Vanished Years (3 page)

Why am I here? A complicated question that may take a little time and some soul searching to answer. There is a lady named Emma Freud. She is married to a man called Richard Curtis. He is the wunderkind of the British film business. Curtis, for anyone who doesn’t know, is to Blair’s Britain what Leni Riefenstahl was to Hitler’s Germany, and
Notting Hill
, a film he wrote and produced, was the silver-screen face of Cool Britannia. A grim, lifeless romantic comedy about ‘the special relationship’ between Julia Roberts and Hugh Grant. But already I digress. Focus.

Richard Curtis’s life is a movie (
Richard Actually
) and Emma is his perfectly cast cohort. Impeccably connected, she is the daughter of Clement Freud, the niece of Lucien and the great-granddaughter of Sigmund. Her brother is the official diabolical nuncio Matthew Freud, himself gastrologically aligned for power, married as he is to the daughter of Rupert Murdoch, our recently deposed puppet master, and all these people live very close to power. Emma knows all the backstairs routes that connect number ten with number eleven. (I know only routes between numbers one and two. And not
Downing Street.) These people have always avoided me, as I have them.

A few years earlier, Robbie Williams asked me to compère his swing concert at the Albert Hall, and sing with him the track we had recorded together. It sounded like fun. Richard Curtis was the director. It sounded even better. Richard was preparing
Love Actually
at the time. My brain went into overdrive. Maybe during the Robbie rehearsals I could grab the leading role from the jaws of Hugh Grant. Yes, I would be more amusing, more debonair, so deep that Richard would turn to Emma in bed one night and say: ‘I think I’ve had enough of Hugh. Rupert will be my new muse.’

Well, at first it all went according to plan. I sat with Richard and Emma during rehearsals. There wasn’t much directing to do. Robbie was a one-man band. He knew how to work a crowd, and at the Albert Hall concert he reached his zenith. We all just sat around, waiting for our turn to be sucked dry by his hoover-like magnetism. Richard wrote my part, and we had a little rehearsal. The show was a great success. The BBC got a record number of complaints, which is always the sign of a hit. After the show, Richard came into my dressing room.

‘You were absolutely marvellous,’ he said.

‘Thanks, Richard,’ I replied, pinching myself just to make sure I wasn’t dreaming. Was it all going to work out as I had planned? ‘I hope we see each other soon,’ I ventured hopefully.

‘Yes, that would be lovely. Here. Let me give you my number.’

Orgasm. Images of renewed Hollywood stardom burst across my brain like fireworks. ‘And the winner is … Rupert Everett for
Love Actually
.’ I could hear the applause.

Unfortunately, a party of hags and swamp bitches had congregated in my dressing room and were all dangerously drunk. One of them, drunker than the rest, was the director John Maybury, a friend of mine from the dawn of time. He lurched towards us, his blue eyes glittering dangerously, and thrust his face in between Richard and me.

‘This is my friend John Maybury,’ I stammered, smelling trouble and alcohol on the same breath.

The room suddenly turned silent. I looked round. John’s boyfriend Baillie was looking at me with a frightful grimace, arms outstretched. Everyone else – Princess Julia, Antony Price, Huge Crack, Les Childs and Connie, my PR – stood and gaped. It must feel like this on a beach momentarily drained of sea before the onslaught of a tsunami.

‘Oh, hello, John,’ said Richard, pleasantly. ‘I did so enjoy
Love Is the Devil
.’

John thought for a moment and cracked a smile as huge as the Cheshire cat’s. He had a big famous mouth in more ways than one.

‘Why, thank you, Richard,’ he replied. ‘But look at your own achievements. You have single-handedly destroyed British cinema.’

‘Aw my gawd!’ muttered Princess Julia, but otherwise silence.

Richard’s pupils dilated slightly, and the tip of his nose flushed. I broke into a sweat.

All I could see were eyes. John’s were bloodshot fried eggs and Richard’s were narrow and icy, like a ferret’s. Mine were enormous and about to pop out of their sockets and roll across the floor. John took a generous gulp from his glass and waited for the ball to be lobbed back, with the same killer smile cutting his face (one of them) in half, but Richard just looked at his watch.

‘Well, let’s be in touch. All the best.’ And he left the room.

Needless to say, I did not get a part in
Love Actually
or anything else actually, then or since.

So when Emma Freud called me and asked me to take part in a charity version of
The Apprentice
, I should have just said no. But I didn’t. I never can.

‘When is it?’ I asked lamely.

