Part 1 (2/2)

Towards the end of term, I asked Bunce what plans he had for Christmas He looked uncomfortable as he confessed that he was off with his family to the West Indies

'What about you?' he asked

'Derrin Norfolk with ht your parents were dead and that you lived with aunts?'

'Ah Mm Yes'

damn Busted

Bunce looked hurt and confused

'Youat him fixedly, 'You seeI '

'Yes?'

'I say these things'

We never spoke of it again Not until Bunce reminded me of it forty-five years later He remes,' were, he ularly caned, always in trouble, never stable, never settled in or secure, I left prep school a sugar addict, thief, fantasist and liar

The pattern continued at , ary food I had gorged upon was beginning to take a real and painful physical toll Not in the waistline, for I was as skinny as a pencil, but in the mouth Caries, cavities and cankerous ulcers were constant companions By my fourteenth birthday I had lost five ofme The rush of excitear as I sat and feasted on my kill inevitably ended, such is the way of passion, in the crash of guilt, ust that follow all such addictionssugar, shopping, alcohol, sex, you na resulted in a rustication, which was the public-school word for being sent home for a feeeks: 'suspension' I suppose one would call it now Finally the school could put up with one to London on an officially sanctioned weekend away to attend aof the Sherlock Holmes Society of London, of which I was an enthusiastic reed, I stayed away for a week, blissfully locking h, as parents and schoolone to London on an officially sanctioned weekend away to attend aof the Sherlock Holmes Society of London, of which I was an enthusiastic reed, I stayed away for a week, blissfully locking h, as parents and schoolh

Tobacco's bitter juices will soon take over the story Once that loveable leaf had ar never had quite the saain But there is a little more yet to tell of rew to late adolescence and early ar Puffs was little by little replaced with a passion for Scott's Porage Oats, enerously sprinkled, to be sure, with spoonfuls of granulated sugar At the saave way to a ether more sophisticated confection, chocolate And of course there was coffee

The Sugar Puffs addict has e Oats

It is 1982, and I a to Granada Television Ben Elton, Paul Shearer, Eathered there to rehearse for the first series of ill later become a TV sketch show called Alfresco Alfresco The title of this first series is There's Nothing to Worry About There's Nothing to Worry About I wanted it to be called Trouser, Trouser, Trouser Trouser, Trouser, Trouser but was, perhaps rightly, overruled but was, perhaps rightly, overruled

Providence has once again been merciful Alfresco Alfresco

We are in our early twenties and have left university eightshould be wonderful in our lives, and I suppose it is Hugh, Emma, Paul and I have won the first Perrier Award at the Edinburgh Festival for our university revue; a tour of Australia has followed We have just co that revue for the BBC and noe are about to create our very own television series

Big sticky tins of Nescafe and boxes of PG Tips teabags stand on a trestle table at one end of the rooes the consu, as a sketch is being run through that everyone is in except ), I oes towards the teaspoon, that I aar

There I a of Tate and Lyle Suppose I were to give it up? I have always been told that tea and coffee are infinitely better without it I look across at the others and vow there and then that I will go sugar-free for teeks If, after a fortnight of unsweetened coffee, I have failed to acquire a taste for it, I shall return to ht a cigarette and watch the others A rather splendid swell of proud elation surges up inside me Perhaps I can do it

And I do Ten days later soar has been added I leap and start at the first sip as if I have been given an electric shock It is the most wonderful shock ofsoreatest tale of triumph over adversity you ever read, but thatif I really could quit never left me It was to be the one faint whisper of hope in the bottom of Pandora's box I can still smell that rehearsal room and hear its piano I can still see the packets of biscuits on the trestle table and the Tate and Lyle bag, soathered into translucent crystalline lumps from the repeated insertion of a wet teaspoon

