Fry_ A Memoir Part 11

'Bus is short for business.'

I am not sure that we looked any the wiser.

'Bill was played by Lupino Lane. Lupino Lane was from a music-hall dynasty. He was the finest physical comedian of his day. A huge part of his success came from the remarkable knockabout routines he devised. His business with the cloak in Me and My Girl Me and My Girl became one of the most famous sights on the London stage.' became one of the most famous sights on the London stage.'

Well, I shan't take you through every twist and turn of the story of how Noel Gay's musical came to be reworked for the 1980s. Richard, who acted as producer, secured Mike Ockrent to direct and as a co-producer he brought in David Aukin, who ran the Theatre Royal, Leicester, where the show was to be mounted. If it was a success there, the plan was to bring it into the West End. There was talk of Robert Lindsay for the lead role of Bill and Leslie Ash for Sally. Meanwhile it was up to me to rewrite the script from that Lord Chamberlain's copy.

'By the way,' Richard had said. 'Do feel free to add any of my father's other songs that you think might fit.'

The script of a musical is divided into three departments: music, lyrics and book. The book might be considered everything that isn't music or lyrics the dialogue and story in other words. n.o.body goes to a musical because of the book, they go to straight plays for that. On the other hand, the book is the spine of a musical. Like a spine it is only noticed when it goes wrong and like a spine, the book supports the entire frame and transmits the signals, messages and impulses that allow the body to feel, move and express itself. The great composers, Sondheim, Rogers, Porter and the rest, always insisted indeed such insistence is one of the cliches of musical theatre that everything starts with the book. The audience does not sing the book, n.o.body gasps and claps and delights in the book, but without it there is nothing. That is certainly not a complaint, by the way. There are plenty of essential jobs in the world of which people take little notice, and writing the book of the musical is amongst the least arduous and best rewarded of all of them.

In 1983 I didn't know a book from a ball-change or a torch song. In fact I knew nothing about musicals at all. I was in my mid-twenties, just a year and a half out of university. I could talk nonsense all day about Shakespeare, Ibsen, Beckett or Tennessee Williams as required. I was sound on the history and heroes of radio and television comedy, which was after all, despite the dismal public reception to Alfresco Alfresco, my profession. I had a good knowledge of cinema, especially Warner Brothers films of the thirties and forties and British cinema of the forties and fifties. My knowledge of the cla.s.sical musical and opera repertoire was fair, and I knew the songbooks of Porter, Kern and Gershwin very well. But few of the musicals for which most of those songs were written had I ever seen. The secret truth was that I rather looked down on the whole genre. I made exceptions for Cabaret Cabaret, My Fair Lady My Fair Lady, West Side Story West Side Story and and Guys and Dolls Guys and Dolls, which I knew as films and records and rated highly. Singin' in the Rain Singin' in the Rain, Mary Poppins Mary Poppins, Oliver! Oliver! and and The Sound of Music The Sound of Music I knew and valued only as films and ... well, that was about it, give or take the occasional Sunday-afternoon screening of a Fred Astaire or Gene Kelly cla.s.sic on BBC2. I knew and valued only as films and ... well, that was about it, give or take the occasional Sunday-afternoon screening of a Fred Astaire or Gene Kelly cla.s.sic on BBC2. Cats Cats had been running in the West End for a year and a half, but I hadn't seen it. Still haven't. Must get round to it. Ditto had been running in the West End for a year and a half, but I hadn't seen it. Still haven't. Must get round to it. Ditto Les Miserables Les Miserables, The Phantom of the Opera The Phantom of the Opera and and Miss Saigon Miss Saigon and all the others that have come and gone and come back again since. I don't doubt that the loss is mine. and all the others that have come and gone and come back again since. I don't doubt that the loss is mine.

The director, Mike Ockrent, who had made his name with the presentation of new theatre writing mostly in the fringe venues of England and Scotland, knew the world of musicals even less well than I did. But we soon discovered, as we worked on the script of Me and My Girl Me and My Girl, that we had here a project that owed nothing to Broadway and Hollywood and everything to music hall. Whether the revival succeeded or failed would depend on how ready a modern audience might be for the slapstick, silliness and cheeky bounce that the late music-hall style embodied.

As I went from draft to draft, David Aukin provided me with an invaluable lesson. For many years he had presided over the Hampstead Theatre, where he had nurtured Mike Leigh's legendary Abigail's Party Abigail's Party as well as new plays by Dennis Potter, Michael Frayn, Harold Pinter and many others. When he saw my first draft, fresh from the daisy-wheel printer, he smiled. as well as new plays by Dennis Potter, Michael Frayn, Harold Pinter and many others. When he saw my first draft, fresh from the daisy-wheel printer, he smiled.

'Your job is to try and do yourself out of a job. The shorter the distance between musical numbers, the better.'

'There's just too much dialogue, isn't there?' I said.

'Far too much.'

