Call the Midlife (25 page)

One mile for every year I’d been down here. That worked.

Within ten minutes I was coming up to The Forum, formerly the Town & Country Club, the first place I ever saw Texas, David Bowie and a shedload of other solid-gold performers. Then I glimpsed the car park round the back and was reminded of the time a confused but enthusiastic Robbie Williams beckoned me into his Range Rover to play me a CASSETTE of a new song he’d just finished, one he was sincerely hoping would consolidate his post-Take That solo career. The tune was dominated by a sample of the haunting strings loop from
You Only Live Twice
and went on to be a worldwide smash (‘Millennium’ – you may be aware of it).

Next on my tour: five minutes up the road, a gorgeous old terraced house I rented for a while shortly after landing my life-changing job on
The Big Breakfast
. This was most memorable as the house in which I was ‘hit’ by Noel Edmonds live in front of fifteen million viewers on BBC1 back in 1993. I was sitting picking my
nose on the sofa, watching my favourite show when Noel clicked his fingers and boom, there I was, live in my own living room after his technicians had spent the whole day wiring up secret cameras all over the place.

After passing there I filtered left into Hampstead Heath, following a route that would take me all around the perimeter of its vast expanse. I love Hampstead Heath, and I’ve made many big decisions in my life while ambling along its paths. There was a period when I walked there every day without fail to sit atop its highest point on a bench from which you can not only see the whole of London’s dramatic skyline but right across into Kent, the Surrey Hills, Berkshire and Buckinghamshire.

That said, I’d never taken in the whole of it before. My goodness it’s huge, and much hillier than I realized. Half an hour later I was breathless running up a steep incline past Kenwood House, a former stately home that sits on the northern edge of the Heath. I needed a break soon and I got one: the next mile, heading south, was downhill all the way. It took me past the studio flat which was the first London property I bought. It cost £105,000 back in the early Nineties and was no more than a large room with a galley kitchen, a bath in the corner and a ladder up to a galleried bedroom. Crazy times, crazy prices. Nothing has changed. When I put it on the market, Tori Amos, the Cornflake Girl, came round to have a look. Like me she fell in love at first sight, but in the end had to pass as she couldn’t figure out how to get her grand piano up over the roof and in through the French windows.

A few hundred yards on, a right and a left and I was outside what’s now a trendy bar but was once the Haverstock Arms, the pub I used to go to every single day for ten years. The pub where I met hundreds of ‘friends’ – and probably spent close to a million pounds. With friends like that . . .

One of the old signed
TFI Friday
desks (there were three!) was hung there on the wall. It was also the place where I first hatched the idea of
Don’t Forget Your Toothbrush
, my hit game-show for Channel 4 and the venue for the wake of my old friend, the actor
Ronnie Fraser. The man who taught me to drink, laugh and not take showbusiness at all seriously. He should have known, he was first in his class at RADA in the fifties and was best friends with Peter O’Toole and Sean Connery, both of whom were pallbearers at his funeral. I can vouch for this, as I was the one in the middle with James Bond behind and Lawrence of Arabia in front.

Stellar times.

Up Haverstock Hill next and past several more flats I’d lived in at one time or another. It was beginning to sink in just how peripatetic my twenties and thirties had been. The first mews house I rented was next, a tiny place but with a huge sliding window on the first floor that opened up the bijou living room to the whole world. A few hundred yards on and the mighty Steele’s Road, named after Sir Richard Steele, the eighteenth-century writer-politician who co-founded the
Spectator
magazine.

This is the road famed throughout the Nineties and early noughties as the real Stella Street, home to Bob Hoskins, Jude Law and Sadie Frost, Noel Gallagher, David Walliams – and lots of other household names who still live there. My house was the one closest to the pub at the end of the street on the left and most memorable to me as the first house I sold, thinking I’d done really well by making a ten per cent profit.

Not bad short term but a disaster long term as three years later its value had doubled. You know that phrase: ‘first profit; best profit – first loss; best loss’? Well I think that’s for the most part, absolute rot.

After yet more reminiscing and memories, all of them fond – what’s the point in remembering the not-s0-good times? – I found myself jogging through Primrose Hill, which has to be the prettiest village in North London, somewhere I’ve always hung out in but never actually lived.

