A Young Man's Passage (25 page)

You kissed me on the cheek
,

But you were gone within a week
.

Six months later I spotted him on the dance floor at Bang nightclub and tapped him on the shoulder. He explained that he had been in hospital with pneumonia, but was now better. There in the nightclub, shouting over the music, he explained that the pneumonia had been the first sign he’d had that all wasn’t well. Although he looked fine and as handsome as ever, he didn’t just have HIV, he had full-blown AIDS.

Never mind about that, I said. Perhaps they’ll find a cure. We picked up where we left off. Then late one night he turned up unannounced at Seymour Place. It was late and he was tipsy. I buzzed him in through the gate, opened my front door and stood in the middle of the room waiting in my dressing gown. A minute later he flew through the door and into my arms. He was breathless and desperate to tell me how he’d had a revelatory moment: he loved me. He’d been out at a bar in Islington where all eyes had been upon a devastatingly handsome young man. To everyone else’s chagrin, the man had approached Christopher and propositioned him. Christopher panicked, said he was popping to the loo but ran out of the bar and caught a taxi to my place. ‘I love you. I love
you
!’ After that he never left.

STICKY MOMENTS
WAS
a game-show parody dreamt up by Paul Merton. We were sitting in the dressing room at Jongleurs discussing my prospects.
Trick or Treat
, for all its faults, had at least paved the way for me to get my own TV show and we had a meeting arranged with Seamus Cassidy, commissioning editor at Channel 4. A game show was the perfect set-up for me to mess about with punters. ‘You can take away points for wearing beige, humiliate the poor bastards all night, then give out rubbish prizes. The winner gets a lift home,’ said Paul.

Seamus agreed, but there were a few hoops to jump through first before he’d allow us to create our own production company to make the series. The whole point of this was so we could have control over all aspects of the production and editing process. On
Trick or Treat
the liberal use of dubbed laughter on shots where clearly no one in the audience was laughing at all was irksome. I also wanted to pick the contestants out from the queue where the audience was waiting to enter the studio. This hadn’t been done before and was obviously risky as they might not be wacky or extrovert. But to my mind this was just an extension of what I’d been doing for years on the cabaret circuit and I wanted to trust my instincts. But the main problem was that our proposed new company – Wonderdog Productions – had never made a single programme and had no track record of any kind. Seamus was understandably nervous about handing over vast sums of money to such virginal idealists. But Addison, with his bulldog determination, argued on, and after we secured John Henderson, a reassuringly experienced and charismatic director, as both a shareholder of the company and director of the series, we were given the go-ahead.

We set up offices in Noel Street in Soho, printed up stationery with Fanny as our logo, and set to it. Various people sat behind computer screens all day doing who knows what, runners scurried about offering everyone tea and coffee and being generally keen to please, and our producer, the fertile and constantly lactating Toni Yardley, oversaw the proceedings. Michael Ferri made me some outrageous costumes, the like of which had never been seen on British television, and Anne Tilby designed a set so camp and brightly coloured there was some worry that the cameras might spontaneously combust when filming it.

Meanwhile, Paul and I sat upstairs in the boardroom writing the scripts for the ten forthcoming episodes. The six contestants were to take part in several rounds, starting with ‘True or False’ and culminating in a
Generation Game
-style playlet, and a final round where they had to stuff as many cream cakes into their mouths as possible. At no point could they ever hope to get a question right. All the questions were just set-ups for gags, and the awarding of points was entirely at my discretion. This way I could ensure that the best-value punters made it through to the end. For example:

Question: Which L is King of the Jungle?

Answer: Lionel Blair.

Question: Which L is the most important ingredient in a marriage?

Answer: Lager.

Question: Which L would you urinate in?

Answer: Luton.

Question: True or false: all condoms are individually numbered.

Answer: True. You’ve obviously never unrolled one far enough.

Question: Tony Blackburn: true or false?

Answer: False, obviously.

Question: Complete the quotation – ‘Is that a pistol in your pocket . . . ?’

Answer: Or is your penis engorged with blood?

Question: Complete the quotation – ‘Cupid, draw back your . . . ?’

Answer: Foreskin.

A more elaborate game involved the blindfolded contestants searching in a laundry basket for a simple household object, which turned out to be Bernie Winters. After a short chat about which panto he was in that year, he read out a riddle which, in the style of Ted Rogers’s
321
, was a clue to a mystery prize:

You may find yourself in foreign climes

And although you may feel like revving up

Be careful you don’t get sunstroke

And end up in a sea of despair
. . .

After some speculation about exotic holidays and fast cars, I decoded the riddle for them: ‘You may feel like revving up: that could mean a car, but rev is also short for reverend, so revving up could mean dressing up as a priest, which could mean an 18–30s holiday in Majorca. If you take the letters of Majorca and add 15 more you have enough letters to make the sentence: “Get off the table, Mabel, the money’s for the beer.” Beer means alcohol, alcohol means whisky, whisky means gin, gin means a rowing boat. Rowing boat, punt. Punt, Oxford. Oxford, Cambridge. Russell went to Cambridge, so you’ve won Russell!’

At the end of each show I wound up the proceedings by singing a song from my growing repertoire, accompanied by Russell with Barb Jungr and Michael Parker. My glamorous assistant was Hugh Jelly, in the real world called Philip Herbert, an old chum from the circuit where he worked as Randolph the Remarkable. His function was to assist and agree and read out the scores after each round.

