Fry_ A Memoir Part 13

I confessed that I did not.

'Keep it that way,' said Mark.

Boxer was an attractive-looking man aged, I suppose, about fifty, but youthful in a twinkly, almost elfin way. He was married to the newsreader and co-founder of TV-AM, Anna Ford. Over the first two courses Mark was charming, funny and inconsequential, as if the reason for his invitation to lunch was entirely social. He kept me in raptures with stories of his time at Cambridge.

'It was quite the thing then to present oneself as h.o.m.os.e.xual. I used to wear fantastically tight white trousers and tell the rugby players that they were the creamiest darlings in the world. It was actually very odd not not to behave like that. Amongst my set at least. No one batted an eyelid if you came on as gay. And of course it made the girls simply throw themselves at you. Did you know that I am the only person aside from Sh.e.l.ley to be sent down from one of the universities for atheism?' to behave like that. Amongst my set at least. No one batted an eyelid if you came on as gay. And of course it made the girls simply throw themselves at you. Did you know that I am the only person aside from Sh.e.l.ley to be sent down from one of the universities for atheism?'

'No! Really?'

'Well, not quite. I was editor of Granta Granta and I published a poem by somebody or other that the university authorities said was blasphemous. They demanded I, as editor, be sent down, but E. M. Forster and Noel Annan and others simply leapt to my defence, so they changed it to a rustication, which they meanly set for May Week so that I would miss the May Ball, but of course they overlooked the fact that b.a.l.l.s go on way past midnight. So on the stroke of twelve I returned to King's in my white tie and tails and was chaired around from marquee to marquee like a conquering hero. It was too marvellous.' and I published a poem by somebody or other that the university authorities said was blasphemous. They demanded I, as editor, be sent down, but E. M. Forster and Noel Annan and others simply leapt to my defence, so they changed it to a rustication, which they meanly set for May Week so that I would miss the May Ball, but of course they overlooked the fact that b.a.l.l.s go on way past midnight. So on the stroke of twelve I returned to King's in my white tie and tails and was chaired around from marquee to marquee like a conquering hero. It was too marvellous.'

It was hard to believe that this man was the same age as my father. He had the gift, if gift it is, of making me feel more than usually bourgeois, ordinary and unexciting.

'So, a nos moutons a nos moutons,' he said as the cheese arrived. 'Tatler. I know you have written for us once before. Wonderful piece, by the way. Is it really true?'

He was referring to a feature to which I had contributed earlier in the year and which we will come to later. I blushed fiercely as I always did when that article was mentioned.

'Yes. Quite true.'

'Heavens. Anyway. The magazine ... Do you read it, by any chance?'

'Sometimes ... I mean, I don't positively not not read it, but I don't think I've ever actually bought one. Except the month my piece came out, that is.' read it, but I don't think I've ever actually bought one. Except the month my piece came out, that is.'

'That's all right,' he said. 'Here's next month's number. The covers are wonderful these days. We have Michael Roberts as our art director. He's too splendid for words.'

I took his proffered copy of the magazine and flipped through the pages.

'It's all fine,' said Mark. 'Nothing wrong. It's just that there's something ... something missing missing.'

'Well whatever it is,' I said, 'it isn't advertis.e.m.e.nts.'

'Ha! No, we're doing very well, really. But I need someone to come in every month to ... to smell smell the issue before it goes to print.' the issue before it goes to print.'

'To smell it?'

'Mm ... you know. To look at the sum total of articles and spreads and to think about how they can all come together. To work on the text of the cover and the spinelines ...'

'Spinelines?'

'The copy written on the spine.'

'Of course. Spinelines, yes.'

'I need someone who isn't in on the everyday production of the magazine to take that look. To smell it all and to ...'

A thought struck me. 'Do you mean,' I said, 'that you want someone to do the puns?'

He slapped the table. 'I knew knew you'd understand!' you'd understand!'

Since Tina Brown's pioneering reign at the Tatler Tatler's helm the magazine had become notorious, amongst other things, for its punning headlines, sub-headlines and as I now knew them to be called spinelines.

'That's settled, then. You're Officer Commanding Puns.' He drained his coffee with clear satisfaction. 'Oh, another thing I thought of on the way here. We get sent all kinds of books. For the most part insufferably dull fly-fishing manuals and the memoirs of forgettable d.u.c.h.esses, but sometimes more interesting t.i.tles might come our way. We don't have a book reviewer. Why don't I get all the books we're sent couriered over to you in a batch once a week and you can ...'

'Smell them?'

'That's it. Smell them and then write a column in which you can review them or simply comment on the kinds of books that are being published these days. A zeitgeisty, smelly sort of thing. How does that appeal?'

I said that a zeitgeisty, smelly sort of thing appealed greatly.

'Fine. Why don't you pop back to Hanover Square with me, and I'll introduce you around?'

'Will I have to come into the office a lot?'

'Just from time to time to have a ...'

'A smell?'

'To have a smell, exactly.'

The first issue for which I acted as Smellfinder General was June's. 'June Know Where You're Going' was the date pun. Michael Roberts's cover of a model in a frock of the deepest crimson found itself accompanied by the headline RED DRESS THE BALANCE. An article on aristocratic Catholic families was subt.i.tled: 'The Smart Sect'. Time has thankfully erased from my memory the other hideous verbal contortions of which I was guilty, but I came up with more than a dozen for each edition with which I was involved.

Critics and Couriers Books began to arrive by the box-load. Rather than review under my own name I gave myself a made-up byline: Williver Hendry, editor of A Most Peculiar Friendship: The Correspondence of Lord Alfred Douglas and Jack Dempsey A Most Peculiar Friendship: The Correspondence of Lord Alfred Douglas and Jack Dempsey and author of and author of Towards the Brightening Dawn Towards the Brightening Dawn and and Notes From a Purple Distance: An Ischian Memoir Notes From a Purple Distance: An Ischian Memoir, casts a loving eye over some June publications ...

