by Matt Lucas
Sir Bernard’s tale about the events at his showbiz soirée ended with his arse exploding and faeces landing on the faces of various celebrities …
‘There was shit on the ceiling, caca on the carpet, dump on the dining table, poo on the porcelain … I didn’t know where to look. And I turned to Felicity Ken-dell and I said “Felicity, you’ve grown a moustache” but she hadn’t – a bit of poo had deflected off the ceiling and landed on her upper lip!’
In my set I had contrived a reason for this arse explosion that involved Sir Bernard having been born in India and therefore being caught in some sort of ‘Anglo-Asian curry zone’. I know it doesn’t make any sense. I’m sure it didn’t then, either. But as soon as I mentioned about coming from India, some of the audience started shouting ‘Racist!’ I was taken aback. I hadn’t done an Indian accent or made any further comment, but the table of young men had had enough. I wasn’t quite booed off, but everyone in the room could hear the reaction. I hurried through to the end of the set and got off.
Jeremy and I left the venue quickly, my heart racing as I sat on the Tube back to Edgware station, trying to process what had happened. It was clear that I would have to make some big changes to my set before my first ‘official’ gig.
A few weeks later I turned up at the Punchlines club for my proper debut. I knew the place well, having been a regular punter there for a year or two. Despite being underage, I would flash my fake ID and make half a pint last the night as I watched some of Britain’s finest up-and-coming comedians take the stage.
I certainly hadn’t been shy in letting people know about the big event and much of the audience was made up of friends (and their friends and their friends etc.).
When it was my turn to appear, the compère gave me a warm introduction. I had a pre-recorded intro on tape, which featured some speeded-up music that I had found in my parents’ record collection, and me introducing myself in a bad Northern accent – ‘Live from Barry Island …’
Why would a theatrical raconteur be in Barry Island and why was a Northern voice introducing him? And why was I pretending to be a theatrical raconteur? I barely even knew what one was. I’m sure the audience had no idea, either. It made little sense.
It also wasn’t that funny.
But I needed to be onstage. Despite the confidence I’d got from those Youth Theatre appearances, I was still desperately unhappy, scared, freaked out by the events of my youth, by my paleness, baldness, fatness, gayness, otherness. Like many before me, and countless others since, I was convinced that becoming successful and achieving public recognition was the only way my sad story could end happily.
I was happy to use anything and everything I had in my pursuit. Sir Bernard was bald, though for much of the routine he proudly sported the wig that I had thrown in the cupboard a few years earlier.
The wig might have come out of the closet. I hadn’t – yet. But Sir Bernard was so gay that I partly hoped it wouldn’t occur to anyone that I wasn’t. He would do my coming out for me, I hoped. I wouldn’t have to say the words or live the life. I could hide in plain sight, at turns celebrating and mocking homosexuality, playing to both gay people and those who found gayness absurd, dancing nimbly backwards and forwards either side of the line.
Now people would laugh with me, not at me. I would control it.
The compère – Dave Thompson, later to find fame as Tinky Winky in Teletubbies – introduced me. The audience hollered loudly at my entrance and I sprinted on. I hadn’t considered how long the introductory music was (i.e. far too long) and, eager to fill the time, spontaneously broke into a wild dance, which drew laughter. Ever the fat, sedentary asthmatic, by the time the music came to an end I was breathless.
That night I wheezed and panted my way through my muddled little routine. Each lame joke was greeted with a supportive cheer from those who knew me, rather than a laugh. Those who didn’t know me would doubtless have been utterly bemused.
At the end of my act there were wild cheers. I took the applause – a little embarrassed, because I knew, despite the response, that it hadn’t worked on a comedic level. Dave came back onstage and the audience continued to applaud. He generously waited there and acknowledged the reception I was getting.
And what did I do? Well, because I am a bloody idiot, I stood behind him, signalled in his direction and did the ‘Wanker’ hand-sign.
Why did I do that?
