Part 1 (1/2)

The Fry Chronicles

by Stephen Fry

Work issorry; it doesn't s any better or worse If only I had it in ht instead of forever sprinkling ies and prevarications It is one of the reasons I could never have been an artist, either of a literary or any other kind All the true artists I know are uninterested in the opinion of the world and wholly unconcerned with self-explanation Self-revelation, yes, and often, but never self-explanation Artists are strong, bloody-erous Fate, or laziness, or cowardice cast o in the role of entertainer, and that is what I found h at ti one, which is no kind of entertainer at all, of course Wanting to be liked is often a very unlikeable characteristic Certainly I don't like it in myself But then, there is a lot in o I wrote a memoir of my childhood and adolescence called Moab is My Washpot Moab is My Washpot, a title that confused no one, so clear, direct and obvious was its y took ed soet myself accepted into university, which is where this book takes up the story For the sake of those who have read Moab Moab I don't round Where I mention events from my past that I covered there I shall append a superscribed obelus, thus: I don't round Where I mention events from my past that I covered there I shall append a superscribed obelus, thus:

This book picks up the threads and charts the next eight years of es for so few years? It was a late adolescence and early manhood croith incident, that is one answer Another is that in every particular I fail Strunk's Eleood writing' If a thing can be said in ten words, I ht to apologize for that I ought to go back and ruthlessly prune, pare and extirpate excess growth, but I will not I like words strike that, I or any othercan be said in ten words, I ht to apologize for that I ought to go back and ruthlessly prune, pare and extirpate excess growth, but I will not I like words strike that, I love love words and while I am fond of the condensed and econoood journalis, I love the luxuriant profusion and mad scatter of them too After all, as you will already have noticed, I as like 'I shall append a superscribed obelus, thus' If rinding your teeth then I aht to bark new tunes words and while I am fond of the condensed and econoood journalis, I love the luxuriant profusion and mad scatter of them too After all, as you will already have noticed, I as like 'I shall append a superscribed obelus, thus' If rinding your teeth then I aht to bark new tunes

Between Maht

I hope you forgive the unedifying sight of le to express some of the truths of my inner self and to measure the distance between the mask of security, ease, confidence and assurance I wear (so easily that its features often lift into a sness) and the real condition of anxiety, self-doubt, self-disgust and fear in which much of my life then and now is lived It is a life, I suppose, as interesting or as uninteresting as anyone else's It is mine and I can do what I like with it, both in the world in the real plane of facts and objects and on the page in the even more real plane of words and subjects It is not for me to be so cavalier with the lives of others, however In much of my life from 1977 to 1987 people appear who are known in the public world and to who pseudonyms If I told you, for example, that at university I met a man called Lew Horrie and that we ereat insight or tooabout a real person It is not forabout his life and loves, personal habits, mannerisms and modes of behaviour, is it? On the other hand, were I sih life was darling and gorgeous and super and lovely and talented and dazzling and sweet, you would soon enough be arcing streams of hot vomit all over the place and in every probability short-circuiting your eBook reader I don't doubt for a minute that my publishers have already ned with them that I, the author, a to, but not restricted to, e devices in this and all territories So I a the wholly reasonable privacy of friends and colleagues and the Charybdis of causing you, the reader, to sick up It is a narrow course, and I shall do es deal with some of the C-words that have doy of the chronicles coue a couple more Cs To put you, as it were, in the mood

C is for C12H22O11

for Cerealfor Candyfor Cariesfor Cavitiesfor Carbohydratesfor Calories Shades of the prison-house begin to close upon the growing boyWilliam Wordsworth, 'Intimations of Mortality'

To care aboutabout Sincebut sha of flesh I inhabit It couldn't bowl, bat or catch It couldn't dance It couldn't ski, dive or leap When it walked into a bar or club it didn't attract lustful glares of desire or even faint glances of interest It had nothing to recommend it beyond its function as a fuel cell for ht reward hs and reasons to be cheerful Perhaps it all comes down to breasts Or the lack of them

While it is true that I was once a babe I was never, I think, a suckling I have noclamped to the nipple and believeThere are psychologists schooled in this tradition or that, whether Kleinian, Freudian, Adlerian, Jungian or Insertnamehereian I cannot say, who hold that the tit or Teat issue has a significant, even crucial, bearing on huests it is the denial of mother's milk or the over-abundant supply of it that stores up problems for later life Possibly both A lot of bosoroith a Russ Meyer or Jonathan Ross breast fixation Nothing but bottle to suck and you develop a horror of bosoeneral Or perhaps the other way around All absolute poppywash, of course False mammary syndrome There are plenty of brothers and sisters, identical twins even, fed on the same infant diets, who have turned out different in every particular except the irrelevant one of physical appearance My brother and sister were treated just as I was in infancy, and we could not be, fortunately for them and the world, less alike So let us suppose that the vices and weaknesses that I a to tell you about now are peculiar towith the s and the whorls on the pads of ers Which is not to say that I am uniquely alone in the possession of these weaknesses Far froeneration

