Dying on your arse, as comedians tend to call it, is, as you might expect, a pretty grim experience. And it doesn’t take much to start the terrible ball slowly rolling. A comedy act is a bit like a long street, with the jokes as lampposts. I know this is pushing it but bear with me. If you’re walking down a long street and you come to a lamppost that doesn’t work, it’s a bit dark, but not bad enough to cause you to turn back because the light from the next lamppost and the previous one will suffice. However, if the next lamppost doesn’t work either, then it starts to get really gloomy. Logically it seems wise to turn down another street because, well, you just can’t rely on these lampposts any more. Clearly there is some sort of power failure.
It was getting so dark, I couldn’t see the end of the routine at all.
As often happens with nerves, I got quicker, and quicker, trying to hurry to the next lamppost before it was too late. I was driving blind, with no headlights, at breakneck speed, and, unfortunately, I was driving the X-Twenty to Stratford.
My best mate, Marino, was in the audience. Pete, who offered me the job at Halesowen College, was in the audience. One of my slightly older female students, who had fantastic, slightly muscular legs and a sun-bed tan, was in the audience. A girl from my drama evening class I was desperately trying to shag was in the audience. And, of course, Malcolm was in the audience. But it was too dark to see any of them. The dying comic is utterly alone. I had come to see myself, from a personal-worth point of view, as funny, and not much else. Now, even that had been taken away.
Comedy without laughs is just someone talking. This is what I became. Andy Feet went OK, but not as well as when I’d seen him previously. The world was upside-down. I started to crumble. I would begin a routine but, if the first line or two failed, I just gave up and introduced the next act. I suppose I was afraid of the dark. Slowly, my terrible evening ebbed away, and when I finally walked off stage at the end of the show, there was just silence. I felt smaller and older. I was back on the scrapheap. As soon as I was in the gloom of the wings, I closed my eyes, took a deep breath, and just stood there. I was a broken man. Then I remembered that I had spent my life-savings booking an hour-long stand-up comedy slot at the next Edinburgh Festival. I was trapped.
I’m in Japan now, and I like it. In Osaka, I saw a Japanese Hell’s Angel sitting on his massive bike at the traffic lights. He wore a helmet that had ‘Fuck the World’ written on it, but he didn’t look like he really meant it. When Phil took his photo, you could tell that he stayed especially still in order to be helpful. The Japanese are incredibly polite. I know everybody says this – well, everybody except old POWs – but it’s true. It makes the whole place seem really safe. I know ‘Fuck the World’ doesn’t seem all that polite, but I’m not sure that English translations are ever quite right over here. Everything comes out sounding a bit like modern poetry. I saw a girl wearing a t-shirt that said, ‘Lay low until they consider you more highly.’ If only she’d been at the Portland Club. More confusing, since we’re in Japan, was another girl’s t-shirt, on the railway platform in Osaka. It said, ‘Turn soft and lovery every time you have the chance.’ Now, of course, it could have meant ‘lovery’ as in like a lover, or, alternatively, well, I suppose it could have been a Japanese post-modern ironic take on Benny Hill.
We went to meet a schoolteacher in Shimizu, whose school has produced a stupid amount of professional footballers, several of them internationals. He was a very still, calm person, not like your average English schoolteacher. He had a manner more like that bloke with the ping-pong-ball eyes in the Kung Fu TV series. The one who used to say Grasshopper a lot. (I sense you’re giving me that look I got when I mentioned X-Two-Zero, all those years ago.) The schoolteacher was like a sensei, I believe they call them here, a sort of master, a source of wisdom. He said he had a feeling for football, for its rhythms and its special moments. As he spoke, a fourteen-year-old Japanese kid on a nearby dirt pitch swept one sweet thirty-yard free kick after the next round a plastic five-man defensive wall, and into, or nearly into, a goal defended bravely by an unusually tall teenage goalkeeper.
