by Matt Lucas
The cameraman then introduced me to his wife. She and I chatted for about twenty minutes. At that point the host of the party appeared next to me. I always know him, because he’s very distinctive-looking – with long black hair and white eyebrows. I spent thirty seconds telling him what a lovely party it was, thanking him for the invitation, and then turned back to continue talking to the cameraman’s wife. We spoke for a further five minutes, until she introduced herself. At which point I realised that I had actually been talking to two different people. Not only that, but when the original woman reappeared, I saw that the two women bore no physical similarity whatsoever.
At a party one could almost be forgiven for this kind of thing – you meet a lot of new people in a short space of time. But when you’re working with people on a daily basis and still can’t figure out who folk are, it’s awkward.
These days I just apologise in advance, but for years I kept it to myself, because it’s quite embarrassing to accidentally treat friends as strangers. The way I describe it is that it just takes me a lot longer to learn faces than most people. For some sufferers it’s so extreme that they can’t identify their own parents or even themselves. I don’t have it as bad as all that. I can still function, and often people will be very forgiving, even before I tell them of my condition. ‘Oh, you must meet tons of people,’ they say, when I fail to recognise them. Yes, that’s true too, but there are people I have worked with daily for the past six months, and who I often chat to, and I still wouldn’t recognise them if I met them in the street.
In fact, I probably wouldn’t recognise the street either. I’m useless with directions, but that is mainly because I am an idiot (see earlier chapter).
Pompidou as Freddie
Howard and me with Bobby Moore & George Graham, Brent Cross Shopping Centre, 1989
Q – Queen (and other Teenage Pursuits)
It was 1989. Having been spoilt on a rich early eighties diet of Madness, Duran Duran, Wham! and Elton, the fifteen-year-old me held no truck with Jive Bunny, New Kids on the Block or the inescapable offerings of Stock, Aitken and Waterman. Dance music was not to my taste – ditto hard core hip-hop, heavy metal or bland R’n’B. It was time to find something else to listen to.
However, I was not a sexy skinny dude with long blond hair, blue eyes, a leather jacket and a cute girlfriend. I admired but couldn’t identify with Nirvana, as my friends Alex and Nick did, while Jeremy banged his head to Metallica, which made my ears bleed. And everyone seemed to love Guns N’ Roses. I didn’t mind their songs, but that man’s voice. Ugh. So nasal and whiny. No, thank you.
I needed to find my own music. I habitually scoured Watford market on a Saturday afternoon and Wembley market on a Sunday for LPs and cassettes. I found myself drawn to stars of the sixties and seventies – The Beatles, Elvis, Aretha, James Brown, Glen Campbell, Jackie Wilson, Marvin Gaye. My tastes were encouraged every week night by Randall Lee Rose, the deep-voiced American DJ who ruled Capital Gold and signed off every show by playing ‘Sweet Dreams’ (the Tommy McLain version) and Roy Rogers’ ‘Happy Trails’.
I loved The Proclaimers too. I’d seen them on the TV series The Tube and adored their raw mix of folk and soul, their harmonies and their strange accents. I’d put on one of their records and dance around my bedroom each day after school, crashing into the hi-fi and causing the needle to bounce off the vinyl. Like me, they looked unusual – so much so that they were often mistaken for a novelty act – but it was clear that behind the quirky presentation lay master songwriters. If you want proof, listen to ‘Sunshine on Leith’. It’s as beautiful a ballad as has ever been sung.
My obsession, however, was Queen. I adored their soaring melodies, Freddie’s unrivalled vocals, the sound of Brian’s home-made Red Special guitar, Roger’s thumping beats and John’s funky bass. I could and would bang on at length to anyone who happened to be passing about the differences between the versions of ‘Seven Seas Of Rhye’ that had appeared on their first two albums, the state-of-the-art lighting rig that the band toured with, the collectability of their Japanese laser disc – the list was endless.
In 1989 Freddie was still alive – but Queen weren’t celebrated critically the way they are now. The music press sneered at them, damned them for playing Sun City in South Africa, made sly digs at Freddie’s sexuality, said the band’s lyrics meant nothing, said they should have quit after Live Aid. They didn’t know what I knew, which was that Queen were quite clearly the greatest band in the world.
