Part 12 (1/2)

'hello again!' Patrick called cheerily 'We ondering if we ue this time?'

I sat and delivered

'Thank you!' said Patrick 'Thank youI think ' He conferred with John Gale, nodded his head and looked down as if seeking inspiration fro to the carpet 'Well, yes ' he murmured 'I think so too' He looked up towards me with a smile and said in a louder voice 'Stephen, John and I would be very pleased to ask you to play the part of Tempest for our production Would you like to do that?'

'Would I? Oh, indeed I would!' I said 'Thank you Thank you so very, very much'

'That's excellent news,' said Patrick 'We're delighted Aren't we?' he added, to the carpet

There was a sort of scuffling and scrabbling, and a figure rose froht The long, lean forh 'Oh, yes,' he said, brushi+ng dust frohted'

Patrick noted h to mention to us that Alan's presence had ht it ht be best to conceal himself'

Such consideration fro an arse, I expressed ratitude at all To this day I do not think I have ever properly thanked Alan for his grace and sweetness that afternoon

Crises of Confidence Alan Bennett has a huge advantage over most of us in that his shyness is known about and expected; indeed it is one of the qualities most admired in him It proves his authenticity, modesty and the classy distance he naturally keeps fro of loud, confident, shallow and self-congratulatory wankers to which I cannot but help belong and which the rest of society so rightly despises nobody seems to expect me to be shy, or believes me when I say that I ah the world I was reuest on the CBS prograuson The Late Late Shoith Craig Ferguson Craig is the Scottish comedian who has now become, in the opinion of many, myself included, the best talk show host in Aan the interview, that back in the eighties, when he had been a regular on the British coarded me as almost unnaturally calm, sorted and in control, to the extent that he was in a kind of angry awe of ain it brought me up short Never, at any point inthat I was any part of assured, controlled or at ease The longer I live the more clearly one truth stands out People will rarely modify their preferred view of a person, no lish Tweedy Pukka Confident Establishe That is how people like to see me, be the truth never so at variance It rel with an addictive self-destructive streak that it has taken me years to master It may be the case that my afflictions of mood and temperament cause me to be occasionally suicidal in outlook and can frequently leave ust It may be the case that I am chronically overmastered by a sense of failure, underachievee that I have betrayed, abused or neglected the talents that nature bestowed upon me It may be the case that I doubt I will ever have the capacity to be happy It may be the case that I fear for my sanity, my moral centre and my very future All these cases may be protested, and I can assert their truth as often as I like, but the repetition will not alter e I had before I was a known public figure The ie first-year contemporaries to visit e that satisfies and ies others and no doubt bores, provokes or irritates ure indeed if I had not learnt to live with that persona by now Like ht a fit that it ht be said to have rewritten the features of whatever true face once screamed behind it, were it not that it is just a s underneath are as they alere

What I want to say about all this wailing is not that I expect your pity or your understanding (although I wouldn't throw either of the pity and understanding here For I have to believe that all the feelings I have described are not unique to me but common to us all The sense of failure, the fear of eternal unhappiness, the insecurity, ust and the awful awareness of underachievement that I have described Are you not prey to all those things also? I do hope so I would feel the rant that s of ical thannothing more than the fears, dreads and neuroses we all share? No? More or less? Mutatisequal? Oh, please say yes

This is a problem ance that persuades us that our insights, fixations and habits are for the most part shared characteristics that we alone have the boldness, insight and openness of ed thereby, or so we congratulate ourselves, to be spokes or peeing in the shower or whatever it hter as a 'h again because our initial laughter and that of the person sitting next to us in the audience proves our couilt This much is obvious and a truism of observational comedy On top of it there can also be laid, of course, that conscious game comics play in which they shuttle between those common, shared anxieties and ones that are very particular to theh at how different different we are How si a st on our behalf A kind of 'thank God I'm not we are How si a st on our behalf A kind of 'thank God I'hter is the result When a co howwe also do or feel, they can then go further and reveal depths of activity or feeling that we ht revolt us or that perhaps eird' laughter is the result When a co howwe also do or feel, they can then go further and reveal depths of activity or feeling that we ht revolt us or that perhaps we do do share but would ht And of course, co what they are, appreciate that point share but would ht And of course, co what they are, appreciate that point

