Join Me

by Danny Wallace

  I still had an old Join Me leaflet folded up in my wallet and gave that to the print shop lady as well. She said she could do me 500 colour photocopies for a very reasonable price and I picked them up an hour later. She even did me a deal on special Join Me stickers. It was all coming together beautifully.

  ‘What on earth are these?’ asked Patrick, that night, at the bar by the pool.

  ‘They’re Join Us T-shirts,’ I said, proudly. ‘Trust me. This is what will attract the Mag Seven. When they see you boys in these, they’ll want nothing more than to spend the rest of their lives with you. Take them to the others and I’ll see you back here at ten.’

  Patrick looked at me dubiously, but did as he was told, and at ten o’clock precisely I looked up from my seat by the pool to see the fruits of my labour. In single file, down the path, walked seven lads each wearing a navy blue Join Us T-shirt and dark trousers. They looked amazing. I had created an army.

  I asked each of them to pull up a chair at the longest table in the bar and I sat at the head of it to give a briefing.

  ‘Now, men . . .’

  Yes. I had even started to call them ‘men’.

  ‘. . . tonight’s operation is quite simple. In front of you are hundreds of leaflets and stickers. It will be your job to spread the word of Join Me throughout Malia. Convince people to join up. Inform them of the merits of being in the Karma Army. Sing the scheme’s praises. Lie through your teeth if you have to. But get them joining.’

  ‘And . . . er . . . where do the Magnificent Seven come into all this?’ asked Simon.

  ‘Don’t you see? They’ll be intrigued when they see your T-shirts. They’ll want to know what you’re doing. And then you can tell them. You look like you have a reason to be there. Let the T-shirts guide you. Let the T-shirts give you confidence. They’re the perfect excuse to walk up to the Magnificent Seven and start chatting them up.’

  The lads all smiled. Stephen looked positively excited. John rubbed his hands together, which actually made him look a little sinister.

  But I ignored that. Because this felt good. This felt right. I was back on the horse. I was back in the game.

  The Leader had returned.

  * * *

  ‘Make like an egg and scramble,’ said the huge German man outside the first bar.

  This is possibly the funniest thing anyone has ever tried to say to me in a threatening way. It may have been the accent, it may have been the fact that he probably saw it in an old episode of Starsky & Hutch and misguidedly still believed it to have intimidating qualities, it may even have been that he pointed at me when he said it . . . whatever it was, it made me laugh in his big German face before realising quite how big it was, and then run away very quickly indeed. I think it may have been quite a confusing reaction for him to have witnessed.

  Anyway, the lads were doing rather better than I was at spreading the word of the Karma Army. They had taken to their roles brilliantly, and developed their own personal schtick . . . we walked from bar to bar, handing out leaflets and offering people stickers by the bucketload. And if there’s one thing I discovered that night, it’s that drunk people love stickers. They suddenly develop into the most precious and hilarious of commodities. Thanks to our stickers, my group of Newcastle joinees had been transformed overnight into the most popular group of men in Malia. It is hard adequately to describe just how much interest we aroused. You will just have to believe me when I tell you that people actually cheered when we walked into their bars. And all because of some T-shirts and sticky bits of paper. It spurred the lads on to greater things.

  Down Beach Road we moved, like a stealthy task force, on a crusade of great import. Bar owners soon realised what a boon we were to their bars, and would invite us in and ply us with free drinks just to make us stay awhile. One old Greek man liked us so much he tried to feed us almonds to keep us there. But rather than just offer you the jar, he’d actually physically poke them into the side of your mouth while you were talking to someone else. It was rather disturbing. Mainly because it can’t be long before someone invents Rohypnuts.

  But the boys were doing me proud. The youngest of the group, Stephen, became an incredible salesman with no fear of approaching complete and utter strangers and asking them to join. At one point he found a man who was also from Newcastle and promised him that if he was ever in town he could come to the hotel bar where Stephen worked and he’d get a free pint. The man seemed genuinely interested. Mind you, he made the same offer to a burly man from Sunderland and was told he was a ‘fucking weirdo’ and should ‘fucking fuck off,’ so it’s swings and roundabouts, really.

