A Young Man's Passage (31 page)

H: I enjoy being with you and I KNOW that you enjoy being with me. I know that.

Stephen arrived by taxi from the Brodrip Ward and sat fidgeting while I cleaned out my wardrobe. From five carrier bags full of old clothes he only rejected two old pairs of boxer shorts and a JCFC T-shirt. ‘It’s like Christmas!’ he said. Dropped him back off at the Middlesex and he wheeled his booty in on a wheelchair. We’d had a frosty moment earlier when he cast his eye at Christopher’s urn on the patio and said, ‘You should have a shrine built for Christopher,’ and I said, ‘Thank you for your opinion.’ I liked to see the urn out there, battered by the seasons. Earlier he said, ‘I never really liked Christopher and he never liked me,’ which was true enough, but the constant references to Christopher as a kind of gauge to his own deterioration annoy me. ‘At what stage did Christopher’s hair fall out?’ was one.

29 March 1993

Stephen has moved into a single room at the Brodrip Ward. Not because his condition suddenly deteriorated or anything, but because he saw it was empty and fancied it.

He went out today and bought a fish tank and three fish. He was sitting in bed smoking a joint when I arrived. In fact, it was the same bed I slept in head to head with Christopher one night towards the end, the night when the nurse slipped me a bottle of Valium.

‘I’m going to treat this place like a hotel. I’m going to come and go as I please. I’m going to buy a houseboat. I’m going to take an intensive driving course, so I am. I’m getting my self-confidence back. I refused laser treatment today, I’m not ready for it, I’m just up and about again.’ He raves on and on, determined to achieve so much in so little time. Then he starts attempting profound phrases I think he imagines will be remembered after he has gone, like: ‘Life is beautiful. Every day is a new beginning.’ I sit in embarrassed silence most of the time and talk about the patio plants.

Hans and I had a more conclusive conversation about our relationship. Neither of us can really end it just for the reason that it’s impractical. So we’ve decided to hang on for a while and see what happens. ‘Maybe we’ll have a row or something a bit more conclusive,’ I offered helpfully.

‘Perhaps we won’t,’ he said. I felt a shiver down my spine.

The UK leg of the
Glittering Passage
tour got under way in April. My new tour driver was a nervous young man called Toby. On his first day he walked dog shit through my flat and soon found himself on his hands and knees with a bowl of disinfectant and a J-cloth. He became known as ‘the Poo Man’ – not ideal for the self-esteem of a 21-year-old straight boy. The spaceship set took two men to operate it, and Steve and Keith, two south London non-theatricals, took on the task. One day Philip asked them: ‘You boys strictly down-the-line heteros or do you delve at all?’

After the Brighton gig, cast and crew retired to the bar at the Grand Hotel. Andy Cunningham, who had directed me back in the days of Covent Garden Community Theatre, came with us.

‘Such a nice outfit you’ve got,’ he said to me.

I casually brushed my clothes and said, ‘Oh, thank you. It’s just something I threw on.’

‘No,’ whispered Andy. ‘I meant nice people you’re working with.’

Hans came to visit but the situation wasn’t helped when I had a phone call one morning from Josh in Perth informing me he was in contact with the
Sun
and ready to sell his story. ‘What story?’ I asked, lying in bed with Hans beside me. ‘I’m 18. That’s illegal in Perth,’ he said triumphantly. I hung up, but Hans wanted to know what the conversation had been about, so I told him. The next day I came clean and told him about my other infidelities.

28 April 1993

This Morning
with Nick Owen and a heavily pregnant Anne Diamond. Just before we went on air at 10.30 a.m. I was sitting on a sofa with Jilly Cooper, who turned suddenly and touched my hand. ‘Are you all right?’ she asked, concerned. Worried that my hangover was showing through the make-up, I said, ‘Yes, I’m all right. I’m only half here, really.’

‘Sometimes’, she said, ‘you think you’re over something and then you realise that you’re not.’ I realised she was referring to Christopher and bereavement. But there was no time to continue the conversation. Suddenly cameras were rolling, Anne and Nick were showing their teeth and Jilly and I were making merry between a cookery item featuring stewed apples baked on butter-soaked bread and Claire Rayner helping the nation with their relationship problems.

I managed a good joke. Viewers were asked to phone in with tongue-twisters in response to a German student who needed help with his English lessons. ‘I’ve got something a German student might like to get his tongue around,’ I said. Nick and Anne just stared at me. There was silence, so thinking the camera might still be on me I widened my eyes and shrugged at them. Then the pause ended as Jilly shrieked with laughter. The show went on and on and on. My final appearance was a 90-second item with the Chef of the Year. ‘Have you ever stuffed a chicken?’ I asked him.

I hear that Addison refers to me, Philip and Michael as ‘the Handbags’, which might be offensive if it wasn’t funny. The other day he greeted Keith the technical by saying. ‘Tour going well, mate? How’s your arse?’

The next day we arrived in Oxford to do our gig at the Apollo, only to find the city centre sealed off due to a bomb scare. We sat in Fat Jack’s for four hours, until we realised we’d have to cancel. I called Addison. ‘Oh my Gawd. Why does it always happen to me?’ he said from his office in Peckham. We passed the time talking to the gay Australian waiter. ‘I really admire you,’ he said. ‘Making all that money just for being camp.’