The teacher started talking about football in a very philosophical way. He talked about a thing called ‘wa’, which seemed to be a kind of extreme form of team-spirit along the lines of being prepared to truly suffer for the good of the team. As another free kick zinged home, he started to lose me a bit. He explained that one of the most important actions in football is inaction, or ‘pause’. That moment before something happens. All the great players have this pause, and their movements and non-movements not only employ this pause to its full advantage, but also deliberately fracture the pause in others. I could feel a very fine trail of steam leaving each of my ears. The Japanese word for this ‘pause’, he explained, is ‘ma’. For a brief moment, or pause, I considered telling him the Marmite joke. But I didn’t.
Unsurprisingly, I didn’t hang around after the Portland Club gig. I had promised the girl from the drama group a lift home in my 1967 Vauxhall Viva, but now the idea of shagging her seemed like it came from a previous life. I no longer had the right to shag anyone. She chatted about everything but the gig on the way home, but it didn’t help. Earlier in the evening, I had noticed that her arse looked fantastic in the tight white jeans she was wearing, but as she walked away from the car towards her front door, I didn’t even bother to look. I sat there in the Viva, re-living each terrible moment. Malcolm had thought it was hilarious. Not my material, my humiliation, and amidst his uncontrolled giggling, he told my passenger to keep me away from canals on the way home. I turned off the lights and switched off the engine and sat in the dark. Marino, another witness to my disgrace, had the bedsit next to mine, and I didn’t want to go home yet in case he was still up. After a while, I could see my breath in the air as the car steadily got colder. Apparently, despite everything, I was still alive.
The next morning I was back in college, teaching again. I entered the building through a side-door because I didn’t want to pass the orange dayglo poster advertising the gig. My first lesson was A-level English. Which was a bit unfortunate because the class included the woman with the fantastic, slightly muscular legs and sun-bed tan, and I was hoping to avoid her for a while till I could get some of my composure back. As I neared the open door of the classroom, I could hear her voice, clear as a bell, saying, ‘Nobody was laughing.’ I stopped, I took a deep breath, I walked in. She looked embarrassed. I think she assumed I would have taken my own life during the night. I looked straight at her and said, ‘Wasn’t it terrible?’ She struggled for a suitable reply, so I went straight into the lesson to get her off the hook. I don’t know if she picked up on my strained over-cheerfulness, but I was glad she had turned up. Not because I felt the need to face my demons, or show the witnesses to my nightmare that I had awoken to a bright new day, but because she had fantastic, slightly muscular legs, and she sat at the front desk, where I could see them in all their splendour. I think I was starting to recover.
I went to 7 o’clock Mass in Osaka this morning, at the Cathedral of Santa Maria. As I walked in the back door with Bernie, also a papist, the first thing I noticed was a massive stained-glass window on the side wall showing St. Francis Xavier bringing Christianity to the Japanese. He stood there, in a blue robe, with his arms spread wide. At his side, but slightly behind him, was a man in full samurai-warrior gear, wearing a crucifix. The church was full of morning sunshine.
Bernie and me crossed ourselves with holy water from a massive sea-shell next to the door, and then I followed her to a pew. Dotted around the church were lots of nuns dressed in white, each one standing alone at least five or six feet from the next. I suppose they didn’t want to be distracted from their oneness with God, but it meant that in order to get to a seat, you had to pass through a sort of ‘nun slalom’.
I was glad Bernie had led the way, because it meant that the fact I’d ended up standing behind a leggy Japanese schoolgirl in a very short grey pleated skirt wa
s purely accidental. Because, and I’m generalising here, Catholic women have a tendency to be better-looking than Protestant ones, this is a regular dilemma when attending a Catholic church. Usually, wherever I go – pubs, restaurants, football matches, public transport, crematoriums – I always like to position myself so that I have at least one attractive woman nearby who I can gawp at in a strictly non-intimidatory way, but in church this just doesn’t seem right. I have, accidentally, found myself with a good view of an attractive woman in church, and I don’t really enjoy it. I can’t help but think of Matthew 5:28, ‘But I say unto you, that whosoever looketh on a woman to lust after her hath committed adultery with her already in his heart.’ Well, that’s no good, is it? Not in a church.