  Further down the road, potential joinees were concerned that joining up would cost them money. To prove that it wouldn’t, Patrick dug into his pocket and gave them a handful of money if they promised to join. They promised they would. I’m not sure if they did.

  But we talked to hundreds of people that night, including my very favourite find of the evening. A young chap called Gavin, who seemed very interested in joining indeed. And when I asked him what he did for a living, I was not disappointed.

  ‘I’m a joiner.’

  A more perfect moment I do not think you’ll find.

  Ten minutes later we stumbled across a camera crew at the centre of a group of drunken revellers, each trying desperately to get in shot. It was all in aid of some kind of Greece Uncovered documentary, and it was generally agreed that getting the words Join Me into the programme would be rather a good idea. As we approached the crowd, however, we noticed the job had already been done. The crew were filming a man with his trousers round his ankles, dancing about, and with two Join Me stickers stuck to his arse.

  This was not a sophisticated holiday resort.

  By three in the morning, we were running out of leaflets and stickers, but I was satisfied that we had done a fine job. Many dozens of people had expressed a genuine interest in signing up, and I was sure that on my return home I’d have the passport photos to prove it. I was just telling Fletcher this, when one of the Newcastle boys made a vital discovery . . .

  ‘The Mag Seven! They’ve just gone into that club!’

  ‘Right. How many leaflets and stickers have we got?’ I asked.

  ‘Enough.’

  ‘Okay. Let’s go. Make them yours, gentlemen . . .’

  The boys walked through the doors of the club with a confidence and coolness they hadn’t had the day before. A few people recognised them from their shirts and from seeing them earlier and cheered when they walked in. The Mag Seven noticed this, and sipped at their drinks in the corner, looking mildly interested.

  The boys were on a mission. They strode straight up to the girls and, without missing a beat, said . . .

  ‘Hello. Would you like to join our cult?’

  ‘Collective,’ I whispered to myself ‘It’s a bloody collective.’

  The girls smiled and took a leaflet each. The boys smiled and each started talking to their favourite. It was a fine sight.

  ‘See that?’ I said to Fletcher. ‘We made that happen.’

  ‘I’m just waiting for one of them to mess up so’s I can have a go,’ he said, charitably.

  Moments later John approached me.

  ‘Thank you,’ he said. ‘Thank you thank you thank you. You are truly our Leader.’

  He then went and bought two drinks – one for himself, and one for his chosen girl. She seemed genuinely pleased when he returned.

  And then something weird happened. One of the girls caught my eye, looked at me slightly strangely, and then whispered something to her friend. Her friend looked at me, nodded, and then asked Patrick something. He nodded, looked at me, and said something back to them.

  Then the first girl walked up to me.

  ‘Is your name Danny?’ she said.

  I was shocked.

  ‘Er . . . yes . . .’ I said.

  ‘Danny Wallace?’ she said.

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘I’m Anna!’r />
  I still wasn’t sure. But there was something familiar about her.

  ‘I’m Anna Bailey!’

  Bailey! Of course! Bamsley! The Baileys! The Bamsley Baileys!

  When I’d been at university I’d been chuffed and surprised to win a prize in honour of a brilliant social affairs journalist by the name of Richard Bailey, for a student project I’d done. When I’d gone up to Bamsley to collect it, I’d met his family – including his daughter Anna and one of her best friends. The same Anna and best friend who were now standing right in front of me.

  I sensed the Newcastle lads in the comer of my eye, each now simply staring at me, open-mouthed.

  ‘He knows two of the Magnificent Seven!’ said Tom, a bit too loudly. ‘He knows two of them!’

  If I wasn’t before, I felt I was now, truly, their Leader.

  ‘We worship you,’ said Stephen, later, and somewhat in awe.

  Seven down, six billion to go.

  * * *

  The boys left the following night and I spent the next couple of days sitting in the sun, swimming in the pool, and planning my return to the world of the Karma Army.

  I also discovered, while lying on a sunlounger, that it is absolutely impossible to lick your own elbow.