‘Not for a couple of months. There is a task,’ explained Emma on the phone, ‘and it’s
made
for you. It’ll be a doddle. Only four days’ work.’

Four days in two months’ time was a dot on the horizon, and I said
yes. I didn’t have a television and had never even seen
The Apprentice
, but I imagined it was something along the same lines as
The Avengers
, so I gurgled encouragingly back down the line and thought no more about it, hoping I’d get the Purdey role. I should have asked, what kind of task would be a doddle? What is a doddle in the Curtis–Freud world? But I put down the phone and thought no more about it.

The day before the show was due to begin, a lady telephoned and told me to pack enough clothes for four nights away.

‘But I’m not going away,’ I said.

‘They want all the teams to stay together during the task.’

Teams?

‘Oh well, I can’t. I have to go home to my own bed.’ Silence. God, I remember thinking, I’ve always hated Red Nose Day, and now this …

The next evening a car came with the same lady inside to collect me and take me to the secret venue where I was to meet with the rest of my team, and the other team, and, of course, Alan Sugar.

‘Who on earth is Alan Sugar?’ I laughed, intrigued.

‘You don’t know Alan Sugar?’

‘No, I don’t. Is he a singer?’

‘No. He is the star of
The Apprentice
.’

‘Aha,’ I said knowingly.

It was just before Christmas. People tumbled about the streets in Santa hats, drunk from the office party. Soon we left the West End behind, then west London. Where the fuck were we going? Finally we arrived at a kind of disused warehouse, where there were a lot of other cars and vans, and more official-looking ladies bundled up against the cold, breathing smoke, waving clipboards and screaming red-carpet jangles into their walkie-talkies.

‘Copy that. Go for Ginger. I have Mr Everett.’

I was taken into a dimly lit scene dock where twelve celebrities were gathered in the gloom. The walls were black and it felt like being in a gigantic aquarium. Cameramen circled the stars like
sharks around bloody meat, pilot fish at their shoulders, expressionless lads holding mini lamps, which were shone on the weird pasty faces of our favourite dishes. There was a gnawing tension in the air as everyone tried to acclimatise themselves to the cameras. The women’s team were huddled together, and I wished I was one of them. Susannah Constantine, Cheryl Cole and Jo Brand. They were acting normal, heightened, slightly hysterical, but to anyone in the know their eyes gave them away, momentarily swivelling round, looking for the familiar things: the bar, the PR, the way out. They carried suitcases and seemed to have barricaded themselves behind them against the onslaught of the male team who were circling with the cameramen, trying to get some juicy dialogue going for the show.

This team of men, this band of brothers, glistened with testosterone in the spotlights. It oozed from their every pore like sap and froze me to the marrow. Alastair Campbell, Piers Morgan and Ross Kemp had their suitcases in their hands as if they were getting on the school train. In fact the whole thing reminded me of school. Here were the same rugger buggers and bullies I had escaped all those years ago, wearing the same slouchy sixth-form clothes. I could think of one thing only. Escape.

Emma Freud sidled up to me, and I had to restrain myself from breaking her neck. A camera swept in with her.

‘So you know the task?’ she giggled. ‘Everyone else does.’

‘No. No one told me.’ My eyes were about to pop out. I had to send a message to my eyelids.

‘You’re going to love it.’

‘Am I? Are you sure?’

‘Yes. It’s made for you.’

Now Piers Morgan emerged from the depths towards me.

‘You’ve got to call Madonna,’ he boomed. ‘What’s her number?’

He got his cellphone out ready to dial.

At the word Madonna, the camera lens dilated and looked at me questioningly.

‘Madonna,’ I blundered. ‘I don’t know if I have her number.’

‘Course you do. Where’s your phone?’

Piers was definitely not afraid of the camera. He had been itching to get in front of it for years. This may have been a charity event but it was also a diving board. He was going to bellyflop into the water and splash around until he got what he wanted. (
American Idol
followed by the Parkinson slot.)

‘Come on!’ he said.

‘Well, she’s not really talking to me at the moment,’ I said, looking guiltily at the camera.

‘Ah!’ mimicked Piers unpleasantly. ‘Where’s your phone?’

I produced my battered old Nokia with the smashed screen, and waved it hopelessly.

‘What am I going to tell her?’

‘She’s got to give us a lot of money.’

‘She won’t like that.’ I started scrolling.

Piers looked at me. He was about to speak when our camera spied something more interesting across the room and shot away. The lights snapped off. The scene was over. Piers swam off.