Only it wasn't so loving an eye at all. Hiding in cowardly fashion under this nom de guerre nom de guerre I was beastly unkind to someone called Baron de Ma.s.sy, a nephew of Prince Rainier who had written an autobiography crammed with a.r.s.e-paralysingly sn.o.bbish Monegasque drivel about Ferraris, polo-players and c.o.ke-snorting tennis champions. 'Here is that marriage of style and content we look for in great writing,' I, or rather Williver, wrote. 'A shatteringly vulgar and worthless life captured in shatteringly vulgar and worthless prose.' I was beastly unkind to someone called Baron de Ma.s.sy, a nephew of Prince Rainier who had written an autobiography crammed with a.r.s.e-paralysingly sn.o.bbish Monegasque drivel about Ferraris, polo-players and c.o.ke-snorting tennis champions. 'Here is that marriage of style and content we look for in great writing,' I, or rather Williver, wrote. 'A shatteringly vulgar and worthless life captured in shatteringly vulgar and worthless prose.'

My career as a book reviewer was short-lived, but long enough to make me feel that it was not the occupation for me. For good or ill (perhaps it is what footballers call a fifty-fifty ball) I cannot bear to upset people. Perhaps it would be truer to say that I cannot bear to know that there are people going around whom I have upset and who think badly of me as a consequence. My overwhelming desire to please and to be liked has not gone unnoticed. I sometimes hopefully imagine that it may be an agreeable and acceptable enough quirk of character, but I have lived long enough to know that it is more likely to appal than appeal.

It is obvious that the purpose of critics is to transmit their opinion of the works that have been sent to them. In your life as a reviewer, the day will soon come when a book arrives which is too bad to respond to with anything other than the savaging you are convinced it deserves. You berate it and its author, you mock, you expose, you trash and you pillory. It is, for a short time, a wonderful feeling to tick an author off and in scalding prose to ridicule their inadequacies and rubbish their pretensions. After all, for weeks and weeks you have been compelled to read novels, autobiographies, histories, guides and collections, most of which are dread word, as Wallace Arnold would say fine fine. They are of sufficient quality to justify their publication and for the most part it will be easy enough, if you are a placating weasel like me, to find something about them to like. But, w.i.l.l.y nilly, the iron has entered your soul. You cannot help but begin to look on authors and publishers as the enemy. They pound at your door at all times of the day and night clamouring for your attention. So many of them, all with so much to say. Their tics, minor flaws and mannerisms become an aggravation, but you hold your fire as reasonably as you can. One day, with all this building up inside you, there is a buzzing at the entryphone, and a motorcycle courier stands outside in the rain with a package for you to sign for. Another set of new literary works to be read and rated. After the leather-clad messenger of the metropolis has gone through the usual 'Do you mind if I use your toilet?' and 'Oh, can I use your phone to call my dispatcher?' and 'Shall we have s.e.x right here and now?' I am left alone with his delivery. And this time one of the books is It. The Stinker.

Incidentally, anybody who thinks that a book reviewer has at least the profitable perk of hundreds of free books a month to offset his misery may not know about uncorrected bound proofs: these are flimsy and hastily a.s.sembled pre-release editions sent out to reviewers and to anyone likely to provide a winning phrase to be printed on the front of the proper later-to-be-printed dust-jacketed edition ' "Deliciously insightful, coolly ironic," Wayne Rooney'; ' "A rip-snorting, barn-storming, cliff-hanging, roller-coaster of a ride," Iris Murdoch'; '"The dog's b.o.l.l.o.c.ks: Bukowski is gang-raped by Burroughs and Gibson and has a b.a.s.t.a.r.d child," Ann Widdecombe' that kind of thing. There is now an online auction market for the bound proofs of better-known authors, but in the mid-eighties they were so much waste paper to be thrown away as soon as they had been read and reviewed. Today email, .pdf and the eBook and iPad are beginning to put an end to the age of the bound proof, as they have to the age of the motorcycle courier, of course. In the eighties every phone call between editors and journalists, agents and clients, producers and writers, lawyers and lawyers included phrases like: 'I'll get it biked over to you,' 'Bike it over, I'll sign and bike it back,' 'Is it small enough for a bike, or shall we cab it round?' London in the mid-eighties buzzed and snarled to the sound of 550cc Hondas and Kawasaki 750s swooping and skidding around you, clipping your wing-mirrors, revving at the traffic lights and terrifying the citizenry with their desperado devilry.

I shall divert for a revealing story that a friend told me round about this time. Her aunt had been checked into Moorfields Eye Hospital, where she was due for a corneal graft, cataract operation or similarly routine, but nonetheless delicate, ophthalmic procedure. She was lying in bed wondering what was up, when the consultant came in.

'Ah, Miss Tredway, how do you do? You've had the operation explained? What we do is we cut out your nasty cloudy old lens and replace it with a shiny new donor one. Simple as can be. Trouble is, we don't have any donor eyes in at the moment.'

'Oh.'

'I shouldn't worry, though.' He went to the window and looked out over the City Road. 'It's raining, so it won't be very long.'

You know there is something amiss when a doctor can absolutely guarantee that if the roads are slippery a fatal accident will be sure to befall a despatch rider somewhere in the city and that a fresh, healthy pair of young eyes will soon be speeding their way to the operating theatre packed in a cool-box. A cool-box bungeed to the pillion of a motorcycle in all probability ...

Well, that was London in the pre-fax, pre-internet eighties. Couriers and cars did the work, and it was matter in the form of ma.s.sy atoms, rather than content in the form of ma.s.sless electrons, that had to be conveyed from place to place.

But I was telling you about The Stinker. It was inevitable that sooner or later in my career as a literary critic I would open a courier's package (ooer, now but shush) and find a book about which there could be nothing good to say.