Sister Jo, self, brother Roger

Once we get beyond milk, whether breast or formula, we move on to the hard stuff Solid food Pappy spoonfuls of apple sauce and beef casserole are pushed into us until we can wield cutlery for ourselves One of the first and ins to express itself is through its attitude to food In the late 1950s and early 1960s food meant breakfast cereal and sweets I was one of the first wave of infants to be exposed to child-targeted advertising Sugar Puffs were born, as was I, in 1957 That cereal, which no one could pretend had any ambition to be eaten by adults, was represented, a decade before the arrival of the Honey Monster, by a real live bear called Jereraphed for the carton and filmed for television commercials until he was finally retired into private life, ending up, after a short period at Cromer Zoo, in Campertown, Dundee, where he died peacefully in his sleep in 1990 I visited him at Cromer, the first celebrity I ever saw in the flesh, or in the fur, and believe est Hollywood babe or pop idol is to a child now, Jeremy the Bear was to reed and the need

Sugar Puffs were pellets of wheat that had been puffed up under heat and coated in a syrupy and slightly sticky fructose and glucose glaze All you had to do to enjoy their glory was to pour on cold milk Hot y bowlful closer to soup than cereal Besides, hotpoint could form a surface skin, and a skin on ht or smell of boiled milk makes me keck and puke I am put in mind of the cock tales they tell of Cocteau's cocktail parties They say that Jean Cocteau, to a hi hiht alone I have a si skin on hot milk, custard or coffee We can both make hot fluids spit and spurt from our bodies I can't but feel that Cocteau's party piece is always likely to be more in demand than mine

The breakfast table here the seeds oflink in a chain that would shackle ine, they were a breakfast habit But soon I was snacking on theh at the number of packets she was forced to buy I would eat the sweet pellets loose fro, into the o I was like an A and falling pack-to-mouth, pack-to-lazed' Is that important? A child at the breast or bottle has that look There is a sexual eleht or nine I sucked the first two fingers ofthe hair on the crown of ht hand And alith that glazed, faraway look, with parted lips and laboured breath Was I giving myself the breast treat that I had been denied? These are dark waters, Watson

Cereal-packet lists of ingredients and serving suggestions were my literature; thiamine, riboflavin and niacin ht not voluer under flap and move from side to side They're Gr-r-r-r-r-r-r-eat! We like Ricicles, they're twicicles as nicicles And so they were In fact, as I liked to say, they were thricicles thricicles as nicicles Certainly much nicicler than their staid, unsweetened parent, Rice Krispies, the cereal that said, if you listened carefully, Snot, Pickle and crap To have Rice Krispies when you could have Ricicles, to have Cornflakes when you could have Frosties Who could i to watch the news on television or preferring to drink unsweetened tea I lived for one thing and one thing only C as nicicles Certainly much nicicler than their staid, unsweetened parent, Rice Krispies, the cereal that said, if you listened carefully, Snot, Pickle and crap To have Rice Krispies when you could have Ricicles, to have Cornflakes when you could have Frosties Who could i to watch the news on television or preferring to drink unsweetened tea I lived for one thing and one thing only C12H22O11 Perhaps this is why I should have been Aar everywhere in the United States In bread, in bottled water, in beef jerky, pickles, ar

My relationshi+p with this beguiling and benighted substance is coar, and yet it ca me too

I told elsewhere the story of the role of ar to Britain I latterly found out ra sugar to Britain I latterly found out rarandfather Martin Neumann came to Bury St Edmunds (not to praise hiinally Hungary, although the 1920 Treaty of Trianon later absorbed his hoysurany into the newly expanded Czechoslovakia For the purposes of history, however, he was froarian Jew, as he liked to observe, is the onlydoor and corandfather Martin Neumann came to Bury St Edmunds (not to praise hiinally Hungary, although the 1920 Treaty of Trianon later absorbed his hoysurany into the newly expanded Czechoslovakia For the purposes of history, however, he was froarian Jew, as he liked to observe, is the onlydoor and come out first