My bedroom wall was covered in Queen posters. I marvelled at Jeremy’s mum and stepdad, who had been to see them at Wembley. My stepsister Barbra had a ticket to see them perform at Knebworth, but one of her friends let her down and she couldn’t get there. I sat with her and we listened to the concert live on the radio. We didn’t know at the time that the Knebworth show was to be their last.
I never got to see Queen live, but a few months after Freddie died there was a benefit concert at Wembley Stadium in aid of the newly founded Mercury Phoenix Trust and you can bet your bottom dollar bill I was there. Bowie and Annie Lennox sang ‘Under Pressure’, George Michael did ‘Somebody To Love’ and even Liza Minnelli performed ‘We Are The Champions’.
I’d also been to Wembley a few times to see Arsenal play and, by the age of fourteen, was now regularly going to games at Highbury. Our parents were usually working, so Howard and me and my friend Darren would walk to Canons Park station, catch the bus to Edgware and get the Tube from there.
I was a Junior Gunner, which meant I could stand in the Family Enclosure, though it wasn’t long before Darren and I opted to stand on the North Bank at Highbury with Howard and his friends. We’d arrive two hours before kick-off, as the turnstiles opened, and pick an optimum spot for ourselves. Then, five minutes before the match began, some giant lump would barge in front of us and we’d be jumping up and down throughout the match, barely able to see a thing.
One day in 1989 I saw an advert in the Arsenal programme which said that anyone under the age of sixteen could put their name down to be a ball boy. I sent in a letter and forgot all about it. A few months later I received a phone call telling me I would be working for the home games against Everton and Newcastle.
We met an hour before kick-off outside the famous Marble Halls. Bob Wilson, Arsenal’s former goalie, said hello to us in the corridor and joked that if Arsenal were winning, we should take our time giving the ball back to the opposition. We got changed in one of the offices and I saw a large pile of tickets on the counter for the forthcoming match against Liverpool at Anfield. There was no hotter ticket in the country at that time and there were not many security cameras around either in those days. I remember thinking I could just swipe a couple for me and my brother and no one would probably notice.
I was thrilled to pull on the Arsenal tracksuit and walk out onto the pitch, standing on the halfway line while the players ran past. One or two patted my head for luck.
The second match – against Newcastle – took place on 15 April 1989. It was a day that would change British football forever. Some of the fans nearby had radios and during the first half somebody mentioned that someone had been killed in a crush up at Hillsborough.
I wasn’t surprised. Only weeks earlier I had been in a couple of crushes in the North Bank and I genuinely thought I was going to die. They occurred towards the end of the match, when some fans made their way to the exit, while others remained in their path to watch the final seconds.
The year before, I had gone to Wembley to watch Arsenal lose unexpectedly to Luton Town in the Littlewoods Challenge Cup Final. Arsenal took the lead. The crowd celebrated wildly and I got pushed and pulled about so much that my flagstick went into my eye. We were then awarded a penalty. As Arsenal were already ahead and I was fearful of another crush, I was actually relieved when we didn’t score.
On that day in April 1989, the full enormity of the tragedy in Sheffield wasn’t yet known and at half-time, in the Players’ Lounge,
I had a Coke and still wanted to know the Tottenham score. Meanwhile Des Lynam was on Grandstand providing updates, turning paler by the second. That night I watched the news in horror and, back at Haberdashers’ on the Monday, learned that two sisters from the girls’ school – Sarah and Victoria Hicks – had perished at Hillsborough.
A few weeks later, when Arsenal beat the odds to clinch the league title at Anfield with virtually the last kick of the game, I was watching on TV in Edgware with Howard and his friends, but we got straight in the car and headed to Highbury, where a spontaneous street party broke out. A couple of days after that, Mum took me to see the victory parade. We cheered wildly as the players arrived on an open-top bus and joined in with Perry Groves as he led a chorus of ‘Ooh, To Be a Gooner’ from the Islington Town Hall balcony. Though the whole country had wanted Liverpool to win that year, it was Arsenal’s first title in eighteen seasons and we celebrated for months.