'Well, if you haven't anything nice to say, then don't say anything,' is the recommendation of most mothers, and as always their advice is worth considering. The difficulty comes when, as mentioned, iron has entered the soul and charity, compa.s.sion and fellow-feeling have fled it.

I shall refrain from naming names and t.i.tles, but The Stinker was the one that propelled me into meanness. I sharpened the nib, dipped it in the most caustic solution available and set forth to make my feelings known. Just as when a beautiful person is beautiful in all their lineaments hair, nose, ankles, eyelashes and nape so when a writer is bad they seem to strike one as bad in every particular, from style and syntax to moral outlook and spiritual worth. There will be those reading this book who have come to that same conclusion about me, although it is probable that they will have cast it down in disgust before getting this far. Unless they are reading it for review, of course, in which case I shall have cause to shudder. Or rather my mother will, since I do not read reviews.

I might have hoped that the nameless author of the nameless book that I so mercilessly tore into never read my review either, but I happen to know that they did. Oh, I was witty, devastating and to anyone who read the piece incontestably convincing and incontrovertibly correct. I adduced quotations with which to condemn the poor author out of his or her own mouth, I questioned their sanity, sense and intellect. I 'proved' that their book was not only bad but wicked, not only imperfect but opportunistic, creepy and deluded. All of which I sincerely believed it to be. It really was a most awful piece of work, this book. Had it been cack-handed and incompetent but well-intentioned and un.o.bjectionable in disposition, I am sure I would have let it be. Since it was The Stinker, however, no feature redeemed it, and I let myself go. I mustn't overstate things. You should understand that plenty of worse reviews were written of that book and of other books that week, plenty of meaner and more disapproving pieces are written about books every every week. Nonetheless, my article would certainly cause anyone who read it to wince and to feel for the author. Why am I lingering on this book and my review of it? week. Nonetheless, my article would certainly cause anyone who read it to wince and to feel for the author. Why am I lingering on this book and my review of it?

In a long life of offering up works for public scrutiny I have had my own share of negative critical notices. I no longer look, and my friends know better than to commiserate with (or occasionally to congratulate) me on a review that I will never read. But in all the years during which I could not resist checking my reviews and on reading them felt myself punched and lowered and dispirited by the savageries or cruel perspicacities levelled at me, I never felt a tenth as chronically dreadful as I did in the weeks following the publication of my a.s.sault on The Stinker. I lay awake at night picturing his or her reaction. On the cowardly level I imagined that one day, when I least expected it, I would be waylaid by this now wholly deranged and indigent ex-author and have a quart of actual vitriol flung at my face as revenge for the quart of virtual vitriol I had flung in theirs. In less egoistic moods, I pictured their misery and humiliation and I felt like the worst kind of bully. What right had I to make them unhappy? What business of mine was it to hold up to the light their infelicities of phrasing or falsities of reasoning? Where the f.u.c.k, in other words, did I get off?

Any number of reviewers and critics will tell you that if someone chooses to present a work for money then the public should be warned before making an expenditure that they cannot recall. If you writers and performers don't like the heat, they say, you can get out of the kitchen. What right, they will add, turning the question around, do pract.i.tioners of theatre, literature, film, television or any other art have to be immune from informed opinion? Are they only to be lauded and applauded, pampered, praised and petted?

I cannot deny a single word of these and many other of the cogent plaidoyers plaidoyers routinely offered by criticism's apologists. There are all kinds of responses and att.i.tudes that can justify the art and practice of reviewing, but none of them, not a one, addresses the question of how you live with yourself if your wicked wit, shrewd insight and scornful judgement will have hurt someone, will have them crying themselves to sleep. Or worse still, how you can live with yourself if you realize that you have become the kind of person who does not even routinely offered by criticism's apologists. There are all kinds of responses and att.i.tudes that can justify the art and practice of reviewing, but none of them, not a one, addresses the question of how you live with yourself if your wicked wit, shrewd insight and scornful judgement will have hurt someone, will have them crying themselves to sleep. Or worse still, how you can live with yourself if you realize that you have become the kind of person who does not even care care that they regularly cause pain, suffering, discouragement and loss of self-regard in those trying to earn a living in their field? that they regularly cause pain, suffering, discouragement and loss of self-regard in those trying to earn a living in their field?

It is weak, it is wussy, it is probably a betrayal of everything the Cambridge literary ethos from Leavis to Kermode stands for, but I am much less interested in artistic standards, literary values, aesthetic authenticity and critical candour than I am in the feelings of others. Or in my own feelings, I suppose I should say, for I cannot bear to feel that I have offended or that I have enemies. It is is weak, it weak, it is is wussy, but there you are. And for that reason I was relieved when Alan Coren took over the wussy, but there you are. And for that reason I was relieved when Alan Coren took over the Listener Listener and suggested that I move away from literary reviewing and contribute instead a weekly column on general topics that might appeal to me. From that day on I have only agreed to review a book, film or television programme if one proviso is understood and accepted by the editor commissioning me: the review will be favourable or, if the product is so dreadful that even I cannot find a good word to say about it, there will be no article. I am less fastidious about kindness to the digital devices, smartphones and computer peripherals I sometimes review, but then their origins are usually so much more corporate and so much less personal. However, if it ever got back to me that the designers of a camera or the authors of a new piece of software were weeping because of something cruel I had said, then I would probably pack in my geek reviews too. and suggested that I move away from literary reviewing and contribute instead a weekly column on general topics that might appeal to me. From that day on I have only agreed to review a book, film or television programme if one proviso is understood and accepted by the editor commissioning me: the review will be favourable or, if the product is so dreadful that even I cannot find a good word to say about it, there will be no article. I am less fastidious about kindness to the digital devices, smartphones and computer peripherals I sometimes review, but then their origins are usually so much more corporate and so much less personal. However, if it ever got back to me that the designers of a camera or the authors of a new piece of software were weeping because of something cruel I had said, then I would probably pack in my geek reviews too.

