This Is Your Life (22 page)

Nancy wasn't as pleased for me as I'd hoped. ‘You looked like you were enjoying yourself on the television,' she said curtly.

‘Er, well, it was quite an exciting evening.'

‘Did Stella Scrivens kiss all the award winners or just you?'

‘She was just pleased that I'd won. It was a showbiz party, everyone kisses everyone.'

‘Yes, she seemed to be squeezing your arm or laughing at your jokes all evening.'

‘Nancy, you and I split up nearly a decade ago. Why should it concern you that Stella Scrivens or any other girl should happen to kiss me?'

‘Yes, but we're still
friends
, remember?' she said. ‘And as your
friend
, I just don't think you should be flirting with that bloody walking Barbie doll. It's only six months since her husband died.'

‘I wasn't flirting with her. I was “comforting” her. It said so in the
Sun
.'

‘I just think you could do a lot better than her, that's all. Speaking as a
friend?

I had wanted to buy all my old mates a drink to celebrate the award but the whole evening fell a bit flat. When Dave said, ‘Statistically speaking, there are not very many people in China,' everyone just nodded and agreed with him. An hour later Norman said to me: ‘I lost my air guitar final, in case you were going to ask.'

‘Oh sorry, Norman. God, it had completely slipped my mind.'

‘It doesn't matter,' he mumbled, though clearly it did.

‘I bet you were the best.'

‘No, it was my fault. I just went to pieces under the pressure. I must have looked ridiculous.'

Apparently Panda had thought Norman deserved a second chance and asked the judges for a viva. Chris laughed and said, ‘What does he want one of them for? They were crappy cars.'

After I won the award all kinds of exciting new things started happening for me but now I felt increasingly unable to tell any of my friends. There were more interviews, more photo sessions and more features. The papers didn't just want to know what was in my fridge; they wanted to know where I ate, to see a room of my own and hear about my kind of day. TV producers all simultaneously had the same original idea of putting Jimmy Conway's name on the proposed cast list for their sketch-show pilots. Various heads of development invited me out to have lunch with them. If nothing else I saved a fortune in food bills and put on about eight pounds in a couple of weeks. None of them could understand why I would
not make one exception just for them and secretly reveal where I would be performing my next stand-up set. I was quite principled about this and nobody was ever informed; such was my determination to uphold the principles of guerrilla comedy. The result was that a number of TV executives were forced to start regularly going to comedy clubs in the hope of finally seeing my celebrated act. Unfortunately it seemed they just weren't going to the right venues; on the plus side, several other promising young comics got noticed and were offered their first break in television.

One or two of the producers tentatively raised my resolution not to do television, and I explained that this only referred to my stand-up material. If they wanted me to appear on a make-over show or a celebrity survival challenge then I would be more than happy to oblige. I was interviewed for a nostalgia clips show called
Weren't The Old Days Like, Soooo Embarrassing?
and after some footage of David Soul singing ‘Don't Give Up On Us Baby' there I was telling a nostalgic anecdote about the summer of punk. As it happens I was too young to remember punk rock but they still wanted me on because the people who really could remember it turned out to be too old to appeal to their target audience. So I sat in front of the camera and trotted out a prepared line I had thought was quite funny. ‘Pop music today . . .' I sighed. ‘It's not like the punk rock we used to listen to. I mean, these days, well, you
can
hear the words. And the songs
do
have a proper tune . . .'

The producer, who was interviewing me from behind the camera, didn't react to this joke at all and just glanced at her clipboard and said, ‘Erm, yeah, Jimmy, when you look back at that time, would you say it was almost as if there were no more heroes?'

‘Er, well, a bit, I suppose,' I replied, slightly disappointed that my preparation seemed to have been a waste of time.

‘Remember my questions won't be in the final edit.'

‘Oh yeah, sorry,' and then I took a breath. ‘When I look back at those days, it's like there were no role models left, there was nothing to believe in, it's like, there were – no more heroes.'