In the end I cut and cut and cut. I read, on somebody's recommendation, The Street Where I Live The Street Where I Live, Alan Jay Lerner's superb memoir of a Broadway lyricist and book writer's life and work. When it is time for an emotional or narrative transformation in the action of a musical, Lerner maintained, that moment should be expressed not in spoken words, but in song or in dance, otherwise why are you creating a musical show in the first place and not a play? In a good musical the action doesn't stop for a song the songs are are the action. I read this manifestly sound prescription, looked at my script thus far and realized that I had written nothing but a stop-start drama in which everything important happened in scenes of spoken dialogue that were from time to time halted for song and dance numbers. Douglas Furber and Arthur Rose, who had written the original book and lyrics, came from an era that preceded the Lerner manifesto. The stagecraft of the time allowed for chorus lines to shuffle on in front of a front-cloth while the scene was shifted behind. Modern theatre demanded visible changes that used trucking and flying and floating and other magical machine-driven techniques. Here Mike Ockrent was fantastically encouraging. He had read physics at university, briefly been an inventor and had a fine engineering mind. the action. I read this manifestly sound prescription, looked at my script thus far and realized that I had written nothing but a stop-start drama in which everything important happened in scenes of spoken dialogue that were from time to time halted for song and dance numbers. Douglas Furber and Arthur Rose, who had written the original book and lyrics, came from an era that preceded the Lerner manifesto. The stagecraft of the time allowed for chorus lines to shuffle on in front of a front-cloth while the scene was shifted behind. Modern theatre demanded visible changes that used trucking and flying and floating and other magical machine-driven techniques. Here Mike Ockrent was fantastically encouraging. He had read physics at university, briefly been an inventor and had a fine engineering mind.

'Write the most extravagant and outrageous scene changes you can think of,' he said. 'We'll make them work. But don't write to save money. Between us the production designer and I will make it happen.'

For the next draft then, I went crazy. The show opened with a number called 'A Weekend at Hareford'. I tweaked the lyrics a little and wrote stage directions that were, on the face of it, absurd. I described country-house weekenders singing the song in open chauffeur-driven cars as they made their way out of London, into the countryside, through the gates of Hareford Hall and up to the ma.s.sive frontage, which would revolve and transform into an interior which the guests would enter to be greeted by the household servants. It was easy enough for me to write; let Martin Johns the designer and Mike Ockrent make of that what they would.

I cut dialogue as drastically as I could. The idea was to jump, as David Aukin had suggested, from musical number to musical number with as little dialogue as possible, but also to treat certain comic scenes like the Lupino Lane cloak business to which Richard had alluded, as well as a seduction scene involving cushions and a sofa as kinds of numbers in their own right. I also added two other well-known Noel Gay songs, 'The Sun Has Got His Hat On' and 'Leaning On a Lamp-post'.

Mike visited me in Chichester to work through his notes on this draft. He relished every over-ambitious, absurd and impossible demand I had made on his ingenuity.

'More,' he said. 'Let's go even further!'

But why, you will be wanting to know, was I in Chichester?

Chichester 1 Early in 1982 Richard Armitage took me and Hugh to L'Escargot in Greek Street for lunch.

'So that I get an idea of how best to shape your destinies,' he said, 'each of you should now tell me whose careers you most admire and whom you would most want to emulate.'

Hugh wondered if there was someone between Peter Ustinov and Clint Eastwood. Maybe with a hint of Mick Jagger thrown in.

Richard nodded, made a note in his black leather Smythson notebook and turned to me.

'Alan Bennett,' I said. 'Definitely Alan Bennett.'

I was too young to have seen Bennett's television comedy On The Margin On The Margin, the tapes of which the BBC had shamefully wiped within weeks of transmission, as was the practice in those days, but I had an audio recording of highlights, which I knew off by heart, as I did the sermon in Beyond the Fringe Beyond the Fringe and his cottaging sketch from and his cottaging sketch from The Secret Policeman's Other Ball The Secret Policeman's Other Ball. I had read but never seen his play Habeas Corpus Habeas Corpus and had once owned, then subsequently lost, a ca.s.sette tape of and had once owned, then subsequently lost, a ca.s.sette tape of Forty Years On Forty Years On, in which he played a schoolmaster called Tempest. Those were enough for me to think him a hero. Talking Heads Talking Heads, A Private Function A Private Function, An Englishman Abroad An Englishman Abroad, The Madness of George III The Madness of George III and and The History Boys The History Boys all lay many years in the future. all lay many years in the future.

'Alan Bennett, eh?'

Was it paranoia, or did I sense that Richard found my answer disappointing? Peter Cook and John Cleese were greater comedy stars with their almost rock and roll status and charisma, but Alan Bennett's miniaturism, his frailty combined with his verbal touch and literary, almost academic, frames of reference appealed to me more as a role model. History has, of course, shown that his kind of career path was as unattainable for me as Cook's and Cleese's, but a man's reach should exceed his grasp, or what's a heaven for?

A year after this lunch, round about the time Gossip Gossip was getting into financial trouble and I was working on the first drafts of was getting into financial trouble and I was working on the first drafts of Me and My Girl Me and My Girl in between sweaty bouts of not coming up with in between sweaty bouts of not coming up with Alfresco 2 Alfresco 2 material with Hugh, Richard called me up. material with Hugh, Richard called me up.

'Ha!' he said. 'You're going to like this. Be at the Garrick Theatre on Thursday afternoon at half past three to audition for Patrick Garland and John Gale. Prepare the part of Tempest in Forty Years On Forty Years On.'

'W-w-w-w ...?'

'It's for the Chichester Festival next April.'

'P-p-p-p-p ...'

'Good luck.'

Alan Bennett's very own part. And to be directed by the same man who directed the original production in nineteen sixty-whenever it was. I leapt for the bookshelf. I knew I had a copy somewhere, but it must have been in a box in my parents' house in Norfolk or in that indeterminate place where lost teenage property goes, all those favourite records, wall-posters and pullovers that you never see again. I streaked over to John Sandoe's, where the a.s.sistant was quite sure they had a copy if only he could lay his hands on it, now just let him think ... I almost screamed with impatience as he hunted with maddening deliberation and cheerfulness.

'Here we are. Our only copy. A little grubby I'm afraid you can have it for a pound.'