We knew we had a hit on our hands after the first few recordings. John Henderson created a jolly, carefree atmosphere in the studio and set me loose to do my thing. Recording was rarely interrupted for any technical reasons. Audience, contestants, crew and performers were all happy and it showed. When it was broadcast even the critics liked it. Paul and I did go on
Right to Reply
to defend the show against two rather lame viewers who, it turned out, had only watched five minutes of the show before they complained. Just prior to the recording the producers had sat them down to watch a video of the entire show. Much to everyone’s chagrin, they discovered they rather liked it so there wasn’t much of a heated debate after all. Channel 4 commissioned a second series.

When he returned from a holiday to Africa, Paul’s behaviour started to become a bit strange. He’d march in circles round the office during meetings, then lie down on the floor and try to calm himself down. He spoke rapidly and excitedly, ideas and thoughts fighting for expression. It was amusing for a while, and as Paul had always been eccentric and excessively imaginative no one took much notice. But I could see he was getting worse by the day, bewildered by his own thoughts. The strange mixture of anxiety and wonderment soon resulted in paranoia, most of which centred round the Freemasons. He was sure they were watching him at all times. When some workmen built a canvas hut outside his flat, he was sure this was just a flimsy cover for their spying activities.

Eventually his girlfriend at the time, Julie Balloo, took him to the Maudsley psychiatric hospital, where it was discovered that the antimalarial pills he had been taking were the primary cause of his malaise. He was there for some weeks and I visited him several times. Once he passed me a note. It read: ‘The lunatics have taken over the asylum. Get me out of here.’ It was a grim, scary place, but I knew he needed treatment and was probably in the best place. Nevertheless, I felt duty-bound, as a friend, to respond to his plea for help. I had a word with his doctor and it was agreed I could take him out for a few hours.

That night there was an incredible gale-force storm blowing. As we drove through Dulwich the car was almost lifted off the road, and tree branches swung menacingly overhead. We found a restaurant but on the next table an American woman was talking loudly. After ten minutes Paul could stand it no more and asked me to take him back to the ward. It would be a few more days before he was able to cope with the real world again.

I WAS 30,
newly famous, bank account swelling nicely. Since I was a teenager my ambition had been to live in Camden Town and drive a Citroën 2CV. I could now afford to do both, so I tore myself away from Seymour Place and bought the ground-floor flat at 5 Albert Street, Camden Town in north London. It was long and narrow, laid out like a railway carriage, with bedroom, bathroom and kitchen-diner leading off the hallway. Through the French windows was a small patio garden featuring an established vine. It was something of a love nest. Christopher and I curled up on the new Chesterfield sofa with Fanny and counted our blessings. The pendulum of my good fortune was now at full swing.

Christopher worked at the Marks and Spencer headquarters in Baker Street doing something with computers but because of his illness he was able to ‘retire’ with a pension.

We went on holiday to Portugal where we swanned about wearing matching pastel shorts (like you do when you’re in love) and people-watched the package-holiday folk for our entertainment. At our hotel we met a couple called Mr and Mrs Plank. Their name amused us no end. ‘Here come the Planks,’ we’d say whenever we saw them waddling towards us. They were both barely five foot tall and none too bright. ‘They’re as thick as two short Planks,’ said Christopher.

Every few weeks he’d go to the Middlesex Hospital for blood readings or scans. The results were never encouraging so we just took no notice. He was given more and more pills to take, got thinner and slept a lot, which Fanny loved as there was always someone warm to curl up with. We’d get up most nights and change the sheets because his night sweats were torrential. At this time the first series of
Sticky Moments
had just been broadcast and I was rushing about doing interviews and chat shows and the like. Christopher came with me when he felt like it, but often I’d leave him and Fanny sleeping, putting a Post-it note by the bed with a mound of pills, instructing him when to take them. For some reason the ritual was I’d kiss them both 15 times before I left.

He had a lot of baths. He would slide silently in and lie there motionless. It used to bother me that I never heard him splashing about. I would sit next door and imagine him lying there thinking about his illness. A healthy, carefree person would splash, I thought. Was he looking through the clear water at his failing body, imagining himself as a corpse? I wished the scientists would hurry up and find a wonder drug that would make him better. We didn’t talk about him dying at all. We never cried. Maybe we both only thought about it during these silent baths.

I had some shows to do in Dublin and Christopher came with me. Homosexuality was illegal there at that time and when I asked at the check-in for a double room, the receptionist said it wasn’t their policy to give double rooms to two men. I looked at him in disbelief.

‘I am a gay man here to perform at the Gaiety Theatre. Tonight I shall be interviewed on the Gaye Byrne show. Give me a double room now!’

His face darkened and he handed me a key.

‘Now,’ I said loudly to Christopher, ‘let’s go upstairs. I’m desperate for a fuck.’

I REMEMBER COMMITTING
myself to Christopher one time when he was in hospital for a lumbar puncture. We were sitting in the day room talking about him coming home. Somehow the conversation got on to where exactly his ‘home’ was. Although he’d been living with me in Albert Street, nothing had ever been ‘said’ officially, and he still had ‘Reach View Court’ as the address on his medical records. I said I wanted him with me, I wanted to look after him. ‘I will see you through this’ are the words I remember saying, gravely, eye to eye, hand in hand. It was almost ceremonious. He immediately went to the nurses’ desk there in the ward and had Albert Street registered as his home address, and came back looking happy.