And in the broadcast version they cut from me saying that line straight to ‘No More Heroes' by the Stranglers and that was the only appearance I made. She had attempted to get me to idly muse that we had felt that we had No Future and that Something Better Change and that Teenage Kicks had been so hard to beat, but then she became suspicious that I was onto her when I attempted to tell an anecdote that ended with the line ‘And so I said to him, “Yes, Sir, I Can Boogie”.'

I watched my appearance on the programme and decided that at least I wasn't as underwhelming as most of the other ‘celebrity' contributions on the show. Who are all these people? I kept thinking as I fast-forwarded through the tape they sent me; I've never heard of half of them. I decided that the way to avoid being one of these anonymous rent-a-quotes would be to make as many appearances as possible and then I'd be a slightly famous rent-a-quote.

I took part in a live discussion on breakfast television. The depletion of cod stocks in the North Sea had caused several tabloids to do features on the possible extinction of the traditional British fish and chips and they decided this was the sort of thing that demanded my particular expertise. On the phone the researcher explained to me that since they had three serious pundits, they thought Jimmy Conway with his famous fish routine might be able to add a lighter note to the proceedings. So I found myself sitting in the green room
with a Conservative from the House of Lords, a desperate trawlerman who'd come down from Hull and a Green MEP from Holland. All the guests for the various other items were in there too, flicking through that morning's newspapers or sipping endless cups of coffee. The Ethiopian ambassador was asked if he was the skateboarder, and then another researcher said, ‘No, he's famine – skateboarding's in make-up.' ‘Are you HRT?' they said to the Dutch MEP before adding, ‘Oh no, sorry, you're all fish aren't you?' Our microphones were clipped on and during the news and weather we were quickly ushered onto the sofas by a floor manager, and then the presenter said, ‘Has cod had its chips? With me are four people to discuss the end of a great British tradition.' I sat there waiting for her to ask me something while the two politicians talked non-stop and then finally she said to me, ‘Jimmy Conway, what's your take on all of this?' and I looked skywards and said, ‘Cod! I mean, what a stupid fish that is! They keep swimming into trawler nets and they taste delicious. All those millions of years spent evolving, you'd think they would have had the sense not to taste so nice, wouldn't you? So, cod, you're going to be extinct. Well, whose fault is that then? Just accept it and move on!'

The presenter looked a little shocked and when she realized I had stopped suddenly faked slightly too much laughter before adding, ‘Thanks very much and now here's Kelly with business breakfast update.' I have a feeling I may have said ‘dodo' instead of ‘cod' by mistake but either way it suddenly didn't feel very funny with the environmentalist and the trawlerman sitting there beside me. He'd come all the way from Humberside and hadn't said a single word. He'd been asked a couple of questions that had both been answered by the politicians and he never got his chance again. ‘Yeah, I
wondered if four guests might be too many for this item,' said the researcher to him nonchalantly when he complained that his entire crew had avoided putting to sea so they could watch him stick up for their industry. ‘Never mind, hopefully you'll get longer next time,' she said as if there would ever be a next time for him. So the poor fishing industry never got defended but hey ho, not to worry, at least Jimmy Conway found out that he still didn't have a fish routine.

Because very few of Britain's broadcasting organizations, national newspapers, PR companies and media players seemed to be based in Seaford, I found myself regularly having to stay in London for several days at a time. My parents seemed delighted to have me there and Betty didn't seem to object to eating organic dog food. Although Mum was always exhausting, there was a definite shift in my parents' attitude towards me. Previously when Mum began her monologues you never knew where that hurtling train of thought might end up, but now when I overheard her conversations with her network of friends I could guarantee that the success of her youngest son would always somehow be incorporated into the narrative.

