Join Me

by Danny Wallace

  You gotta join . . . join Danny

  You gotta join . . . join Danny

  Ooh you gotta join . . . join Danny

  ’Cos tonight we’re gonna party like it’s 1983!

  (Very good year for me, I was seven years old, I got a new bike!)

  Join me!

  You gotta join me!

  You gotta . . . join me!

  If you’re a lady

  Or a manny

  Or a granny

  Or a tranny

  Join Danny!

  It was great. I sang, then Chris and Wayne added their backing vocals, as well as pianos, a choir and drums. They phoned up a Filipino trumpeter mate of theirs who popped round and improvised around it. By the end of the day, we had something beautiful.

  ‘That was brilliant,’ I said, standing up to leave. ‘Thank you so much . . .’

  ‘Before you go,’ said Chris, looking at Wayne, who shrugged and then nodded. ‘We were wondering if you could do us a favour in return?’

  ‘Anything,’ I said.

  ‘Well . . . you actually have a better voice than we thought you’d have.’

  This was very odd. I am famed for my bad singing voice. I am almost universally asked not to sing by people. And yet here were two professional musicians telling me I was alright.

  ‘Yeah,’ said Wayne. ‘Could we borrow you for something?’

  Ten minutes later I had some headphones on and was standing back in front of the microphone.

  ‘Buh . . . buh . . . buh . . . Butter!’ I sang, before, in a mock-American accent, ‘Yeeeow!’

  ‘Perfect!’ shouted Chris. ‘That’s what we were after!’

  ‘That’ll make all the difference, mate,’ said Wayne. ‘I think we’ve got what we were missing.’

  It was amazing. I had arrived at their studio a normal man.

  I left as the Voice of Polish Butter.

  I wonder if you did something similar with your day.

  * * *

  I was in the Horse & Groom with Ian.

  ‘So how was your holiday?’ he asked.

  ‘Never mind that,’ I said. ‘Listen to this.’

  I popped some headphones on him and pressed play on the Walkman. Ian looked shocked when he heard me singing, but listened to the whole thing, tapping his finger on the table in time with the music.

  ‘You’ve done a song!’ he said.

  ‘It’s on the website!’ I said. ‘I’m going to get it on the radio, too! And not just that – I’m also now the Voice of Polish Butter! That’s track two!’

  ‘So you’re still doing all this? But the last time I spoke to you, you sounded like you were giving up!’

  ‘I just needed time to get things into perspective,’ I said. ‘My holiday did that. Actually, seven lads from Newcastle did.’

  ‘So Raymond Price didn’t beat you? That’s good. You can still get revenge on him. Send a group of joinees after him. That’ll teach him!’

  ‘Ah, but will it? I’ve decided to do something else instead . . .’

  And then I told Ian my plan.

  When I’d been lying in the sun in Greece, I had a lot of time to think, you see. And I thought not just about Raymond Price, but about the effect he’d had on people. And not just on my people. But on the people of Britain. You.

  Sure, he’d caused me nearly to give up on my collective. But what’s sadder is the effect he’d had on the man who’d sent me that article – Mr Jackson.

  Mr Jackson had finished his email to me by saying:

  It is a shame since this will just make me think twice before helping out like this again. I was actually scammed like this some 12 years ago. You would think I would learn.

  So the next time Mr Jackson had the opportunity to help a stranger, he probably wouldn’t. The next time he was tempted to carry out a random act of kindness, he’d just shrug and walk away. There was something just plain wrong about this.

  So I got my pen out, and I did some maths.

  Raymond Price had been convicted for thirteen acts of deception, and then asked for another 162 to be taken into consideration. Add to those the one he pulled on us, and a little faith in the British justice system, and that’s 176 crimes.

  Each crime had been worth between £7 and – thanks to my joinees – £38. That means he stole between £1232 and £6668 (nearly the number of the beast), which means that the good-hearted people of this country are an average of £3950 worse off than they were fifty years ago.

  Because yes – all these crimes were committed over the course of about fifty years. So that averages out at a loss to the nice people of Britain of £79 a year.

  Raymond Price was making £79 a year from his crimes.