I can only think that I was just trying to generate another laugh. I was eighteen years old and unprepared for – and giddied by – the audience’s applause. However, not only was my response unprofessional, it was also completely unwarranted, but that didn’t occur to me in the moment.
I got another laugh and went off.
Downstairs, in the backstage area, sweating, waiting to get my breath back, I accepted the congratulations of the other comics, but I knew that this hadn’t been a real victory. Half the crowd was already on my side. I’d shown balls – yes – but not much else.
The next act went onstage and then Dave appeared in the waiting area. He summoned me over and calmly asked me why I had called him a wanker onstage in front of the audience.
I gulped. I had no idea he’d seen the gesture. I stammered an apology. He told me, his anger coming to the surface, how I’d made a huge mistake, that comedians must never ever undermine each other like that onstage, that he had given me a great introduction and encouraged the audience to applaud me afterwards, that it was an incredibly selfish thing to do, that he was furious and that there was no place on the circuit for that kind of behaviour. If he told other people what had just happened, he said, I would never get booked anywhere.
What had I done? That was it. It was all over. My name would now be mud. People who hadn’t seen my act yet – who hadn’t heard of me – would know me by this story and this story alone.
He was apoplectic, but of course totally justified in his anger. I continued to apologise profusely. I told him I was completely out of my depth, that it was my first gig, that I’d been flustered and surprised by the audience’s response. Unsure of what to do, I had made a grave error. I was genuinely contrite. I felt awful to have put us both in that position, had learned an important lesson and would never do anything like that again. He accepted my apology and we shook hands.
Outside I was met by friends and acquaintances and praise was poured on me, but I was very shaken up and just wanted to go home.
The following night, I arrived for the next gig – at the VD Clinic, a dedicated open-spot show which took place every Sunday evening in the downstairs bar of the White Horse pub in Belsize Park.
I walked in and my face dropped. There in front of me was Dave Thompson, the compère from the night before. By chance he was hosting this gig too. Sheepishly I went and said hello and he was a complete gentleman, making no reference at all to the previous night’s incident. Onstage I was already calmer, wiser, more focused. The audience had been primed for an evening of new acts and it felt like a more natural environment for me. To my surprise, the set went down well. Afterwards Dave congratulated me. I thanked him and apologised again and again until he told me I could stop. Over the next few years I often found myself on the bill with him and we always laughed about our first meeting.
So my third gig was a success – or rather, I had got away with it – but the following morning I phoned Don Ward at the Comedy Store and told him I was going to pull out of the gig that week. Don admonished me for letting him down, but also said he respected the fact that I was saving us both from embarrassment. We agreed that I’d call him again when I had a bit more experience under my belt.
And so I focused on playing the smaller clubs. I would use that stage time to get good, I decided, and then approach the more established venues.
The act was thin, but I would listen to the audience and take out stuff that didn’t work. And when all else failed, there was one thing that guaranteed a laugh … halfway through my set I would pretend to sneeze and then
yank the wig off my head and use it as a tissue, before replacing it, all skew-whiff. Other times I would simply scratch my head, moving the wig in the process, and then continue talking without making any reference to it. I was eighteen years old and looked a lot younger – the audience was not expecting this to happen. They would half-gasp, half-roar. Sometimes they’d even applaud. At Churchill’s in Southend, one man in the crowd was drinking his beer when I moved the wig and was so shocked he bit straight into his pint glass. As he left the club for the hospital with blood streaming down his face, still laughing, he told the manager to get me offstage. He said I was a health hazard.
At one of my early gigs I moved the wig but didn’t get the laugh I was hoping for. One of the other acts pointed out afterwards that it was perhaps because I had walked in without the wig and put it on in view of some of the audience, while waiting at the bar. From that moment on, I always made sure to ‘wig up’ before I arrived at the venue. Often I would run into a neighbouring pub, into the toilet and ignore the raised eyebrows of the other occupants as I placed ‘Kimberly’ (David Williams had said I should give it a name) on my head.