I spent the next few hours reacquainting myself with this, Alan Bennett's first full-length dramatic work. Forty Years On Forty Years On is set in a fictional school called Albion House, which is mounting its annual school play, this year a specially devised pageant performed by staff and boys called 'Speak for England, Arthur'. This play-within-a-play takes a family through the World Wars by way of a dazzling series of sketches, monologues and parodies that manage to combine, in that uniquely Bennett way, the joyously comic with the mournfully elegiac. The original production, which starred John Gielgud as the headmaster, Paul Eddington as the senior master and Alan Bennett as the drippy junior master Tempest, was a huge success from the very beginning. The school's name, Albion House, alerted the audience to the possibility, never overstretched, that it might perhaps stand as a symbol of England itself. is set in a fictional school called Albion House, which is mounting its annual school play, this year a specially devised pageant performed by staff and boys called 'Speak for England, Arthur'. This play-within-a-play takes a family through the World Wars by way of a dazzling series of sketches, monologues and parodies that manage to combine, in that uniquely Bennett way, the joyously comic with the mournfully elegiac. The original production, which starred John Gielgud as the headmaster, Paul Eddington as the senior master and Alan Bennett as the drippy junior master Tempest, was a huge success from the very beginning. The school's name, Albion House, alerted the audience to the possibility, never overstretched, that it might perhaps stand as a symbol of England itself.

I learned off by heart Tempest's 'Confirmation Cla.s.s', in which he attempts to give a lesson on the facts of life.

TEMPEST: Those are called your private parts, Foster. And if anyone ever touches them, you are to say, 'Those are my private parts and you're not to touch them.'

FOSTER: Those are my private parts and you are not to touch them.

TEMPEST: It doesn't apply to me, Foster! It doesn't apply to me!

I also committed to memory a monologue in which Tempest plays a rather precious and faded literary figure recalling the great days of Bloomsbury.

With these and other scenes safely in my head I made my way by bus and Tube to the Garrick Theatre in the Charing Cross Road. I found the stage door, where I was greeted by a friendly young man who led me backstage to a little green room.

'My name's Michael,' he said. 'You're a little little early, so perhaps you wouldn't mind waiting here while we just see some other people?' early, so perhaps you wouldn't mind waiting here while we just see some other people?'

I looked at my watch and saw that it was ten to three. Perhaps the appropriateness of the number of minutes early I was could be read as a good omen.

Forty minutes on I walked nervously on to the stage, a hand shading my eyes as I strained to see down into the auditorium.

'h.e.l.lo,' said a neat, friendly and delicately precise voice, 'I am Patrick, and this is John Gale, who runs the Chichester Festival Theatre.'

'h.e.l.lo,' boomed a rich baritone from the dark.

'And this,' continued Patrick, 'is Alan Bennett.'

The high tenor song of a cheery and attenuated Yorkshire 'h.e.l.lo' floated up from the stalls and into my unbelieving ears. Alan Bennett? Alan Bennett? Here! At the audition! Every organ in my body screamed. A hammering came into my ears, and my knees turned to water. Here! At the audition! Every organ in my body screamed. A hammering came into my ears, and my knees turned to water. Alan Bennett? Alan Bennett?

I remember not one minute or second of the half hour that followed. I know I must have recited or read some scenes and I do recall stumbling through the London streets in an agony of despair and disappointment, so I must have said goodbye and left the theatre in some manner or other.

Richard Armitage called me up at the flat that evening. 'How did it go, m'dear?'

'Oh Richard it was awful awful, I was terrible. Appalling. Monstrous. Unspeakable. Alan Bennett Alan Bennett was there! was there! In the theatre.' In the theatre.'

'I don't doubt it. Is that a bad thing?'

'Well, it never occurred occurred to me he'd be present. Never. I was tongue-tied, struck dumb. So nervous I could barely speak. Oh G.o.d, I was to me he'd be present. Never. I was tongue-tied, struck dumb. So nervous I could barely speak. Oh G.o.d, I was dreadful dreadful.'

'I'm sure you can't have been as bad as all that ...' He made the series of soothing and clucking noises that agents make to calm hysterical clients. They failed to console me.

The next day Lorraine rang. 'Darling, could you go to the Garrick again at three o'clock for a recall?'

'A recall?'

'It means they want to see and hear you again.'

'You mean they haven't ruled me out?'

I arrived at the Garrick bang on the hour determined at least to try to override my nerves. Michael greeted me like an old friend and led me straight through to the stage. The house lights were up, and I looked out and could clearly see Patrick Garland and John Gale in the stalls but this time no Alan Bennett. A great wave of relief swept over me.

'h.e.l.lo again!' Patrick called cheerily. 'We were wondering if we might hear the Bloomsbury monologue this time?'

I sat and delivered.

'Thank you!' said Patrick. 'Thank you ... I think ...' He conferred with John Gale, nodded his head and looked down as if seeking inspiration from the floor. From where I stood he seemed to be whispering to the carpet. 'Well, yes ...' he murmured. 'I think so too.' He looked up towards me with a smile and said in a louder voice. 'Stephen, John and I would be very pleased to ask you to play the part of Tempest for our production. Would you like to do that?'

'Would I? Oh, indeed I would!' I said. 'Thank you. Thank you so very, very much.'

'That's excellent news,' said Patrick. 'We're delighted. Aren't we?' he added, to the carpet.

There was a sort of scuffling and scrabbling, and a figure rose from behind the seats where it had been crouching out of sight. The long, lean form of Alan Bennett unfolded itself with an apologetic cough. 'Oh, yes,' he said, brushing dust from the knees of his grey flannel trousers, 'quite delighted.'

