by Stephen Fry
Two weeks later the issue of the magazine Lynne had been writing for came out. The first words of her copy?
‘Tweedy Stephen Fry …’
I had sat in front of her, radiating Guerlain Eau de Verveine, a goatskin US Airforce Golden Bear bomber jacket creaking and gleaming about my person before I took it off and hung it on the chair to reveal the pure white, captionless T-shirt beneath, a pack of Marlboro Red tucked, Brando-styley, into the sleeve. My legs were sheathed in Levi 501s and my feet shod in acid-resistant, heavy-duty Doc Marten working boots, the footjoy of choice for any Soho media fashionista (not a word yet in currency then) or fashionisto (not a word yet in currency now). The front upper of the left boot was already worn from gear-changing my hog, and the first word she can come up with is tweedy? Well, who am I to tell her that she is wrong? Webster was much possessed by death. He saw the skull beneath the skin. Or so claimed T. S. Eliot. Maybe Truss saw the tweed beneath the leather jacket and boots. Where others have cartilage and sinew, I have corduroy and cavalry twill, it seemed, and always will. We see in people what we want to see, and nothing can change that.
The first rule of being a rebel is that you can’t make yourself a rebel. It is an action not an identity, a process not a title. You rebel. When I was a distressed, confused, manic, disruptive and disrupted schoolboy, rebellion did not come as a choice.
It is extraordinary how some single concentrated occasions seem to combine so many features of your life in one dreadful moment so as to stand as symbolic of your entire character and destiny at that point in time.
There came one such critical culmination of all that I was in the summer of 1989. I found myself in a restaurant in Soho’s Dean Street, an establishment long since passed into memory. It was called Burt’s, I think in honour of Burt Shevelove, the little-remembered (by most) lyricist and librettist – No, No, Nanette and A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum, those kinds of works. We had booked the whole of Burt’s to give Kenneth Branagh some kind of stag party, for this was a Saturday night, and he was to wed Emma Thompson on Sunday at Cliveden, the country house hotel that once belonged to the Astor family and gave its name to a ‘set’ of supposedly appeasement and Germanophile aristocrats and politicians that flourished in the 1930s.*
All week Hugh, Rowan and my fellow Blackadderists had been rehearsing the final episode of Blackadder Goes Forth, so by the time we got down to Soho from Television Centre and the tech rehearsal we were rather tired. I had ridden in on my rearing, snarling trail-bike, which I parked dead opposite the restaurant in Bourchier Street, commonly known as piss alley. I worry to this day whether the lane’s official name should be pronounced as spelled, ‘Boor-she-A’, or weirdly to rhyme with ‘voucher’. The trouble is, I don’t suppose there is anyone alive who can tell me the answer. I only fret over this question because a) I am a verbal nerd who does get in a tizzy about such things and b) I once judged a reading competition at Harrow School which was called the Lady Bourchier Reading Prize and was most definitely pronounced to rhyme with Sloucher and Croucher, solicitors at law and notaries public. I awarded one of the schoolboys, who went by the exotic name of Benedict Cumberbatch, second prize. Second. I cannot remember the name of the boy who won first, but I hope he will suddenly burst on to the acting scene, blow Benedict out of the water and finally vindicate my judgement. Something tells me that the contingency is a remote one, and I shall continue to look upon myself as the fisherman who let the big one go.
Whichever and however I parked my Yamaha, conveniently facing the entrance to Burt’s restaurant, where Kenneth Branagh and friends were celebrating his last night as a bachelor.
I fully intended to be a good boy that night, for the following day we would be recording that last episode of the series Blackadder Goes Forth. I drank no more than a few vodka and tonics, my favoured drink back then, before turning to give Ken his obligatory farewell hug.
‘Here,’ said Ken, ‘have this.’ He passed me a large glass half full of whisky.
‘I really …’
‘Go on! Down in one.’
‘Oh well, here goes.’