On 8 November 1992, five weeks after that Punchlines show, I wigged up outside the Tube station, then arrived, as I now did every Sunday, at the White Horse to do a short set at the VD Clinic. You had to walk into the main room in the pub in order to get downstairs and, as usual, I arrived far too early, sat down and ordered my customary Diet Coke.
My jaw hit the floor when I saw, at the next table, my idol Bob Mortimer.
Was there a more brilliant, more vibrant, more original and just plain funnier act in British comedy in the early nineties than Reeves and Mortimer?
Let me answer that for you.
No.
In fact, no one came close.
Jim Moir, aka Vic Reeves, had been around for a while. I had seen him occasionally on Jonathan Ross’s TV programmes and he and Bob Mortimer had developed a bizarre spoof variety show called Vic Reeves Big Night Out, which had transferred from the Goldsmith’s Tavern to Channel 4, where it ran for two series on Friday nights.
As a teenager in Stanmore who wasn’t quite allowed out yet on a Friday night, I had watched the first episode with expectations that weren’t met. In fact, I was mystified. Reeves kept promising things that were going to come up later in the show that simply didn’t. And there were no celebrity guests. I couldn’t work it out at all. By the end of the episode I was so irritated that I pompously called up Channel 4 and told them that I didn’t get it.
I tuned in again the following week, but only because I was convinced that I was watching something historically bad, something that would almost certainly be removed from air before the series could run in its entirety. This time I recognised the return of some of the weird non-jokes from the week before, understood that none of the so-called celebrity guests would actually be appearing, that instead Vic and Bob and their pals would be playing everyone. By the end of the series I was not just a convert, I was a fully fledged apostle.
In the White Horse pub that November night in 1992, I rushed over to Bob Mortimer, who had left his small group of friends and was on his way to the toilet.
‘Hi Bob i am a huge fan i am also a comedian like you are you coming to the-show tonight?’
And it turned out he was. He said his friend Dorian was compèring.
Dorian Crook was (and still is) a man from another age. The late fifties, I would say. The clothes he wore, the car he drove – even the jokes he told – could have come straight out of a Terry Thomas film. By day he was an air traffic controller, by night he was an aspiring comedian. He had been at art school with Vic Reeves and subsequently had become embroiled in Vic and Bob’s antics, making brief appearances in their stage shows and joining them on tour. Now he was branching out on his own. His set – a parade of puns, one-liners and Christmas cracker-style jokes – was entirely original and of his own creation, but was so traditional in its tone and subject matter that it gave the impression of having been excavated from the distant past. Some audiences – hungry for something more biting and fashionable – resisted Dorian’s charms, but those audiences who had had their fill of knob gags and hectoring political invective, and who were willing to go along for the ride, laughed uproariously throughout. There was something joyous and liberating about watching Dorian. As with Vic and Bob, it was a bit like he wasn’t supposed to be there, like he had somehow wandered in and managed to get onstage. He was cheeky.
Downstairs the gig began. I lurked nervously at the back of the room, until it was my turn to perform. With the great Bob Mortimer in attendance, I decided to give it everything.
In the five weeks since my first ‘official’ gig at the Punchlines, I had added a dynamic new aspect to Sir Bernard’s persona. I’d been heckled a few times – often before the act had got going – and, terrified and without any decent put-downs, had started to respond by screaming back at hecklers in a rough Cockney accent …
‘I will cut your fucking face! Do you want some? DO YOU FUCKING WANT SOME?’
And then I would turn straight back into the elderly posh old man again, as if nothing had happened. The audience – initially startled – would burst into hysterics.
Eager to utilise anything that got a laugh, I had started to incorporate Chumley’s outbursts into the set, regardless of whether anyone was heckling or not. The anecdote would be routinely punctuated with these horrendous, incongruous streams of abuse, often aimed at anyone who was returning from the bar or simply just someone who happened to be sitting in the front row.
