The Varnished Untruth (18 page)

In achieving such success, and reaching such a central position in the limelight, you also risked massive rejection, didn’t you?

Good point. And I really had no one to talk to in the early days; I was too busy to have friends and I was going through a very painful withdrawal and separation from Nicholas. The
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boys and I were a team in the professional comedy sense, but that was as far as our contact went. Actually, I’m not even sure I could use the word ‘professional’! We put the show together in a seemingly haphazard way. I remember our early rehearsals, in a big, chilly room somewhere near Hammersmith. There was a Space Invaders machine we all used to take turns at, non-stop. We’d start rehearsing a bit late, then halfway through the morning Richard Curtis would turn up with a crumpled bit of paper – something he’d handwritten for Rowan. Rowan would read it and, next thing, John Lloyd would be doubling over with his high-pitched laugh. The rest of us would roll our eyes because we wished Richard would write something brilliant for us, too. Now John would be in a great mood and Rowan would be smirking, Mel would be playing Space Invaders, and Griff would be eating an iced bun out of a paper bag, but I would be morose and plotting in a corner. I desperately wished I could write sketches that would blow them all away. I was like Ringo Starr, who used to think he’d come up with a good Beatles song, but when he turned up to play it for the band he’d walk in and Paul would be playing ‘Yesterday’. None of us could write like Richard, although together we were good at developing what other writers had drafted. Eventually, more writers would shuffle in and John would start reading what they’d been working on. If he broke into a giggle at any point the three boys and I would saunter over to see who could swipe that line. Oh yes, comedians will sell their mothers for a laugh – and we were no exception.

Usually these groups, like your comedy team, end up replicating dysfunctional families, and the individuals often behave in ways that are triggered by the group dynamic . . . You were slotting into your familiar role of family outsider, weren’t you?

Ah, yes. Now that I am a psychologist I understand a lot more about groups, and I wish I’d understood that process back then. Nowadays, I’m especially interested in comedy troupes and musical bands and, professionally, I have often helped members of such collectives to deal with the stresses and problems that arise under such pressured conditions . . .

Well, many people regress – and destructive competitiveness can be inspired by quite innocent acts: for example, assigning a particular role to one person may cause another to feel injured and resentful, even though the adult part of him may understand it’s for the greater good and he’ll get his turn
.

Yes. I know there were complicated issues – even a kind of sibling rivalry – swirling around all our psyches; and with John and Sean as ‘daddy’ and ‘mummy’ there were bound to be fireworks. Of course, now I understand that it must have been my deep fear of rejection that often caused me acute pain in that situation. Fortunately, all these feelings were kept in check – under the surface. Cross words were never spoken as far as I know . . .

Maybe they should have been . . .

Yes, I suppose it would have created more authentic relationships between us. To be honest, I don’t think any of my fellow cast members liked me at all. And I don’t blame them. Well, what would they have liked about me? I imagine the kind of women they would have liked were upper middle class, fun, matey, essentially lovely, accommodating types, like, well, Emma Thompson, who had come from the same background as them. I was far from accommodating and in
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I tended to steal the limelight a bit by being sexually provocative (the sketches sometimes demanded that). And I made the mistake of behaving competitively towards the boys, which didn’t go down too well. I really hadn’t learned how to get on with men who weren’t my boyfriends. Yes, the chaps disliked me. I wasn’t ‘one of them’, we were never friends, and we have not kept in touch. Also, I discovered after a couple of series that I was being paid a lot less than them. That seriously pissed me off.

You still have feelings about that?

You betcha. But I genuinely appreciate how well and benevolently they tolerated my prickliness. Looking back now, I realize I was really struggling. For example, it was really weird to have such a novel perception of myself – created largely through others. Apparently I was some kind of a phenomenon. I discovered this because people said extraordinary things to me at the time. They said, ‘I’ve never seen a pretty girl being funny before.’ Seriously? Sometimes this would even be posed as a question in the press: ‘But can an attractive woman really be funny?’ That really surprised – and insulted – me. After all, I was being funny, wasn’t I? Well, I was doing my best. I didn’t even think I was particularly pretty; in fact, I always found fault with my appearance. I mean, I understood that what I was doing was new and slightly threatening, but I resented the question. My personal comedy heroines were Lucille Ball and Goldie Hawn – both beautiful, funny women – so I certainly didn’t think there was anything unusual about me. Well, perhaps it was new for Britain at that time.

