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First published in Great Britain in 2008 by Bantam Press
an imprint of Transworld Publishers
Copyright © Jonathan Ross 2008
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ISBNs 9781407040219
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To Jane, and Betty and Harvey and Honey, who are all that matter.
Why do I say these things?
Jonathan Ross
Acknowledgements
This book was first promised almost ten years ago, so I offer both thanks and apologies to Larry Finlay for the long wait. Thanks also to Susanna Wadeson and her team who helped decipher my ramblings on tape before we committed them to paper, guiding me gently in the right direction without judging. And thanks to Suzi Aplin and the talented and patient people who work on my various shows and who must have grown tired of hearing me say I couldn’t make a meeting because I had to work on ‘the book’. Thanks also to David Baddiel and Jimmy Carr and Victor Hillman for not blowing my cover when we were playing tennis after I had managed to avoid a meeting, claiming I needed to work on ‘the book’.
Thanks to Shaun, Frasier and Jim for making me laugh, and to Jez for pretty much the same but for longer. And to Fiona and Andy and Chrissie and Jerry and Lou and Lesley over at Radio 2.
My agent, despite all the odds, is also my friend. Addison – thanks for always being there, even when you’re not.
Thanks to Robert for keeping the computers working, to Sam for getting the kids from school, and Lillya, Catherine, Tommy and Paul for loads of other things. Thanks to Andy for watching my front, and Dave, David, Stephen and Ian, aka Four Poofs and a Piano, for watching my back. Thanks to Danny and Damon and Joe, at the other office. Thanks to Mr Pickle, Captain Jack, Sweeny, Princess, Yoda, Cupcake and Spider, for keeping me company on the couch.
Thanks, finally, to all the Little People, without whom The Wizard of Oz would have been nowhere near as much fun.
Why do I say these things?
Why do I say these things? It’s a phrase which I’ve moaned to my wife on any number of occasions over the twenty or so years we’ve been together, and a phrase which I used with my friends and family before Jane and I found each other. A phrase which, over the years, has shifted from being a genuine question to a rhetorical one, until now it’s more of a groaning statement of defeat. I’ve lost count of the number of times that I’ve inadvertently insulted a guest on one of my shows, or given away just a little too much about my sex life while making a speech at a charity fundraiser. And so, unable to control my loose tongue and rambling brain, I have instead tried to channel them and turn this mental tic to my advantage.
Oddly, for someone who is virtually unembarrassable, I still feel some things are best kept to yourself, which is why this book is not my autobiography. My life has had a lot of fun moments and a few dramatic ones, but mostly it’s been fairly straightforward – at least that’s how it seems to me – and of course it’s still going on. Maybe one day, when I’m winding things down on the career front, I will write that book. That’s if people still seem interested enough, and my kids have grown up enough not to be shocked when they find out that Dad’s done all the same stupid things and made the same mistakes that they will one day. Nor is this one of those books that recounts every meeting the writer’s ever had with a famous person, predictably retelling the event so that they always come out on top. And it’s certainly not a collection of short stories, or a guide to anything useful or interesting, like finding the right pension, or how to meet the perfect partner. Which leaves us with the question of exactly what this book is.
I wanted it to be the story of how I regained consciousness in the Pacific Ocean, more dead than alive. Nursed back to health by a friendly sailor, I had no inkling of who I really was, the only clue being the number tattooed on my arm which led to a safe deposit box in a Swiss bank. There I discovered a gun, money and a number of different passports. But who am I? Jason Bourne, the lethal killing machine, or mild-mannered David Webb, family man and college professor? But dammit, that didn’t happen to me, and it’s already been done. So I decided to write about a bunch of stuff that really has occurred. A bunch of stuff that I think you’ll find funny, or interesting, or both. The sort of stuff that I ramble on about in between the records on my radio show, or sometimes crowbar into the talk show between guests. The sort of things that have occasionally resulted in my getting told off by my wife or kids or the people I work for, but more often lead to people telling me that they liked hearing it. That’s what I went for in the end. Hope you enjoy.
I date-raped myself
Filming a documentary on the woefully neglected topic of Mexican wrestling movies some time around 1989, I found myself landing in Mexico City itself. It’s not a place I’d recommend for a fun tourist break, not least because, aside from the pollution and the overcrowding and the mind-boggling traffic jams and the violent crime, landing there is a bitch. We flew in on a turbulent day, and our approach entailed flying over a mountain range. The abrupt shifts in air pressure led to an effect that I believe pilots refer to as shearing, while we passengers chose more colourful phrases like ‘Oh fuck, we’re all going to die.’
Only a handful of my fellow travellers seemed unconcerned by the improvised rollercoaster approach to the runway, even when a stewardess fell into someone’s lap and several bags exploded, piñata-style, from the overhead lockers. I assume the ones who kept their cool were either regulars, who had experienced this often and knew it was par for the course, or drug mules, so intent on not drawing attention to themselves that they would have stayed in their seats, staring straight ahead and minding their own illegal business, even if the tail had fallen off. Never yet having smuggled drugs, I can only imagine how keenly having a condom filled with cocaine working its way through your lower intestine must focus your attention. However, now I think of it, surely they would have been smuggling drugs out of the country rather than into it. Perhaps they were lost or stupid drug mules. I added that qualifying ‘yet’ in the sentence about me smuggling drugs because you never know what the future might hold, and I don’t want to make rash promises now that I might have trouble keeping later in life.
