Call the Midlife (39 page)

Bizarre.

By far the biggest hit of the night is my mum in the emergency mobility scooter
Top Gear
skit. She absolutely brings the house down. When she trundles on to the set to be presented with her winning driver’s laurel wreath by none other than F1 World Champion Lewis Hamilton, she receives what is easily the most triumphant ovation of the whole time we’re on air.

Lewis himself is the best I’ve ever seen him on a chat show. Twice during his interview I need him to change tack and lead the conversation by asking me two predetermined questions to get us to the next film – which he delivers perfectly, right on cue. I tap his foot twice under the table to let him know when. Nice one, Lewis.

In the end the show runs over by almost half an hour, but we could have easily gone on for longer. Maybe this is the way forward for a series.
TFI Friday – The Show That Doesn’t Know When to End.
Sounds good to me. You want unpredictable television, it doesn’t get more unpredictable than that.

As the end credits finally roll, I feel an immense sense of calm and satisfaction, like nothing I’ve ever felt before in or around a
live television event. This has to happen again surely, it has been the best night of my career, bar none.
TFI Friday
, the best it has ever been, warmer than it’s ever been and, most importantly, more sustainable than it’s ever been. And seeing as back when it felt so unstable we might all slip through a wormhole at any moment, we still managed to make a hundred and forty-seven of the damn things, surely we can come up with at least a couple more years of this new, more survivable incarnation.

With the end credits still rolling:

I quietly slip off the set unnoticed and slowly walk, head lowered, down two flights of stairs and out the side entrance to the underground car park. I swear if there’d been a doctor there to take my pulse it wouldn’t have been much above normal. I was ice cool. Do you know what? It may have been even lower. I’ve only ever felt like this once before, and that was, guess when? The day after the London Marathon when all felt right with the world.

That sense of being at one with the world was back with me for only the second time in my life, just a few weeks after I first encountered it – what is referred to as enlightenment.

Encouraging, then, that it can be achieved in a scuzzy concrete car park after two hours of relative madness, not solely in a remote Himalayan hermitage over a twenty-five-year period of solitary meditation.

The return of the kids we made cry to receive their long overdue apology plus a free Caribbean holiday each – we had to give them something – was sensational. The second-best moment of the show for me after my mum’s show-stopping appearance. I can’t imagine I’d have felt at all enlightened and at peace with the universe if we’d left them at home.

Karma in need. Karma indeed.

‘Do you work on the show?’ asks the driver of a black people-carrier waiting to take someone home. He’s foreign with a friendly smile, very polite.

‘Yes, I do.’

‘You’re the first out, they say there’s going to be a big party now, could go on very late.’

‘Really? Well, I suppose that is usually the case. There’s a lot of very excited people in there.’

We chat for a few more minutes. It’s clear he has no idea that I even work on the show, let alone present, produce and own it. Perfect.

Turns out he’s Serbian and has been in the UK for six years. Just the grounding, unaffected conversation I need after the preceding mayhem. It will be hyper back inside: ‘How great was that? How hot was it in there! How many more
TFI Friday
s do you think there’ll be now?’ I can hear the hysteria and repetition from here. Nothing wrong with that, nothing at all, and far better than everyone awkwardly trying to avoid the elephant in the room when a show has been a disaster. But by and large, collective adrendine kills individually, and when you’re the star of the show, its’s usually the best idea to make a quick getaway: I’ve seen it a million times.

A few moments later, Will appears.

‘Ah, you’re here. You OK?’

‘Fantastic, best night of my professional life.’

‘Wow, really?’

‘You?’

‘Don’t know, haven’t had time to think about it. Yeah, pretty much, I guess.’

I love Will. He can be so innocent one moment and yet so intense the next, entirely charming and genuine. As we continue to chat, Tash, escorts my sister and my mum outside to find their taxi. One of my best pals, Noel Fitzpatrick, the Supervet, is cadging a lift home with them. Noel’s a genius who has achieved a worldwide hit with his bionic vet-themed TV shows. I’ve known him for fifteen years, ever since he fixed Enzo our German Shepherd’s back legs. He also happens to live around the corner from my mum.

Midnight: Tash and I are back home leaning against the kitchen island, enjoying a glass of champagne with my daughter Jade, her
husband Callum, her mum Alison, Al’s husband Wardy, Alex Jones – my colleague from
The One Show
, her fiancé Charlie, and my faithful assistant The Frothy Coffee Man. Everyone’s dog-tired but still smiling. It’s been a long day for Jade and her gang, having travelled down from Warrington. Not as long a day as mine, but I’m used to feeling dog-tired.

3 a.m: Talking of dogs, my wife is currently running up and down the streets of Primrose Hill chasing one. After Jade’s lot went to bed, the rest of us nipped out to a party Matthew Freud had spontaneously announced was taking place. I’ve known Matthew for years, ever since he came down to a dark and dingy basement studio one Saturday morning back in 1989 where I was training his sister Emma how to operate a radio studio. He’d just started his PR business and was always bursting with excitement and weird ideas.

His house is so cool. Situated behind a grand Georgian terrace of approximately twenty houses, you get to it via a metal door which fills an odd gap between two gable ends. After stepping through the mesh gateway, the space immediately opens up to reveal a courtyard and the front of his contemporary palace. Not only is the house a work of art, so is everything in it, even the furniture. But it’s that Fifties/Sixties robust furniture that has the unique combination of the aesthetic and practical.

‘Have nothing in your house except that which is beautiful or useful,’ said William Morris. Matthew’s place is the quintessence of the great man’s ethos.

The dog wasn’t found until the next day but found nevertheless. The party on the other hand rendered most attendant humans lost until well into Saturday afternoon.