  But while I was thinking of more important matters, I made some vital decisions. I had promised myself early on that I would go anywhere and meet anyone. I knew that had been right. So I would go back on the road and meet more joinees, no matter how tiring it was, and no matter how many more Joinee Benjamins I would meet.

  Greece had been brilliant. But there were other countries out there. So I would work tirelessly to make sure that the word of the Karma Army spread around the world and I got my 1000 joinees.

  ‘You can’t place a hum,’ those musicians had said. And they were right. What we needed was an anthem. A catchy tune to help spread the word globally. I still had their business card. I’d call the Vis à Vis boys on my return.

  Oh, and as for Raymond Price . . .

  Well . . . if Join Me was to be a force for good in this world, it would be wrong to punish him for what he’d done . . .

  No. I would have to come up with something special for him.

  And I did.

  Vis à Vis

  CHAPTER 16

  9. And, behold, the words of Daniel reached a damsel of fiery seasoning, not red and yet not brown.

  10. And the damsel did give ear, and was beguiled.

  I DIDN’T KNOW whether to be thankful or annoyed.

  No one seemed bothered that I’d stopped having any involvement in Join Me for the last couple of weeks. I’d ignored my emails. I’d been absent from the website. For Gods’ sake, I’d even gone on holiday. But no one seemed to have even noticed. If the Pope gave up on Catholicism for a fortnight it’d at least make the papers. If Jesus had stopped paying attention to his disciples and spent his days down the pub smoking, playing darts, and restocking the wine racks at will, I’m sure there’d have been a bloody great passage in the Bible about it.

  But no. People had just got on with things. It was as if they didn’t need me any more. Join Me had, quite without me realising, taken on a momentum all of its own.

  When I’d arrived home I’d checked my post and been surprised at how many people had heard about Join Me in my absence and signed up. I now had over 400 passport photos. 400! Nearly the halfway point! And not only that, but my existing joinees had been incredibly busy with their random acts of kindness while I’d been all upset and pouty on a sunlounger. Email upon email informed me of what they’d been up to. I had hundreds of good deeds to wade through and tried my hardest to at least send a ‘well done’ to each and every joinee who’d done something good.

  And in an exciting twist, new localised collectives were forming all by themselves. Joinees in Manchester had decided to meet up and plan their movements. Joinees in Oxford had realised they’d be more effective working as a team than apart, and six of them were arranging to meet at a local pub the following Wednesday to swap notes and develop strategies. Joinees in York had met up while I’d been away and were full of ideas and game-plans for new random acts of kindness. The two joinees I’d met in Bath had found a new member and were arranging to meet with her over the weekend. It was all going very well without me.

  At first I didn’t know how I felt about it all. My little children were fleeing the nest.

  But more exciting news came in the form of an email from Joinee Estelle of Paris. She’d told a few friends, one of whom was from Belgium, and he’d decided to join me. So now I had a picture of Joinee Geert Stadeus, a journalist from Brussels, and he’d promised to tell his pals in the media about all this too. Brussels! The heart of Europe!

  It also appeared that a dedicated joinee had called the phone-in radio station TalkSport and waxed lyrical about the benefits of signing up. Fourteen people did so as a result, including a curious chap called Joinee Gerstein who also sent me a rather frightening self-penned poem about a relentlessly crying baby.

  Joinee Jess had sent me a photo of her at a book-signing session handing ex-Spice Girl Geri Halliwell a Join Me leaflet, along with assurance that ‘Geri had seemed quite interested in the whole thing and so may join you!’ I am sorry to inform you that I am still waiting for her passport photo.

  Joinee Whitby had also been busy in my absence. By curious coincidence, he had recorded his very own Join Me anthem on his home computer. I popped the CD into my stereo and listened with great interest. To give you an idea of what it sounded like in the most polite way possible (because he, like you, will be reading this), I had initially thought that the CD was defective and was skipping around. In actual fact, it wasn’t. In his letter, he asked me what I thought of it, and told me he would be in London very soon, and would I fancy meeting up?