I swallowed it all down and weaved my way through to collect the skid-lid and gauntlets that, together with the previously described goatskin leather jacket, were all that might come between me and a skin-peeling ‘moment’, as two-wheel riders call anything from a slight loss of the back wheel to a somersault over the front on to the road.
This was a time when motorbikes swarmed over London streets. The soi-disant service industries were thriving in post-Big-Bang Thatcherite Britain, especially, of course, in London. The internet was in its hobbyist infancy, and fax machines were limited. I described the ubiquity of the motorcycle courier in the still in-print and still entirely fascinating Fry Chronicles. The noise and smell of them was all-pervasive (the motorbikes, not the chronicles, which are but lightly and pleasantly perfumed) and library footage of the era reminds one with a start how empty of them the metropolis now is. The delivery of scripts and documents could be achieved no other way, and many a student topped up his savings by haring about the city on delivery runs with scant regard to his or her or pedestrian safety.
I suppose we riders were easy meat for the busies.
I crossed Dean Street, pulling on the gauntlets and pushing the tightly fitting crash helmet down over my head with a smack on its crown, unjacked the beast and swung my leg over. I started the engine and was just easing forwards when a heavy hand descended on each shoulder. Fuck, I was going to be mugged. My adored motorcycle was going to be stolen. If I revved the engine and tried to escape, the bike would jerk forwards, and I would be left behind in Wile E. Coyote midair before thumping to earth with a coccyx-jarring thud.
I turned to face the aggressor.
Double fuck and twenty rotten arseholes. Uniformed police. What the hell?
Another constable stepped forwards from the shadows, signalling with a throat slit gesture for me to cut the engine. I complied, jacked the bike up, prepared a charming and conciliatory smile and pulled off the helmet.
The helmet, most unfortunately, almost airtight with the visor drawn down – which it had been – released right into the face of Second Constable a warm aromatic ball of something malty, peaty and Scottish.
‘Oh dear. Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear,’ said Second Constable to First. ‘Whisky.’
First Constable had released his grip from my shoulders and allowed me to swing from the bike.
A van was parked opposite the Groucho Club.
‘You seemed to be tottering a little unsteadily as you crossed the street to your motorcycle, sir,’ First Constable explained.
I knew he was giving me his ‘due cause’ explanation. Since the repeal of the ancient sus laws, which had given the police the right to stop anyone ‘on suspicion’, a plausible reason had to be given. The police are very good at plausible reasons. Not the Nine O’Clock News had made merry fun with them on that very head some years earlier: ‘walking in a built-up area in a loud shirt’, and so forth. It was no good my protesting that I hadn’t ‘tottered’ in the least. Crossing a street while donning a crash helmet is not a task easily undertaken, and while I may have wound and woven this way and that a little, it was certainly not in a manner that would cause a reasonable onlooker to suspect me of being inder the unfluence, ossifer. But none of this was of any use: they had me and doubtless they were going to invite me to blow down a tube of some kind.
Two vodka and tonics (doubles) and one very large whisky. Would that propel me over the limit? It was shock enough to think that a bike rider would be stopped at all. One of the reasons I had bought the damned thing, I reflected, was that I had had the idea that it would offer me a modicum of freedom from police interference.
A white tube was attached to a device, and I was invited to exhale.
‘This reading indicates that your blood alcohol level is over the legal limit for the operation of a licensed motorized road vehicle, sir. We will n
ow take you to the main station, where you will be asked to offer another breath sample to a Lionizer machine. This will be compared to the reading you have given us. The lower of the two readings will be used. If you do not wish to blow into the Lionizer, a blood or urine sample is acceptable. Failure, however, to provide any of these is a criminal offence. Do you understand this, sir?’