Saturday, 13 June

TFI FRIDAY
+ ONE DAY

I wake up exhausted but couldn’t be happier.

We’ve made a ten o’clock booking at a fantastic New York-style diner for brunch. A table for eight and a half, as little Teddy, our
five-and-a-bit-month-old grandson will be hanging out with us in public for the first time. Hungover, weary, drowsy but with seven (and a half) of the most important people in my life around me, I feel like a very lucky man.

After brunch we go for a walk and a play on the swings in the local park. I check the time on my phone, it’s already past one and with Jade and the northern gang having to make tracks soon, we give the kids their final five-minute call.

While all this has been going on, I notice an unopened email symbol on my home page. It’s from Jay, at Channel 4, entitled simply – RATINGS.

Ah, ratings, the death knell to any ensuing euphoria the day after the celebration of a TV show the night before. The odds are always against you, you see. In as much as there are far fewer successful television shows than not. Chances are, you are going to have a turkey on your hands. One of my early career problems was ironically the fact all three of my first three big TV shows were hits, which meant I was almost ten years into the business before being woken up to the reality check of habitual failure.

As I was in my family bubble of everything that really mattered, I decided to postpone finding out how many of the Great British Public had or had not watched our show last night until they had left.

At 3 p.m., having waved off the northerners, Tash declares she is pooped, as are the kids, who enjoyed their own mini late-night yesterday while we were in telly land. She’s desperate to watch the show, as are Noah and Eli, but she knows I won’t want to. It’s not that I mind watching myself on screen, I just don’t want to do it for a day or two days afterwards in case the show didn’t ‘play’ as well as I imagined. I tell her to go ahead, I nip out for a walk and to open the dreaded email.

I decide to go for a quiet coffee in my favourite Italian deli, I get myself settled at a table.

OK, this is the moment of truth.

‘Be prepared to be taken down a peg or two, Christopher,’ I say to
myself. ‘You know the routine.’

The truth is I am hoping for the late one-point-something million; 1.9 million would be brilliant. Anything beginning with a two and it will be party time all over again.

Matthew!!!

I scroll to Jay’s email with her little yellow sealed envelope icon staring back at me. I click on open. Ping. And there it is. The number.

The dreaded bloody number.

The number that can make or break lives and careers.

But I find myself having to blink. One of those comedy blinks like in a cartoon.

A double take with a slight shake of the head to nudge your brain back online.

Did it really say:

3.8 MILLION!!!

Shut the front door.

3.8 MILLION. What???

That was the average figure throughout the broadcast.

Unbelievable.

No, really bloody unbelievable.

But then what was this on the next line.

Surely more fiction.

How about, in addition to 3.8 million – a peak audience of . . .

4.3 MILLION!!!

That’s even more insane! I am in total shock. This is not possible. Both figures are more than double what the original
TFI Friday
ever managed to score. And I mean ever.

Fuck, fuck, fuck.

A day now to celebrate more than ever.

I down my coffee and run back to the house to tell Tash. As I fling open the front door, almost off its hinges, I can hear the muted shouts and screams coming from the television downstairs.

‘Babe, the ratings have come through. Look.’

Tash is cuddled up with the boys on the sofa. I pass her the phone, waiting for the information to register. She burst into tears.
Another marathon moment.

‘OH – MY – GOD. This is amazing.’

She is so pleased for me.

Surely this means Channel 4 will simply have to pick up their option for a series – who knows, maybe more?
TFI Friday
has also won its slot against all other channels, including the mighty BBC1 and 2 and ITV1.

This is dreamsville.

That said, I take a moment to remind myself this is showbusiness. The business that sent Benny Hill packing when he was still being watched and loved somewhere in the world by 300 million people every week. Similarly, let’s not forget the moment when Metro GOLDWYN Mayer (the clue’s in capitals for you) thought it perfectly reasonable to dispense with the services of SAM GOLDWYN from the company. Not only was he the man who founded the legendary studio that had just sacked him, in the first place, but he was one of the founding fathers of Hollywood itself.

No, I have learnt to expect the unexpected, even to be ready for the ludicrous. That said, I have to admit to feeling the most optimistic I’ve ever felt while awaiting a call from a channel head.

But you never know.

You just never know.

Sunday, 14 June

TFI FRIDAY
+ 2 DAYS

It’s 11.30 a.m. and I’m at my mum’s with Tash and the kids. Minnie wasn’t expecting us as we’d seen her for most of Friday at
TFI
but we love hanging out at my mum’s little bungalow, the world is much simpler from her point of view. Especially when the preceding forty-eight hours have been a little crazy. Which they had.

After seeing the northerners off yesterday Tash and I had treated ourselves to a night out at the O2 Arena to watch Take That. So good we’ve decided to go again next weekend and take Noah to his
first big concert.

Gary, Mark and Howard have really nailed this threesome thing.

‘Much more symmetrical with three,’ said Gary to me backstage. ‘There’s always one of us in the middle which means the other two can go a bit more freestyle if they want to.’

Though Tash and I are a little more bleary-eyed than a half-ten finish Take That gig can lay claim to.

We went on a bar crawl afterwards, just the two of us having our own private little celebration in honour of how well
TFI
had gone.

Actually I say bar crawl, the truth is we enjoyed our first post-Take That cold beverage at Danny Baker’s house in Blackheath. We’d been given four tickets for the gig but when at the last minute the two pals we were supposed to be going with pulled out, and it was so close to show time, I remembered, ‘Danny lives five minutes from the O2,’ so I called to ask him if anyone in his family might want to drop everything to come with.