Dear Fatty (31 page)

Arnold Brown was one of my favourite people of that time in the eighties. He’s a Scottish comedian in a tidy brown suit and tie. He had been an accountant for most of his adult life and was giving comedy a go at a much later age than the rest of us. He stood out. In a good way. His comedy was gentle and self-deprecating. He spoke quietly. He was then – and still is – a fabulous oddity and a truly funny man. He didn’t join us on the films because he didn’t really do the acting thing – his strength is live stand-up. I recall, though, his enthusiasm for our double act and his encouraging me to listen to tapes of Gert and Daisy which he found for me, alongside Mike Nichols and Elaine May improvising on albums. Listening to both of these double acts was a revelation to me. I realised that a relaxed, truthful representation of a friendship, however odd it may be, is the key factor in any long-standing, successful double act relationship.

So, Dad, that was the line-up of people I spent the best part of 20 years working with. People who are, for the most part, still my good friends today. People who helped shape who I am, and who directed me towards a greater understanding of just how bloomin’ lucky I was to have such a great living. All that stuff you and Mum used to gently tell me off for, like being loud and showing off and being attention-seeking – guess what, Dad? That’s my job!

WHEN THE LIVE
Comic Strip show was at its height, people I admired came to see it, people you knew of and appreciated, like Peter Cook and Michael Palin. I was stunned every time I was introduced to folk such as these, my comedy heroes. I remember sharing with Michael Palin the fact that we had received a bad review in the London listings mag
Time Out
, which I found very hurtful. He told me about the initial, appalling reception he’d had from the press for virtually every job he’d ever embarked upon, especially for
Monty Python
, and said to take heart, which I most certainly did. I have since endeavoured to avoid all reviews of any live work, until the very last night when I enjoy a little ritual of reading ‘notices’ with a glass of rum when I get home, after the party, when the whole shebang is put to bed. By this time the reviews can’t hurt me or influence me or even puff me up, and if there is anything useful there for me to take forward to the next job, I can take it in. Reviews for TV work are different. The job is done, the show is made and usually my involvement is over by months. I will have watched it, maybe edited it, and so I have already formed my opinion of what I like or dislike about it. A review is handy for the audience perhaps, but even then you know very quickly if an audience enjoy something because they continue to watch, or not, and that’s reflected in the viewing figures. The response is that tangible, that quantifiable. I learned a big lesson when the first series of
The Vicar
of
Dibley
received one memorably vile review which was especially personal about me. When the same series was repeated later in the year, the exact same fool wrote a glowing review claiming that Richard Curtis and I must have taken heed of his previous comments because this second (so he thought) series was much better, blah blah … I also have a clear memory of inviting reviewers to see a preview episode of an anthology series of comedy films I made in the eighties called
Murder Most Horrid
. I had worked so hard on it for a year or so, and here was the big Judgement Day. We hired a posh room and set up a screening. There were refreshments for everyone, a buffet and drinks. It was about 11am. As more reviewers tipped up, I started to notice what was happening. They fell upon the buffet like starving gannets and sloshed back the drink like camels fuelling up for a Saharan crossing. By the time we started the film, a good third were already asleep and those that graced us with their attention had egg on their ties and dried dribble on their many chins. Was this who I had been so scared of? I decided then and there not to mind any more what they wrote.

Anyway, sorry, meandered off-piste and up my own bum there. I was telling you about the various remarkable folk who came to watch us at the Comic Strip. One night, I heard very loud, distinctive, deep, rolling laughter in the audience. It was constant, throughout the show. This was the kind of big infectious laughter you crave when you’re a comedian. You hunger for it. If chuckles are canapés, this was a bacchanalian feast. Someone generous-spirited was
really
enjoying the performance. We all felt it, and it was lovely. That person turned out to be Lenny Henry. He and Chris Tarrant were in to see the
show
, and especially to see Fatty and me because they were doing a new, late-night, adult version of
Tiswas
called
O.T.T
., and were looking to cast some women. Don’t get me wrong, I loved
Tiswas
but I found Len a bit loud, too broad, for my taste. They came backstage. I don’t really remember much about it except thinking what a huge, impressive-looking man he was. To this day, he remembers every word of that first meeting and can repeat them back to me, as a kind of torture, doing a far-too-accurate impression of the much younger, misguided me who was at pains to explain that ‘we take ages to write our stuff, yeah? And I’m not sure we could be involved with a show where we aren’t, like, totally in control of it, we’re just not going to do that, OK? And we don’t want to be token women, right, that’s not what we are, we’re not just token, we actually
are
women and that’s not really the point anyway, cos we’re performers, not women, and anyway, if there’s gonna be women in bikinis we wouldn’t honestly be involved anyway. Cos it’s demeaning. Sorry.’ Yes, that is how much of a pretentious arse I was back then.