And where does Matthew 5:28 leave all the millions of women I’ve lookethed on over the years? You can’t commit adultery on your own so, presumably, they’ve all committed adultery with me, without even noticing. Poor Zola Budd.
Anyway, my point is that I try not to commit adultery in this way when I’m in a Catholic church. Which is a shame, really, because I’ve always thought that a Catholic church is, in fact, a fantastic place to pull girls. There’s a black girl who goes to one of my local churches who is absolutely to die for, but I’d never dare approach her in or around church, I mean if I was single, because it seems, well, improper. And yet I know that we already have one massively important thing in common. She would be one of the few girls I’ve been out with who didn’t think my Catholicism was seriously weird. At the same time, even if I saw her in another context, in a bar or something, I couldn’t go up to her and say, ‘Hello, we go to the same church,’ because modern prejudices against Christianity have forced so many of us into the closet that her friends would probably say, ‘What’s that? You go to church? You fucking weirdo. Don’t hang around with us anymore,’ and she’d hate me for exposing her. Mind you, I probably wouldn’t approach her, even if she was on her own, because I imagine that practising Catholics don’t put out. I mean, I know I do, but that’s because I’m spiritually flawed.
Nevertheless, there I stood, at seven o’clock in the morning in a Catholic church in Osaka, behind a leggy Japanese schoolgirl in a very short grey pleated skirt, trying hard not to commit adultery with her.
I’d like to add a small technical point here, Japanese schoolgirls in their school uniforms are everywhere in Japan. It’s not like in Britain, where school uniforms seem to slowly fade into street clothes as kids get to about fifteen. There are seventeen- and eighteen-year-old girls in school uniform all over the place. This is, it has to be said, a very good thing, especially in regard to socks. Many of these girls wear baggy white socks that look a bit like leg warmers. Phil, who has researched this subject, told me that the girls wear these because it makes their legs look slimmer, and that they glue them to their shins to keep them in place. This sexy-schoolgirl thing has been made worse (or is it better?) by one particular social phenomenon. Because of a Westernisation of diet in recent years, Japanese schoolgirls are much more curvy than older Japanese women. The latter tend to be often beautiful, but also very slim-hipped and flat-chested. Thus, the girls look like women and the women look like girls. I’m keeping out of it, but Japanese blokes must get very bewildered.
The schoolgirl in the pew in front had gone for the baggy white socks, but the effect was spoiled by the fact that her legs were a bit hairy. This was the first hairy Japanese woman I’d noticed. I wondered if, maybe, she was a feminist. But what would a feminist be doing in a Catholic church? In fact, this poor girl had got it bad. She even had thick black hairs coming out of the collar of her skimpy white cardigan. And when she turned to the side, I could see that she also had sideburns, and stubble, and a wig, and was a bloke. I whispered to Bernie, ‘This schoolgirl is a bloke,’ but she didn’t seem at all bothered. I think she was trying hard to be all grown-up and broad-minded about it, but I was really shocked. Thank God I hadn’t committed adultery on this occasion. It would have been a double whammy.
Now, don’t get me wrong. I don’t have anything against blokes dressing up in women’s clothes if that’s what they like, but a middle-aged man in a schoolgirl uniform? In church? Maybe he had in mind Matthew 18:3: ‘Verily, I say unto you, except ye be converted, and become as little children, ye shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven.’
Then it came to the bidding prayers. These are prayers in which the congregation join together to pray for others: the heads of the church, the poor, the sick, and so on. The first of these was read by a nun, in Japanese of course, but there was a pamphlet which had the prayers translated into English. Her prayer was ‘Send messengers of love and compassion to countries suffering from drought and hunger, into slum areas, and among the poor and neglected.’ And we all replied, ‘Lord, your kingdom come.’ Then an old lady read a prayer, ‘Send messengers of peace into army barracks, weapons factories and rocket warehouses, strongholds of rebels and private armies. And so we pray.’ Amidst the response, I thought, ‘Wow! That’s what I call a prayer.’