It is coh to hear this kind of routine: 'You know, ladies and gentle television and you stick your finger up your arse and wiggle it about?No? Oh, right Iton ' Well, with an average stand-up co in the shower and nose- or arse-picking it is easy enough to see the distinction bethat is communal and what is individual But those are discrete identifiable actions of which one is either 'guilty' or not Some people pee in the shower, others do not I have to confess that I do I try to be good and refrain frouiltless about what seeienically unexceptionable act I also pick ht there for fear of e you or myself further You can decide whether to put the book do and say to the vacant air: 'I too pick my nose and pee in the shower' Plenty of people do neither They are likely, I hope, to forgive those of us who are less fastidious in our habits But in either case whether or not they do is not susceptible to interpretation But feelings feelingsI may knohether or not I pick my nose but do I really knohether or not I feel a failure? I may be aware that I often feel bleak and unhappy or filled with nas as a sense of ? The root of the feeling ered unconsciousAs with colour sense or pain sensitivity we can never knohether any of our perceptions and sensations are the sareat big cissy and thatcompared to yours Or perhaps I am the bravest man on the planet and that, if any of you were to experience a tenth of the sorrows I daily endure, you would screaree on what is red, even if ill never knoe each see it in the saree can't we? that no matter how confident we , scared and uncertain for much of the time Or perhaps it's just meI may knohether or not I pick my nose but do I really knohether or not I feel a failure? I may be aware that I often feel bleak and unhappy or filled with nas as a sense of ? The root of the feeling ered unconsciousAs with colour sense or pain sensitivity we can never knohether any of our perceptions and sensations are the sareat big cissy and thatcompared to yours Or perhaps I am the bravest man on the planet and that, if any of you were to experience a tenth of the sorrows I daily endure, you would screaree on what is red, even if ill never knoe each see it in the saree can't we? that no matter how confident we , scared and uncertain for much of the time Or perhaps it's just me

Oh God, perhaps it really is is just me just me

Actually it doesn't really matter, when you co the story of some weird freak You are free to treat this book like science fiction, fantasy or exotic travel literature Are there really men like Stephen Fry on this planet? Goodness, how alien some people are And if I am not not alone, then neither are you, and hand in hand we can eness of the human condition alone, then neither are you, and hand in hand we can eness of the hue University Challenge, the BBC's transmission of The Cellar Tapes The Cellar Tapes was the first time I had appeared on national television I don't count was the first time I had appeared on national television I don't count There's Nothing to Worry About There's Nothing to Worry About, which was inflicted only upon viewers in the north-west ITV region

Theafter The Cellar Tapes The Cellar Tapes was aired on BBC2 I went for a walk along the King's Road How ought I to treat those who approached entle smile and practised a kind of 'Who?was aired on BBC2 I went for a walk along the King's Road How ought I to treat those who approached entle sesture that involved looking behinddisbelief atout, that there were pens in my pocket as well as soraphs Would I write 'Yours sincerely' or 'With best wishes'? I decided that I should try each a few times and see which looked better

Photo call in Richmond Park for BBC version of The Cellar Tapes The Cellar Tapes

The sait with a pipe stuck in his face

The first people I passed as I made my way up Blacklands Terrace were an elderly couple who paid ners possibly, or the kind of Chelseaites who thought it s wohland terrier on a lead I added an extra 10 per cent of soupy asps and shrieks She and the terrier passed right by without a flicker of recognition How very strange I turned left at the King's Road and walked past the Peter Jones department store and twice around Sloane Square Not one person stopped nition or favoured le puzzled stare that told me that they knew the face but couldn't quite place it There was simply no reaction fro around the periodicals section, close to the piles of listings azines To pick up a Radio Times Radio Times people had to ask me to step aside; obviously and by definition these persons must have been television watchers, but rin, e Television, everybody in the world knew, conferred instant fa you do the weather on BBC1, the next you are besieged at the supermarket checkout queue Instead I had woken up to findmore than another face in the London crowd Maybe alhts show? Or ettable faces that nized Surely this was unlikely? I had toldtruths in the past, but I had never accused it of being bland or forgettable people had to ask me to step aside; obviously and by definition these persons must have been television watchers, but rin, e Television, everybody in the world knew, conferred instant fa you do the weather on BBC1, the next you are besieged at the supermarket checkout queue Instead I had woken up to findmore than another face in the London crowd Maybe alhts show? Or ettable faces that nized Surely this was unlikely? I had toldtruths in the past, but I had never accused it of being bland or forgettable

I pulled a coazine fro disappointedly back to the flat I heard a voice behinddisappointedly back to the flat I heard a voice behind me

'Excuse irl At last 'Yes?'

