying why didn’t I have the guts to name them? This ignored the thrust of my argument, which was not to accuse them of a crime but to accuse them of hypocrisy in their insistence on telling us how to live ‘core value’, ‘back to basics’ lives. And in the Standard someone had written an article pointing out that Rory Bremner had done a sketch which had himself as John Major saying ‘Portillo, Lilley* … don’t think I can’t see what you’re doing at the back there.’ On my return to the flat I wrote a note to Sir John Junor, but probably won’t post it. No point really.
A day of quiet achievement. Ho, bloody ho. Started with a voice over for Intel processors. Stopped off at Fortnum’s to buy sister Jo her birthday present for the day after tomorrow. Then round to Berry Bros and Rudd to order wine for Christmas. Simon Berry was in and I had a nice chat with him. Ordered some excellent stuff.
Back at the flat by lunchtime. Hugh was late: had a press screening of his series All Or Nothing At All. He was charismatic as ever, but I didn’t especially like the script. One day Hugh will find the right material and emerge either as James Bond or something that will make him a world star. He has that star quality that I so noticeably lack. I just hope that people won’t think I’m jealous when the day comes. Back to the flat at four-thirty in time only for an hour or so’s writing and then he puddled off. He had time however, to speak to me man to man, as besto chummo, about Bachelors Anonymous. He put it to me as delicately as he could: ‘Stephen,’ he said, ‘are you sure you want to have anything to do with it?’ No sooner were the words out of his mouth (my God he is wise, that one) than I knew he was right. Secretly, inside (haven’t even confided in you, Daisy Diary, dear) I have felt that a) the script is absolutely unrescuable tosh and b) Robin Hardy is not a man I can spend months and months with comfortably. Hugh pointed out that I was too modest or too flattered to realize that he had asked me to direct the movie simply because that put him in a position to be able to raise money for it. I should be aware of that and proceed only if it was the right project, not simply out of gratitude to a nice man who wanted me involved.
Heartrending conversation with Lo, who was wonderful and promised to ring him and pull me out. She rang back an hour later to say that she had succeeded, but that he was deeply distressed and angry. Gulp! So much easier to apply the surgeon’s knife at the inception of these projects. Why am I such an arse?
Hugh said ‘if you want to direct a film, then write one yourself: let it be as personal and as wonderful as you want it to be. If it’s halfway decent an idea, money can be raised. Be aware that your name does mean something.’ This has inspired me to be careful of Other People’s Projects. About bloody time, Stephen.
Hugh popped off at 5.30 and I messed around till eightish, driving my own cab to Battersea/Wandsworth/Clapham, where Ian Hislop and his wife Victoria live. Quiet dinner à trois: strangely and comfortingly bourgeois house, rather like Dan Patterson’s. Modish stencilled wallpaper and perhaps over-tidy faux antique chairs. No books that I could see or any life or mess or splendour. Odd compared to Ian’s thrillingly disorganized Private Eye office, especially given how literary both Ian and Tori are. But a delightful dinner. I think Ian is all right, not untrustworthy: I think he knows the difference between a private dinner and usable gossip. For some reason I shot my mouth off about knowing Tristan Garel-Jones and talking to him about the age of consent and meeting Ken Clarke and all that. Hope he doesn’t publish or I’ll feel an arse. Back home by about twelveish. Crosswords and coke, then bed. Idiot.
Just a plain old writing day. Hugh round at the usual hour and then a lot of chat, hysterical laughter and trying to get sketches out.
In the evening went off to the Groucho and played poker. Won a heap, snorted a heap. Also present Rory McGrath, Griff, Keith Allen. All the usual suspects. Bed at three. Twice damned villain. Watched the recordings of the Labour Party broadcast which had gone out at nine and ten. Seemed okay in my haze.
Hugh and I did a spot of work before zipping over to Holland Park for lunch with David Liddiment at the new Joe Allen/Orso restaurant, Orsino’s. Liddiment is the man who’s replaced Jim Moir* as head of Light Entertainment at the BBC. Tall, thin, glasses, Mancunian accent: seemed wildly unfriendly at very first glance. Turned out to be shyness, rather a decent sort really. Good that we touched base with him, I think. Decent grub.
