Going Off Alarming: The Autobiography: Vol 2 (5 page)

So there it was. I was in my mid-twenties, popular and successful, hopelessly, happily in love, earning tons of money in a fantastic, easy job on TV that was a real pleasure to do. The form in autobiographies is to now write:
‘. . . 
but I had no idea that this idyllic lifestyle was about to come crashing down around my ears and life was going to get very
hard.’
I fully understand that. It’s the kind of thing that gives consecutive chapters some emotional light and shade.
‘Ah!’
says the reader.
‘A
reckoning!’
As I said in the first book, it might appease certain sourpusses if I eased up on the lashings of joy and light that seems to attend the events in these volumes, but to what end? What I present are the bald facts and we’re stuck with them. Indeed, in the current style I should say SPOILER ALERT here, because any readers who could reasonably expect a bit of struggle and darkness from their tomes might want to make for the last bus now because a) I don’t get cancer till Book Three and b) Believe it or not, the professional hijinks were only just beginning.

None of the preceding cart-wheeling should leave you with the impression that, even with a hit TV show thundering away each week, I was entirely to the manor born. In fact I could have done with putting on a little more side and taking expert advice in how best to handle this jamboree. Here’s a perfect example.

When you first begin achieving any kind of profile through the media, you simply can’t do enough to keep up with the schedule such a privileged position brings. You reply personally to the trickle of letters that arrive at the studios. You accept invitations to present
cheques in pubs, often many hours from your home. You take part in tug-o’-wars to raise fourpence ha’penny for church-steeple funds. I have even been locked into authentically fashioned medieval stocks in order that people might throw sodden sponges at me for 20p a pop. This, to be fair, can be a lot of fun, so long as people are forming a queue to aim their soggy missiles at you. It is in the longueurs between customers that you begin to question your status as a draw. There you are, in public, your head and hands poking through two tiny wooden apertures that scrape off skin with every attempt to find comfort, arse and legs sticking out behind, inviting stray stones from the younger set, and, worst of all, a procession of indifferent stragglers go strolling by within yards of this ignominy, not so much as glancing in your direction. You’ve taken a few hits, so the water saturating your hair is now freezing cold and the seemingly incessant rivulets make you blink like a strobe light. Meanwhile, the woman assigned to take the money and hand out the sponges is similarly fed up with being ignored and keeps throwing you embarrassed glances, saying things like,
‘Blimey
, you’re a flop! We had Wincey Willis last year and I’d taken thirty quid by this
time.’
Of course you can take this information either way. You can tell yourself Wincey is a controversial figure so it’s no wonder the crowds flocked to launch their sponges at her helpless head, whereas you are universally loved and simply do not deserve such treatment. But part of you wonders whether it’s because the public have no idea who this absurd man in the humiliating contraption is and haven’t the least desire to waste 20p attempting to feed his raging ego. The internal debate surges back and forth interminably as the punters drift by, oblivious, ignoring your inane grins that you hope will make you look a bit like someone they’ll have seen on television at some point.

Extraordinarily, my mum and dad would treat these low-wattage gatherings as irrefutable signs that their boy was at last on the map. My previous front-page bylines in the world’s most read music paper were as nothing compared to being pictured on page 17 of the
South London Press
in a pretend head-lock with wrestler Kendo Nagasaki. Of course, this was understandable. Friends of theirs would shout across the Jolly Gardeners saloon bar,
‘Here
, I saw your Danny in the
South London
yesterday!’
Whereas they never came across a single living soul who had seen my rather caustic half-page about Brian Eno in that week’s
NME
.

The very first public event I was ever invited to attend as a result of my minuscule public profile was a fête at the Erith & District Sports Centre. I was actually asked to open the affair. It was to be on a Sunday morning at nine o’clock and, suburban Erith being a good forty-five minutes from where I was living, I asked my dad if he’d mind
‘running
me’. (Nobody I knew ever asked for a
‘lift’
from the few among us who had cars. You always asked if someone could
‘run’
you somewhere.) Spud’s face as he drank in the info that I was kicking the event off was a picture of wonder and joy.

‘How
comes they asked
you?’
he said. And I knew that he’d only asked so he could hear the reply that would confirm his pride.

‘I
suppose they’ve seen me on telly and think it’ll drum up a crowd. I
dunno.’

He drank this in momentarily, then moved on to his inevitable secondary train of thought:
‘And
are they giving you a nice few
quid?’
he beamed with a relish signifying my confidential answer would be all over Bermondsey’s best boozers later that day.

‘No,’
I said with as much insouciance as I could muster.
‘I
mean, leave off, Dad, you do these things for nothing. You know, it’s a good cause and
that.’

The fascination fell from his face.
‘What
? Fuck-all? Not even a
drink?’

‘’Course
not,’
I came back, though by now not meeting his eye.
‘That’s
not the way things are in telly. They’re trying to build a new sports hall or something in Erith. You can’t ask for money. Anyway, I’m happy to be giving something
back.’
Even as I said this I knew I might as well have been talking Chinese.

‘Give
something back! Well, if you say so, boy. But I tell ya – whenever there’s pound notes flying about, you better have a fucking good look how much of it winds up in the pot. You’ll soon find out who’s giving something back! Do yourself a favour – just make a few enquiries when you get there. You find the right bloke and you’ll get in the swim – they’ll all be at it, don’t you worry about
that.’

Again, readers of the previous book will already know that, no matter what the gathering, service or enterprise, Spud always believed there was
‘a
swim’
that allowed access to only a golden few. He never, ever had the slightest trouble
‘finding
the right
bloke’
on these occasions, because nine times out of ten that bloke would be him.