'You forgot your change'

Here are the first lines of Love's Labour's Lost Love's Labour's Lost: Let faister'd upon our brazen torace of death

That is the King of Navarre's opening speech, the one Hugh had such trouble with in the 1981 Marlowe Society production It is a fine senti could run more counter to the way the world thinks today It certainly seems that all still hunt after fame, but how many are content for it to come only in the form of a tombstone inscription? They want it now And that is hoanted it too Ever since I can re an admission this is I could atte intricate psychological grounds, i complex developmental causations that elevated the condition into a syndro it up in fine linen From the first , I had wanted to be a celebrity We are forever telling ourselves that we live in a celebrity-obsessed culture;at the supremacy of appearance over achievee over industry To desire desire faues a shallow and delusional outlook This much we all know But if we clever ones can see so clearly that fame is a snare and a delusion, we can also see just as clearly that as each year passes a greater and greater proportion of the western world's youth is beco entraues a shallow and delusional outlook This much we all know But if we clever ones can see so clearly that fame is a snare and a delusion, we can also see just as clearly that as each year passes a greater and greater proportion of the western world's youth is beco entramelled in that snare and dazzled by that delusion

We have in our minds a dreadful picture of the thousands who audition so pitifully for television talent shows and whose heads seeazines We feel sorrow and contempt for the narrow dimensions of their lives We excoriate a society that is all surface and iest, are slaves to body-ie and fashi+on fantasies, they are junkies on the fa How can our culture be so broken and so sick, onder, as to raise up as objects of veneration a raft of talentless nobodies who offer no moral, spiritual or intellectual sustenance and no discernible gifts beyond over-hygienic eroticiseneity?

I would offer the usual counters to that Firstly, the phenomenon simply is not as new as everyone thinks it is That there areand receiving news and ies is obvious, but read any novel published in the early part of the twentieth century and you will find female uneducated characters who spend their spareof -drivers and barnstorirls and head-in-the-clouds houseatha Christie, P G Wodehouse and every genre in between The propensity to worshi+p idols is not new Nor is the wrathful contempt of those who believe that they alone understand the difference between false Gods and true In the story of the Ten Coolden calf Biblical colour plates for children showed it garlanded with flowers, revelling idolaters dancing happily around it, clashi+ng cy each other ild, abandoned joy Theproof (especially the cymbals) in the minds of the Victorian illustrators that Aaron's folloere debauched, degenerate, decadent and doo, Moses returns with those fatuous tablets tucked under his arolden calf and grinds it to powder, which he mixes into a drink that he forces all the Israelites to s Next, being such a holy eful arse back up Mount Sinai to get a second batch of commandments I think we can celebrate the fact thatlive in a culture, flawed or not, that instantly sees that, while Aaron erous fanatic The gilt bull beats the guilty bullshi+t any way you choose to look at it We humans are naturally disposed to worshi+p Gods and heroes, to build our pantheons and valhallas I would rather see that iers, thicko footballers and air-headed screen actors than into the veneration of dogmatic zealots, fanatical preachers, militant politicians and rabid cultural commentators

Secondly, is it not a rule in life that no one is quite as stupid as ould like them to be? Spokesmen across the political divide from us are smarter than ould have the like as duents, journalists, Aht reasonably expect to write off as ht and intellect well beyond what is comfortable for us This inconvenient truth extends to those on e lavish our patronizing pity too If the social-networking services of the digital age teach us anything it is that only a fool would underestinitive skills of the ' about more than the 'wisdom of crowds' here If you look beyond sillinesses like the puzzling inability of the uish between your your and and you're you're, its its and and it's it's and and there there, they're they're and and their their (all of which distinctions have nothing to do with language, only with graic and consistency would suggest the insertion of a genitival apostrophe in the prono to do with language, only with graic and consistency would suggest the insertion of a genitival apostrophe in the pronominal possessive its its, but convention has decided, perhaps to avoid confusion with the elided it is it is, to dispense with one), if, as I say, you look beyond such pernickety pedantries, you will see that it is possible to be a fan of reality TV, talent shows and bubblegureat many people know perfectly well how silly and camp and trivial their fandom is They do not check in their ement is not necessarily fled to brutish beasts, and men have not quite lost their reason Which is all a way of questioning whether pop-culture hero worshi+p is really so psychically da of the soul of mankind as we are so often told

Thirdly, look at the kind of people who most object to the childishness and cheapness of celebrity culture Does one really want to side with such apoplectic and bo one, and it isn't pretty I will defend the absolute value of Mozart over Miley Cyrus, of course I will, but we should be wary of false dichotomies You do not have to choose between one or the other You can have both The hule should be as varied and plural as the Amazonian rainforest We are all richer for biodiversity We may decide that a puma is worth ree that the habitat is all the better for being able to sustain each Monocultures are uninhabitably dull and end as deserts

