by Julian Clary
As I draw near you you’ll smile a little smile,
For a little while, we shall stand
Hand in hand.
NOËL COWARD
WHEN ASKED IF he had any regrets in life, an elderly John Betjeman said: ‘I wish I’d had more sex.’ If I make that claim in my dotage, somebody slap me.
As fame gradually crept over me, I became aware that anonymous gay cruising would soon be out of bounds. People would stare for the wrong reasons. I might be scandalised in the Sunday papers to the embarrassment of my family and the detriment of my thrilling career. I didn’t want that. The night before the first transmission of Trick or Treat, I took myself to Hyde Park after dark and had a ‘portion’ behind a tree with a shadowy figure simply because I knew it might be my last chance to be so reckless. He turned out to be a bit peculiar, as it happens.
‘We’re both going to go to hell for what we’ve just done!’ he hissed at me, as fearful as if we were standing on the precipice of Satan’s fiery cauldron.
‘You speak for yourself,’ I said, and rearranged my clothing.
I recall travelling home with Fanny on a crowded tube after an innocent stroll on Hampstead Heath had produced unexpected carnal results. People were looking down at her with unusual disdain. I reached down to give her a reassuring stroke on the back and came into contact with the sticky wet ejaculate of my surprise afternoon husband. I hurriedly produced a tissue to wipe my hand and the dog’s back, but Fanny’s expression – that of a duchess whose husband has just farted at a royal garden party – remains clear in my mind.
It was not dissimilar to the expression on the gasman’s face when I opened the door to him early one morning after a night of passion with someone called Augustino. I thought he was offended by the sight of me in a frayed kimono. It wasn’t until I closed the door after him and glanced in a mirror that I realised a now dry, flaky residue from the previous evening’s activities was spread in expressive jets from forehead to chin, like a jet stream in a clear blue sky.
I found sex in all its variations a reassuring and exciting pastime. Apart from the odd, painful infatuation, true love eluded me, and what you’ve never had, you don’t miss. I’d heard talk that with your soulmate, sex (or love-making as it would then be called) could be elevated to something deep and spiritual, and I looked forward to that elusive, apocalyptic moment, but meanwhile the endless variety of available cock would have to do. I had never quite got the hang of relationships. Even now I don’t think I’d pass an A-level in the subject. I might scrape through with a GCSE grade D but only just. I’ve been told I’m manipulative and selfish by those who have attempted a lasting partnership with me. Well, pardon me for living. I thought the whole point of having a boyfriend was so you could manipulate him. What fun!
But I accept that I’m wrong about that. As for selfish, I went out with someone once whose persistent selflessness drove me to distraction. Every time I asked what he wanted to do he said, ‘What do you want to do? I’m happy to do whatever you want me to do.’ Very kind I’m sure, but neither of us was happy because happiness meant doing what the other wanted to do and we weren’t sure if we were doing it or not. A bit of selfishness and plain speaking all round might have saved the day. We couldn’t even bring ourselves to split up for ages because we weren’t sure if that was what the other one wanted. It was exhausting. I didn’t have the energy. Bring back the revolving door and the endless variety of men.
Not that my choice of one-night stands has always been satisfactory. There have been bed-wetters, wallet-lifters, wart-infectors, crab-carriers, colostomy-bag owners and worse. That’s just the law of averages. Here are some of the gentlemen callers that I can recall: the Brazilian scaffolder, the Geordie scaffolder, the Irish pick-pocket, the Greek Cypriot drinker, the bald Brighton leukaemia victim, the Chinese sex worker, the Australian blackmailer, the Dutchman, Henry from Chelsea, Andrew the car mechanic from Essex, Emmanuelle – illegal Albanian immigrant, nice Craig and nasty Craig, Miguel the ballet dancer, Tony with low self-esteem, Christopher the dead boyfriend, Jacques the Frenchman avec wind, the Nigerian taxi driver, Max the Birmingham lawyer, the Cardiff band bassist, the boy from Hove youth hostel, the Dutch nurse, the man from Madrid who pronounced me ‘magnifico!’, the air steward in Gran Canaria, the bed-wetting Dubliner, the bed-wetting bouncer from C.C. Blooms, the West End chorus boy, Henry with the dirty sheets, Morgan the Organ, the Spanish hotel worker, Augustino – inventor of the kangaroo game, boy in striped top on holiday in Gran Canaria, his friend, the Swiss flight attendant, THT man, former RUC man with real bullet scars and colostomy bag, Pop-it-in Pat, large man with nice eyes in Rio de Janeiro, Rio man with skin complaint, Chris at university, the Canadian actor, the newsreader, the Texas chef, Prince Charming, an Asian gentleman, a Chinese gentleman, Brisbane martial arts expert boy, Sydney Glenn, two Toms, Angel of Majorca, doctor in a waistcoat in Key West, Palma man with one eye, Roman car driver, prematurely bald Adelaide boy with hairpiece, Thai boy, Sensible Ian, R from Gibraltar.
There were more. Any past conquests scanning the list for their own description and not finding it should not feel inadequate. The omission is no reflection on their performance. It’s just that I forget. Lord knows, there are those who are included who have no business calling themselves homosexual at all. Let’s just leave it at that, shall we?
It’s no wonder I’m always tired. And it’s no wonder the night I met Christopher I hadn’t the vaguest idea I would fall in love. But I like the fact we met in a nightclub called Paradise. The Catholic in me hopes that this will be where we meet again – if the contents of this book don’t prevent my entry.