I continued going to Arsenal throughout my teenage years and beyond. I saw George Graham’s steely team grind out 1–0 victories and witnessed Arsène Wenger’s French revolution. In my twenties and thirties I fulfilled my dream of owning a season ticket. These days I live in the US, but I get up at silly o’clock to watch the matches live on telly, and when I’m back in London I go to as many games as possible.
I still love Arsenal. I get into arguments with strangers about Arsenal. I wear stupid Arsenal polo shirts and jumpers most days. I schedule work and book holidays around Arsenal fixtures. I think about Arsenal sometimes when I should be concentrating on helping the Doctor defeat those monsters that are trying to destroy the universe. My relationship with Arsenal has been a huge part of my life. At turns joyous, depressing, inspiring, exasperating. I could write a book about it. Maybe one day I will. But while football captivates many, it bores others rigid. One whole chapter about Arsenal would be too little for some readers and too much for the rest of you, so either forgive me or thank me for nipping back to Wembley – not as a spectator, but now – in 1990 – as a casual labourer, working there on weekends while studying at college.
The job was knackering, but at least it was varied. The foreman would hand the easiest jobs to his mates. The rest of us picked up a broom and set to work emptying bins and sweeping up horseshit. Yup, even me, your little gay dumpling. Sometimes the foreman had overbooked, and then he would send some of us home with no work, no money and no apology, chastising us for being late, even though we weren’t.
Often we’d be employed on a match day. At 8 a.m. it was bearable. By 1 p.m., as the crowds began to arrive, the bins would fill with litter faster than we could empty them, and if the end of my shift coincided with the final whistle, it might take me two hours just to get onto a tube home.
I much preferred working the day after a big game – at least it was quiet. The key was to try and engineer a spot clearing up after the supporters of the winning team. There you were much more likely to find little gifts absent-mindedly left behind by jubilant, drunken fans: unopened cigarette packets, Sony Walkmans and, of course, money. One Sunday in 1991 I worked alone, personally cleaning every seat in the Olympic Gallery after Tottenham had won the FA Cup, and my irritation at the result (compounded by having seen Arsenal lose to Spurs in the semi-final) was in some way reduced by finding an extra £30 amongst the trash.
Despite the occasional unexpected cash bonus, I was keen to find another job and I soon did – this time working at Homerun Video Megastore in Harrow. I’d walked past the shop while it was being fitted and popped my head in speculatively, asking if they needed any weekend staff. It was a large shop, owned by an American who never graced us with his actual presence, but who was regarded by the management as some kind of a visionary, when clearly all he had done was just copy Blockbuster.
It was the first time I had worked at a computerised till with a barcode scanner. I amused myself no end one dull day by looking up the American owner’s account and then renting out a selection of unlikely titles on it – Pepé. Le Pew, Carry On Abroad and a Mad Lizzie workout tape.
Barcode scanners are the best. Who doesn’t love the beep of a scanner? I used to know a guy called Biffo who worked at the Our Price in Watford, who told me that he once sat at the counter bored out of his tree repeatedly scanning a packet of Marlboro Lights and by Wednesday afternoon they were number 4 in the charts.
Anyway, for those of you old enough to remember going into a video shop, I’m pretty sure you were generally happy to be left alone to browse. If you wanted a particular film, you’d ask for it, yes? Well, the luxury of time and space was not afforded to the clientele of Homerun Video Megastore, because its employees were instructed to trail customers around the shop, haranguing them with questions, all of which had been helpfully printed out on a laminated card which we were to carry around with us at all times.
‘Can I help you?’ was the first one. Most people just said no. After much feedback the laminated card was reprinted, so that we were now to ask ‘How can I help you?’ – to which most people replied ‘I’m all right, actually’.
But we were still under orders to stalk anyone who came into the shop and interact with them. We had a huge catalogue of films, but there was one furious old man who would turn up early in the mornings, always in a terrible mood, perpetually frustrated with our selection: ‘Where’s the violent films? I want violent! I want violent!’ I would try to help him, but my efforts were either met with ‘That’s a fifteen! I want an eighteen!’ or ‘That’s a thriller! There’s only one death. It’s not violent! I want violent!’
Some of the other customers were more approachable. One middle-aged Asian man – who looked the spitting image of the Dalai Lama – would pop in week after week and engage me in long conversations about film. I loved that he seemed to share my passion for independent movies, rather than the mindless action flicks that took up most of the shelves.