Patrick noted my bewilderment. 'Your agent was kind enough to mention to us that Alan's presence had made you a little nervous, so this time round he thought it might be best to conceal himself.'

Such consideration from a hero was almost more than I could bear. Naturally, being an a.r.s.e, I expressed my grat.i.tude by not managing to express any grat.i.tude at all. To this day I do not think I have ever properly thanked Alan for his grace and sweetness that afternoon.

Crises of Confidence Alan Bennett has a huge advantage over most of us in that his shyness is known about and expected; indeed it is one of the qualities most admired in him. It proves his authenticity, modesty and the cla.s.sy distance he naturally keeps from that creepy media gang of loud, confident, shallow and self-congratulatory w.a.n.kers to which I cannot but help belong and which the rest of society so rightly despises. n.o.body seems to expect me to be shy, or believes me when I say that I am. I cannot blame them. I seem to move with such ease through the world. I was reminded of this only yesterday afternoon. I was a guest on the CBS programme The Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson The Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson. Craig is the Scottish comedian who has now become, in the opinion of many, myself included, the best talk show host in America. He told me, as he began the interview, that back in the eighties, when he had been a regular on the British comedy circuit, he had always regarded me as almost unnaturally calm, sorted and in control, to the extent that he was in a kind of angry awe of me. I ought to be used to being told that, but yet again it brought me up short. Never, at any point in my life, can I remember feeling that I was any part of a.s.sured, controlled or at ease. The longer I live the more clearly one truth stands out. People will rarely modify their preferred view of a person, no matter what the evidence might suggest. I am English. Tweedy. Pukka. Confident. Establishment. Self-a.s.sured. In charge. That is how people like to see me, be the truth never so at variance. It may be the case that I am a Jewish mongrel with an addictive self-destructive streak that it has taken me years to master. It may be the case that my afflictions of mood and temperament cause me to be occasionally suicidal in outlook and can frequently leave me in despair and eaten up with self-hatred and self-disgust. It may be the case that I am chronically overmastered by a sense of failure, underachievement and a terrible knowledge that I have betrayed, abused or neglected the talents that nature bestowed upon me. It may be the case that I doubt I will ever have the capacity to be happy. It may be the case that I fear for my sanity, my moral centre and my very future. All these cases may be protested, and I can a.s.sert their truth as often as I like, but the repet.i.tion will not alter my 'image' by one pixel. It is the same image I had before I was a known public figure. The image that caused a delegation of college first-year contemporaries to visit me in my rooms and demand to know my 'secret'. The image that satisfies and impresses some, enrages others and no doubt bores, provokes or irritates many more. I would be a tragic figure indeed if I had not learnt to live with that persona by now. Like many masks this smiling, placid one has become so tight a fit that it might be said to have rewritten the features of whatever true face once screamed behind it, were it not that it is just a mask and that the feelings underneath are as they always were.

What I want to say about all this wailing is not that I expect your pity or your understanding (although I wouldn't throw either of them out of bed), but that perhaps I am the one actually offering pity and understanding here. For I have to believe that all the feelings I have described are not unique to me but common to us all. The sense of failure, the fear of eternal unhappiness, the insecurity, misery, self-disgust and the awful awareness of underachievement that I have described. Are you not prey to all those things also? I do hope so. I would feel the most conspicuous oddity otherwise. I grant that my moments of 'suicidal ideation' and swings of mood may be more extreme and pathological than most have to endure, but otherwise, I am surely describing nothing more than the fears, dreads and neuroses we all share? No? More or less? Mutatis mutandis Mutatis mutandis? All things being equal? Oh, please say yes.

This is a problem many writers and comedians face: we possess the primary arrogance that persuades us that our insights, fixations and habits are for the most part shared characteristics that we alone have the boldness, insight and openness of mind to expose and name: we are privileged thereby, or so we congratulate ourselves, to be spokesmen for humanity. When a stand-up comic describes nose-picking or peeing in the shower or whatever it might be we can interpret our laughter as a 'me too' release which itself triggers more laughter: we laugh again because our initial laughter and that of the person sitting next to us in the audience proves our complicity and shared guilt. This much is obvious and a truism of observational comedy. On top of it there can also be laid, of course, that conscious game comics play in which they shuttle between those common, shared anxieties and ones that are very particular to them. And here I suppose we laugh at how different different we are. How similar, but different. How the comic is living a more extreme life of neurosis and angst on our behalf. A kind of 'thank G.o.d I'm not we are. How similar, but different. How the comic is living a more extreme life of neurosis and angst on our behalf. A kind of 'thank G.o.d I'm not that that weird' laughter is the result. When a comic or a writer has established their credentials by revealing how much of what they do or feel is something we also do or feel, they can then go further and reveal depths of activity or feeling that we may not share, that might revolt us or that perhaps we weird' laughter is the result. When a comic or a writer has established their credentials by revealing how much of what they do or feel is something we also do or feel, they can then go further and reveal depths of activity or feeling that we may not share, that might revolt us or that perhaps we do do share but would much rather not have dragged up into the light. And of course, comics, being what they are, appreciate that point. share but would much rather not have dragged up into the light. And of course, comics, being what they are, appreciate that point.