In the event, on the morning of the Erith & District Grand Fête the phrase
‘in
the
swim’
would have another, almost literal, meaning. It was hammering down. Pelting. As we sat about to set off in Spud’s two-tone bronze 1976 Ford Granada, neither of us thought the trip would be necessary.

‘They
ain’t gonna
fuckin’
go ahead with it in this, are
they?’
he asked, for about the fifth time.

I explained that – cancelled or not – I had better show willing and pitch up. Dad didn’t see this.

‘Wha’for?
Even if the gates are open, you’d have to be puggled to come out in this. Fuck me, boy, people wouldn’t turn out for Frank Sinatra in this lot – what chance you
got?’

Bolstered by this, I asked him to turn the ignition key and head south.

When we arrived it wasn’t raining as bad. It was raining far worse. The venue was an open-air municipal complex, little more than a small reception bungalow, a few changing rooms and then a running track encasing an oval grassed games field. There were about six cars outside in a car park that could’ve held fifty. Out on the field were three drenched and bedraggled stalls that looked to have been erected and abandoned some hours previously. The long PVC banner announcing the event had come adrift at one end and was slapping against the puddles as the wind whipped beneath it. In the short run from our car to the facility’s entrance, my dad and I could not have taken on more water had we gone down on the
Lusitania
.

Bursting breathless and cursing into the tiny concrete reception space, Spud summed up our situation with a surgeon’s precision:

‘Well,
this is
bollocks!’
he boomed, without the slightest hint of humour.

Far from laying on a welcoming committee for their star turn, there wasn’t a soul in sight. Plainly the thing had been called off, but I still needed it confirmed before I would get back in the car and order Dad to find the nearest warm café. I wanted them to know I had at least seen my part of the bargain through like any seasoned pro was expected to in
‘my’
business. Three options stood before us. The door straight ahead would lead out on to the running track. To our right, a short corridor of changing rooms and showers. To the left, behind a council-blue door with a frosted-glass window, was what we assumed was some sort of office. Dripping a trail behind us, I knocked on the glass. As I did, I was able to make out a few blurry, silent figures within. When a woman eventually opened the door she looked us up and down and said,
‘Have
you come for the fê
te?’

‘I’m
Danny
Baker,’
I said, blowing a good-sized droplet off the end of my nose.
‘I
was asked to open the
event.’

‘You
were?’
she replied, with, for my liking, too strong an emphasis on the first word.

I nodded.

‘Yes,
well, that’ll have been organized through John
Riley,’
she barked.
‘I’m
afraid he’s not arrived yet. Come in, won’t
you?’

Inside the cheerless little room four other people were gathered about a wooden table, trying not to hog a two-bar electric fire that was causing significant steam to rise from sodden shoes and trouser legs. After shaking hands all round, we were offered tea. Some small talk about the conditions ensued, during which I could just about hear Spud behind me, wheezing a low
‘fuck
-ing
hell’
in a singsong tone I recognized as both amused and exasperated. Then one of the ladies dropped her bombshell.

‘In
any case, we will be planning on going ahead on
time,’
she announced.

She carried on talking, but I was too numb at this news to register anything else. Eventually I managed a small,
‘Really?’

‘Yes,’
she rattled on crisply.
‘We’ve
discussed it and there are one or two brave souls sitting out in their cars waiting, and we’ve got the under-sixteens marching band due at any minute. They’ve been working very hard, so
 . . .’

This last revelation struck me as particularly farcical. On a day like this, any marching band, irrespective of what age they were, might just as well have marched straight off the end of Clacton Pier. Naturally, I felt for these poor kids who’d obviously been looking forward to a decent blow as they kicked out the Erith jams, but my plan now was to hurriedly cut whatever ribbon I was expected to and, stopping briefly to deliver a few amusing words for the local free sheet, follow the siren call of that hot sizzling breakfast. Inwardly, I hoped, and hoped hard, that I wouldn’t be asked to stick around for the junior swing combo’s full honking set.

No such luck.

With mounting horror I was informed that, as far as the Erith & District Events Committee were concerned, no proper Erith & District Annual Fête could be properly pronounced open without the Erith & District Marching Band (under-sixteens) first making one full circuit of the Erith & District four-hundred-metre running track.

OK, so my sausage-and-egg sandwich would be delayed for thirty minutes. This might be something I could just about cope with. There was bound to be some sort of porch or canopy beneath which we dignitaries could shelter while the youth made their noisy wet way around the flooded asphalt. Except it was then explained to me that whatever lucky celebrity been given the honour of opening that year’s spectacular would be fully expected to march at the head of this cacophony – trumpets, tubas and drums blazing away – waving wildly at the ranks of cheering spectators (a throng that currently numbered approximately three desolate souls).

As the woman outlined these proceedings, she seemed to pay little heed to the fact that her words were being drowned out by the monsoon raging against the room’s sole window.

Sure enough, the band duly arrived, shocked, squelching and bedraggled, and we were soon all jostling for the high ground beneath a small square exterior roof that was our last refuge before marching out into the tempest. There was nobody,
nobody
out there and it was now raining so hard that none of us could even see the far side of the field. Out into the wall of water we went.

Incredibly, the parade could not immediately get underway, as I had hoped, at a lunatic pace redolent of the Keystone Kops. No. First the band had to be physically arranged and lengthily briefed by their sergeant or whoever this cruel martinet was. It seemed to be all about proper distances between marchers and thumbs aligned parallel to trouser seams. All the while I stood patiently about five feet in front of them with not so much as a hat to ward off the continuous assault. Eventually he came over to me.

‘I’ll
instruct the boys when to begin, Mr
Baker,’
he said.
‘When
you hear that, start walking smartly – but in sync with the drum at all
times.’