My relationship with Hans did not survive the tour. I was in Margate when I called him. ‘In my country, if love is not fed it dies,’ he said. I went for a post-show walk along the seafront and felt suitably desolate. Feeling miserable was an interesting mood change, after the hilarity of tour fun and japes and the high of being applauded and lionised every night on stage. There is a self-consciousness, sometimes, about despondency. (There is with me anyway.) As I took my melancholy stroll I could almost have been auditioning for a remake of
The French Lieutenant’s Woman
.

Becoming famous plays havoc with your emotions, and because you are famous people will scrutinise your emotions much more than they ever did before. You are being looked at more than is normal, so it stands to reason that you are also being analysed. The Sydney queens who said ‘Nothing much to write home about’ would not have passed the comment had they not recognised me. They would have kept their thoughts to themselves. And while your ego is suitably massaged by the nightly confirmation of the public’s love for you, the stakes are higher. You think if you make one false move the adoration will be withdrawn. The game will be up. If they didn’t make as much noise in Southampton as they did in Glasgow, you might think it’s your fault. You don’t always put it down to regional clapping variations or theatre acoustics. And if it hadn’t been for public demand you would not have been on tour and tired and emotional in the first place. Your worst fear is that it will stop. What if your next tour, your next performance, TV show, interview or joke is not received as favourably as the last? All will be lost.

What if I don’t want to do it any more? All this was just the low after the high, you understand, but I don’t think my reading material at the time helped.

6 June 1993. Margate

I’m reading Frankie Howerd’s biography so career dives are on my mind. Failures of all kinds, all round. I’m trying to convince myself that I’m by myself because I want to be, but it isn’t working.

I fancy a change of lifestyle. I could take a year off. I could change management, social scene, house and lover. I could finish the tour and see if I’m quite as hysterical about things then.

There is a trajectory to fame. We see it all the time, most commonly with pop stars who suddenly hit the big time. Self-esteem and insecurity battle it out. Modesty and disbelief give way to arrogance and self-delusion. I have been guilty of both, snappy and demanding with friends and fans alike. There is a period when the basic courtesies of human interaction do not seem to apply to you, the famous person. If luck is on your side this will all level out and you can make your apologies before too much damage is done. But we must bear in mind that those around a famous person often don’t conform to normal patterns of behaviour either. The whole business of day-to-day living is suddenly topsy-turvy: you’re not exactly behaving in a normal way, but neither is anyone else. It’s hard to know how to behave. I used to leave my fans waiting for hours at the stage door. ‘The longer they wait, the more they love you,’ I used to repeat nightly, as if it were an ancient Chinese proverb rather than an unnecessary test of loyalty. Nowadays I’m there before they are, offering a selection of sandwiches and a flask of tea. For my next tour I’m thinking of offering a free T-shirt to the first five to arrive. In TV terms, of course, one’s career goes through a number of phases from ‘Accept no offers. You’re too good for that!’ to ‘How lovely to be asked! I’ll take anything!’

I clearly didn’t endear myself to Ivan Massow. We met in 1991 in Heaven. He decided he wanted to be my friend and I went along with it in a half-hearted sort of way. We went for a drive down the A40 in his Aston Martin, and had a glam weekend together at L’Hotel in Paris. I treated him with shocking indifference. This, of course, made him all the more eager to please. But I couldn’t take him seriously because he was a Tory. As an obstacle to friendship that was a bit like being a convicted paedophile, decorative though he was. He came to the launch of my coffee table book
How To Be A Real Man
at Madame Jojo’s and I arranged to meet him at a bar across the road after I’d finished schmoozing some journalists, but there was a bomb scare in Soho and we were locked in at Madame Jojo’s for several hours – an unfortunate predicament at the best of times. I didn’t much care. This being the pre-mobile-phone era I was unable to contact him. The next day a stern letter was delivered by bike. Ivan (self-made multi-millionaire) clearly felt the need to assess our friendship in writing.

Dear Julian,

It has been fun getting to know you and I think that by London standards I have at some stages got as close to you as anyone. I have found you a rewarding friend on the whole but very difficult at the same time. It frightens me when I invest energy and respect which is unrequited and with you that was so often the case . . . I don’t think I have ever really let you down in the ways you that you have done so with me. The trouble is that I make excuses for you and never really say anything when you simply don’t turn up. The truth is that it has made me feel more and more worthless to you, which is why I have been slipping away.

I couldn’t believe it when you left me in that pub the other night. It was an example of just how cruel you can be and it upset me almost to tears because you made me realise just how worthless I am.

I am not the wonderful ‘Julian Clary’ and never will be. But I work very hard and have a life which I am, like you, very proud of. I am brilliant at what I do, as you are at what you do. I have never denied you that compliment, which you have never paid me . . . anyway, please excuse this last little luxury of saying goodbye. I’m a bit sentimental about things like that.

love Ivan xxx

We have made friends again since, although we had a good six-year break. In fact, in a recent magazine article Ivan claimed me as one of his best friends. Apparently we speak on the phone at least five times a day! Good Lord . . . whatever do we find to talk about?

A similar ‘farewell’ letter came my way from a fan called Susan. With a bit of detective work she discovered my home address and was sitting on my garden wall one day when I emerged. I told her, quite reasonably in my opinion, to ‘Fuck off, and don’t ever come back’. She didn’t take it well . . .