It is common enough to hear this kind of routine: 'You know, ladies and gentlemen, you know when you're sat watching television and you stick your finger up your a.r.s.e and wiggle it about? ... No? Oh, right. It must be just me then. Sorry about that. Oops. Moving on ...' Well, with an average stand-up comic talking about physical things like peeing in the shower and nose- or a.r.s.e-picking it is easy enough to see the distinction between what is communal and what is individual. But those are discrete identifiable actions of which one is either 'guilty' or not. Some people pee in the shower, others do not. I have to confess that I do. I try to be good and refrain from doing so in somebody else's shower, but otherwise I am guiltless about what seems to me to be a logical, reasonable and hygienically unexceptionable act. I also pick my nose. I will stop the confession right there for fear of embarra.s.sing you or myself further. You can decide whether to put the book down now and say to the vacant air: 'I too pick my nose and pee in the shower.' Plenty of people do neither. They are likely, I hope, to forgive those of us who are less fastidious in our habits. But in either case whether or not they do is not susceptible to interpretation. But feelings feelings ... I may know whether or not I pick my nose but do I really know whether or not I feel a failure? I may be aware that I often feel bleak and unhappy or filled with nameless dread, but am I right to interpret these feelings as a sense of moral deficiency or personal inadequacy or any such thing? The root of the feeling may after all be a hormonal imbalance, heartburn, a triggered unconscious memory, too little sunlight, a bad dream, anything. As with colour sense or pain sensitivity we can never know whether any of our perceptions and sensations are the same as others'. So it may very well be that I am just a great big cissy and that my miseries and worries are nothing compared to yours. Or perhaps I am the bravest man on the planet and that, if any of you were to experience a tenth of the sorrows I daily endure, you would scream in agony. But just as we can all agree on what is red, even if we will never know if we each see it in the same way, so we can all agree can't we? that no matter how confident we may appear to others, inside we are all sobbing, scared and uncertain for much of the time. Or perhaps it's just me. ... I may know whether or not I pick my nose but do I really know whether or not I feel a failure? I may be aware that I often feel bleak and unhappy or filled with nameless dread, but am I right to interpret these feelings as a sense of moral deficiency or personal inadequacy or any such thing? The root of the feeling may after all be a hormonal imbalance, heartburn, a triggered unconscious memory, too little sunlight, a bad dream, anything. As with colour sense or pain sensitivity we can never know whether any of our perceptions and sensations are the same as others'. So it may very well be that I am just a great big cissy and that my miseries and worries are nothing compared to yours. Or perhaps I am the bravest man on the planet and that, if any of you were to experience a tenth of the sorrows I daily endure, you would scream in agony. But just as we can all agree on what is red, even if we will never know if we each see it in the same way, so we can all agree can't we? that no matter how confident we may appear to others, inside we are all sobbing, scared and uncertain for much of the time. Or perhaps it's just me.

Oh G.o.d, perhaps it really is is just me. just me.

Actually it doesn't really matter, when you come to think of it. If it is just me, then you are reading the story of some weird freak. You are free to treat this book like science fiction, fantasy or exotic travel literature. Are there really men like Stephen Fry on this planet? Goodness, how alien some people are. And if I am not not alone, then neither are you, and hand in hand we can marvel together at the strangeness of the human condition. alone, then neither are you, and hand in hand we can marvel together at the strangeness of the human condition.

Celebrity Aside from University Challenge University Challenge, the BBC's transmission of The Cellar Tapes The Cellar Tapes was the first time I had appeared on national television. I don't count was the first time I had appeared on national television. I don't count There's Nothing to Worry About There's Nothing to Worry About, which was inflicted only upon viewers in the north-west ITV region.

The morning after The Cellar Tapes The Cellar Tapes was aired on BBC2 I went for a walk along the King's Road. How ought I to treat those who approached me? I switched on a sweet gentle smile and practised a kind of 'Who? ... was aired on BBC2 I went for a walk along the King's Road. How ought I to treat those who approached me? I switched on a sweet gentle smile and practised a kind of 'Who? ... me me?' gesture that involved looking behind me and then pointing with questioning disbelief at my own undeserving chest. I made sure, before setting out, that there were pens in my pocket as well as some artfully random sc.r.a.ps of paper for autographs. Would I write 'Yours sincerely' or 'With best wishes'? I decided that I should try each a few times and see which looked better.

Photo call in Richmond Park for BBC version of The Cellar Tapes. The Cellar Tapes.

The same: ultimately a git with a pipe stuck in his face.

The first people I pa.s.sed as I made my way up Blacklands Terrace were an elderly couple who paid me no attention. Foreigners possibly, or the kind of Chelseaites who thought it smart not to have a television. A young woman came towards me with a West Highland terrier on a lead. I added an extra 10 per cent of soupy modesty to my sweet gentle smile and awaited her gasps and shrieks. She and the terrier pa.s.sed right by without a flicker of recognition. How very strange. I turned left at the King's Road and walked past the Peter Jones department store and twice around Sloane Square. Not one person stopped me, shot me a sideways glance of admiring recognition or favoured me with a single puzzled stare that told me that they knew the face but couldn't quite place it. There was simply no reaction from anyone anywhere. I went into W. H. Smith's and hung around the periodicals section, close to the piles of listings magazines. To pick up a Radio Times Radio Times people had to ask me to step aside; obviously and by definition these persons must have been television watchers, but my features, by now set into a wild, despairing grin, meant nothing to them. This was most strange. Television, everybody in the world knew, conferred instant fame. One morning you do the weather on BBC1, the next you are besieged at the supermarket checkout queue. Instead I had woken up to find myself anonymous. I was still nothing more than another face in the London crowd. Maybe almost no one had watched the Footlights show? Or maybe millions had, but I possessed one of those bland, forgettable faces that meant I was doomed never to be recognized. Surely this was unlikely? I had told my face a lot of tough and unforgiving truths in the past, but I had never accused it of being bland or forgettable. people had to ask me to step aside; obviously and by definition these persons must have been television watchers, but my features, by now set into a wild, despairing grin, meant nothing to them. This was most strange. Television, everybody in the world knew, conferred instant fame. One morning you do the weather on BBC1, the next you are besieged at the supermarket checkout queue. Instead I had woken up to find myself anonymous. I was still nothing more than another face in the London crowd. Maybe almost no one had watched the Footlights show? Or maybe millions had, but I possessed one of those bland, forgettable faces that meant I was doomed never to be recognized. Surely this was unlikely? I had told my face a lot of tough and unforgiving truths in the past, but I had never accused it of being bland or forgettable.