Back home for me, and off to the dubbing studio for Hugh. More work on his Cellnet commersh. At seven-thirty I walked over to the Paris studios to record a couple of Just a Minutes. Think they went alright. I was against Peter Jones and Paul Merton. The first one had Pete McCarthy† as a guest, the second had Jan Ravens.‡ Jan excelled at her silly voices and impressions. Merton and Jones were splendid as ever. I my usual self, I suppose. In any case I won both games, for what little that is worth.
Then I had to walk very fast indeed to Le Caprice, for dinner with the Cleeses, Marilyn Lownes,* the Lauries and Bill Goldman. I had said I would be through recording by about eight thirty: it was actually 9.45 by the time I got there. Still, everyone on good form and enjoying the chance to use me as a friendly butt. Bill Goldman, as ever, spilling over with rich advice on how to proceed with the film business. I wish I had his huevos. Chucked it in at about twelve-ish. Ended on a sour note, though. There was a cluster of paparazzi outside the restaurant, Hugh did the sensible thing and zoomed out through the kitchens. I went ahead on my own and left John C. to do the same.
Stayed in cheerfully most of the day, emerging at seven to cab it to Hammersmith. Ben (Elton) on at the Apollo. Saw him backstage first: Phil McIntyre† very sweetly had arranged a free bar backstage. Lots of dahlings present. Em and Ken, Hugh, Ade and Jenny, Bob Mortimer, Rik Mayall … all sorts. Ben on stunning form. Christ, those arseholes in the press who go on about him as if he is the quintessence of modern PC evil … they haven’t the faintest idea, they really haven’t. If it weren’t enough that he is the gentlest, kindest poppet in the world, he is also so much funnier and cleverer than they realize.
The party afterwards was just absurd. Too much voddie for the undersigned. And a whole deal too much of the old Bolivian marching powder too. X at one point, wanted a line, so I chopped him one in the loo. Y fully on the stuff too. I left at two and the joint was still jumping.
Sunday papers and coffee. Norman Fowler is ‘consulting his lawyers’ after the Labour Party Broadcast had suggested that he had gone from privatizing National Freight to being on the board of the new company. ‘They never mentioned that nine years passed between the two acts,’ he (perhaps rather justifiably) complained. Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear. I feel a bit sorry about this as he’s one of the few of that generation of Thatcher’s cabinet I really admire. The AIDS epidemic landed in his lap when he was Health Secretary and, since retiring, he has continued to work and proselytize in the sector when he has no reason to other than moral decency.
To the Cleese’s for Alyce Faye’s son’s wedding. A lot of the Nile holiday crowd were there. Peter Cook, Bill Goldman, Ian and Mo Johnstone, Tomasz Starzewski etc. etc. Wedding went all right, rather chilly in the garden grotto. Good food and wine and, afterwards I made a small speech, as requested by Alyce Faye. Then a few rounds of Perudo with Peter C., Tomasz, Martin and Brian King. I skipped at three-ish, having arranged that Bill Goldman would come round at eight to examine my computer.
This he duly did. He’s just bought a Mac and wanted to know how they worked. Not what you would call technophile, Bill, but he gasped and wowed appropriately when shown what a Mac can do. We then trotted off to Le Caprice again for dinz. I still have to rub my eyes and pinch myself to believe that I know the man who wrote Butch Cassidy and Marathon Man and who inspired me so much with Adventures in the Screen Trade.
A day working with Hugh, rather thrown off course by Emma Thompson arriving at twelve to have her script rescued. She had been writing her screenplay of Sense and Sensibility on a Mac, using Final Draft. Somehow it had all got corrupted. They saved it all, but lost the formatting and so on. I managed to get it all back in shape for her, but the defragging and so on took a very, very long time.
She is rather keen for Hugh to play Colonel Brandon and equally keen, so far as I can see, for me to play no one at all. Heigh ho, quite right, no doubt.
Off to Chris Beetles gallery at six. They were holding some kind of party and sale of illustrations on behalf of the NSPCC. All the usual suspects present, Cleese, Terry Jones, Terry Gilliam, Lord Archer, Frank Thornton* (all right, he’s not really a usual suspect) and many others. Stayed for a while, signing T-shirts before the Terrys persuaded me out for a bite to eat. We decided on Groucho’s.