Even though we were down Mexico way to work, we squeezed in a few afternoons off, one of which we spent at the amusement park that could be seen from my hotel-room window. The hotel was new and super-modern and incredibly tall and seemed to have been built exclusively out of glass. Lovely to look at from the outside, rather terrifying to sleep in, especially on the fifty-ninth floor during an electrical storm. The funfair, however, was great, and while enjoying the rollercoaster, an old-fashioned johnny made of wood apparently built in the fifties then left alone to acquire the appearance of elegant decay, w
hich looked as if it was rarely if ever troubled by pesky safety checks, I had something of a minor epiphany. I love being scared when it’s safe, but loathe the reality of actual fear. The swoops and drops that I willingly permitted the rollercoaster to hurtle me through were fun, because I expected them and had signed on for the experience. But encountering more or less the same sensations unexpectedly in a plane or a tall glass building made me sweat and pray to all the gods I’ve flirted with over the years and promise I’d never put myself in the same situation ever again.
Seeing as much of the build-up to visiting Mexico City involves people finding different ways of telling you you might not make it back alive, you’d have thought a bumpy landing and some lightning would have been easily shrugged off. It’s not as if I hadn’t tried to prepare myself for the worst. I had packed some shabby clothes for our trips out of the city, having been warned that we should try our hardest to look poor. Compared to today, I suppose I was poor back then, having a mortgage that kept me awake at night and not for a moment believing I had any long-term career prospects on television, and therefore worried about how I would support my family once the bubble burst. But compared to some of the actual live Mexicans I saw there, of course, I was rich beyond comprehension.
Driving out to a big wrestling event that was taking place in what I remember as being a very, very large barn with seats, we saw many people who were proper, raggedy-arse, cartoon poor. That’s not to say they didn’t look nice. In fact, compared to the way poor people look nowadays they looked fabulous – traditional-style clothing that had been patched and repaired and was still authentically of the region, straw hats, babies tied on to their bodies with lengths of colourful cloth – nice friendly eye-candy-style poverty. None of the truncated limbs or festering sores that India is so rightly famous for, nor the starving, fly-covered African-style poverty that frankly no one can enjoy driving past, however quickly. This was old-school, 100 per cent charming poverty – picturesque and life-affirming and, most importantly to those with a purist approach to travel, indigenous. Not like today, when no matter where you look you’re likely to see people wearing hand-me-downs and cast-offs from the West. There were some pictures printed recently showing the survivors of an earthquake somewhere so far away I can’t even remember its name. Along with the usual sporting brands of shirts, shorts and baseball caps that had been handed out to the survivors, one of them, a very old man, was wearing a Little Britain T-shirt with Daffyd, the only gay in the village, on the front. That’s just cruel, isn’t it? Surely he had suffered enough already.
Like many of you, I’m sure, I sponsor some charmingly poor families in picturesque but underprivileged parts of the world. As part of the deal for setting up the standing order that ensures they receive a set amount each month, enough to help the village educate their kids and keep fresh water coming, they send you a picture of the families you are sponsoring, sometimes with a note from the children. It’s very sweet, and helps to keep you involved enough not to cancel the standing order in a year’s time when you get bored with the concept of sending money to strangers.
But in one of the pictures they sent me, alongside the adorable children living in a tiny house made of clay, trying their best to smile and look cute for the rich but possibly fickle stranger half a world away who helped pay for the village well, you can make out an elderly family member sitting in the background. He’s wearing a hooded sweatshirt that someone, somewhere, must have bought after going to see Bucks Fizz play live. Oh, the humiliation. I’ve tried to make out who was supporting them, and it might have been Dollar, but the old man is sitting at a funny angle and there’s a crease in the shirt. And while I’m on the subject, would it not have been a good idea for them to clean up a little before the photo was taken? I don’t expect it to look like a Hello! spread – Mustafa and Kemel show us around their charming mud hut – but surely they could have used one of their dodgy T-shirts to wipe the table and give the windows a clean? There’s no better use for a Curiosity Killed the Cat sleeveless tanktop than a little light hovel dusting.
Anyway, the Mexicans we met were mostly poor, but fabulously friendly, and I fell in love with them, imagining how rich and fulfilling my life would be if I came back to live here. This is something I normally do when I encounter a new country with a new language and a new history. I get overly excited and start making all sorts of stupid pointless promises that I never manage to keep. I convince myself I will return with the whole family within six months. I just know that, this time, I really will go to the absurd trouble of learning the language fluently, and when I reappear, those people to whom I stammered an unconvincing ‘Good morning’ or ‘How much is that?’ in native will be delighted and impressed that the handsome gringo who they secretly recognized as being somehow better than all the other tourists is now virtually one of them.