  I managed to avoid the first question, but not the second. And in a brave move, I agreed to meet with him. After all, he fascinated me. Ian wouldn’t be happy. He still thought that Whitby harboured impure ambitions to steal Join Me away from me. But I wanted to meet him. For one thing, I’d promised myself I would meet more joinees. And for another, I wanted to set my mind at rest that he wasn’t the evil-fuelled joinee I’d been told he was. And maybe there was another reason, too. Supposing Ian was right and Whitby was the Judas of the joinees – wasn’t it better if I came face to face with my enemy? After all, he could hardly be much worse than freaky Joinee Benjamin and his words of confusion and mystery.

  So we arranged to meet the following week, when he’d be in town doing ‘something special’ for Join Me. He wouldn’t tell me what.

  And then I found the business card of the Vis à Vis boys and gave them a bell.

  * * *

  ‘Come in,’ said Wayne. ‘Excuse the mess. The studio’s just up there . . .’

  I was in a small suburban street in Middlesex, walking up the stairs of the 60’s semi that contained the Vis à Vis studio, which looked remarkably like a spare bedroom. Not many other studios, in my experience, contain a futon and an ironing board.

  ‘Hello!’ said Christopher, when I walked in. ‘Nice to see you again. Wayne’s told me all about what you’re up to. Sounds good.’

  ‘Thanks. I hope it is.’

  I moved some laundry and sat down.

  ‘So what is it exactly you’re after?’ asked Wayne.

  ‘Well . . . an anthem, I think. A joinee of mine called Spacetoad suggested it at first. He reckons it’ll break down any cultural boundaries. And then I met you guys, and you seemed to think the same. A hum is a hum in any language, you said.’

  ‘Right. So this should be something hummable to get people joining up in their masses?’ he said. ‘Well, I’m sure we can come up with something.’

  I’d brought Joinee Whitby’s anthem with me to play to the boys, in case it gave them any new ideas. As it started, I saw Chris check the stereo to make sure the CD wasn’t skipping. It wasn’t. The boys politely tapped along in silence for the th
ree minutes it took for the track to end. At times, I couldn’t tell whether it was them out of rhythm, or Whitby’s anthem.

  ‘Would you mind if we made it a bit . . . less . . . you know . . . like that?’ said Chris.

  ‘Whatever you think.’

  ‘I have a feeling a track like that would get people thinking yours was a suicide cult.’

  Ideas were flung about left, right and centre, and I was incredibly impressed with how quickly the boys were working with it. Wayne had his guitar out, and Christopher sat at his keyboard, and while they strummed and plink-plonked about, I tried to think of a few lyrics. I was a bit rubbish, but Chris came up with the inspired lyric ‘If you’re a lady, or a manny, or a granny, or a tranny, Join Danny!’ and Wayne developed a lovely hook.

  To be honest, I’m very impressed with the way I got the term ‘hook’ in there. It’s one of the two musical terms I know. For a brief period, I’d worked for the music magazine Melody Maker, until I discovered that I found it impossible to write about music. My reviews inevitably made reference to the song’s ‘hook’, and if I could ever get the phrase ‘syncopated backbeat’ in there, then by God I would. Even though to this day I have absolutely no idea what that means.

  Wayne and Christopher, however, knew exactly what they were on about.

  ‘Thanks for doing this,’ I said. ‘I know you must be busy.’

  ‘No problem,’ said Chris. ‘We’re still having trouble with that Polish butter advert, so any distraction is welcome . . .’

  Pretty soon a tune was coming together. It was jaunty, and lively, and had a lovely hook and made good use of the syncopated backbeat.

  The lyrics were simple . . . it began with a moody, swelling intro while I talked over it . . .

  The word is spreading . . . all over the earth!

  Through England . . . Ireland . . . Wales . . . and the Scottish . . .

  Across Europe . . . A-zee-ah . . . and the United States of Americans . . .

  Everyone . . . is talking about one thing . . .!

  And then the whole thing turned into a hugely upbeat, almost jazzy funfest with a great hook and a brilliant syncopated backbeat . . .