I pulled a compensatory BBC Micro BBC Micro magazine from the shelf and left. As I was trailing disappointedly back to the flat I heard a voice behind me. magazine from the shelf and left. As I was trailing disappointedly back to the flat I heard a voice behind me.

'Excuse me, excuse me!'

I turned to see an excited young girl. At last. 'Yes?'

'You forgot your change.'

Here are the first lines of Love's Labour's Lost Love's Labour's Lost: Let fame, that all hunt after in their lives, Live register'd upon our brazen tombs, And then grace us in the disgrace of death.

That is the King of Navarre's opening speech, the one Hugh had such trouble with in the 1981 Marlowe Society production. It is a fine sentiment, but nothing could run more counter to the way the world thinks today. It certainly seems that all still hunt after fame, but how many are content for it to come only in the form of a tombstone inscription? They want it now. And that is how I wanted it too. Ever since I can remember I had dreamt of being famous. I know how embarra.s.sing an admission this is. I could attempt to dress it up in finer words, imputing and inferring intricate psychological grounds, implicating and adducing complex developmental causations that elevated the condition into a syndrome, but there is no point dressing it up in fine linen. From the first moment I was aware of such a cla.s.s of person existing, I had wanted to be a celebrity. We are forever telling ourselves that we live in a celebrity-obsessed culture; many hands are daily wrung at the supremacy of appearance over achievement, status over substance and image over industry. To desire desire fame argues a shallow and delusional outlook. This much we all know. But if we clever ones can see so clearly that fame is a snare and a delusion, we can also see just as clearly that as each year pa.s.ses a greater and greater proportion of the western world's youth is becoming entramelled in that snare and dazzled by that delusion. fame argues a shallow and delusional outlook. This much we all know. But if we clever ones can see so clearly that fame is a snare and a delusion, we can also see just as clearly that as each year pa.s.ses a greater and greater proportion of the western world's youth is becoming entramelled in that snare and dazzled by that delusion.

We have in our minds a dreadful picture of the thousands who audition so pitifully for television talent shows and whose heads seem always to be buried in garish celebrity magazines. We feel sorrow and contempt for the narrow dimensions of their lives. We excoriate a society that is all surface and image. Teenaged girls in particular, we suggest, are slaves to body-image and fashion fantasies, they are junkies on the fame drug. How can our culture be so broken and so sick, we wonder, as to raise up as objects of veneration a raft of talentless n.o.bodies who offer no moral, spiritual or intellectual sustenance and no discernible gifts beyond over-hygienic eroticism and unthreatening photogeneity?

I would offer the usual counters to that. Firstly, the phenomenon simply is not as new as everyone thinks it is. That there are more outlets, pipelines, conduits and means of transmitting and receiving news and images is obvious, but read any novel published in the early part of the twentieth century and you will find female uneducated characters who spend their spare moments dreaming of movie stars, tennis-players, explorers, racing-drivers and barnstorming aviators. You'll find these dreamy shop-girls and head-in-the-clouds housemaids in Evelyn Waugh, Agatha Christie, P. G. Wodehouse and every genre in between. The propensity to worship idols is not new. Nor is the wrathful contempt of those who believe that they alone understand the difference between false G.o.ds and true. In the story of the Ten Commandments I was always on the side of Aaron. I liked his golden calf. Biblical colour plates for children showed it garlanded with flowers, revelling idolaters dancing happily around it, clashing cymbals and embracing each other with wild, abandoned joy. The music and the hugs were clinching proof (especially the cymbals) in the minds of the Victorian ill.u.s.trators that Aaron's followers were debauched, degenerate, decadent and doomed to eternal d.a.m.nation. With the party in full swing, Moses returns with those fatuous tablets tucked under his arm, dashes them petulantly to the ground, melts the golden calf and grinds it to powder, which he mixes into a drink that he forces all the Israelites to swallow. Next, being such a holy man of G.o.d, he slays 3,000 men before hauling his vengeful a.r.s.e back up Mount Sinai to get a second batch of commandments. I think we can celebrate the fact that we now live in a culture, flawed or not, that instantly sees that, while Aaron may be a weak voluptuary, his brother is a dangerous fanatic. The gilt bull beats the guilty bulls.h.i.t any way you choose to look at it. We humans are naturally disposed to worship G.o.ds and heroes, to build our pantheons and valhallas. I would rather see that impulse directed into the adoration of daft singers, thicko footballers and air-headed screen actors than into the veneration of dogmatic zealots, fanatical preachers, militant politicians and rabid cultural commentators.