As I performed, I noticed Bob Mortimer making his way down to the front. I certainly didn’t scream at him. I idolised him. However, I did allow myself to glance in his direction once or twice and I saw that he was laughing heartily.
After the show I was in the pub upstairs, wondering if and how I could talk to Bob again. I needn’t have wondered. He came over to me and, making no reference to our brief interaction before the show (maybe he had forgotten – after all, I had been wearing the wig), he introduced himself.
‘Hello, my name’s Bob. I work at a production company called Channel X. I really enjoyed your act. I wondered if you have an agent or a phone number I can pass on?’
Did I fly home that night? I might well have done. I might have soared up into the sky, circled a star and then floated back down over London, towards the suburbs. Did I sleep a wink? Did I even need to? History had been made. I had not only met Bob Mortimer – JESUS CHRIST, I JUST MET BOB MORTIMER – but he had asked for my phone number.
I cannot emphasise enough what a pivotal moment this was for me – in my life, let alone my career. I adored Vic and Bob. To me they were gods. They were Lennon and McCartney. And I was to become their drummer.
Sorry, I couldn’t resist.
I still pinch myself.
It was to be a few months before I heard from Bob, but with the confidence that grew from this chance meeting, nothing was going to stop me. Storm or die, paid or unpaid, I got as many gigs in my diary as possible. I didn’t care what or where they were. I pushed and pushed myself, performing every night, twice a night if I could.
And … I got better. A lot better. And I decided it was time to call Don Ward again and get that open spot at the Comedy Store back in the diary.
The Comedy Store had played host to every great British alternative comic and you saw their photos lining the walls as you descended the stairs. Paul Merton (then Paul Martin), Jo Brand, Rik Mayall and Adrian Edmondson, French and Saunders, even Robin Williams had turned up on a few occasions to try stuff out.
I was never going to get a paid booking there, I was too new for that – so it was more a rite of passage. I just had to do a gig there, at least once.
I did it. And it actually didn’t go too badly.
I did shit myself that morning, though – literally – while serving a customer in the shop.
Ah yes, the shop.
I was leading a do
uble life. By night I was a caped crusader, swooping down through the windows of comedy clubs, reducing audiences to hysterics – or goading them into abuse – before disappearing off into the night. And by day I sold pencil cases, rosettes, scarves, ashtrays – anything, as long as it was emblazoned with Chelsea FC.
Chelsea Sportsland, it was called – a name that never sounded anything other than ridiculous, and which irritated and alienated the largely working-class English fan-base, who still ate dodgy burgers and pissed in each other’s pockets at half-time. Chelsea Sportsland reflected the creeping Americanisation of British culture. Saturday nights on ITV were dominated by a new US format – Gladiators; rockers banged heads to the grisly nasal screeching of Axl Rose. London even had its own gridiron team – The Monarchs.
When Sky paid what was then an astronomical £304 million over five seasons for the rights to broadcast games from the brand new Premier League, they featured cheerleaders at half-time. Football fans were unimpressed, and Chelsea supporters were not too happy either about the vision that Chelsea Football Club and Clive Pollard had for a new football shopping experience. Alongside the Chelsea kits, footballs, posters and T-shirts were a load of baseball jackets.
‘What the fuck is this shit?’ asked one of the more articulate fans as he squinted at an obscenely priced and completely pointless Chelsea baseball shirt.
This was pre-Abramovich Chelsea. This was pre-Matthew Harding Chelsea, even. This was the Ken Bates era, when you stood on the Shed for a few quid, screamed at Nigel Spackman for missing a sitter and called Graeme Le Saux a poof because he read The Guardian.
Tony, the shop manager, was a Watford fan. Vince, who also worked there, supported Leeds, and I was, of course, a Gooner, but on a match day we’d all have to sport Chelsea tops – not the blue one, thank God, but their brand new third kit – white with vertical thin red stripes. Beneath it, in an act of defiance, I would wear my Arsenal top, but that would show through, so I’d have to wear a white T-shirt between the two layers. I was roasting!