  Which – as any criminal mastermind will tell you – is rubbish. Even if you round it up to £80. It’s not exactly Nick Leeson or the Green Goblin, is it?

  But through his actions, he had unwittingly spawned something beautiful. He had inspired me to ask others to do good. Surely that was worth £79 a year? Perhaps. But what was absolutely crucial was that he did no more damage. It was important that he didn’t create more Mr Jacksons; that he didn’t create more people wary of doing good for fear of others doing bad.

  And if we could keep Raymond Price from doing that – would that not be as good for him as for the karma of this country? If I could find a way of preventing him from committing any more crimes, we’d be keeping him out of jail! We’d be stopping an old man straying from the straight-and-narrow!

  And so I started The Raymond Price Fund For Keeping Raymond Price Out Of Trouble. I suppose I could have called it Help An Aged, but, as I think you’ll agree, TRPFFKRPOOT is a far superior acronym.

  I opened a new bank account, and asked my joinees to set up a special direct debit. I’d only ask for around 20p per person per year. If we could raise, annually, around £79 to give to Raymond Price, then he’d no longer need to hit the streets in search of people to scam. He could stay in and watch Countdown instead! And the people of Britain could walk the streets knowing full well where Raymond Price was – staying indoors with a nice cup of tea and a biscuit.

  Within a day, I’d raised £11, and told Ian all about it, rather excitedly.

  ‘£11,’ he said. ‘That’s very . . . impressive. But it’s slightly odd . . . I mean . . . you’re giving money to criminals now? It wasn’t enough doing it by accident? You’re now doing it on purpose?’

  ‘No! Don’t you see? He won’t have to be a criminal any more! The whole true spirit of Join Me started when I asked people to make an old man very happy. Well, we are doing! We’re keeping him so happy he’ll never have to go to jail again! And at the same time we’re saving people from being ripped off! People will walk around happy without even knowing why!’

  ‘But why will that stop him from doing more scams? It’ll just be free money!’

  ‘I’ll find him one day, and I’ll give him the money as long as he signs something to say he’ll stop scamming people. And if I find out he’s still doing it, I’ll immediately stop the payments and give it all to charity. He’s a clever bloke. He’ll know he’s on to something good. And it’s so much more positive than going round there and shouting at him.’

  ‘I suppose . . .’ said Ian. ‘But look, Dan . . . where will all this end?’

  ‘How do you mean?’

  ‘Well, don’t get me wrong . . . but I bumped into Hanne the other day, and she seemed . . . well . . . a bit annoyed with you, generally.’

  ‘You didn’t tell her about Join Me, did you?’

  ‘No, course not. But maybe you should. You know? She thinks you’re acting all odd for no good reason.’

  ‘I’ll tell her. One day. I can’t tell her now, though. I have a feeling if I did she’d make me stop, and I’ve only just realised how much this still means to me. And I’ve been trying to spend more time with her. You know how much I love her. I cooked her a burnt onion the other night. I saw her last night, too. And I’m having dinner with her a
nd some of her mates on Thursday.’

  ‘Which mates?’

  ‘Just some mates of hers. New ones. Anyway, she’s been on at me to meet them. So I’m doing that. And I will tell her. Soon. Just let me carry on for a bit longer, now that I’ve found my direction again.’

  ‘But how much longer? When will you stop?’

  ‘When I’ve reached my target.’

  ‘What’s your target?’

  I didn’t want to tell Ian. He didn’t know for sure I’d decided to go for 1000, and if I told him, he’d think we were having a bet. And we were not having a bet. I’m 25. I’ve moved on.

  ‘Ah!,’ said Ian, remembering that afternoon in the pub. ‘It’s 1000, isn’t it? Admit it!’

  Damn.

  ‘Yes. But that doesn’t mean this is a bet. Because it’s not. No one’s bet anyone anything.’

  ‘I said I’d get you a pint if you did it,’ he said. ‘So that counts.’

  ‘No it does not. This isn’t a bet. I want 1000 because that’s the maximum number of people Gallus could have got. And anyway, you’re my friend – you should be helping me.’

  ‘I’m not joining you.’