Most of all I refuse to say anything bad about the work of a friend. My literary integrity can go hang, but friendship is sacred. Of course, by telling you this, it allows you were you so minded to look back at the blurbs and jacket quotes I have given for writers I have known and speculate that when I wrote, 'Brilliant, harrowing, lung-achingly funny' I might really have been thinking, 'Grisly, horrible, a.r.s.e-seepingly incompetent'. You will never know.

One of Alan Coren's favourite academic stories was one of mine too. It concerns a don, often identified as Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch, that great moustachioed Edwardian doyen of letters, author of children's adventure stories and responsible as 'Q' for the great edition of the Oxford Book of English Verse. Oxford Book of English Verse. Apparently he was welcoming a new Fellow to the Senior Combination Room at Jesus, the Cambridge College where he roosted for the last thirty years of his life. Apparently he was welcoming a new Fellow to the Senior Combination Room at Jesus, the Cambridge College where he roosted for the last thirty years of his life.

'We're delighted to have you here,' he said, putting an arm round the young man's shoulder, 'but a word of advice. Don't try to be clever. We're all clever here. Only try to be kind, a little kind.'

Like most university stories, this one is variously attributed and it probably never even happened but, as the Italians say, se non e vero, e ben trovato se non e vero, e ben trovato even if it isn't true, it's well founded. even if it isn't true, it's well founded.

I wrote a weekly Listener Listener column for another year. The column for another year. The Tatler Tatler smelling duties lasted only a few months before Boxer and I parted by mutual consent: the puns were threatening my sanity. I continued meanwhile to tap away at the keyboard for other publications as often as I was asked to. I seemed to be in almost limitless demand and, so long as I didn't have to breach my peculiar rules on reviewing, all was well. smelling duties lasted only a few months before Boxer and I parted by mutual consent: the puns were threatening my sanity. I continued meanwhile to tap away at the keyboard for other publications as often as I was asked to. I seemed to be in almost limitless demand and, so long as I didn't have to breach my peculiar rules on reviewing, all was well.

Confirmed Celibate How did it all begin? Why did editors fasten upon me in the first place? What motivated Mark Boxer to be in touch? Why did Russell Twisk make an approach? Well, it is possible that I owed my journalistic career, such as it was, to a man called Jonathan Meades. If you watch good television you will know who I mean. He wears charcoal suits and sungla.s.ses and talks about architecture, food and culture high and low as brilliantly as any man alive. For many years he was The Times The Times's restaurant critic, and there are many who might think that, pace pace Giles Coren and his generation, he has never been surpa.s.sed in that field. In the mid-eighties he had some kind of position on the Giles Coren and his generation, he has never been surpa.s.sed in that field. In the mid-eighties he had some kind of position on the Tatler Tatler, 'features editor' is I think the proper description. He got hold of my telephone number somehow, perhaps from Don Boyd, who knew everybody.

'Forgive me for calling out of the blue,' he said. 'My name is Jonathan Meades and I work for the Tatler Tatler magazine. I got your number perhaps from Don Boyd, who knows everybody.' magazine. I got your number perhaps from Don Boyd, who knows everybody.'

'h.e.l.lo. How can I help?'

'I am putting together an article in which people write about something they don't don't do. Gavin Stamp, for example, is telling us why he doesn't drive, and Brian Sewell is giving us a piece about never going on holiday. I wondered if you might be able to weigh in?' do. Gavin Stamp, for example, is telling us why he doesn't drive, and Brian Sewell is giving us a piece about never going on holiday. I wondered if you might be able to weigh in?'

'Gosh! Er ...'

'So. Is there anything you don't do?'

'Hm,' I scrabbled frantically around in the recesses of my mind. 'I'm afraid I can't really think of anything. Well I don't strangle kittens or rape nuns, but I'm a.s.suming this is about things we ...'

'... about things we don't do which most of humanity does, exactly. Nothing?'

'Oh!' A thought suddenly struck me. 'I don't do s.e.x s.e.x. Would that count, do you think?'

A pause followed that made me wonder if the line had gone dead.

'h.e.l.lo? ... Jonathan?'

'Four hundred words by Friday afternoon. Can't offer more than two hundred pounds. Deal?'

I cannot entirely understand, to this day, why I withheld my body from s.e.xual congress with another for as long as I did. Kim and I had been partners in a complete and proper sense at Cambridge and for a month or so afterwards. Since then I had become less and less interested in s.e.x while Kim had pursued a more conventional and fulfilled erotic career and had by now found himself a new partner, a handsome Greek-American called Steve. Kim and I still adored each other and still shared the Chelsea flat. He had Steve and I had ... I had my work.

If I have a theory to explain the celibacy that began in 1982 and was not to end until 1996 it is that during that period work took the place of everything else in my life. Whatever effect multiple school expulsions, social and academic failures and the final degradation of imprisonment may have had on me, I think it true that my last-gasp escape into Cambridge and the discovery that there was work I could do and be valued for doing galvanized me into an orgy of concentrated labour from which I could not and would not be diverted, not even by the prospect of s.e.xual or romantic fulfilment. Perhaps career, concentration, commitment and creation had become my new drugs of choice. I have a theory to explain the celibacy that began in 1982 and was not to end until 1996 it is that during that period work took the place of everything else in my life. Whatever effect multiple school expulsions, social and academic failures and the final degradation of imprisonment may have had on me, I think it true that my last-gasp escape into Cambridge and the discovery that there was work I could do and be valued for doing galvanized me into an orgy of concentrated labour from which I could not and would not be diverted, not even by the prospect of s.e.xual or romantic fulfilment. Perhaps career, concentration, commitment and creation had become my new drugs of choice.

Work can be an addiction like any other. Love of it can be a home-wrecker, an obsession that bores, upsets, insults and worries those close to you. We all know that drugs, alcohol and tobacco are Bad, but work, we are brought up to believe, is Good. As a result the world is full of families who are angry at being abandoned and breadwinners who are even more angry because their hours of labour are not sufficiently appreciated. 'I do it for you!' they cry. While it may be true that work puts meat on the table, everyone around them knows that hard workers do it for themselves. Most children of workaholics would rather see less money and more of their parent.