Against all that it ht be said that the quarrel is not with harue, is not that everybody worshi+ps celebrity, but they want it for theenerated content and the rise of the talent show and reality TV have bred a generation for whoazines, they want their own shot at stardoht to fa tedious considerations like hard work and talent Well, we all kno satisfying it is to recite the shortcos and hollowness of others especially those who have nition where we have none It is certainly s I dare say we do live in a cheap age, an age where the things that should have value are little prized and things that are ehly rated But who on earth could think for a second that this is new to our race? Anyone familiar with Aristophanes, Martial, Catullus, Shakespeare, Jonson, Dryden, Johnson, Pope, SwiftYou get the point It has Online user-generated content and the rise of the talent show and reality TV have bred a generation for whoazines, they want their own shot at stardoht to fa tedious considerations like hard work and talent Well, we all kno satisfying it is to recite the shortcos and hollowness of others especially those who have nition where we have none It is certainly s I dare say we do live in a cheap age, an age where the things that should have value are little prized and things that are ehly rated But who on earth could think for a second that this is new to our race? Anyone familiar with Aristophanes, Martial, Catullus, Shakespeare, Jonson, Dryden, Johnson, Pope, SwiftYou get the point It has always always been the case, since hu people' have been seen to have arrived at the highest positions The eentry, the arrivistes, parvenus and nouveaux riches, the financiers, ners, literati and cultural elite, the actors, sportsers and presenters, they have all been unfairly elevated to positions they do not deserve 'In a just and properly ordered world,' the angry ones wail, ' been the case, since hu people' have been seen to have arrived at the highest positions The eentry, the arrivistes, parvenus and nouveaux riches, the financiers, ners, literati and cultural elite, the actors, sportsers and presenters, they have all been unfairly elevated to positions they do not deserve 'In a just and properly ordered world,' the angry ones wail, 'I should be up there too, but I am too proud to say so, so I shall carp and snipe and rant with indignation and showBut deep inside I want to be recognized I just want to count' should be up there too, but I am too proud to say so, so I shall carp and snipe and rant with indignation and showBut deep inside I want to be recognized I just want to count'

I was like that all through e years and early twenties Desperate to be famous but very, very ready, if I didn't make it, to vent my scorn on those who did I contend that people like nition arevieould have us believe I take er and his family as my touchstone for all that is sane, sound and decent They are as modern and connected to the world as anyone else I know I recall, and I seeh-def widescreen 3D detail, an evening at the pantoer was nine buttons irls out there ould like to join hi his hardest to look invisible The idea of being up there in the lights in front of a staring audience horrified hi my hand into the air desperate, absolutely desperate to be picked Two boys, eighteen e, bred in the saers in the world, praise be, than Stephens

Maybe the childish desire for attention I felt then is all of a piece with s The desire to be fae when infantilised than now Infantile foods in the forers or hot dogs sary sauce are considereddrinks disguised as milkshakes and soda pops exist for those whose taste buds haven't grown up enough to enjoy the taste of alcohol As in food so in the wider culture Anything astringent, savoury, sharp, conored in favour of the colourful, the sweet, the hollow and the simple I know that fame to me, when I was a child, was e and dra to write here and now that, like candy-floss, fame turned out to be little more than air on a stick and that the s and corrosive to hts, if I truly have them, for later I am, thus far in my story, not famous at all and I cannot yet tell what fa for

In fact, I think few people are really obsessed with being faht, squir down in their seats like ht consider froht experi lit by flashbulbs, but that is no land or volleying the championshi+p point at Wimbledon For the most part, most people are mostly for a quiet life out of the public eye and have aof how peculiar fae all celebrities as alike and civil enough not to despise people because they have coolfer or a politician Most people are tolerant, wise, kind and thoughtful Most of the ti with resentment, white-hot with neediness at one moment and sullen with frustration and disappointment the next, we are the ones who obsess about fa but dissatisfaction, vexation and horrible doses of heavy angst

All this is e for ar, cheesy and undignified yearnings It is all about the ork If your work happens, unlike insurance, accountancy or teaching, to bring celebrity in its train, or riches, then so be it You aiame bird of accomplishment; fame and fortune just happen to be the feathers it flies with Yeah, right We know these worthy precepts, I echo and endorse them But the needy child that hid within the tweedy man screamed to be fed and the needy child, as always, wanted as instantly satisfying and instantly rewarding, no ht make him Shallow and devious is what I was (and probably alill be), and if you have not yet understood how profoundly shallow and how straightforwardly devious I aht