  ‘Go on.’

  ‘No. I’m not helping you win that pint.’

  ‘Will you stop going on about that pint? This isn’t a bet, okay? It’s a tribute. A tribute to Gallus. Stop tainting it with talk of bets.’

  My phone rang. I was relieved. I answered it.

  * * *

  ‘What do you mean, you’re planning something?’ I asked.

  ‘We just are,’ said Patrick. ‘Me and the rest of the Newcastle Collective have a little something planned for tomorrow.’

  Talk about Join Me gaining momentum. Now things were happening that were being kept a secret even from me.

  The Newcastle boys had returned to the North East with only one thing on their minds: how to carry on the good work of Join Me and the Karma Army.

  ‘We had such a good time with it that we didn’t want to stop,’ said Patrick. ‘The other night we put our T-shirts on and walked around the bars of Newcastle handing out our own leaflets. It was fun, but a bit colder than Greece. Which is when we had the idea for tomorrow.’

  He still wouldn’t tell me what it was. But I wouldn’t have long to wait.

  * * *

  The next morning – a Saturday – I was woken from my slumber by a reporter from the Newcastle Evening Chronicle. Twenty minutes after that I was phoned up by a freelancer from the Guardian. After her, I was called by someone from Newcastle’s Sunday Sun newspaper. Later on I received an email from a reporter from BBC Radio Newcastle. This was followed by a phonecall from a researcher for a Radio 4 magazine show.

  Each time I gave them the same answers. My name was Danny. I used to work at Argos. Join Me was about good deeds. And each time they told me how impressed they were by the Newcastle Collective’s efforts.

  As was I.

  These seven lads had stayed up all Friday night – and I mean all of it – and painstakingly painted six huge, black letters on to six, six-foot pieces of white cloth. Together, they spelt the words ‘JOIN ME’.

  Then, at five in the morning, they drove in two cars to the world-famous Tyne Bridge, ran under cover of darkness to its centre, and hung their massive banner off the side. The words had caused fascination and confusion throughout the North East. Journalists accused me of being, variously, a media student, a clever marketing man about to release a new shampoo or chocolate bar called Join Me, and a religious nutjob. One of them made the point that if I wasn’t starting a suicide cult, I really shouldn’t be hanging words like ‘Join Me’ off the side of a bridge.

  But the boys had done incredibly well. They’d stayed and watched as the good people of Tyneside had stared, open-mouthed, at their achievement, right up until lunchtime when the police got involved and decided to take the thing back to the station with them.

  Perhaps most remarkable was the fact that when the boys had retreated to the nearby Millennium Bridge to get a better view of their work, they spotted, glued to the side of the railings, a worn, blue, Join Me sticker. One that they’d had nothing to do with. Because they hadn’t had any stickers since our days in Crete. No, this was someone else’s work – an anonymous joinee!

  The word of Join Me really was spreading at an alarming rate. And the following day, articles about the Tyne Bridge event helped the word spread even further . . .

  MYSTERY MESSAGE STUMPS SHOPPERS

  A mysterious message hung from the Tyne Bridge over the weekend caused a great deal of head scratching.

  Commuters, shoppers and the authorities were all confused after the words ‘Join Me’ appeared hanging over the side of Newcastle’s famous landmark on Saturday morning.

  Police on both sides of the river appeared baffled and could offer no explanation of why the banner should be there or what its meaning was.

  The mystery message, which was written on single squares of white cloth in black paint, led to speculation it could be the latest example of modern art to decorate the increasingly highbrow area of the booming Quayside.

  ‘The latest example of modern art to decorate the increasingly highbrow area of the booming Quayside’? No! Seven idiots and me!

  The Sunday Sun had gone one step further and asked to speak to one of the Newcastle Collective, and Patrick decided that because he was the tallest he’d do it.

  ‘But the thing is,’ he said, ‘when he asked me my name I panicked. I don’t know why I said it, but I changed my name and called myself “Jamie”.’ The intimidating power of the press, it seems, is second only to their powers of alliteration . . .