Then the hairy transvestite spoke. I stood, mouth slightly open, as a middle-aged man in a schoolgirl uniform offered, in a voice deeper than mine, this prayer to God: ‘Lord, send messengers of tenderness to the dead-end streets, the furnished or unfurnished rooms of the lonely, and the attics of the abandoned in our cities. And so we pray.’ My ‘Lord, your kingdom come’ was said with a tightening throat. I imagined him, lonely in his furnished or unfurnished room, a figure of fun to most people, but embraced by this small Catholic community happy to encourage his active participation in the Mass, regardless of his bizarre appearance. I felt humbled and slightly ashamed. I suppose I had dismissed him as a freak, but he was, it seemed to me now, a brave and very honest man.
Japan is eight hours ahead of Britain, so when you’re next out, living it up, at eleven on a Saturday night, remember that, in a Catholic church in Osaka, there’s a middle-aged man in a schoolgirl uniform and wig, listening attentively amidst the whirr of electric fans to the word of God, and offering up his prayers for the lonely and the abandoned.
Malcolm had got me a second gig. This was an amazing thing in itself, but there were two things about it that made it even more amazing. Firstly, it was back at the Portland Club, and secondly, I was getting paid. Fifty quid for half an hour. I was to supply the comedy for the club’s New Year’s Eve Extravaganza. After my grim debut at the same venue, I decided that I would write a completely new set, and even chuck in a few old mainstream gags to get the audience on my side. I was glad I was going back to the Portland. It was like getting back on the horse that had thrown me. It would exorcise the devils that still lingered after December 9th.
When Malcolm and me arrived on New Year’s Eve, the party was already in full swing. All the audience, which ranged from twelve-year-olds to old-age pensioners, wore paper hats and blew little cardboard trumpets that made a high-pitched shriek. The DJ was playing sixties classics and everybody looked like they were up for a good time. I had learned a lot from my first gig. Now it was time to put those lessons into practice.
I stood in the wings and listened as the DJ faded out Herman’s Hermits’ ‘I’m into Something Good’ and told the audience that I was a ‘very funny local lad’. Then, in a much louder voice, he said, ‘Ladies and gentlemen, Chris Collins,’ and I bounded forth, on to the stage, to much applause and cheering. I went straight into my brand new opening gag: ‘I bought my girlfriend a lovely engagement ring for Christmas, but she dropped it on the floor and the dog ate it. And we’ve been just going through the motions ever since.’
How quickly an audience can turn from summer to autumn. There was mainly silence and some groans. Not just casual groans, but groans of profound disappointment and indignation. I hurried on to the second lamppost. ‘The manager told me to keep it short and sweet tonight, so I’ve spent the last half hour sitting in a bath full of ice-cream.’ Silence, except for a couple of cardboard trumpets. No groans. This was good. I was o
n an upward curve, but the street was still very dark. I decided to try and engage the audience on a more personal level. I turned to a bloke at a table near the front. ‘Just think, mate,’ I said, ‘in an hour’s time, it’ll be 1988. Doesn’t time fly when you’re going bald.’ I think he said, ‘Fuck off,’ but I couldn’t hear him over the shrill chorus of the now-deafening cardboard horn section. I looked into the wings. Malcolm, the DJ, and the manager of the club, were standing, shoulder-to-shoulder, frantically gesturing me towards them and mouthing ‘Come off’ with a look of desperation in their eyes. I turned back to the audience. The tenor trumpets had been joined by a baritone chorus of booing.
I knew a few old gags which involved animals, and had written some stuff on a similar theme, myself. This, I felt, would turn them round. ‘I’m going to tell you my ten favourite animal jokes,’ I said.
‘Oh no you’re not,’ said a voice from the back.
‘No, honest, I am. And you’ll really like these.’
Frank Skinner Autobiography Page 28