‘God I love it here,’ I said to myself. There’s the hill itself, the first-ever UK park gifted to the public, the church, the canal, the curved parade of rainbow-coloured shop fronts, cafés, restaurants and a cast of locals all playing their own bespoke role in The Primrose
Hill Show. And then there’s the paparazzi trolling up and down in their various mini-vans with blacked-out windows, hoping for a fifty-quid snap of Robert Plant nipping out for a loaf, Liam embarking on an afternoon drinking session, or Andrew Marr having an impromptu clandestine get-together with apparatchiks in the local French bistro. But it’s the houses with their infinite views across the city that are the real stars of the show. All of them, without exception.

‘Why did I never buy a place here when I had the chance?’ I mused. ‘Mmm,’ I thought, ‘I wonder.’

Ten minutes later and I was idiotically trying to weave in and out of the pavement traffic of rush hour on Baker Street.

There I was, moving twice as fast as everyone else amongst a human throng that was ten times more stressed than me, too busy looking down at their smartphones to watch where they’re going or see what might be about to run them over. I hit my first pedestrian-crossing red light – which gave me time to check my GPS watch to see how far I’d run and how long I’d been out.

‘Shit, fuck, no! You cannot be serious. There’s no way I’ve only done ten miles!’ But it was true. I’d taken in a massive loop of Camden, Kentish Town, Belsize Park, St John’s Wood and THE WHOLE OF HAMPSTEAD BLOODY HEATH and still I’d only covered 10 miles and been out for just under two hours. ‘Now, how the heck, where the heck, am I going to get my other 10 miles from?’ I was running out of London.

Immediately I headed to Hyde Park. Thank goodness for the Royals. I would run the outer boundary and then past another house I used to own in Belgravia, which made my Steele’s Road property wheeling and dealing look like financial genius. I bought this one for £1.5 million, thought I’d rung the bell when I sold for £1.6 million five years later. Last year the same house sold for £32 MILLION! That which does not destroy you only makes you stronger.

Deep breath and move on, literally, down into St James’s Park, Green Park. ‘That should do it,’ I told myself.

Wrong!

As I approached Big Ben with the band of the Household Cavalry going through marching drills in the courtyard on the right-hand side, I was still 4 miles short of my 20-mile target. I couldn’t believe it. I thought back to my first ever shuffle/run in December 2014 when I couldn’t make it around the lake at Virginia Water. Now here I was, getting frustrated that I still had that much left to go, not because I didn’t think I could keep going but because I couldn’t work out which route to take.

Almost without realizing it, I made my way across Westminster Bridge and a few minutes later I was heaving myself past County Hall to join the Jubilee Walk. Here on the South Bank there were tens of thousands of people to negotiate. Not to mention hundreds of lunchtime runners, every single one of whom, regardless of size, build, age, shape or ability was overtaking me as my legs began to grind to a halt. Shit, they were hurting. I only had two miles to go exponentially but I could barely move another two steps. These were the most extreme physical sensations I had ever experienced.

In the end I just about made it back to Broadcasting House, whereupon I asked myself:

‘If I absolutely had to, if my life depended on it, could I have somehow run another 6.2 miles, making up the full marathon distance?’

To which the answer was an emphatic no.

Friday, 6 March

52 DAYS TO GO

First group run with the radio team – somehow we’d all signed up to do the Windsor Half-marathon on 27 September. Plenty of time to prep and the perfect smokescreen for more secret training. Turnout: 3 people.

Distance: 5 miles, with a coffee and croissant stop half way. Very civilized.

Sunday, 8 March

50 DAYS TO GO

STILL HAVEN’T TOLD TASH.

Now more like a lie than a secret. Because of my chaotic work life she is used to me being in and out of the house sporadically. She’s aware I’m still running and very pleased that I’m getting fit and finally looking after myself. But she has absolutely no idea a marathon is in the offing. She’s the athlete in the family, not me. In fact Tash would more likely expect my mum to run a marathon than she would me.

The longer my secret goes on, the more frightened I am of eventually telling her. Like taking too long to say you’re sorry for something.