I went over to talk to the girls.

‘God, I wish I was on your team,’ I said.

‘I know. Poor you,’ said Jo.

‘Are we all meant to stay the night together?’

‘Yes. In some hotel.’

‘I didn’t bring any things,’ I whined. I was turning into clingy desperate me. Ugh.

The hospitality girls arranged us in a line and gave us each a cue to go into the next room where apparently Alan Sugar was waiting for us like the Wizard of Oz. One by one our names were called out and we mounted the scaffold.

‘Have a fabulous time,’ said Emma, blowing a kiss, as my name was called out.

Imagine my surprise when I saw Sid James sitting on one side of a large table.

‘Isn’t that …?’ I whispered to Piers.

‘That’s Alan Sugar,’ Piers replied in a worshipful murmur.

Our two teams sat opposite him. Sid was flanked by Hattie Jacques and some other
Carry On
character. Both flunkeys regarded us severely.

Alan introduced himself to each of us, with that blunt insolence peculiar to all barrow-boy billionaires. I suppose this was all part of the fun. He laid into poor Jo Brand for being too fat. She couldn’t have cared less, rummaged in her bag and extracted a giant bar of Fruit and Nut and threw it at him. It was water off a duck’s back to Jo, but Ross Kemp was slightly more sensitive. Sid made some unpleasant remarks about Ross’s recent divorce. They dripped with innuendo. It was all way above my head.

‘What’s this all about?’ I whispered to Piers.

‘Apparently Rebekah his wife found him in bed with someone. The police had to be called in to pull them apart.’

‘What? Ross and the someone? Had they got stuck?’

‘No. Ross and Rebekah, you idiot.’

Rebekah, incidentally, was the editor-in-chief of the
Sun
newspaper. It was a juicy scandal. After a few minutes of Sid’s grilling Ross went purple.

This rough-diamond aggression was Alan Sugar’s trademark, and he worked it to the hilt. It was a strangely Vaudeville performance, and weird too, because in contrast to the blunt insults that came from his mouth, he had the sad hangdog eyes of a St Bernard under a troubled brow. He was quite vain, and a little girl popped up from under the table to adjust the hair that was like beige haircord and powder down the klaxon nose. He was a postmodern clown, tragic and angry, and
The Apprentice
was this year’s Big Top. His delivery was sheer Sid James. They could have been twins.

In fact, I am not at all sure, to this day, that the whole Lord Sugar phenomenon is not one great big heist. Maybe the whole
Carry On
team have been made Labour peers without us knowing it. Barbara, Duchess of Windsor. Anyway, whether he was Alan or Sid, he was pretty unpleasant to everyone, and if that wasn’t enough for one day,
he then explained the task. We were to organise a giant funfair for one thousand celebrities that was to take place in three days. We had to raise a certain amount of money, and each group had to set up sideshows, bars and hot-dog stands, parking, security, publicity, everything.

My heart sank. It was the week before Christmas! The one week in the whole year when everybody has plans for every minute of every day.
Nobody
is sitting around during the week before Christmas doing nothing, and
if
they are, then the last thing they want to do is go to yet another Red Nose Day event in the freezing cold where they have to lay out a whole lot more cash than they have already spent, satiating their starving chicks on the Christmas orgy. It seemed ludicrous.

I looked for signs of fatigue among the other contestants but their smiles were glued on, except for Ross Kemp who was fuming.

‘Any questions?’ growled Sid James. No one answered. ‘Then good luck. Enjoy yourselves.’

We were dismissed and taken to a bar to get to know each other. I sat on a couch in the corner with a glass of wine and wished I was dead. This was a nightmare.

Actually it was a dream come true. Ever since I can remember, I have had a recurring dream about being sent back to boarding school. Sometimes I am packing my trunk. At others I am arriving in my dormitory, or going in to school prayers. Everybody whispers as I walk by, because I am not a child in these dreams. I am the person I am on the day of the dream, so usually I am a famous movie star. Sometimes I am going to a première in my school cap and shorts. I can’t take them off because I might be spanked. (Wet dream.) Sometimes I am late for a performance in the theatre in London because I am brushing my teeth at a row of sinks, ludicrous in dressing gown and slippers, in a crowd of tiny boys. (Anxiety dream.) Or sometimes I am on the skids and am sent back to school by my agent. (Realistic dream.) No matter how much I try to explain that I shouldn’t be there, that I have to leave, no one listens. They
look right through me because they can see only a small boy acting up.