Can't Stand Up for Sitting Down (25 page)

The
first bit goes OK and I arrive at the Brompton Road in about twenty minutes and
feel rather pleased with myself. Then, of course, I can’t find the bloody
venue. I drive up and down three times trying to spot the place. Finally, I start
to panic and wonder if I’m ever going to get there. My satnav keeps saying,
‘You have arrived at your destination,’ and I keep replying, ‘No, I haven’t,
you silly old cow. Do something.’

Eventually,
I call someone at the Labour Party who says they’ll get someone to call me, as
I drive aimlessly up and down in the worst mood imaginable. Eventually someone
does phone and says they have saved a parking space. They assure me that I am
near by, and that someone else has been dispatched to find me. I pull into the
kerb and in my wing mirror see some poor bloke in a suit legging it up the road
at a hundred miles an hour. He is a Labour Party guy not some besuited
psychopath, so I let him in the car and we do a U-ey right in the middle of
heavy traffic and I relish doing some rude signs as other drivers beep at me.
We finally arrive outside the venue at number 264 and I have to park in a tiny
space in front of a fifteen-strong welcoming committee. Inevitably I fuck it up
and have to go in and out a few times. And then I am hardly out of the car when
they descend on me, little knowing that I want to punch the first one who comes
near me, I’m that stressed. I manage to smile through heavily gritted teeth and
am escorted in.

10.45 p.m.
It’s even worse inside. There are hordes of people, all pissed, and
the music is deafening (said grandma). As I’m late, I have about two seconds to
prepare and then am shoved onto a makeshift stage to do my fifteen-minute bit.
It goes by in a blur. I do some jokes about Cameron I have literally written on
the back of a fag packet on my way, and then segue into my usual material which
I know works.

Thank
God, although it is noisy they are very friendly and seem to like me — which is
fortunate because they were going to get it with both barrels if they didn’t. I
come off stage and am surrounded by alcohol fumes leaking out of very close
faces. The owner asks me to come to a table with him for a drink, but I can do
no more of anything sociable and plead exhaustion, although I can see he doesn’t
really believe me. However, I am past caring and head for the door, being
waylaid every few feet or so to say hello to a very nice bunch of people. It’s
me that’s the problem.

11.45
p.m.
As I drive off I could cry I am so
tired, and when I get home I drop everything on the floor, climb into bed and
pass out like I’ve been punched unconscious.

Just a
small matter now of having to get up at 5.30 a.m. again …

Friends are enormously
important to me, especially longstanding ones, because they are the people who
knew me before all this comedy stuff and therefore I value their opinion on
things like whether I have turned into a showbiz arse or not.

Because
of the immense cultural weight placed on being a so-called ‘celebrity’, people
do react differently towards you, there is no getting round it. And so from the
moment when I realised I was now someone whom people recognised off the telly I
found myself becoming warier and warier of those individuals who wanted to be
my friend.

I know
this is unfair of me and too cynical, because on the whole, most people are
friendly honest and trustworthy — but when you look at those little messages
in the tabloids that exhort you to phone in and grass up some celeb who’s done
something interesting, in some cases only pick their nose in the street, I feel
it’s important to be on your guard a bit. Add to that features like ‘Spotted’
in
Heat
magazine (a secret guilty pleasure of mine), which allows people
to describe someone famous they saw and what they were doing, it does make you
feel slightly under scrutiny The irony of these items is that, most of the
time, it’s so dull. Are we really interested in the fact that Jimmy Carr was
spotted talking into his mobile phone on Oxford Street? Not exactly an unusual
thing to do, is it? Now if he’d been shoving it up someone’s … well, you get
the picture.

First
of all, let’s take those people who approach you at events. They often seem
keen to let you know that:

You’re
Not As Great As You Think You Are.

Well,
it may come as a surprise, but I don’t think I’m that great. I’m pleased and
proud of the way my comedy career has turned out, but I like to think I’m not
smug. However, there is a natural assumption on the part of some people that I
must be flawed in the personality department. That may well be true, but I
don’t believe I am a diva in any way This is because I did a ‘normal’ job for
years and I know what it’s like to earn a low wage for huge numbers of hours in
a stressful job.

Secondly
I am perfectly well aware that some people may think I’m a demanding, petulant
pain, so I actually go out of my way to prove them wrong. Even when I am feeling
tired, fed up and ill, I still make an enormous effort to be polite and
friendly This doesn’t wash with some people. They push and push, or they throw
an insult out of the blue at you, which belies their initially friendly
attitude. I did a book signing recently and a woman who had queued for ages,
finally got to the top of the line and informed me while I was signing her book
that I was ‘crap on
QI
the other night’. I just smiled and said, ‘Oh,
thanks,’ which I think wrong-footed her a bit, but inside I was thinking, Oh,
why don’t you just fuck off, you stupid cow.

I
myself wouldn’t dream of being so rude to someone I don’t know — and if you are
thinking — Yes, you would, on stage — that is a completely different matter
altogether. It’s a performance and it has very little to do with me as a
person, in the sense that all comedy performances are exaggerated versions of
life. So when strangers say to me, ‘I don’t like you,’ (which, believe you me,
they do), or conversely ‘I’d love to be your friend,’ they don’t really mean
me, they mean my stand-up act. This assumes that I go round all the time with
the ‘comedy’ switch permanently turned on. Well, I don’t. That would be too
bloody exhausting for words and would royally piss off everyone I know.