I’m wondering . . . now that you understand how traumatic it is for the mind when a person rockets to public attention, are you able to reflect about some of the feelings you were having at the time and put them in that context?

Oh yes . . . I now recognize them as par for the curse – wow, Freudian slip, I meant ‘course’. But in a way fame is a curse, because it’s rather a hollow victory. While appreciating the good things fame can bring, one also tends to maintain private terror – that it will go away, that you’ll be ‘found out’ as unworthy of it, and that the real person you know yourself to be deep inside can never match up to the scintillating personage others now think you are. I knew, for example that I was personally nowhere near as funny as I was on
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, but somehow strangers seemed to expect that I would be. ‘Go on, make me laugh!’ was what they seemed to demand, whether that was on the street, in a cab, or in a public ladies’ room. And the embarrassment! I was once trying to avoid the stares in a doctor’s waiting room when a nurse came in and very publically handed me a small, clear bottle ‘Miss Stephenson? The doctor would like a urine sample.’ ‘Me too,’ I quipped. Brazening it out, I waved the bottle at my wide-eyed fellow patients. ‘Any takers?’

You made the best of it on that occasion, but it can’t have been easy – all over again, you became acutely aware of people’s high expectations of you . . . That has historically had a negative effect on you, hampering your ability to be productive . . .

And of course, I wasn’t the only one who had that problem. One day Mel Smith turned up for filming in a state of total panic and announced that, for the first time ever, he’d been asked to give an after-dinner speech – but he had nothing prepared. He had to face this group of 250 Barclays Bank managers that very evening so, in between scenes, the four of us sat crouched over a paraffin heater in a make-up van, desperately trying to think of a decent joke or two. As the day wore on, Mel became more and more terrified – because nothing much materialized from any of us. It struck me as being highly ironic that four people who were supposed to be among the top British comedy-makers were unable to think of a single thing. We were all trying to remember every joke we’d ever heard – even really stupid stuff from our school days. ‘Knock knock . . . ?’ It was sooo pathetic.

But being in a hit show at the BBC was fantastic, and I was terribly lucky to be a part of it. Really – that’s not just a PR line. And it got me some of the attention I most wanted; Billy called me after I did a sketch in which I parodied pop singer Kate Bush (
‘Oh England . . . my leotard . . .
’) and told me he thought I was very talented. Wow. From a man I’d never seen perform but the people I was in competition with thought was a comic genius! That meant a great deal to me. Of course, I could be cynical now and tell myself he just really fancied me in that leotard . . .

Pamela! You’re way too harsh with yourself . . .

Really? I thought it was Billy I was being harsh with . . . But anyway, my husband’s leotard fetish aside, four series of
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, several records, plus a stage version of the show called
Not In Front Of The Audience
truly launched me as a comedian in the UK. It wasn’t easy and I remember how nerve-wracking it was to perform live every week with so little preparation. But, then again, I’d survived worse.

So, in many ways, your early trauma and the survival skills you developed to deal with it really helped you to handle difficult situations you subsequently faced – both personal and professional. In fact, one could say they contributed to your success . . . ?

Well, yes. I do now see myself as a survivor, but it wasn’t always like that. I have mainly seen myself a bit like a racing driver who is not quite ready for the race she’s in, gripping the steering wheel and hanging on for all she’s worth. At any moment, she could lose control of the car and it could skid into a corner. Frankly, I still struggle with that. Will I ever be free?

Chapter Eight

K
ING
OF C
OMEDY
K
INDA
L
INGERS

Consistently being on the edge as you describe, compelled to place yourself in danger, is not a comfortable way to live – do you ever see respite looming?

Ahh . . . I’m always grasping for it . . .