  BYSTANDERS BAFFLED BY BANNER ON THE BRIDGE

  A giant banner saying ‘Join Me ‘was erected on the Tyne Bridge yesterday . . . to the puzzlement of passers-by.

  The banner was made by seven Newcastle members of an organisation called simply Join Me.

  But officers from Northumbria police will definitely not be joining up.

  They took a dim view of the stunt . . . and quickly took the enigmatic recruiting poster down.

  One of the northern members of the group, identified only as Jamie, said ‘It was done for a bit of fun. It’s not a religious thing but it’s all about doing little acts of kindness.’

  The organisation was started by founder Danny, who wanted to stay anonymous.

  He said: ‘It’s really about random acts of kindness. The Newcastle Collective is one of my most dedicated and hardworking.’

  A typical example of their ‘work’ was sending a man packets of his favourite wine gums to stop him feeling depressed.

  Wine gums? Depressed? Maybe sending an old man peanuts to make him very happy is frowned upon in Newcastle. But whatever . . . word was most definitely out in the North East, and within a couple of days, I received thirty joining enquiries and nineteen brand new passport photos as a result.

  It was great. And one thing was certain. I was losing control over Join Me. Things had carried on without me when I’d been gone, and bigger things were starting to happen without me even though I was back . . .

  To be honest with you, it was all starting to get a little out of hand.

  CHAPTER 17

  15. Then Daniel met with Annalies, an exceeding beautiful maiden whose height was threescore cubits.

  THERE WERE TWO emails I clicked open straight away.

  Well, two emails I clicked open after having a sip of the first cup of tea of the day and trying to stop my boxer shorts from exploring areas of my body usually reserved for someone with a qualification.

  The first was from Hanne.

  ‘Just a little reminder,’ it began sweetly, ‘about Thursday. Dinner in Finchley with Mike and the others. Hope you’re still up for it. xx.’

  I replied instantly.

  ‘Yep!’

  The next email was from a name I didn’t recognise. That was happening all the time now, though, so I thought nothing of it. But it was marked �
�Highest Priority’, which was unusual, and had an intriguing subject line.

  ‘Belgium’.

  I clicked it open . . .

  Dear Danny,

  It was a good friend of mine who has ‘joined’ you, Geert Stadeus, who draw my attention to what you do. And believe it or not, but we love you.

  So much that I dare ask you two questions:

  – Have you ever been in Belgium?

  – Would you like to come to Belgium?

  There is a reason I ask.

  I work in Belgian television. I would like to invite you in the most famous Flemish talkshow there is.

  Can you believe this? A Belgian TV executive, inviting me on to the most famous Flemish talkshow there is! Not one of the less-famous ones (and I think we all know which ones I’m referring to . . .!) but one that we all know the name of! What was going on with my life?

  De Laatste Show is a daily talkshow on the Flemish national channel TV1, hosted by Bruno Wyndaele. Every night Bruno invites three guests who were in the news that day (more or less) to have a relaxed and cheerful talk about the events of that day or that week. A show you could compare with it is The Late Show with David Letterman.

  Other past international guests in the show were Joanna Lumley, Tom Jones and Roger Moore.

  And now, the logical extension – me!

  Am I being unrealistic or do you see an opportunity to come to Belgium before May next year?

  Please let me know if you’d like it.

  Yours truly,

  Sam De Graeve

  De Laatste Show

  Did I see an opportunity to come to Belgium before May next year? Too bloody right I did! I emailed Sam back immediately, saying that by complete and utter coincidence I would be in Belgium any time this week he fancied. Well, I didn’t want to seem too keen.

  But how exciting was this? My first international television appearance! And on a chatshow! The David Letterman of Belgium was probably already as excited by my possible appearance as I was!

  I re-read the email. ‘Other past international guests in the show were Joanna Lumley, Tom Jones and Roger Moore.’ Well, I was in good company. Me, Jo, Tommo and Rog. I just hoped we wouldn’t all be on the same show this time round, because I think in a list like that my story would command slightly less attention than I’d like to pretend it deserves. It would be all Bond, Ab Fab and pelvises, and precious little about good deeds and passport photos. Maybe that’s what’s wrong with the Belgians these days.