He cariculture in Whitehall, whose hted functionaries realized that if there was, as seely likely, to be another world war the Atlantic would almost certainly be cut off, as it so nearly had been at the height of the German U-boat threat of 1917 The West Indies and Australia would be out of reach, and there would be no sugar for the British cup of tea, a disaster too horrible to contear capacity, its farle beet, its industrialists never having refined a single ounce Back in Nagysurany, now urany, est sugar refinery in the world, so he seemed like a natural candidate for British recruitment In 1925 he and his brother-in-law Robert Jorisch caar beet refinery in Bury St Ed a rich and bitter pong faintly reminiscent of burnt peanut butter Had Martin and his wife and fa Jews, have been exterminated in the nazi death camps, as were his mother, sister, parents-in-law and the dozens of other family members who stayed in Europe I should never have been born, and the paper or digital display technology that has gone into the production of the book you are now reading with such unalloyed pleasure would have been put to other uses

So sugar gave me life, but it exacted a price slavish adherence Addiction to it and an addiction to addiction in addition

Sweetened breakfast cereals were one thing, and relatively harar Puffs, Ricicles and Frosties would be ordered bywith the rest of the groceries by Mr Neil, who always calledman' and who drove the van for Riches, the little store in the village of Reepham, which lay some two or three miles away froer exist; little stores like Riches no longer exist

As a result of Mr Neil's weekly deliveries, I could eat al to spend any ar hit was free Of course it was Why wouldn't it be? I was a child who lived in a house where there were always Sugar Puffs in the cupboard Perfectly nore of seven I was sent to a Gloucestershi+re preparatory school almost exactly 200at Stouts Hill, for such was the school's na line of disappoint I had awoken to the buabout its daily rites

'You! What are you doing? You should be in the refectory,' a prefect shouted at me as I caromed panic-stricken down random corridors

'Please, what's a refectory?' A picture of some kind of medieval punishrabbed eway, and down another and finally through a door that led into a long, low dining-roo, shi+ny oak forms, as benches used to be called He marched ed htened e my head, I saw that there was cereal available Cornflakes or luar Puffs, Frosties and Ricicles there was no sign I ain, that trust, faith, hope, belief and confidence died in me that day and that thenceforward melancholyit a touch strong Nonetheless I was shocked Was there now to be no sweetness in my life?

The school did have one institution that counter-balanced the troubling deficiencies of the refectory 'Tuck', as youword for sweets What Americans call candy While I had encountered sweets before, of course I had, they had usually colass jars in Riches or Reepham Post Office Pear drops, sherbet les and fruit bonbons: all rather dowdy, respectable and pre-war The Stouts Hill School Tuck Shop offered wilder excitee of confectionery Cadbury's, Fry's (hurrah!), Rowntree's, Nestle's, Mackintosh's, Mars and Terry's were still individual independent manufacturers From Mackintosh's came Rolos, Caraht, Crunchie bars and Chocolate Creaave us the Picnic and the Flake as well as their signature Dairy Milk wrapped in delicate purple foil The Bournville giants were even then preparing to launch within one year of each other the legendary Curly Wurly and the Greatest Chocolate Bar in the History of the World, the Aztec Nestle's meanwhile offered us the Milky Bar and KitKat, Rowntree's had the Aero, Fruit Pastilles, Fruit Gums, Smarties and Jelly Tots, Mars had the Milky Way, Mars bar, Maltesers and Marathon Bless my soul! I never noticed till now that the Mars products all began with M Marathon would many years later be rechristened Snickers, of course (and I would help launch the new nan: if I had known such a thing ht well have exploded), just as Mars' Opal Fruits would one day become Starburst Doubtless they had their reasons They also produced Spangles, the square boiled sweet that has becoia in which I a in there if you will; there is a point to all this beyond the mere fevered recitation of brand names

The Stouts Hill Tuck Shop was open for business on different days for each of the four houses into which the school was divided: Kingfishers, Otters, Wasps and Panthers I was an Otter, and our tuck day was Thursday First you queued up for cash Whatever pocket money your parents had allocated you was kept in trust and doled out in instalments by the master on duty, who recorded the withdrawn suer As the term wore on I watched in dismay as my capital dwindled away Desperate letters ritten ho note to be sent as soon as possible 'Please, Muh money to last them for ever ever Oh please, please, please please, please, please ' '