I nodded. Second Constable took my helmet and gloves, opened the rear doors of the van and hauled himself in. I was invited to sit on the bench opposite him. First Constable went round to the driver’s seat, and we moved off. It was only as we turned right into Old Compton Street, which you could do in those days, that I realized my predicament. In my left-hand jacket pocket was a condom holder containing three grams of the best-quality cocaine, bought yesterday with a view to larks and fun at Cliveden. Surely I was certain to be searched or asked to empty my pockets when we got to the station?
I slowly moved my right hand to the jacket’s right pocket, where I had some mints. This, I hoped, was where a decade of being obsessive about magic might pay off. I pulled out the mints and offered the bag to Second Constable, while at the same time putting my other hand into the left pocket and curling my fingers around the condom holder. A very simple act of misdirection which seemed to work.
‘Thank you, sir. And if you don’t mind, I’ll keep these. Nothing is allowed in your mouth until you have completed the Lionizer test. I’m sure you understand.’
‘Of course.’ I spread both hands wide in a gesture of complete comprehension. The condom holder was now on my lap and I was leaning forwards, allowing the groin-crease of my trousers to conceal it in the half light of the police van. ‘So which station are we going to, if I may ask, officer?’
‘West End Central,’ was the reply.
West End Central. How grand. I had heard of it. The name cropped up in news reports and police dramas. George Dixon (of Dock Green) would often say to his son-in-law, Detective Sergeant Crawford (played by the eyebrowy Peter Byrne), ‘Now, now, Andy, we don’t want to go treading on West End Central’s corns,’ and things like that. Famous as it might be, I had no idea where it was. Somewhere central in the West End would be a good guess. It was a pleasant surprise when we drew up in Savile Row.
As I had hoped, Second Constable rose to his feet before me. I stood up fractionally later, just as the brakes were applied. I slapped my hand to the metal roof of the van, and my right foot stamped forwards to give me balance.
‘Oops,’ I said cheerfully. My foot had kicked the condom holder deep into the shadows below the bench I had sat upon. Surely it would not be discovered for a few days, by which time dozens of malefactors would have had rides in the van?
I sprang down and allowed myself to be led into the station. Relief flooded me. Whatever punishment might be meted out for the infraction of driving a motorbike with a glass or so more alcohol in the blood than was permitted could not compare to the scandal, shame, possible imprisonment and career ruination that would follow the discovery of three whole grams of a Class A drug on my person.
It was generally understood in the druggy world that one or two grams would be taken to be ‘personal use’ but that much more might be construed by a bolshy or ill-disposed policeman to be ‘intent to supply’. The first might result in confiscation and a warning; the second would certainly, if the judge was in accord, lead to a prison sentence. Three grams lay on the borderline, and although my poor, stupid, addicted mind was running through a plan to get hold of my dealer between now and tomorrow, I felt well rid of my stash.
The Lionizer gave a reading that was jeeeyust over the limit, and I hoped for clemency. They led me into a room where a female sergeant was sitting across a desk. She asked me to empty my pockets. I complied with scrupulous obedience, turning the pockets inside out. From my inside jacket pocket I drew a wallet and four tickets for the following day’s audience recording of Blackadder Goes Forth.
‘Oh,’ said the sergeant, ‘you’re doing another series, are you?’
The problem with new series of Blackadder as they came along was that people were used to the one before. They were never broadcast until all had been recorded, so when the audience came into the studio expecting to see Queenie’s throne-room and Blackadder’s low-beamed chamber, they were puzzled by the Regency wallpaper of Prince George’s suite. Our audiences over the last few weeks had come expecting Mrs Miggins’s pie shop, and we had to hope they would get used to Captain Blackadder’s trench and Melchett and Darling’s Staff HQ.
I saw my opportunity. We were given four studio tickets every week as a matter of course, and I hadn’t yet thought about whom I might invite.
‘Would you like to come along to a recording? It’s at BBC Television Centre tomorrow evening. As it says on the tickets …’ I pushed them forwards.
The sergeant looked up, and First and Second Constables nodded enthusiastically. They came forwards to collect one each, and she kept the remaining two for herself.