One quiet Sunday we chatted as usual and then he said, ‘I’ll see you next week.’
‘Oh, actually, it’s my last day today,’ I told him. ‘I’m doing A levels and we’ve got our exams soon, so I need to focus on them.’
His face dropped. He seemed to leave the shop a broken man. I was momentarily baffled, but then became distracted by a kid being sick on the giant Sam the Spider slide in the play area.
A couple of hours later, the man who looked like the Dalai Lama returned. Trembling, he handed me a piece of paper with his phone number on it, took a deep breath, kissed me on the cheek and ran out. One of my colleagues saw this and burst out laughing. I was embarrassed for myself and felt sad for the man.
A few months afterwards I was sat on my own upstairs on the 340 bus from Harrow back to Stanmore, McDonald’s takeaway bag on my lap, gazing out of the window, when I spotted the man. My heart sank. He looked up, saw me and then broke into a run towards the bus. He managed to get on just before the doors closed and then, dripping with sweat, headed up the stairs. He seemed so happy to see me, and despite the many empty seats available, joined me on mine, squeezing close and hemming me in.
‘You didn’t call.’
‘Oh, um … I lost your number.’
He pulled out a piece of paper and a pen, wrote down his number again and this time his address too.
‘How have you been?’ he asked.
‘Okay, thanks. I’ve got exams coming up soon.’
‘I haven’t been so good. I’m taking pills at the moment. For depression. They do help me in some ways, but they really piss me off because I can’t get an erection anymore.’
Through his trousers he started to press down impatiently on his penis.
‘Look, nothing. Useless. It’s been months.’
I gulped and stared ahead, food getting cold in my lap.
‘Come over sometime,’ he said. ‘To mine, yes? Please? Maybe you can … help me.’
He got off the bus. A few stops later so did I. I left my McNuggets on the seat. Didn’t really fancy them anymore.
Ever
since then, even though he’s possibly one of the most virtuous men on the planet – and it was just someone who looked like him – every time I see the Dalai Lama on telly, I think ‘Ugh, he touches his penis on the bus’.
Now we both know that I can’t very well finish this chapter there, so allow me, if you will, to jump forward to 2011 …
… and the final week of my run in Les Misérables. Queen’s manager Jim Beach threw a party in London for what would have been Freddie Mercury’s sixty-fifth birthday, in aid of the Mercury Phoenix Trust. Roger Taylor, Brian May and their band performed some Queen numbers with guest performers, including Tom Chaplin from Keane, Mike Rutherford and Jeff Beck.
The theme of the party was ‘Freddie for a Day’. Guests were encouraged to dress up as the man himself. I would have been jubilant just to have received an invite, but to my amazement I was asked to perform with the band. I hotfooted it from the Queen’s Theatre (of course), still in my Monsieur Thénardier costume – and now sporting a Freddie-style moustache. Moments after I arrived I sang ‘Good Old-Fashioned Lover Boy’ onstage with Roger and Brian. I almost want to have kids just so I can tell them about it. It’s weird because, several years later, I still can’t quite comprehend it. It’s too fantastical. It’s too magical. But it happened.
In November 1991, two nights after Freddie died, we had a college trip to see a play in Hammersmith. My friend Claire and I made a detour to Freddie’s home in Logan Place. ‘Radio Gaga’ was blasting from the house, but outside the mood was sombre. Fans lit candles and pinned notes to the front door. I wrote ‘There Can Be Only One’ – a reference to the movie Highlander, which Queen had provided the music for. I was tearful. For a closeted teen, the future seemed bleak and uncertain. I want to go back now and tell my young self that it not only gets better, but give it twenty years and you’ll even get to be Freddie for a day.
I must be dreaming
R – Really Big Britain
David and I would write solidly for about six months, either at his place or mine. We’d start at 10 a.m. – or nine minutes past, given my timekeeping – drink copious amounts of peppermint tea, stop for an M&S microwaved lunch, or, if we were feeling like we needed to get out of the house, grab some noodles at Wagamama, and then write until about 4.30 or 5 p.m. We’d come up with three sketches a day, on average.