Work was co in thick and fast The musical, the play, the filnht coazine and newspaper editors, radio, filents I was a co shaver useful for all kinds of odds and ends But I was not faan to trickle in, but I found that I could walk the red carpet entirely un to soht of a new play, I think To hear his naraphers and see the crowd of fans pressing up against the crash barriers caused the most intense excitement in me, combined with a sick flood of fury and resentnized me me or wanted or wanted my my picture Oh, Stephen I have clicked on and selected that sentence, deleted it, restored it, deleted it and restored it again A large part of me would rather not have you know that I aer part recognizes that this is our bargain I cannot speak for others or presu out their entrails for public inspection, but I can speak for (and against) uard for a new kind of Briton: fanatical about faet-obsessed and determinedly infantile Maybe, to put a kinder construction on it, I was living proof that you could want to be famous picture Oh, Stephen I have clicked on and selected that sentence, deleted it, restored it, deleted it and restored it again A large part of me would rather not have you know that I aer part recognizes that this is our bargain I cannot speak for others or presu out their entrails for public inspection, but I can speak for (and against) uard for a new kind of Briton: fanatical about faet-obsessed and determinedly infantile Maybe, to put a kinder construction on it, I was living proof that you could want to be famous and and want to do the work, you could relish the red carpet want to do the work, you could relish the red carpet and and relish lucubrating into the early hours, cranking out articles, scripts, sketches and scenarios with a genuine sense of pleasure and fulfil out articles, scripts, sketches and scenarios with a genuine sense of pleasure and fulfilment

Commercials, Covent Garden, Compact Discs, Cappuccinos and Croissants On top of the major projects in film and television there tumbled in other requests for work of all kinds Lo Hamilton at Noel Gay Artists fielded these and passed them on I think I understood that I had the option to refuse, to turn down, to inquire further, but I cannot recall that I ever did When I look back at this time it seems to be a paradise of variety without pressure and novelty without nerves Everything was fantastically new, exciting, flattering and appealing

Soh and I found ourselves inside the world of the commercial voiceover Neither of us yet had the kind of vocal heft that afforded us the chance to do the really sexy part of the work, the endline that final slogan which wasfifty-year-olds like the legendary Bill Mitchell, whose vocal chords had the deep, authoritative resonance that carried the advertiser's icians like Martin Jarvis, Ray Brooks, Enn Reitel and Michael Jayston, ere in such heavy deers clipped to their belts so that their agents could push them from job to job at the shortest notice I remember David Jason, another very busy and talented voice artist, showing me how they worked They did no ent, but I was hugely impressed One day, I told myself, I would own such an object and I would treasure it always Soers in assorted stylings and colourways None of them is treasured; they were barely used at all

At our level Hugh and I were required usually to do silly co industry that was taking advantage of the proliferation of independent radio stations that were popping up all over Britain throughout the early eighties as a result of 'second tranche' franchise contracts It is very beguiling to look back at a period of tiine that one was happy then, but I really believe that ere Life in the glass booth was siineer or producer would press the talk-back button and say so like, 'Yeah, that o seconds over Can you do it again, shaving off three seconds, but don't go any quicker' That kind of apparently absurd request starts to reat pride in our ability to ood on them An internal clock starts to build itself in the brain so that within a short ti on, wasn't it? Maybe half a second under?' or 'daain ' and be proved right when the engineer played it back with a stopwatch A trivial skill, the proud acquisition of which soht think a waste of an elite and expensive education, but I know, as I have said, that ere happy How do I know? Well, we said so We actually dared to say it

In those days the studios we found ourselves in ell Sound in Covent Garden, opposite the stage door of the Royal Opera House Hugh and I would eht sunshi+ne of the day, say 'shi+rt' and walk south-west along Floral Street, crossing James Street until we reached Paul Sner's sole London presence Perhaps he had a shop in his native Nottingham, but the Floral Street branch was certainly the only one in London Like David Jason he is now a knight, but back then Paul Sner of choice for men ere shortly to be dubbed 'yuppie' His reputation, unlike that of the yuppie, has eed unscathed frohties the first noises of as to be the post-Big-Bang, newly enriched, newly confident professional classes were beginning to be heard as they clamoured for stylish socks, shi+rts, croissants, frothy coffee and God help us all conspicuous braces I suppose Hugh and I fell into a subset of this new category

One ell's I distinctly re like this: 'bloody hell, this is the life'

'We are so fucking lucky'

'Twenty minutes in a studio, not a minute more'