Secondly, is it not a rule in life that no one is quite as stupid as we would like them to be? Spokesmen across the political divide from us are smarter than we would have them, mad mullahs and crazy nationalists are nothing like as dumb as we would wish. Film producers, shock jocks, insurgents, journalists, American military all kinds of people we might reasonably expect to write off as mentally negligible have cunning, insight and intellect well beyond what is comfortable for us. This inconvenient truth extends to those on whom we lavish our patronizing pity too. If the social-networking services of the digital age teach us anything it is that only a fool would underestimate the intelligence, intuition and cognitive skills of the 'ma.s.ses'. I am talking about more than the 'wisdom of crowds' here. If you look beyond sillinesses like the puzzling inability of the majority to distinguish between your your and and you're you're, its its and and it's it's and and there there, they're they're and and their their (all of which distinctions have nothing to do with language, only with grammar and orthographical convention: after all logic and consistency would suggest the insertion of a genitival apostrophe in the p.r.o.nominal possessive (all of which distinctions have nothing to do with language, only with grammar and orthographical convention: after all logic and consistency would suggest the insertion of a genitival apostrophe in the p.r.o.nominal possessive its its, but convention has decided, perhaps to avoid confusion with the elided it is it is, to dispense with one), if, as I say, you look beyond such pernickety pedantries, you will see that it is possible to be a fan of reality TV, talent shows and bubblegum pop and still have a brain. You will also see that a great many people know perfectly well how silly and camp and trivial their fandom is. They do not check in their minds when they enter a fan site. Judgement is not necessarily fled to brutish beasts, and men have not quite lost their reason. Which is all a way of questioning whether pop-culture hero worship is really so psychically damaging, so erosive of the cognitive faculties, so corrupting of the soul of mankind as we are so often told.

Thirdly, look at the kind of people who most object to the childishness and cheapness of celebrity culture. Does one really want to side with such apoplectic and bombastic bores? I should know, I often catch myself being one, and it isn't pretty. I will defend the absolute value of Mozart over Miley Cyrus, of course I will, but we should be wary of false dichotomies. You do not have to choose between one or the other. You can have both. The human cultural jungle should be as varied and plural as the Amazonian rainforest. We are all richer for biodiversity. We may decide that a puma is worth more to us than a caterpillar, but surely we can agree that the habitat is all the better for being able to sustain each. Monocultures are uninhabitably dull and end as deserts.

Against all that it might be said that the quarrel is not with harmless idolatry. The problem, some would argue, is not that everybody worships celebrity, but they want it for themselves. want it for themselves. Online user-generated content and the rise of the talent show and reality TV have bred a generation for whom it is not enough to flick through fan magazines, they want their own shot at stardom. They want, moreover, to go straight to fame and fortune, short-circuiting tedious considerations like hard work and talent. Well, we all know how satisfying it is to recite the shortcomings and hollowness of others especially those who have money and recognition where we have none. It is certainly more pleasurable than inspecting our own shortcomings. I dare say we do live in a cheap age, an age where the things that should have value are little prized and things that are empty of worth are too highly rated. But who on earth could think for a second that this is new to our race? Anyone familiar with Aristophanes, Martial, Catullus, Shakespeare, Jonson, Dryden, Johnson, Pope, Swift ... You get the point. It has Online user-generated content and the rise of the talent show and reality TV have bred a generation for whom it is not enough to flick through fan magazines, they want their own shot at stardom. They want, moreover, to go straight to fame and fortune, short-circuiting tedious considerations like hard work and talent. Well, we all know how satisfying it is to recite the shortcomings and hollowness of others especially those who have money and recognition where we have none. It is certainly more pleasurable than inspecting our own shortcomings. I dare say we do live in a cheap age, an age where the things that should have value are little prized and things that are empty of worth are too highly rated. But who on earth could think for a second that this is new to our race? Anyone familiar with Aristophanes, Martial, Catullus, Shakespeare, Jonson, Dryden, Johnson, Pope, Swift ... You get the point. It has always always been the case, since humans could first record their thoughts, that the 'wrong people' have been seen to have arrived at the highest positions. The emperors, kings, aristocrats, ruling cla.s.ses and gentry, the arrivistes, parvenus and nouveaux riches, the financiers, merchant princes and industrialists, the artists, designers, literati and cultural elite, the actors, sportsmen, television stars, pop singers and presenters, they have all been unfairly elevated to positions they do not deserve. 'In a just and properly ordered world,' the angry ones wail, ' been the case, since humans could first record their thoughts, that the 'wrong people' have been seen to have arrived at the highest positions. The emperors, kings, aristocrats, ruling cla.s.ses and gentry, the arrivistes, parvenus and nouveaux riches, the financiers, merchant princes and industrialists, the artists, designers, literati and cultural elite, the actors, sportsmen, television stars, pop singers and presenters, they have all been unfairly elevated to positions they do not deserve. 'In a just and properly ordered world,' the angry ones wail, 'I should be up there too, but I am too proud to say so, so I shall carp and snipe and rant with indignation and show my contempt for the whole boiling. But deep inside I want to be recognized. I just want to count.' should be up there too, but I am too proud to say so, so I shall carp and snipe and rant with indignation and show my contempt for the whole boiling. But deep inside I want to be recognized. I just want to count.'

I was like that all through my teenage years and early twenties. Desperate to be famous but very, very ready, if I didn't make it, to vent my scorn on those who did. I contend that people like me who burn for fame and recognition are much rarer than the prevailing view would have us believe. I take my brother Roger and his family as my touchstone for all that is sane, sound and decent. They are as modern and connected to the world as anyone else I know. I recall, and I seem to be able to picture it in pin-sharp high-def widescreen 3D detail, an evening at the pantomime in Norwich when I was seven and Roger was nine. b.u.t.tons made his entrance and asked if there were any boys and girls out there who would like to join him up on stage. Roger dropped down in his seat trying his hardest to look invisible. The idea of being up there in the lights in front of a staring audience horrified him. I meanwhile was leaping up and down thrusting my hand into the air desperate, absolutely desperate to be picked. Two boys, eighteen months apart in age, bred in the same conditions and by the same parents. There are many more Rogers in the world, praise be, than Stephens.