With that in mind, and considering myself virtually a proper Mexican by day three, I took great care to ensure that my mementoes reflected my status. I managed to collect a vinyl box set of Mexican revolutionary songs, certain that I would soon be an expert not only on the war against the Americans but, more specifically, the folk music of the period. Almost twenty years on I still have that box set, still unopened. I also bought some Frida Kahlo postcards, some Day of the Dead figures with which to decorate my soon-to-be-Mexican-themed house, and an over-large sombrero. This was purchased only as an ironic joke, but I soon grew to hate it as I couldn’t pack it in any of the cases I had, so I wound up wearing it on the flight out of the country, looking like the biggest, stupidest tourist in the history of tourism.
It was later stolen from my hotel room in Los Angeles. I often wondered about that and have concluded that it might have been taken by a furious Mexican employee convinced I was taking the piss. The chance of someone actually wanting or needing a giant sombrero so much that they would take the risk of stealing it and then smuggling it out of a hotel is too remote even to contemplate, so I have surmised it was hidden in the dirty laundry, then taken downstairs and destroyed, while every single Mexican employee in the hotel cheered and danced around it.
But the most interesting thing I picked up in Mexico City and took back over the border into America was a stomach bug, the worst stomach bug I have ever had, and this is coming from someone who managed to contract a mild form of dysentery whilst canoeing just outside Seattle, a story I will save for another time. I can even pinpoint the exact meal that I got it from, and I really do have no one to blame but myself. It was our last night there, and we had been careful not to drink anything but bottled water or – as was more often the case – beer. But after a few days of this we had begun to think we were being stupidly, needlessly cautious. After all, we had toughened up our systems with junk food from the four corners of the globe. Our national dish was chicken madras. We were confident we could handle anything the Mexicans cared to throw at us. And so on the last night, while eating in a fabulous restaurant that had a live band and a dance floor where people twirled one another around as the rest of us chowed down chimichangas, we asked for a dish that you could only get in Mexico. Mexican food that you’d never see in a so-called Mexican restaurant anywhere else in the world.
The meal we were served and, crucially, ate, was lamb that had been wrapped in banana leaves and buried underground for three days before cooking. Essentially we ate a reincarnated meal, the Jesus of main courses. It probably tasted lovely. I can’t remember, because doubtless I was drunk on tequila by the time it was served. But I ate it, and nothing bad happened. For about twelve hours.
Then, like a blip on a weather radar that signals a hurricane is on the way, while we were on the plane back to Los Angeles, I farted. This was no ordinary fart. This was the kind of fart that caused my fellow passengers to look at the doors and wonder whether it really would be such a bad idea to open them at twenty thousand feet. Was the worst that could happen likely to be any more terrible than remaining in this fouled environment? Because this was t
he Adolf Hitler, the Genghis Khan, the Osama bin Laden of farts. (Although technically the events in this anecdote took place before Osama’s acts of lunatic extremism earnt him a place on that list, and he was probably still living it up as a stupidly rich hypocritical Saudi playboy at the time. But it seems right and just to name a disgusting, stomach-churning bowel-burp of wind after him.)
Somehow the pilot managed to land the plane despite the wailing of his passengers and the greenish fug that hung in the air. Somehow I managed to retrieve my bags and waddle my way to a taxi, where I lay in the back shivering and holding my buttocks together with superhuman willpower. Somehow I managed to check into my room and, after an hour or so spent sitting on the toilet, crying, while my sphincter tried to pass my lungs into the bowl, I climbed into bed.
Before I did, I raided the emergency medical kit a doctor back in the UK had given me, for just such a situation. He had been one of the cheery souls who had prophesied my probable death in Mexico City. To try to prevent this, he had supplied me with syringes and dressings, swabs and antiseptic wipes, powder that dries up large wounds and is normally only supplied to the SAS to be used if they get wounded behind enemy lines and can’t find a medic, and a whole pharmacy worth of pills for almost every eventuality. For the current situation, which I brilliantly self-diagnosed as extreme nausea and diarrhoea brought on by massive stupidity, he had included some pills which are now quite infamous for their association with date rape but that back then no one had really heard of – Rohypnol. He had suggested I should take one if necessary, but I felt so utterly, utterly miserable I took two, possibly three, and went to bed.
I must have slept for about twenty hours. When I awoke, or tried to wake, I was just about aware that there were other people in my room, concerned people. One might have been the director of the programmes we were filming, another might have been a representative of the hotel. I think a third person, out of focus in the background, might have been wearing my sombrero. They were talking to me and trying to work out what was going on, and whether or not I needed a doctor. I was later told that I had been adamant that I was a doctor and the situation was under control. They phoned the doctor whose number had been included in the pack. I suspect he was a little disappointed that I hadn’t been killed in a knife fight or caught leprosy so he could have written ‘I warned him’ on the death certificate, but instead he reassured them that I had done the right thing and just needed to sleep it off.
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