Tuesday, 10 March

48 DAYS TO GO

My right foot has been hurting like I don’t know what. My chiropractor says it may be
plantar fasciitis
, but should be OK to run on as not too bad. I’m massaging it by rolling it on a golf ball whenever I get the chance. Sounds mad but it works.

I try a gentle few miles; foot feels OK, so I decide to make this a long run of exact half-marathon distance. I also practise nutrition and hydration for the first time at 7 miles. Seems to help more than I realized it would.

Duration: 2 hours 10 minutes.

Distance: 13.1 miles.

Thursday, 12 March

46 DAYS TO GO

Tuesday’s run nearly killed me. Could not have run another yard. So, a nice time but I need to know I can run 26.2 miles and not 13.1. That’s the goal, that’s the aim. It’s so easy to get distracted when
you’ve been doing this for a while. As shorter distances get easier, the temptation to become full of oneself is ever present. Must remain humble. Must presume the worst. What is it the SAS say: Train hard, fight easy? Yes. And keep it to yourself while you’re at it.

Today it’s a lovely day and I just want to amble in the sunshine and figure out the rest of my life. So I opt for a quite useless pootle around the lake where it all began, with a few half-hearted interval sprints. Soon my right foot is playing up again. One way or another I get around the 4.5 miles in about fifty minutes, which would have been a dream when I first started a couple of months ago. Such thoughts, however, are counter-productive at this stage.

The highlight of my circuit was seeing the England rugby coach, Stuart Lancaster, deep in thought doing his own walking lap. I’ve seen him here a few times now. England’s RU training camp is down the road. Always looking straight ahead, always focused but always wearing a bright white England rugby jersey.

Duration: 50 minutes.

Distance: 4.5 miles.

Friday, 13 March

45 DAYS TO GO

Comic Relief Day. Red Nose Day for most, another red-face day for me. Our second Windsor Half team training run. A much better turn-out this week: double from last week, six of us show up.

We run to Primrose Hill and around Regent’s Park. Coffee stop in the village, jog back: 5 miles, lovely job. Everyone did really well, considering. I sneak out for another 3 miles to try out my new target marathon time of 11-minute mile pace. It’s OK but my legs begin to hurt. If you have the luxury, listen to your body. With six weeks to go, I do – just about. I turn for home. Night off
The One Show
so it’s back to Ascot early for what is effectively a long weekend. I arrive home at 2 p.m., have a bath. Lie on my bed and check out all the best training plans. How are they looking with six weeks to go?
More to the point, how is what I’m doing looking with six weeks to go?

It’s looking OK but I sense more and more my training is becoming a balancing act of what my mind wants to do, conflicted with what my body is able to do.

Sunday, 29 March

28 DAYS TO GO

We’re in France on a two-week family Easter break. The vacation party consists of all three of my kids, Noah, Eli and Jade, my grandson Teddy, Jade’s husband Callum, Jade’s mum Alison, her husband Anthony and my wife Natasha. Of course, this is not ideal from a preparation point of view, but I’m only trying to run the London Marathon, not scale the Empire State Building in my bare feet. On the plus side, there’s going to be plenty of time to nip out for short runs and for the three long runs I need to tick off – a 10-miler, a 15-miler and a 20; the various coast roads available will be nice and friendly and flat, as well as interesting and new. I’m both nervous and excited, the perfect combination.

Our first overnight is in St Tropez. I decide to get up early on the Sunday morning and get my 10 miles in the bag straight away. I run to the next village. It’s 9 miles there and back, so I run once around St Tropez on my return which just about gets me to my target. Good. Excellent, in fact. Hardly any discomfort apart from the now usual twinge of fragility in my left knee.

Tuesday, 31 March

26 DAYS TO GO

‘Are you excited that it’s your birthday tomorrow, Dad?’ asks Noah.

We’re having one of our pile-on-cuddle chats. I’m lying down and he jumps on top of me – actually, dives on top of me and stays there, stuck like a limpet, usually with his cheek somewhere around my ear so he can whisper confidential father–son messages in my
shell-like. He would happily stay there all day carrying out covert negotiations. I would happily let him. Moments of gold. Heaven on Earth.

‘Of course I’m excited, it’s my birthday,’ I reply.