Maybe the childish desire for attention I felt then is all of a piece with my childish desire for sweet things. The desire to be famous is infantile, and humanity has never lived in an age when infantilism was more sanctioned and encouraged than now. Infantile foods in the form of crisps, chips, sweet fizzy drinks and pappy burgers or hot dogs smothered in sugary sauce are considered mainstream nutrition for millions of adults. Intoxicating drinks disguised as milkshakes and soda pops exist for those whose taste buds haven't grown up enough to enjoy the taste of alcohol. As in food so in the wider culture. Anything astringent, savoury, sharp, complex, ambiguous or difficult is ignored in favour of the colourful, the sweet, the hollow and the simple. I know that fame to me, when I was a child, was much like candy-floss. It looked magical, it was huge and dramatic and attention-grabbing. It is tempting to write here and now that, like candy-floss, fame turned out to be little more than air on a stick and that the small part of it that has substance was cloying, sick-making and corrosive to me, but I shall keep such thoughts, if I truly have them, for later. I am, thus far in my story, not famous at all and I cannot yet tell what fame is like only that it is a condition I long for.

In fact, I think few people are really obsessed with being famous in the way that I was. Most recoil at the thought, squirming down in their seats like my brother at the very idea of public exposure. They might consider from time to time what fame would be like and conduct thought experiments in which they feature on a red carpet being lit by flashbulbs, but that is no more than the normal fantasy of opening the batting for England or volleying the championship point at Wimbledon. For the most part, most people are mostly for a quiet life out of the public eye and have a mostly sane understanding of how peculiar fame must be. They are sensible enough not to judge all celebrities as alike and civil enough not to despise people because they have committed the crime of being a pop singer, a golfer or a politician. Most people are tolerant, wise, kind and thoughtful. Most of the time. People like me eaten up with ambition, simmering with resentment, white-hot with neediness at one moment and sullen with frustration and disappointment the next, we are the ones who obsess about fame and status, and it gives us nothing but dissatisfaction, vexation and horrible doses of heavy angst.

All this is embarra.s.sing for me to admit. Those in my line do not own up to such vulgar, cheesy and undignified yearnings. It is all about the work work. If your work happens, unlike insurance, accountancy or teaching, to bring celebrity in its train, or riches, then so be it. You aim for the game bird of accomplishment; fame and fortune just happen to be the feathers it flies with. Yeah, right. We know these worthy precepts, I echo and endorse them. But the needy child that hid within the tweedy man screamed to be fed and the needy child, as always, wanted what was instantly satisfying and instantly rewarding, no matter how shallow and devious that might make him. Shallow and devious is what I was (and probably always will be), and if you have not yet understood how profoundly shallow and how straightforwardly devious I am, then I cannot have been doing my job right.

Work was coming in thick and fast. The musical, the play, the film script and a thick miscellany of writing and radio a.s.signments to which we might come in a moment. There is no doubt that amongst magazine and newspaper editors, radio, film and TV producers, directors, commissioners and casting agents I was a coming man, a young shaver useful for all kinds of odds and ends. But I was not famous. A few invitations to film premieres and first nights began to trickle in, but I found that I could walk the red carpet entirely unmolested. I remember going to some event with Rowan Atkinson, the press night of a new play, I think. To hear his name shouted out by photographers and see the crowd of fans pressing up against the crash barriers caused the most intense excitement in me, combined with a sick flood of fury and resentment that no one, not one single person, recognized me me or wanted or wanted my my picture. Oh, Stephen. I have clicked on and selected that sentence, deleted it, restored it, deleted it and restored it again. A large part of me would rather not have you know that I am so futile, fatuous and feeble-minded, but an even larger part recognizes that this is our bargain. I cannot speak for others or presume to drag out their entrails for public inspection, but I can speak for (and against) myself. Maybe I was an advance guard for a new kind of Briton: fanatical about fame, addictive, superficial, gadget-obsessed and determinedly infantile. Maybe, to put a kinder construction on it, I was living proof that you could want to be famous picture. Oh, Stephen. I have clicked on and selected that sentence, deleted it, restored it, deleted it and restored it again. A large part of me would rather not have you know that I am so futile, fatuous and feeble-minded, but an even larger part recognizes that this is our bargain. I cannot speak for others or presume to drag out their entrails for public inspection, but I can speak for (and against) myself. Maybe I was an advance guard for a new kind of Briton: fanatical about fame, addictive, superficial, gadget-obsessed and determinedly infantile. Maybe, to put a kinder construction on it, I was living proof that you could want to be famous and and want to do the work, you could relish the red carpet want to do the work, you could relish the red carpet and and relish lucubrating into the early hours, cranking out articles, scripts, sketches and scenarios with a genuine sense of pleasure and fulfilment. relish lucubrating into the early hours, cranking out articles, scripts, sketches and scenarios with a genuine sense of pleasure and fulfilment.

Commercials, Covent Garden, Compact Discs, Cappuccinos and Croissants On top of the major projects in film and television there tumbled in other requests for work of all kinds. Lo Hamilton at Noel Gay Artists fielded these and pa.s.sed them on. I think I understood that I had the option to refuse, to turn down, to inquire further, but I cannot recall that I ever did. When I look back at this time it seems to be a paradise of variety without pressure and novelty without nerves. Everything was fantastically new, exciting, flattering and appealing.