Yes . . . I watch myself doing it over and over again, but feel powerless to stop it. For example, I was in Fiji a couple of years ago. Now, if you’re going to face destruction in the path of a tropical cyclone, it would be nice if they took the trouble to name it. Serious storms I’ve read about in newspapers – and even the few I’ve faced before – were respectfully called ‘Hurricane Francis’, ‘Arlene’ or ‘Todd’. But sitting on an alarmingly low-lying Fijian atoll, constantly ducking flying coconuts is particularly upsetting when the aggressor is simply known as ‘Nineteen P’. Waiting out weather of any kind has always had limited appeal. As I stare at the boiling sea, protectively clutching my fourth cup of rain-infused tea, an irresistible idea forms.

Idiodynamism – the tendency of an idea to become action – is my bête noire. Determinedly, I stride to the edge of the water, wrestle an ocean kayak from its wooden holster and launch it into the waves. I grab the paddle and make a dive for the middle of the plastic vessel – just as it is upended by a vicious wave. I hang on stubbornly (they don’t sink easily) and manage to right it. With my body finally centred in the canvas seat, I strike away from shore. Adrenaline – oh yeah! That’s what I’m talking about! Perhaps it’s what I really live for. Suddenly I’m excited, inspired, challenged. Out of the corner of my eye I see a local man gesticulating furiously. He’s trying to wave me back, while another concerned person is running along the jetty with a life jacket in hand. I laugh at their earnestness; they don’t know me. They see a middle-aged, crazy woman, but I know who I am: a perfectly sensible, elated, extreme risk-taker. This part of the South Pacific Ocean is choppier than I imagined, and I seem to have hit a cross-current. I have a sober moment of abject fear, but then I tell myself I’ve been in worse conditions. At first I’m struggling to steer the kayak and keep it upright, but eventually I find the perfect groove in the waves. I mount each white-capped water-monster at a thirty-five degree angle, then slide down the other side with a thrilling twist. I glance over my shoulder. Now I have an audience on shore, as tourists and locals have been stirred from their shelters to watch the mad white woman commit suicide before their very eyes. Then it strikes me: what am I doing? Where exactly am I going? What is the point of this?

Well, aside from unconsciously trying to gain mastery over early trauma, you must be aware of the relationship between the summoning of adrenaline and depression. Do you think it’s possible that the adrenaline or endorphin rush you get from taking risks is important because it can mitigate a depressed mood?

That may well have been the case – and not just regarding physical risks. It was probably true of my edgy comedy work after Not
The Nine O’Clock News
, when I started doing stand-up. But many comedians I’ve met seemed to be depressed people who ‘self-medicated’ one way or another, including simply through doing stand-up – one of the scariest jobs in the world! Much of the comedy I did after
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involved high risk-taking that made the BBC show look safe. In fact, John Cleese once chided me because he thought one of my acts was ‘more disturbing than funny’. It was during the Secret Policeman’s Ball charity concert for Amnesty International and, for some reason, I had decided it would be funny to do a sketch in which my breasts were haunted. Holding a seance with your tits was not your usual Oxbridge-type skit, and John Cleese finally came to my dressing room and banned it. Well, it may not have been John’s cup of tea, but Sting was in the audience and he later told me it was one of the funniest things he’d ever seen. So there. I’ll always be grateful to him for that.

Of course you understand where your bitterness about that comes from . . . ?

Well, all right, we can factor or in my rejection issues, but frankly I was bucking against the prevailing notion that only a certain type of comedy was ‘the right kind’. And it was largely the stuff driven by middle-class males – with a notable exception, of course, being Billy. ‘The boys’ club’ as I called it, looked down on most workingclass comics – people like Les Dawson, who’d been making people laugh heartily well before the rest of us were born. And as far as women were concerned, there had been few examples of females on the British comedy scene doing outrageous comedy in their own right. In Monty Python, for example, poor Carol Cleveland was always ‘The Crumpet’. Of course, the wonderful Joyce Grenfell certainly had her day, the
Carry On
crew did lots of smutty jokes at Barbara Windsor’s expense, and there was Eleanor Bron who was funny in a gentle, intellectual kind of way. But brash, smart, in-yourface comedy from a woman on British shores? There had been no Lucille Ball or Carol Burnett here. Just hadn’t happened.