I saw and smelt and relived that scene once more twenty-seven years later in a rooascar It was very, very hot and very, very hu but boxer shorts An approaching thunderstorly, and the hotel's internet connection, flaky at the best of tio to the bathroohtboso the room I checked, turned back and stared in horror and disbelief There he was again, filling the wardrobe rotesquely obese as anyone I had seen since I had filmed in the American usting an to weep

I had spent the last quarter-century seeing raphed in newspapers and had never been under any illusions concerningin that room I saw myself as I was I did not shudder, coverwas fine I did not say to ht I cried at the terrible thing I had become

There were scales in the bathrooralish? I had an app for that on my phone Twenty-one stone and twelve pounds Holy imperial hell Twenty-two stone Three hundred and six pounds

I reive up sugar in tea and coffee Noas tis, chocolates, toffee, fudge, hnuts, cakes, buns, tarts, flans, flapjacks, jelly and jam I would have to exercise too It could not be a diet, it could only be a coe in the way I ate and lived

I won't claiar has passed ascar, but I have s, candied fruits, chocolates, ices, petits fours petits fours and and friandises friandises as waiters present to one at the sort of restaurants in which ieneral avoidance of starchy and fatty foods, this steadfast forbearance has allowedbelow sixteen stone as waiters present to one at the sort of restaurants in which ieneral avoidance of starchy and fatty foods, this steadfast forbearance has allowedbelow sixteen stone

I have not the slightest doubt that I could easily balloon again and findback up past the twenty-first, twenty-second, twenty-third, twenty-fourth and twenty-fifth floors like a cartoon character in an express lift Constant vigilance is the ord It is no part of my business with you to maintain that I now fully know ly that I do at least knowbut doubtful and distrustful when it comes to any claims of solutions, cures and arrivals at final destinations

Take sarettesfor Convictfor Cundallfor Corporal Punishmentfor Common Pursuitfor Cessation All they that love not tobacco and boys are foolsChristopher Marlowe Given that I was so disruptive, disobliging and disobedient as a schoolboy it is perhaps surprising that I didn't sarette until I was fifteen As if to co an early bloomer in matters of the mind I had always been a late developer in arette came later toback, it is as though I spent decades trying toand sex Maybe this is where I have been going wrong all my life

In 1979, towards the end of e, I wrote a play called Latin! or Tobacco and Boys Latin! or Tobacco and Boys Dominic Clarke, the hero, if such a title can used of so warped a character, delivers a speech in the second act in which he describes and conflates his first sexual and s experience

One of those painful steps towards manhood was my first smoke It was behind the fives courts of utter I can reutter opened his packet of Carlton Prearette As an to feel panic I could hearPrestwick-Agutter lit the end, and I sucked and inhaled The ears buzzed, the blood caught fire and sonored it and sucked again But this tihed and expectorated My boy's lungs couldn't take the filthy whirl of shed and kept on coughing Despite ed to maintain a cool, unruffled exterior, hich to iutter, as am and British spunk flowed freely in me and out of me, and the Public School Spirit was born After about an hour, it began to rain, so we dashed into the nearest fives court and leant against the buttress It was an afternoon of rare agony It was later that evening, when a horde of uncouth Philistines was raiding st them, that my voice broke Really quite suddenly I was nearly seventeen, rather e really

While that speech was not (I assure you) autobiographical on arettes does correspond largely to hed and vomited rather badly Not after sex, I should say, but after iving nore