And so it began

Glorious as the Stouts Hill Tuck Shop may have been, it was but a John the Baptist to the e shop, unworthy to tie its red liquorice bootlaces or lick its sherbet dabs The little post office and general stores was just half a ates, and ould pass in crocodile for our heads in unison towards its inviting s like cadets honouring their leaary-sweet treasure I had ever seen or had ever dreas Trebor Refreshers Fruit Salads and Blackjacks a farthing each (that's four for one old penny) Foa saucers filled with sherbet Swizzels Matloizzlers that fizzed and popped in the mouth like fireworks Love Hearts Chewy sour cola bottles and rubbery white milk bottles Chocolate buttons sprinkled with hundreds and thousands Strips of Wrigley's Juicy Fruit and Spearmint, boxes of Chiclets and Pez, loose cubes of Bazooka Joe and packs of Beatles- branded bubblegum, each one with a card inside that offered a picture and priceless biographical inforo is very fond of lee is the tallest Beatle, but only by half an inch!' and other devastating and valuable secrets, all finished with the exclamation marks that remain a characteristic of fan literature to this day On other shelves there were gobstoppers, aniseed balls and everlasting strips Sherbet fountains, dabs and dips Wine Guive the accidental rhy There was the much-prized Spanish Gold, pouches of yelloaxed paper with a picture of a red galleon on the front packed with strands of shredded coconut broith chocolate powder totobacco Liquorice curved into a Sherlock Holarettes with red ends and rice-paper-wrapped chocolate cigarettes presented in a fake Chesterfield's carton

All the elear White powder Tobacco Desire Lack of e shop was out of bounds to all boys The extra sugariness of the sweets, the blindingly bright cheerfulness of the wrappers and the loutish Aobstoppers offended the mostly military sensibilities of the staff The produce was all soar, just a bitwell, frankly just a bit working class Heaven knohat those same poor schoolmasters would have made of Haribo Starmix or the Kinder Happy Hippo It is perhaps as well that they predeceased such unpleasantnesses, for I'iven out

Seven years old, 200 miles from home and a deprived addict There are plenty of stories of children younger than seven who are already full alcoholics or were born addicted to crack cocaine, crystal ar dependency reads as ta and a lesson to nobody Nor is it satisfactorily explicable I have given you the outline of it but that does not suggest necessary or sufficient cause for so co an addiction After all, , had available the same cereals, candies and coans, senses and dimensions Yet froe unswervable certainty that other people were not seized by the sa desire, shi+vering lust and terrible, hurting need that had rip almost every hour of every day Or if they were they had levels of self-control that entirely shamed , characterful and morally assured Perhaps only I was so weak as to succumb to appetites that others could control Perhaps everyone else was equally gnawed by equally keen desires, but had been granted by nature or the alhty an ability todesolation I had been denied We should consider that the ativen private school in those days (and iosity (today's schools quiver with righteousness without the religiosity, which is only just an i of the spiritual torture that accoonies The Bible is crammed from end to end with stories of temptation, interdiction and chastises froiven reed is punished and lust accursed until we reach the full, final and insane da passed through wildernesses and desert trials, locusts, honey, es, tribulations and sacrifices Lead us not into teeance is mine, saith the Lord, I will repay

In such an at already in place, it is little wonder that guilty connections caar and desire and satisfaction and desire and satisfaction and shame All this years before the even fiercer terrors and torments of sex were to make themselves known toit, of course, with deeper and crueller cuts I say, I am am a self-dramatizer, aren't I? a self-dramatizer, aren't I?

Since 90 per cent of my schoolfellows appeared immune to all this trauma, introspection, sha back, whether I was especially weak, especially sensitive or especially sensual

To pay for sweets I stole from shops, from the school and, most shamefully of all, from other boys These acts of theft were conducted, like the eating, in an allazed over, I would ransack the changing roo with fear, elation, dread and passionate self-disgust At night I would raid the school kitchens, ho-sized blocks of raw jelly that I tore withan antelope

I chronicled in Moab Moab the occasion when I was found by a prefect to be in possession of contraband sweets, bubblegum and sherbet fountains that could only have coe shop the occasion when I was found by a prefect to be in possession of contraband sweets, bubblegum and sherbet fountains that could only have coood-natured little fellow called Bunce, who quietly hero-worshi+pped ressions that one , whereas Bunce, who had no for It all backfired, of course, and the heade been so wicked as to lure an innocent like Bunce into ood-natured little fellow called Bunce, who quietly hero-worshi+pped ressions that one , whereas Bunce, who had no for It all backfired, of course, and the heade been so wicked as to lure an innocent like Bunce into my web of sin

The real-life Bunce and I have been in touch since the publication of Moab Moab He was very good-natured about it and reotten

Very early on in my school life I had told Bunce that my parents were dead

'How terrible for you!' Bunce, always kindly, was deeply et handed around during the school holidays You h It's a secret'

Bunce nodded, a look of stout defiance on his downy face I knew that he would sooner cut out his own tongue than say a word to anyone