‘Oh, hello, Marjorie, it's Val here, we had a wonderful day at the Eden Project, Brian Lacy was very brave and walked all the way round which is very hard when you've got one shoe built up two inches higher than the other, people do tend to stare of course I suppose it wasn't so bad when platform shoes were all the rage, even if it was just the one, mind you I always thought that was such a dangerous fashion, I'm surprised Ben Elton didn't keep twisting his ankle, not Ben Elton, I mean the other one who sang ‘Crocodile Rocker', you know he did the song at Diana's funeral, I do think it's good the Queen is finally accepting Camilla, poor Charles has to be allowed to get on with his life it's so hard being in the public eye, but
Jimmy seems to handle it very well, did you see him on Breakfast Television this week, a very interesting discussion about fish, a big Mercedes picked him up from the house with a proper chauffeur and everything although he didn't have a hat, six o'clock in the morning he rang the doorbell, I must do you my cod mornay before they're extinct, John Elton that's it, not Ben Elton, John Elton I knew I'd get it in the end, I wonder if they're brothers.'

Now my mother's stream of consciousness would always incorporate my latest appearance or interview. It wasn't so much a stream of consciousness, really, more of a torrent, a Niagara Falls of consciousness.

Mum had spent the past year planning the party for their golden wedding anniversary – an event I had been dreading because of the amount of defensive self-justification it would have involved on my part. ‘Are you still working part-time at that language school Jimmy?' ‘No plans to settle down and have children yet, Jimmy?' But the change in my fortunes meant that in the event it was my brother Nicholas who seemed to be thrown on to the defensive.

‘So, Nicholas – what is it like to have a famous younger brother?' he was asked while standing right beside me.

‘Yes, he seems to be doing quite well at this comedy lark,' he said through gritted teeth. ‘Shame he won't let any of us come and see him.'

The party went off very well and I managed to remember which elderly family friend was suffering from which fatal condition. Brian Meredith said hello and I said, ‘I'm very sorry to hear you've got – er, Parkinson's, is it?'

‘That's right.'

Yes! I thought to myself, delighted with my excellent memory. I correctly matched the illness to the pensioner
throughout the evening until I thought Ray Dowie had Huntingdon's when in fact he and his wife had just moved to Huntingdon. He only had a hiatus hernia. Damn!

Now they had seen me on the television they all imagined I must be some sort of millionaire. ‘So, are they paying you well, these TV people?'

‘Oh well, mustn't grumble,' I replied evasively.

‘What car are you driving these days?'

‘Well, I don't do much driving to be honest – they tend to send chauffeurs to pick me up,' I parried, determined not to reveal that I was still driving the same rusty Nissan with its own in-car pond under the carpet.

‘So are you still renting the house in Sussex, or are you thinking of buying somewhere, maybe something a little more substantial?'

I sometimes think it would be simpler if we all walked around with our incomes tattooed on our foreheads so that people didn't have to play this elaborate game of twenty questions to place us on the salary scale. The television appearances did pay, however, and often a lot more than I would have got for a whole week's work at the language school.

My hours at the school had always been fairly flexible but I was stretching Doreen's patience with the number of times I was arranging for other teachers to cover for me. We were sitting in Doreen's office. Unlike most people, her desk was not covered with hundreds of scraps of paper. There was just a lamp, a telephone and a large wicker basket containing two panting miniature schnauzers.

‘Peckish, Jimmy?' she asked, unwrapping a couple of Walnut Whips.

‘Ooh, yes please.' I loved Walnut Whips.

Then she took the walnuts off the top and passed them over
to me as the dogs wolfed down the remaining chocolate and lightly whipped marshmallow filling.

‘They don't like the nuts,' she explained. ‘It's funny how things go, isn't it, dear? Before you started this comedy lark I'd had you in mind to possibly teach at a new language school we're setting up in Kuwait.'

‘Kuwait? Didn't that end up being part of Iraq or something?'

‘No, dear, there was quite a big war to ensure that it wasn't part of Iraq, if you remember. My nephew's found me some premises and the pay would be more than double what you're getting now. But I don't suppose you're interested now you're an up-and-coming comedian.'

‘Er, well – that's very flattering, Doreen, but um ... to be honest, Kuwait, I mean, you know if it was the United Arab Emirates that might be different.'