Got very blasted on a lot of wine. The Terrys left and then I stayed behind, getting even drunker with Griff and Helen Mirren. Home at one.
An exciting day. I knew it would be my first evening in for ages. Galleys of The Hippo arrived. I hate the type-face they have chosen. What can I do? It’s a Palatino, the most annoying feature being really irritating ‘inverted commas’ not curly like ‘these’, but naffly straight and horrid. In fact the type-face I’m using here is much better. Theirs is stark and clunky and just plain foul. Bollocks.
Hugh and I didn’t manage to write much: we watched the Budget instead and started reading Emma’s screenplay, which I had printed out for Hugh at her request. She’s actually done a smashing job. It really reads well: I was in floods of tears, absolutely loving it. Such a great story, of course. Hugh would be excellent as Brandon. But top marks to Emma, really brilliant work. The cunt of it is that she’s right, there is absolutely nothing in it for me. Boo hoo. It could make Hugh a star, which he thoroughly deserves,* but yours truly is going to be a bit of a stay-at-home naffness, while Hugh jets off to Hollywood as Mr Big. I have always known that this will happen, but what will come hard will be everyone’s sympathy for me …
Bed reasonably early and totally sober.
End of month, daisy, time for a print out.
And there, for good or ill, that passage of the diary comes to an abrupt end. At least it doesn’t, but I seem to have lost the rest of it for the time being. Perhaps it is best to have offered you that excerpt and leave the rest to be published, when extricated from corrupted hard drives and no longer readable Zip and Jaz drives and floppy disks, after my death. No need then to protect the identities or habits of those I have protected here.
I have to be honest and say that reading the preceding pages gave me quite a turn. I have felt rather like someone groping forwards barefoot in an unlit attic, forever treading on unexpected lego bricks. Only twenty-one years have passed, but I feel as though I am peering into a wholly different world. I had no idea I was quite so busy, quite so debauched, quite so energetic, quite so irremediably foolish. To live that life and each day so studiously to record it is something I do not even recall doing. I cannot even be certain who I was then. If I went back into the Groucho Club of 1993 and watched myself playing a game of snooker and disappearing every ten minutes to the gents, I am not sure I’d be able to hold back from massacring myself. How I managed to do so much working and so much playing without keeling over stone dead I cannot imagine. Believe me when I say, if you are younger than me, that you will not make it if you think you can imitate my wicked, wicked ways. Hold fast to the belief that I am a genetic freak who survived and that you are not. Do not test this assertion. Verb sap. as my old Latin master used to tell me – not that I listened. Verbum sapienti sat est – a word to the wise will do.
I have a very clear black-and-white memory of Michael Ramsey, Archbishop of Canterbury during my childhood, being sycophantically interviewed on a BBC Sunday-night programme.
‘Your Grace, you are considered, I believe, by those who know you to be very wise.’
‘Am I? Am I? Oh my goodness. I wonder if that is true.’
‘Well, perhaps you can tell us what you think wisdom is?’
‘Wisdom? Wisdom? Well now. I think perhaps wisdom is the ability to cope, don’t you?’
I have never heard a better definition of wisdom since. Certainly wisdom is nothing to do with knowledge or intellectual force. There are brilliant minds who can’t sit the right way on a lavatory, and wholly uneducated people whose fortitude and humour in coping with lives that we would find unendurable shames us all.
The opposite of wisdom is generally considered to be folly, not a word much in use today. There are different kinds of fool of course. I fooled for a living in comedy shows on television, stage and radio. I became something of a licensed fool in palaces and private houses. I was a fool to my body – most especially to my brain and the linings of my nostrils, almost daring them to wave the white flag of surrender.
I often lie awake now, not for the old reason, not because my bloodstream is filled with that noxious, insinuating and wickedly compulsive stimulant, but because my mind is churning around and around wondering how as a young man I could ever have got myself into such a state. Where might my life have led me if I had not all but thrown away the prime of it as I partied like one determined to test its limits?
I do not remember that an unconscious whispered command to self-destruct drove me on, but looking back across the decades, reading the diary for the first time in twenty years, shaking my head in wonder at the reckless, impulsive, stupid, vain, arrogant and narcissistic headlong rush into oblivion that I seemed determined upon, I have to believe that a death wish was some part of the story.