I didn’t come across Len again till maybe a year or so later when Alexei was in a TV show called
Whoops Apocalypse
which was filmed in front of a live audience at London Weekend Television. I went along with my friend Angie to support Lex and while we were waiting in the queue, I felt a tap on my shoulder and it was Len with his friend Davey who had also come to see Lex. Of course, by then they were good friends because Lexei had gone on to do
O.T.T.
, the show I had been so very sniffy about. So, we started chatting in the queue and ended up sitting next to each other in the studio. Throughout
the
show, I witnessed the close-up phenomenon of that big laughter I had heard before at the Comic Strip. Len loves comedy. He is the most effusive audience member I’ve ever known. He can’t help it. If something tickles him, and plenty does, he just surrenders to fits of joyous laughter, longer and louder than anyone. It’s a wonderful thing.

Something else, parallel, was going on that evening. My friend Angie was getting on
very well indeed
with Len’s mate, Davey. They were flirting a-go-go. After the show, it was obvious the two of them wanted to go on somewhere else, to have a drink, so really, Len and I tagged along like lemons. Or is it gooseberries? Well, like some kind of tart fruit anyway.

We went to a bar and had a few drinks then Angie suggested we all went back to the flat I shared with my friend Gaynor in Paddington. She was the leaseholder and I was the tenant. I had taken over the back bedroom from my Welsh friend Lyn when he’d moved out and I couldn’t believe my luck because it was so swanky. It was small but smart, with a balcony that looked out over leafy Cleveland Square. Gaynor was a precise, neat person, which is why the flat was so lovely and clean. Along with clean came rules, of course, which were pretty stringent, but it was her place so I tried to abide by them. No noise late at night, clean kitchen, clean bathroom, clean living room, clean cat-litter tray, etc. Gaynor was a teacher, but she was much more diligent than I’d ever been, and went to bed early each evening with earplugs in to get a good night’s sleep. I was always tiptoeing around in a concerted effort not to disturb her. I enjoyed living in that flat, but I never entirely relaxed in it. Sometimes Gaynor went home to her family at weekends and I knew she wasn’t
there
on this particular night, so it would be OK for the four of us to go back.

By the time we tumbled into the flat, it was pretty obvious Angie and Davey were hot to trot, and before long they had commandeered my bedroom. Len and I were left to chat on the sofa with the giggles and shrieks of their fun time as the soundtrack to our evening. We were both a bit awkward at first, but then, slowly, we chatted and relaxed. It was so revealing, Dad. I was witnessing a whole other side to him, the quiet, bright, interested person he really is. Quite serious and, even more unbelievably, shy. We talked and talked and talked. It must have been four in the morning or so when we realised the bedroom had been silent for some time. They must have fallen asleep in there. We were also pretty weary, so I pulled out the sofa bed in the living room, and we camped down on that. It was all so innocent. Two gooseberries taking comfort in each other’s company, that’s all.

By morning, I was in giant love with him. In proper, big, marvellous, astonishing love. It completely shocked me, Dad, how in tune we suddenly seemed to be. I hadn’t experienced anything like it before. Most wonderful of all, he seemed to feel the same and didn’t want to leave. We both knew that something very big had happened. It was so sudden. So deliciously unexpected.

The other two had to be up and out but Len lingered on and I made a huge fry-up with the full works. He has never forgotten this breakfast, he remembers exactly what was on the plate and where!

He didn’t leave the flat for the best part of a week. The morning of the breakfast, I was due to write with Fatty, but my head was in a spin and I totally forgot about the arrangement we’d made.
She
knocked on my front door and, seeing that it was her through the peek-hole, I opened the door half an inch and hissed, ‘Go away!’ She said, ‘Don’t be silly, let me in, what’s going on?’ I replied, ‘Can’t explain, can’t work today, fallen in love, go away, sorry’, and shut the door! Never before or since have I been so rude to her. But Len and I were genuinely in a love-fug, and I didn’t want anyone to interrupt it, especially
not
Jennifer who I always have regarded as an utter beauty and far preferable to me for any guy. Somewhere in the back of my insecure mind, I thought that if he met her, he would surely love her instantly, and I wanted to hang on to him even if it were only for a few more deluded days. This was a preposterous theory, they would have been an utter mismatch and I should have known better. I do now, but we all have little blips of self-doubt and that was one of mine. Luckily we are close enough, Fatty and me, for her to overlook this strange behaviour, and frankly, in the Book of Jennifer, a day where work is cancelled is a good day!