‘Right,’ she said. ‘Well. You were over the limit, Mr Fry, so we will be charging you with the offence of driving or attempting to drive while above the legal limit or unfit through drink. It says on your driving licence that you live in Islington?’
Well, so much for the corruptibility of the Metropolitan Police. I was scandalized. Was no one to be mistrusted?
And so much too for the slow turning of the mills of justice. I would be expected to make an appearance on Monday morning, complete with insurance documents and licence, at Clerkenwell magistrates court, which, as it happened, was situated at the end of Duncan Terrace, where I was house-sitting for Douglas Adams. I was not to drive home on the motorbike, but could collect it the following day – Sunday – morning.
I descended the station steps, crash helmet and gauntlets under my arm, thinking furiously. I wanted the next day to drive my Aston Martin V8 Vantage to the BBC, and then after the Blackadder recording to ‘motor down to Cliveden’, as one imagined Asquiths and Grenfells doing, back in the palmy days. At some point I would need to meet up with one of my three tame coke dealers, who might be induced to rendezvous either at the BBC (in that event I must remember to get another studio ticket, I told myself: funny if they end up next to the policemen and -woman) or somewhere in Soho early the next day as I collected my bike. Perhaps they could come to Islington that night? Damn! I realized that I should have brought my mobile phone with me. I rarely took it on the bike, as its bulk prevented me taking anything else in the limited storage area. Anyway, I would somehow get hold of a wrap or two of good gear, get happily wrecked at Cliveden and then up early next morning, that is if I went to bed at all, and gun the Aston – perhaps for the last time in a year – back to London in time for my court appearance, which was fixed for 11 a.m.
Then another, truly dreadful thought crashed into my mind. Suppose they found the condom holder under the bench in the police van, saw that it contained drugs and then brushed it for fingerprints? As I had a criminal record,* mine would be on file. But no, if they picked it up, they wouldn’t do so with gloves. It was a van, not a crime scene. They would be lucky to find any ‘latents’ surely?
‘Mr Fry? Mr Fry?’
It was the police sergeant. I turned to see her standing at the bottom of the steps waving her arm above her head.
‘Yes?’ I approached her nervously.
‘I believe you left this in the van, sir.’ She pushed the condom holder into my hand.
‘Er … I … thank you … the …’
‘Be careful, sir. And thank you for the tickets.’
I simply did not know what to say. It was already too late to disown it. She turned with an inscrutable look on her face, leaving me standing there, my mouth opening and closing like a landed fish.
A taxi was rattling towards me from the Piccadilly end, so I hailed it and climbed in. En route to Islington I privily and gingerly slid apart the two halves of the condom holder. There, perky as a stripper’s tits, lay the three wraps. I could
have sworn they winked at me.
To this day I am at a loss as to the how and the why and the what-the-hell of it all. Did the sergeant think it rude to open a private condom holder in this, the age of AIDS? Did she open it and think, hell, I’m about to go off duty, I just can’t be arsed to bust this man. We already had the paperwork on the drink driving, so we had to follow through, but this … not inclined to blight his chances. I shall never know. Unless she happens to read this, in which case she is very welcome to be in touch.
I do not watch myself in old films or television programmes, or even new ones, unless I am in the cutting room and a part of the process of putting them together, but if I do catch (it is repeated so often) the final episode of Blackadder Goes Forth, the one which ends with the Blackadder trenchful finally truly going over the top and the image of a field of poppies bleeding through to the sound of raking machine-gun fire and a final mournful version of the Howard Goodall theme tune, if I do catch it or a scene from it, I cannot but say to myself, ‘That was the day after I was busted for drink driving. The day after the woman police sergeant handed my coke back to me in a condom holder, cool as you please. And that evening I took the Aston down to Cliveden, parked it and partied through the night in honour of Emma and Ken’s union. And the following day was the day I lost my licence for a year.’