Within a year of leaving Cambridge, friends and family were already referring to my apparent inability to use the word 'no'. I soon began to hear myself described as a workaholic. Kim preferred the word 'ergomaniac' partly because he was a cla.s.sical scholar and partly I suspect because the 'maniac' part better expressed the absurd frenzy with which I was starting to throw myself into every offer that came my way. To this day I am often reminded by those about me that I don't have to say yes to everything and that there are such things as holidays. I don't believe them, of course, no matter how many times they a.s.sure me it is true.

The question that most troublingly refuses to go away is whether my productivity, ubiquity and well ... career harlotry ... have stopped me from realizing what, in the world of fathers, teachers and grown-ups in general, might be called My Full Potential. Hugh and Emma, to name the two most obvious of my contemporaries, have never been as recklessly carefree, prodigal and improvident with their talents as I have. I want to say that they have always had reason to believe in their talents more than I have in mine. But then I also want to say that I have had more fun than they have and that: For when the One Great Scorer comes To write against your name, He marks not that you won or lost, But how you played the Game.

Which is all very well, but while I may want to say all kinds of things, I am not sure that they would necessarily be true. I will not go so far as to claim that, when falling asleep every night, I mourn lost opportunities. 'Every night' would be an exaggeration. There is a vision that comes to me often though.

I picture myself at the surface of an ocean: the course of my life is played out as a descent to the sea bed. As I drop down I clutch at and try to reach blurred but alluring images representing the vocation of writer, actor, comedian, film director, politician or academic, but they all writhe and ripple flirtatiously out of reach, or rather it would be truer to say that I am afraid to leap forward and hug one of them to me. By being afraid to commit to one I commit to none and arrive at the bottom empty and unfulfilled. This is a self-aggrandizing, pitiful and absurd fantasy of regret, I know, but it is a frequent one. I close whatever book I have been reading in bed, and that same film plays out again and again in my mind before I sleep. I know that I have a reputation for cleverness and articulacy, but I also know that people must wonder why I haven't quite done better with my life and talents. A jack of so many trades and manifestly a master of none. In my perkier moods I am entirely pleased with this outcome, for I refuse to stand on a carpet in a headmaster's study and endure wise shakings of the head and heavy school-report p.r.o.nouncements about my shortcomings. Such att.i.tudes are grotesque, impudent and irrelevant. 'Could do better' is a meaningless conclusion. 'Could be happier' is the only one that counts. I have had five times the opportunities and experiences accorded to most, and if the result is a disappointment to posterity, well prosperity can eat it. In less perky moods, of course, I entirely concur with the judgements of the head-shakers and school-report p.r.o.nouncers. What a waste. What a fatuous, selfish, air-headed, indolent and insulting waste my life has been.

While it is not exactly counterintuitive it may perhaps be less than immediately obvious to point out that it is a great deal more conceited of me to bemoan my life as a waste than for me to be more or less satisfied at the way it has turned out. Any regret at my lack of achievement suggests that I really believe that I had in me the ability, should I have concentrated on any one thing, to have written a great great novel or to have been a novel or to have been a great great actor, director, playwright, poet or statesman or whatever else I might delude myself I had the potential for. Whether or not I have the ability to be any of those things, I do know that I lack the ambition, concentration, focus and above all actor, director, playwright, poet or statesman or whatever else I might delude myself I had the potential for. Whether or not I have the ability to be any of those things, I do know that I lack the ambition, concentration, focus and above all will will without which such talents are as useless as an engine without fuel. Which is not to say that I am lazy or unambitious in the short term. You might say I am good at tactics but hopeless at strategy, happy to slog away at whatever is in front of me but unable to take a long view, plan ahead or imagine the future. A good golfer, they say, has to picture his swing before he addresses the ball in order to drive. My whole life has been an adventure in hit and hope. without which such talents are as useless as an engine without fuel. Which is not to say that I am lazy or unambitious in the short term. You might say I am good at tactics but hopeless at strategy, happy to slog away at whatever is in front of me but unable to take a long view, plan ahead or imagine the future. A good golfer, they say, has to picture his swing before he addresses the ball in order to drive. My whole life has been an adventure in hit and hope.

But s.e.x. Yes, we have to return, I fear, to s.e.x. We were discussing that commission for the Tatler. Tatler. I wrote the article for Jonathan Meades, outlining my distaste for being cursed by nature with an urgent instinct to rummage about in the 'damp, dark, foul-smelling and revoltingly tufted areas of the human body that const.i.tute the main dishes in the banquet of love' and my sense that the whole business was humiliating, disgusting and irksome. I suggested that a life without s.e.x and without the presence of a partner offered numerous benefits. The celibate life allowed productivity, independence and ease free from the pressures of placating and accommodating the will and desires of another: released from the degrading imperatives of erotic congress, a new and better kind of life could be lived. s.e.x was an overrated bore. 'Besides,' I confessed as I ended the article, 'I'm scared that I may not be very good at it.' I wrote the article for Jonathan Meades, outlining my distaste for being cursed by nature with an urgent instinct to rummage about in the 'damp, dark, foul-smelling and revoltingly tufted areas of the human body that const.i.tute the main dishes in the banquet of love' and my sense that the whole business was humiliating, disgusting and irksome. I suggested that a life without s.e.x and without the presence of a partner offered numerous benefits. The celibate life allowed productivity, independence and ease free from the pressures of placating and accommodating the will and desires of another: released from the degrading imperatives of erotic congress, a new and better kind of life could be lived. s.e.x was an overrated bore. 'Besides,' I confessed as I ended the article, 'I'm scared that I may not be very good at it.'