In that week, Gaynor got used to seeing Len around the flat. It wasn’t easy because the flat was small and Len himself isn’t exactly petite. In fact, let me describe him for you, Dad. He’s about six foot two inches, very powerfully built, with a big chest and strong arms. His arms are amazing. They’re long and wrap around me easily and that’s no mean feat. He’s got big hands (HURRAH! – thank you, God!) and the best legs I’ve ever seen on any man (with the possible exception of Gary Lineker … but … actually, no), long and sturdy, with much might in them. He is a sort of reinforced-looking person physically; he appears to be made with RSJs instead of bones. He is solid and strapping, which I love. When you’re a big woman like me, you need a man who
won’t
break. Len won’t break. And his face, Dad, his lovely face. It’s broad and open with appley cheeks and the most excellently expressive eyes, and a beautiful soft mouth. If he wants to, he can do things with his face that would persuade you to believe it’s made entirely of rubber. He can move it about like a human shouldn’t be able to, which led me to believe that perhaps he
wasn’t
entirely human. Perhaps he hails from a long line of superhuman rubbery-faced people, a notion he would love since his biggest heroes are indeed superheroes. Except Richard Prior. Usually, though, his face is in repose, and he maintains a lovely calm, quite serious demeanour. So much so that people often shout at him, ‘Cheer up, Len!’ The one thing he can’t do with his face, though, is lie to me. If I need to know something, anything, and I ask him, his face speaks volumes he can’t control. Of course, that doesn’t mean he hasn’t got or can’t keep secrets, but if asked outright, he is an open book. It’s like he’s brimful of honesty and it overflows onto his face all the time.

Another important physical attribute, probably the most impressive, is his marvellous, incomparably fabulous bum, but it feels inappropriate to tell you about the many virtues of that, so I’ll spare you …

That’s Len physically, but Dad, what a tip-top chap he is. It sounds so trite to say I wish you could have known him, but I do so wish that. I don’t waste my time dwelling on it but there is no doubt that, apart from Gary, you and Len have been the most important men in my life, and I would have had so much pleasure witnessing you discovering each other. I think both of you would have laughed a lot and I also think you would have been quick to spot the softer, perhaps more troubled places in
Len
, and you would surely have been a good listener for him. But, hey-ho, that ain’t how it turned out. The really wonderful thing, Dad, is that I often hear your advice in my subconscious, so maybe vicariously you are still influencing our lives in some significant way. Who knows? You certainly set the bar for me, as so many dads unknowingly do for their daughters. I knew I wanted a man who was as kind and supportive as you, and I certainly have that. Len is a gentle soul. He hates conflict and will do anything to avoid it. He is extremely romantic and continually surprises me with new ways to express his affection. He writes the most fantastic, moving poetry. He is a voracious reader and consequently has a really broad palette of knowledge and taste. The same applies to music, which is in every molecule, every atom of his body. He especially loves hip hop but he will listen to Radio 3 and get passionate about a symphony and listen to only that for a week. He loves blues, soul, jazz, rap, reggae, swing, grime, dance, jazz-funk, pop, rock, not country so much but Dolly Parton is allowed, not indie really, definitely not Dean Friedman (he ‘lost’ all my DF albums in one house move. I still haven’t forgiven that). He can listen to acres of Brian Eno mood music and other strange soundscapes, or chanting or liturgical music, or world music, while he reads. He plays the piano really well. He has an amazing voice. He has a band. He has great taste in suits. He always carries a bag on his shoulder that is heavier than his own body weight. He loses stuff all the time. He’s clumsy and he breaks things. He doesn’t like pets but he has loved all of our dogs more than he cares to admit. He has enormous feet and has to have his shoes made. He smells great. He gets very dry skin and rubs coconut or almond oil all over.
He
can do a very funny dance featuring his privates. He loves movies. All kinds. He hates
Big Brother
. He is open to learning new stuff. He actively pursued the education he’d been deprived, starting when he was in his twenties, taking O levels while doing a summer season in Blackpool. He followed that with an Open University degree and now he’s doing an MA. He writes all the time. He is a great dad. He strives to be a better person, always. He investigates his inner, spiritual life. He loved and still loves his beloved mum. He values his family. He loves wine. He loves food. He cooks. He loves Sundays. He loves kissing … and stuff. He loves his daughter till he’s in pain. He doubts himself. He is not afraid to fail, and learn from it. He drives too fast. He gets lost a lot. He leaves the cooker on. He leaves the back door open (burglars, ignore please). He gets lonely easily. He lives and breathes stand-up comedy. On occasion, he’s quite grumpy. He will help anyone. He’s a Commander of the British Empire. Sometimes we refer to him as ‘Commander’. He can ride a horse. He can play tennis. He will NOT swim until he’s ready. He’s curious. He loves Bootsy Collins. He loves Cerebus. He loves all things Neil Gaiman. He loves
The Sopranos
. And
The Wire
and
Entourage
. He fancies Judi Dench and Sinéad Cusack and Jessica Lange. He does the school run with no complaint, ever. He reads Harry Potter books aloud, doing all the voices. He knows lots of good jokes. He is a great, great man. A big, great, dignified, bright, beautiful man.