I was at horaced and expelled when I started to smoke My parents had chosen for rant gra had Horatio Nelson as an unhappy pupil To get there everyrequired a ride on a h the market town of Aylsha off the bus at Aylsha the day in a small cafe, where I could smoke, drink frothy coffee and play pinball until the coach cah on its return journey This chronic truancy resulted, of course, in another expulsion Next I was sent to NORCAT, the Norfolk College of Arts and Technology in King's Lynn Whateverwent on cigarettes As an addiction it was ar Puffs or sweets and almost as disastrous to teeth, yet wholly more acceptable socially when I started to smoke My parents had chosen for rant gra had Horatio Nelson as an unhappy pupil To get there everyrequired a ride on a h the market town of Aylsha off the bus at Aylsha the day in a small cafe, where I could smoke, drink frothy coffee and play pinball until the coach cah on its return journey This chronic truancy resulted, of course, in another expulsion Next I was sent to NORCAT, the Norfolk College of Arts and Technology in King's Lynn Whateverwent on cigarettes As an addiction it was ar Puffs or sweets and almost as disastrous to teeth, yet wholly ie brands for poor students were Players Nun If I had enjoyed a win at three-card brag I es, but when I was truly in the funds the tobacco equivalent of the Uley village shop beckoned My obsession with Oscar Wilde, Baron Corvo and the appealingly poisonous world of late nineteenth-century decadence resulted in a pretentious preference for exotic brands Sobranie cocktails, Passing Cloud, Sweet Afton, Carroll's Major, Fribourg & Treyer and Sullivan Powell Private Stock were the most desirable, especially the last thich could only be bought from one specialist tobacconist's shop in all of Norfolk or froton Arcade

It was to London that I hen at last I ran away fro approach of exams and the probability that I would fail them had combined with a tiresome adolescent 'I don't need no education' attitude, all of which resulted in a cutting and running Like Dr Watson in the first Sherlock Holreat cesspool into which all the loungers and idlers of the Empire are irresistibly drained' Now I had someone else's credit cards to keep arette Perched on a barstool in the American Bar of the Ritz Hotel, I would sip cocktails, puff Sobranies and thinkthe way I had snaffled and kept randfather's old collars and the leather box shaped like a horseshoe in which they were kept Not only was I a seventeen-year-old trying to look like a coerald and Firbank, I was a seventeen-year-old in a Gatsby-style suit and starched wing collar sarette holder It is extraordinary that I escaped a violent beating to keep arette Perched on a barstool in the American Bar of the Ritz Hotel, I would sip cocktails, puff Sobranies and thinkthe way I had snaffled and kept randfather's old collars and the leather box shaped like a horseshoe in which they were kept Not only was I a seventeen-year-old trying to look like a coerald and Firbank, I was a seventeen-year-old in a Gatsby-style suit and starched wing collar sarette holder It is extraordinary that I escaped a violent beating

What I did not escape was arrest The police caught up with ht in the cells I foundoffenders institution with the endearingly quaint Cotswold name of Pucklechurch

Tobacco, as is well known, is the major currency on the inside Relative peace, control and stability are achieved within prison walls through structured jobs, but no convict could ever be relied upon to ere it not that the wages of his labour are the only means by which he can buy his snout, his burn, his baccy He who has the most tobacco has the most status, influence, respect and contented since then

You aolbird would therefore be a non-smoker or at least have the sense to become one There are alaolbirds, but very few clever in quite that way You can almost define a convict as one who lacks precisely the kind of wisdoe from short-term discomfort This deficiency is ill have turned them to crime in the first place and ill have caused theht and captured in the second To expect a convict to have the strength to give up setarian and learn to knit, all on the same day

I was a natural criminal because I lacked just that ability to resist tele second Whatever guard there is on duty in the minds and moral make-ups of the majority had always been absent fro of the sentry who ht and wrong 'That's enough Sugar Puffs for noe don't need another bowl,' he would say in my friends' heads or, 'One chocolate bar would be a, but it isn't ours' I never had such a guard on duty

Actually that isn't quite true Where Pinocchio had Jirandfather He had died when I was ten, and ever since the day of his going I had been unco over what the Book of Common Prayer would call my manifold sins and wickedness I had erred and strayed from my ways like a lost sheep, and there was no health in ht azines and he saw reed and lust and shame; but for all his heedful presence he could not preventto hell in h to feel no reh a divine outside agency, perhaps I should have been happier; as it was I had neither the consolation that I was free of guilt, nor the conviction that I could ever be forgiven