The piece was quoted and reproduced in whole or in part in several newspapers, and for the next twelve years it was rare for this particular C-word not to be attached to me much as macrobiotic is attached to Gwyneth Paltrow and tantric to Sting. I joined Cliff Richard and Morrissey as one of celibacy's peculiar poster children. Profilers, chat show hosts and interviewers in the years to come would regularly ask if I was still keeping it up, ho-ho, whether I would recommend s.e.xual abstinence as a way of life and how I coped with the loneliness of the single state. I had created a rod for my own back with this article but have never regretted writing it. It was, more or less, inasmuch as these things ever are, true. I did did find the business of eros a nuisance and an embarra.s.sment. I find the business of eros a nuisance and an embarra.s.sment. I did did enjoy the independence and freedom afforded me by being unattached and I enjoy the independence and freedom afforded me by being unattached and I was was afraid that I might not be very good at s.e.x. Am I going to deny my terror of rejection, or my low sense of my own physical worth? afraid that I might not be very good at s.e.x. Am I going to deny my terror of rejection, or my low sense of my own physical worth?

With the pa.s.sing of each year the odds against me ever forging a full relationship lengthened as I felt myself less and less practised in the arts of love and less and less confident about how I would ever go about finding a partner, even supposing that I wanted one. There was just so much to do do. I was rehearsing in London prior to going down to Chichester to start Forty Years On Forty Years On, I was working on Me and My Girl Me and My Girl, chugging out journalism and taking enthusiastic steps in another medium: radio.

The Tatler celibacy article. Photo Tim Platt/ celibacy article. Photo Tim Platt/Tatler Conde Naste Publications Ltd. Words Stephen Fry/ Conde Naste Publications Ltd. Words Stephen Fry/Tatler Conde Naste Publications Ltd. Conde Naste Publications Ltd.

Characters and the Corporation Ever since I can remember I have loved radio, especially the kind of talk radio that only the BBC Home Service, later Radio 4, provides. Throughout my insomniac youth I listened through the day right up to the national anthem, when I would retune to the BBC World Service. 'England made me,' Anthony Farrant says to himself in the Graham Greene novel of that t.i.tle. England made me too, but it was an England broadcast on 1500 metres Long Wave.

I wrote this as the opening of an article on the World Service for Arena Arena magazine. magazine.

BBC World Service. The News, read by Roger Collinge ... The warm brown tones trickle out of Bush House like honey from a jar: rich and resonant on the Long and Medium Waves for domestic listeners or bright and sibilant on the Short Wave for a hundred million Anglophone citizens of the world for whose benefit the precious signal is bounced off the atmosphere from relay station to relay station, through ionospheric storms and the rude jostling traffic of a hundred thousand intrusive foreign transmissions, to arrive fresh and crackling on the veranda table. Oh, to be in England, now that England's gone. This World Service, this little Bakelite gateway into the world of Sidney Box, Charters and Caldicott, Mazawattee tea, Kennedy's Latin Primer and dark, glistening streets. An England that never was, conjured into the air by nothing more than accents, March tunes and a meiotic, self-deprecating style that in its dishonesty is bra.s.sier and brasher than Disneyland. A Mary Poppins service, glamorous in its drab severity, merry in its stern routine and inexhaustible resource: a twinkling authoritarian that fulfils our deepest fantasy by simply staying, even though the wind changed long ago. Ooh, I love it ...

I'm sure I knew what I meant at the time by the World Service's 'dishonesty', but the truth is I still adored and valued radio above television. Radio 4's mix of comedy, news, doc.u.mentary, drama, magazine, panel game and quirky discussion is unique and was central to the fashioning of my outlook and manner. I grew up to the sound of warmly a.s.sured and calmly authoritative BBC voices vibrating the fabric speaker covers of valve wireless sets manufactured by Bush, Ferguson, Roberts and Pye. One of my first-ever memories is sitting under my mother's chair in our house in Chesham while she tapped away on her typewriter with characters from The The Archers Archers arguing about dairy cattle in the background. arguing about dairy cattle in the background. My Music My Music, My Word! My Word!, A Word in Edgeways A Word in Edgeways, Stop the Week Stop the Week, Start the Week Start the Week, Any Answers Any Answers, Any Questions Any Questions, Twenty Questions Twenty Questions, Many a Slip Many a Slip, Does the Team Think? Does the Team Think?, Brain of Britain Brain of Britain, From Our Own Correspondent From Our Own Correspondent, The Petticoat Line The Petticoat Line, File on Four File on Four, Down Your Way Down Your Way, The World at One, Today The World at One, Today, PM PM, You and Yours You and Yours, Woman's Hour Woman's Hour, Letter from America Letter from America, Jack de Manio Precisely Jack de Manio Precisely, The Men from the Ministry The Men from the Ministry, Gardener's Question Time Gardener's Question Time, The Burkiss Way The Burkiss Way, The Jason Explanation The Jason Explanation, Round Britain Quiz Round Britain Quiz, Just a Minute Just a Minute, I'm Sorry I Haven't a Clue I'm Sorry I Haven't a Clue, Desert Island Discs Desert Island Discs and a hundred other dramas, comedies, quizzes and features have amused, amazed, enriched, enraged, informed and inflamed me from the earliest age. My voice, I think, owes more to the BBC microphone and the dusty, slow-to-warm-up Mullard valve than to the accents and tones of my family, friends and school fellows. Just as there are the lazily sucked bones of Wodehouse, Wilde and Waugh in my writing style, if style is the right word for it, so the intonations of John Ebden, Robert Robinson, Franklin 'Jingle' Engelmann, Richard 'Stinker' Murdoch, Derek Guyler, Margaret Howard, David Jacobs, Kenneth Robinson, Richard Baker, Anthony Quinton, John Julius Norwich, Alistair Cooke, David Jason, Brian Johnston, John Timpson, Jack de Manio, Steve Race, Frank Muir, Dennis Norden, Nicholas Parsons, Kenneth Williams, Derek Nimmo, Peter Jones, Nelson Gabriel, Derek Cooper, Clive Jacobs, Martin Muncaster and Brian Perkins have penetrated my brain and being to the extent that much as heavy-metal pollutants get into the hair and skin and nails and tissue they have become a physical as well as an emotional and intellectual part of me. We are all the sum of countless influences. I like to believe that Shakespeare, Keats, d.i.c.kens, Austen, Joyce, Eliot, Auden and the great and n.o.ble grandees of literature have had their effect on me, but the truth is they were distant uncles and aunts, good for a fiver at Christmas and a book token on birthdays, while Radio 4 and the BBC World Service were my mother and father, a daily presence and constant example. and a hundred other dramas, comedies, quizzes and features have amused, amazed, enriched, enraged, informed and inflamed me from the earliest age. My voice, I think, owes more to the BBC microphone and the dusty, slow-to-warm-up Mullard valve than to the accents and tones of my family, friends and school fellows. Just as there are the lazily sucked bones of Wodehouse, Wilde and Waugh in my writing style, if style is the right word for it, so the intonations of John Ebden, Robert Robinson, Franklin 'Jingle' Engelmann, Richard 'Stinker' Murdoch, Derek Guyler, Margaret Howard, David Jacobs, Kenneth Robinson, Richard Baker, Anthony Quinton, John Julius Norwich, Alistair Cooke, David Jason, Brian Johnston, John Timpson, Jack de Manio, Steve Race, Frank Muir, Dennis Norden, Nicholas Parsons, Kenneth Williams, Derek Nimmo, Peter Jones, Nelson Gabriel, Derek Cooper, Clive Jacobs, Martin Muncaster and Brian Perkins have penetrated my brain and being to the extent that much as heavy-metal pollutants get into the hair and skin and nails and tissue they have become a physical as well as an emotional and intellectual part of me. We are all the sum of countless influences. I like to believe that Shakespeare, Keats, d.i.c.kens, Austen, Joyce, Eliot, Auden and the great and n.o.ble grandees of literature have had their effect on me, but the truth is they were distant uncles and aunts, good for a fiver at Christmas and a book token on birthdays, while Radio 4 and the BBC World Service were my mother and father, a daily presence and constant example.