I think
a lot of people are rather disappointed when they meet me and when our ensuing
interaction is not at the performance level of stand-up comedy.

One has
a choice when one joins the world of showbusiness — to throw oneself headlong
into it, or to observe from the sidelines — and the latter is what I chose to
do. I have a slight horror of parties, full stop, let alone showbiz parties. I am
regularly tongue-tied at these sorts of events as I cannot produce the sort of
small talk that seems to be required unless I’ve had eight pints of lager, and
then I tend to do and say quite a lot of things I regret the following day It’s
just easier to steer clear of them.

I have
made some very good friends from the comedy circuit over the years when we all
started off, but on the whole I am not to be found at Elton John’s annual
shindig or premières and the like. I did once get invited to a party by Morrissey
whom I love, but I think he was seriously disappointed in the real me.

I feel
much happier with a small group of long-term friends because I can relax, trust
them, be myself with them and have a laugh.

My
three best friends are Betty Griffo and Edana, whom I have known since 1979 —
hundreds of years. Betty, who lives round the corner from me, is the only one
of us who managed to use her psychology degree to find a job in the field, and
she now works as a senior psychologist. It’s an absolute joy having a good
friend so close at hand. We speak most days, and although we have enormously
stressed lives, see each other all the time. I don’t think I could survive if
she wasn’t around. I know I can tell her anything and she is absolutely
trustworthy in every way, and we are as we always have been, completely in tune
with each other.

Griffo
lives in Swansea, which is a pisser, because I don’t get to see her nearly as
often as I’d like. She decided quite early on that she wanted to be an actress
after we’d left college and has carved herself a fantastic career in an arena
that is enormously competitive and cruel at times. We do our best to
text/email/talk on the phone whenever possible. We work together too, as often
as we can, and she recently played the part of the union rep in the comedy
Getting
On.

Edana
is the third one of the triumvirate who worked for many years in the Health
Service, although she has always harboured a yen to write for TV. This opportunity
came up recently for her and she is trying to convert her working life to
fulltime writing but it’s a very competitive field and it’s taking a while.

We try
to all get together once a year for a couple of days if we can, and our last
trip was to a health spa … not my natural habitat, it has to be said. But it
was pretty quiet and there was a lack of hassle from other punters. I did even,
at one point, don my cozzie and get in the pool for some aquaerobics which I’d
assumed would be a piece of piss. Blimey it’s actually quite hard work and I
felt half dead afterwards. We also signed up for a ‘brisk’ walk (I realise the
word ‘brisk’ should have been a clue) which was more like a bleeding route
march in the Army The main group pulled ahead of me many times, to my shame,
and at one point I had to pretend I was off to find cover to have a piss while
I cowered in a bush and had a sneaky fag.

And
then, of course, there is my lovely friend Waggly who was diagnosed with MS
while we were nurses together. She lives fairly close and is an inspiration to
all of us as she has fought her illness tooth and nail, whilst devoting a lot
of her time to her fellow sufferers. She’s always available to help and has a
gorgeous sunny optimistic outlook, given what a rough time she’s had over the
last few years.

Showbiz Mates

Although it’s difficult to
meet and keep friends in this business because everyone is so bloody busy and
on my nights off I just want to flop over and spend time with the family I do
make an effort to spend time with the following mates from the comedy world.

Kathy Burke

I think Kathy is a bloody
genius and more than that, a fantastic person to spend time with. She is down
to earth, funny and cynical, and a prime example of someone who has really
struggled against the odds to become a leader in her field. We only meet a
handful of times a year, but I always look forward to it enormously as I know
I’m going to have a good time and spend a lot of it pissing myself laughing.

Liza Tarbuck

Liza comes from comedy
royalty and I first met her when we did a show up in Scotland together called
Win,
Lose or Draw.
It was a joy to meet such a funny woman who could hold her
own against all-comers. She is a right laugh too, has a very quick mind and
doesn’t take any shit from anyone.

Dawn French

Dawn is absolutely lovely
and totally comfortable in her skin. Sometimes I wonder how she has managed to
remain so nice in the shark-infested waters of telly and showbusiness. She
radiates a kind of positive light around herself and I defy anyone not to like
her.

Meera Syal

I first met Meera when she
was in a sketch on the Channel Four show that I did,
Through the Cakehole.
I
immediately liked her. She is bright, has a sardonic wit, and although we’ve
managed to have quite a few elongated gaps in our friendship we are still clinging
on and manage to see each other at least twice a year. It’s difficult as we
both have children and lives that are not conducive to meeting up, especially
as we live at opposite ends of London.

Jenny Eclair

Jenny Eclair is one of the
biggest balls of energy I have ever met. She bursts into your personal space
and will not be ignored. Her mind jumps all over the place and it’s as if there
is a pressure in her head to get more words out per minute than anyone else.
She’s very funny very sarcastic and very lovable. We live quite close to each
other, and almost every time I go to the local supermarket, I bump into her
lurking somewhere in the aisles. Again, we struggle to maintain proper, regular
contact but always have a really good gossip when we catch up.