And what possible excuse could I have to throw away the abundance of good fortune that at the time I could not believe I had lucked into and which today I still find unbelievable? Maybe that is where the answer lies.
It is such gimcrack armchair psychology that it may make you groan in dismay, but it is possible that I did not think myself worthy of that incredible luck and did all I could to dispose of it. Which takes me back to the world of my first book of memoirs, Moab is My Washpot, where I describe what I must hope and trust is a common feeling amongst many children: that of being watched and judged. When our race was young all humans felt it and called it God. Now, most of us call it conscience, guilt, shame, self-disgust, low self-esteem, moral awareness … there are plenty of words and phrases that dance around the rim of that boiling psychic volcano.
This very shame might paradoxically explain my bravado, in the way that the defenders of a crass, brash boor might explain that their friend acts in the way he does because he is ‘so terribly shy’. It wasn’t difficult for me to come out as gay, or later to be open about being afflicted with a mental condition that has led to attempts at suicide. I continue to this day unthinkingly to blurt out things which will get me slammed in the tabloids and cause embarrassment to my friends and family. A part of me truly believes that honesty is, as schoolteachers used to say, ‘the best policy’ in every way. It saves being ‘found out’, but it also – if this doesn’t sound too self-regarding and sanctimonious – helps those who are in less of a position to feel comfortable about who they are or the situation they find themselves in. Without diverting ourselves about the nature of altruism and whether it really exists, I know that I write more or less the books that I wish I could have read when I was – oh, between fourteen and thirty I suppose.
Memoir, the act of literary remembering, for me seems to take the form of a kind of dialogue with my former self. What are you doing? Why are you behaving like that? Who do you think you are fooling? Stop it! Don’t do that! Look out!
Books, too, can take the form of a dialogue. I flatter myself, vainly perhaps, that I have been having a dialogue with you. You might think this madness. I am delivering a monologue and you are either paying attention or wearily zipping through the paragraphs until you reach the end. But truly I do hear what I consider to be the voice of the reader, your voice. Yes, yours. Hundreds of thousands of you, wincing, pursing your lips, laughing here, hissing there, nodding, tutting, comparing your life to mine with as much objective honesty as you can. The chances are that you have not been as lucky with the material things in life as I have, but the chances are (and you may find this hard to believe, but I beg that you would) that you are happier, more adjusted and simply a better person.
If there’s one thing that most irks my most loyal and regular readers it is the spectacle of me beating myself up in public. I try to fight it, but it is part of who I am. I am still a fool, but I have greater faith in the healing force of time. It is possible that age brings wisdom. The spectacle of many of our politicians and other citizens of middle age and beyond gives one leave to doubt that hope.
There is a fine legend concerning King Solomon, the wisest of all the Kings of Israel. You may know the story in another way. It hardly matters. It is a good story and worth remembering.
King Solomon was being visited by a great Persian king. During their conversation the Persian king said, ‘You have much wealth and power and wisdom here, Solomon. I wonder if you have heard of the magical golden ring?’
‘Of which ring?’
‘They say that if you are happy it will make you sad, but if you are sad it will make you happy.’
Solomon thought for a second before clapping his hands for an attendant. He whispered into the attendant’s ear. The attendant disappeared with a bow and the king clapped his hands again and called for dates and sherbets.
After the dates and sherbets had been consumed it was not long before the attendant had returned, bringing with him a goldsmith in a leather apron. The goldsmith bowed before both the kings and passed to Solomon a golden ring.
Solomon turned to his visitor. ‘I have the ring that will make you happy if you are sad and sad if you are happy.’
‘But that is not possible!’ cried his guest. ‘The ring is a legend. It is not something you can command to have made in the twinkling of an eye.’
‘Read it,’ said Solomon.
The visiting king took the ring, still warm from the forge, and read upon it the words: ‘This too shall pass.’
If days be good, they shall pass, which is a lowering thought. If they be bad, they shall pass, which is cheering. I suppose it is enough to know this and cling on to it for some small comfort when confronted by the irredeemable and senseless folly of the world; to be a little like Rafael Sabatini’s Scaramouche who was ‘born with a gift of laughter and a sense that the world was mad’.
But I know enough of myself and the instability that seems to be my birthright to be sure that I have not yet learned this lesson.
More fool me.