I believed from the earliest age that I would be quite content to work in radio all my life. If I could just be a continuity announcer or regular broadcaster of some kind, how happy I would be. My dislike of my facial features and physical form contributed to this ambition. I had, as the tired old joke goes, a good face for radio. Announcers and broadcasters have no need of make-up or costume. For one who believed that any attempt at prettification on my part would only draw attention to my cursed deficiencies, a life in front of the microphone seemed like the perfect career. How much more realistic for me a national radio station than irrational venustation.

My first visits to Broadcasting House, the home of BBC Radio in Portland Place, had been as early as 1982, when I played a fictional news reporter for a Radio 1 programme called, I think think, B15 B15. The bas.e.m.e.nt studios in Broadcasting House were all Bx, and I honestly cannot remember the value of the x x which gave this programme its name. In its short run which gave this programme its name. In its short run B14 B14 or or B12 B12 or whatever it may have called itself was presented by David 'Kid' Jensen, an amiable Canadian disc jockey best known, according to a friend of mine who is very keen on this kind of thing, for being the least objectionable presenter of or whatever it may have called itself was presented by David 'Kid' Jensen, an amiable Canadian disc jockey best known, according to a friend of mine who is very keen on this kind of thing, for being the least objectionable presenter of Top of the Pops Top of the Pops in all its long history. My character on in all its long history. My character on Bwhatever Bwhatever, Bevis Marchant, had his own little slot called Beatnews Beatnews, a rather obvious parody of Radio 1's ludicrously urgent, trivial and self-important Newsbeat Newsbeat. Within two weeks of me contributing to this programme Margaret Thatcher had dispatched a task force to recapture the Falkland Islands, and a week later I was taken off the air. My parody of Brian Hanrahan and others was deemed insensitive. I shouted over an electric egg beater in a bucket to recreate the sound of reporting live from a helicopter. I was in fact mocking the grandiose, faux-butch reporting style, not making light of the danger that the military were in, but that has always been too complicated a distinction for stupid people to understand. There was a war on, I was trying to be funny, therefore I had contempt for the sacrifice and bravery of the troops. My levity was tantamount to treason and must be stopped. I think I am angrier about that now than I ever was at the time. Pomposity and indignation grow in old age, like nostril hairs and earlobes.

Not long after Beatnews Beatnews a BBC producer called Ian Gardhouse was in touch with me about contributing to a Radio 4 programme of his called a BBC producer called Ian Gardhouse was in touch with me about contributing to a Radio 4 programme of his called Late Night Sherrin Late Night Sherrin. Ned Sherrin was a well-known broadcaster who had started life as a television producer, first at Val Parnell's ATV and then at the BBC. His most famous achievement in that phase of his life had been That Was The Week That Was That Was The Week That Was, usually referred to as TW3 TW3, the live comedy show that had launched the satire boom and David Frost. Since then Nedwin, as I liked to call him, had given the world Up Pompeii! Up Pompeii!, Side by Side by Sondheim Side by Side by Sondheim and a slew of collaborations with Caryl Brahms and others. Trained as a lawyer, he was known for his love of Tin Pan Alley, rich gossip and comely young men. He received his education at Exeter College, Oxford, where he read law, but before that he had been a boy at the most excellently named educational establishment in the history of the world s.e.xey's School in Somerset. and a slew of collaborations with Caryl Brahms and others. Trained as a lawyer, he was known for his love of Tin Pan Alley, rich gossip and comely young men. He received his education at Exeter College, Oxford, where he read law, but before that he had been a boy at the most excellently named educational establishment in the history of the world s.e.xey's School in Somerset.

I took to Ned straight away. He was like a stern aunt who twinkled and giggled after a little too much gin. The idea behind Late Night Sherrin Late Night Sherrin was to have a hero or heroine guest of the week who would be twitted and teased by Ned and an a.s.sortment of young witty types of which I was to be one. Ned called us his 'young turks'. was to have a hero or heroine guest of the week who would be twitted and teased by Ned and an a.s.sortment of young witty types of which I was to be one. Ned called us his 'young turks'. Late Night Sherrin Late Night Sherrin morphed, for reasons neither I nor Ian Gardhouse can remember, into morphed, for reasons neither I nor Ian Gardhouse can remember, into And So to Ned And So to Ned. They were both live, late-night shows. The routine was for us all to meet for supper high up in the St George's Hotel just by Broadcasting House. The motive behind this, according to Ian, was so that he and Ned could keep an eye on the guests of the week and make sure they stayed relatively sober, a stratagem that failed riotously in the cases of Daniel Farson and Zsa Zsa Gabor.

After And So to Ned And So to Ned's short life came Extra Dry Sherrin Extra Dry Sherrin, whose format I cannot remember as being any different from the others: possibly it had live music or no live music or three guests instead of two. Extra Dry Sherrin Extra Dry Sherrin lasted one series before Ian welcomed me into a new Sherrin-free, live 100-minute programme called lasted one series before Ian welcomed me into a new Sherrin-free, live 100-minute programme called The Colour Supplement The Colour Supplement as the name suggests this was a Sunday 'magazine' show comprising a variety of features, one of which would be a section I could create and shape for myself in any way I chose. Each week I performed a kind of monologue as a different character: an estate agent, an architect, a journalist I cannot remember the whole gallery. Their surnames usually came from Norfolk villages, so I do recall a Simon Mulbarton, a Sandy Crimplesham and a Gerald Clenchwarton. as the name suggests this was a Sunday 'magazine' show comprising a variety of features, one of which would be a section I could create and shape for myself in any way I chose. Each week I performed a kind of monologue as a different character: an estate agent, an architect, a journalist I cannot remember the whole gallery. Their surnames usually came from Norfolk villages, so I do recall a Simon Mulbarton, a Sandy Crimplesham and a Gerald Clenchwarton.

It was unfortunate that the pay packets offered proved that the rest of the world held radio in no real esteem. I had grown up hearing Kenneth Williams and others bemoaning in quavering comic tones the insultingly nugatory fees they had been offered for their services and I soon found out that, compared to her brash younger brother, Television, Dame Wireless did indeed live the most frugal and threadbare existence. This never worried me: I would have done it for free, but it was sometimes hard to persuade Richard Armitage that hours composing broadcast monologues, taking parts in comedies and dramas and guesting on panel games were not a waste of time or beneath as he seemed to think my dignity. Radio is the poor relation of television insofar as monetary considerations go, but a rich one where it matters in terms of depth and intimacy.

The writer Tony Sarchet and producer Paul Mayhew-Archer asked me to play an earnest investigative reporter called David Lander in Delve Special Delve Special, a new comedy series they were creating. It was essentially a parody of Checkpoint Checkpoint, the very popular Radio 4 programme which featured doughty New Zealander Roger Cook inquiring into a different con, scam or swindle each week. The first part of the programme would catalogue the miseries of the unfortunates who had been exploited and ripped off: they might have had their house destroyed by expensive but incompetent pebble-dashing, been duped into buying a non-existent time-share villa, invested their savings in a there were any number of ways that innocent lambs could be fleeced by rascally villains, the door-stepping confrontations with whom formed the second and most compulsively enjoyable part of the programme. Cook was famous for getting chi-iked, insulted, jostled, roughed up and even seriously a.s.saulted by the angry subjects of his exposes. Delve Special Delve Special barely had to exaggerate the stories that barely had to exaggerate the stories that Checkpoint Checkpoint and its successor, John Waite's and its successor, John Waite's Face the Facts Face the Facts, already provided. Over the next three years we made four series and then, when Roger Cook jumped to television, we jumped with him, being screened for a run of six programmes on Channel 4 as This Is David Lander This Is David Lander, for which I wore a quite monstrous blond wig. When my workload was simply too heavy to allow me to do a second series, Tony Slattery stepped in, and the show was ret.i.tled This Is David Harper This Is David Harper.

David Lander, earnest investigative reporter in a badly behaved blond wig.

One of the pleasures of making Delve Delve for radio, aside from not having to wear a wig or care how I looked at all, was working with the guest performers who came along to play the victims and perpetrators. Brenda Blethyn, Harry Enfield, Dawn French, Andrew Sachs, Felicity Montagu, Jack Klaff, Janine Duvitski and many others came into the studio and gave of their brilliant best. Actually, 'into the studio' is not quite accurate. In order to achieve aural verisimilitude Paul Mayhew-Archer would often place us in the street, on the roof of Broadcasting House, in broom cupboards, catering areas, offices, corridors and hallways so that he and his engineer could capture the authentic tone and atmosphere of the scene. Location radio drama is not common, and the 'Sir, sir! It's a lovely day, can we have our lessons outside?' sort of mood that it engendered made the recordings about as larky as such sessions can ever be. for radio, aside from not having to wear a wig or care how I looked at all, was working with the guest performers who came along to play the victims and perpetrators. Brenda Blethyn, Harry Enfield, Dawn French, Andrew Sachs, Felicity Montagu, Jack Klaff, Janine Duvitski and many others came into the studio and gave of their brilliant best. Actually, 'into the studio' is not quite accurate. In order to achieve aural verisimilitude Paul Mayhew-Archer would often place us in the street, on the roof of Broadcasting House, in broom cupboards, catering areas, offices, corridors and hallways so that he and his engineer could capture the authentic tone and atmosphere of the scene. Location radio drama is not common, and the 'Sir, sir! It's a lovely day, can we have our lessons outside?' sort of mood that it engendered made the recordings about as larky as such sessions can ever be.