MY GUARDIAN ANGEL had been doing her job well. The boxes for location, career and finances had all been firmly ticked in the last few years – only personal happiness remained. Christopher was 26, he had black hair, brown almond eyes and an Essex accent. He liked Dionne Warwick, Diana Ross, Dawn French and Julie Walters, and claimed to have once seen an old lady tumble head first into the freezer at the supermarket when she reached in for a bag of frozen peas. He would laugh helplessly if anyone tripped up or slipped over. He was outgoing and friendly and without any queeny pretensions. When you looked into his eyes you saw his soul.
We dated for a while before we became official boyfriends. I was more smitten than him initially. I knew we had made a connection, that there was something different about my feelings for this particular man. But then he disappeared. My phone calls weren’t returned and there was no sign of him. I felt sad and love sick. True love, so long in coming my way, was being thwarted and I had no idea why. I went off on the Mincing Machine tour and wrote a song called ‘Dropped Me Like A Brick’, which I sang each night draped in my Cloak of Sorrow.
Any port in any storm.
I thought your love would keep me warm.
You kissed me on the cheek,
But you were gone within a week.
Six months later I spotted him on the dance floor at Bang nightclub and tapped him on the shoulder. He explained that he had been in hospital with pneumonia, but was now better. There in the nightclub, shouting over the music, he explained that the pneumonia had been the first sign he’d had that all wasn’t well. Although he looked fine and as handsome as ever, he didn’t just have HIV, he had full-blown AIDS.
Never mind about that, I said. Perhaps they’ll find a cure. We picked up where we left off. Then late one night he turned up unannounced at Seymour Place. It was late and he was tipsy. I buzzed him in through the gate, opened my front door and stood in the middle of the room waiting in my dressing gown. A minute later he flew through the door and into my arms. He was breathless and desperate to tell me how he’d had a revelatory moment: he loved me. He’d been out at a bar in Islington where all eyes had been upon a devastatingly handsome young man. To everyone else’s chagrin, the man had approached Christopher and propositioned him. Christopher panicked, said he was popping to the loo but ran out of the bar and caught a taxi to my
place. ‘I love you. I love you!’ After that he never left.
STICKY MOMENTS WAS a game-show parody dreamt up by Paul Merton. We were sitting in the dressing room at Jongleurs discussing my prospects. Trick or Treat, for all its faults, had at least paved the way for me to get my own TV show and we had a meeting arranged with Seamus Cassidy, commissioning editor at Channel 4. A game show was the perfect set-up for me to mess about with punters. ‘You can take away points for wearing beige, humiliate the poor bastards all night, then give out rubbish prizes. The winner gets a lift home,’ said Paul.
Seamus agreed, but there were a few hoops to jump through first before he’d allow us to create our own production company to make the series. The whole point of this was so we could have control over all aspects of the production and editing process. On Trick or Treat the liberal use of dubbed laughter on shots where clearly no one in the audience was laughing at all was irksome. I also wanted to pick the contestants out from the queue where the audience was waiting to enter the studio. This hadn’t been done before and was obviously risky as they might not be wacky or extrovert. But to my mind this was just an extension of what I’d been doing for years on the cabaret circuit and I wanted to trust my instincts. But the main problem was that our proposed new company – Wonderdog Productions – had never made a single programme and had no track record of any kind. Seamus was understandably nervous about handing over vast sums of money to such virginal idealists. But Addison, with his bulldog determination, argued on, and after we secured John Henderson, a reassuringly experienced and charismatic director, as both a shareholder of the company and director of the series, we were given the go-ahead.
We set up offices in Noel Street in Soho, printed up stationery with Fanny as our logo, and set to it. Various people sat behind computer screens all day doing who knows what, runners scurried about offering everyone tea and coffee and being generally keen to please, and our producer, the fertile and constantly lactating Toni Yardley, oversaw the proceedings. Michael Ferri made me some outrageous costumes, the like of which had never been seen on British television, and Anne Tilby designed a set so camp and brightly coloured there was some worry that the cameras might spontaneously combust when filming it.
Meanwhile, Paul and I sat upstairs in the boardroom writing the scripts for the ten forthcoming episodes. The six contestants were to take part in several rounds, starting with ‘True or False’ and culminating in a Generation Game-style playlet, and a final round where they had to stuff as many cream cakes into their mouths as possible. At no point could they ever hope to get a question right. All the questions were just set-ups for gags, and the awarding of points was entirely at my discretion. This way I could ensure that the best-value punters made it through to the end. For example:
Question: Which L is King of the Jungle?
Answer: Lionel Blair.
Question: Which L is the most important ingredient in a marriage?
Answer: Lager.
Question: Which L would you urinate in?
Answer: Luton.
Question: True or false: all condoms are individually numbered.
Answer: True. You’ve obviously never unrolled one far enough.
Question: Tony Blackburn: true or false?
Answer: False, obviously.
Question: Complete the quotation – ‘Is that a pistol in your pocket . . . ?’
Answer: Or is your penis engorged with blood?
Question: Complete the quotation – ‘Cupid, draw back your . . . ?’
Answer: Foreskin.
A more elaborate game involved the blindfolded contestants searching in a laundry basket for a simple household object, which turned out to be Bernie Winters. After a short chat about which panto he was in that year, he read out a riddle which, in the style of Ted Rogers’s 321, was a clue to a mystery prize:
You may find yourself in foreign climes
And although you may feel like revving up
Be careful you don’t get sunstroke
And end up in a sea of despair . . .
After some speculation about exotic holidays and fast cars, I decoded the riddle for them: ‘You may feel like revving up: that could mean a car, but rev is also short for reverend, so revving up could mean dressing up as a priest, which could mean an 18–30s holiday in Majorca. If you take the letters of Majorca and add 15 more you have enough letters to make the sentence: “Get off the table, Mabel, the money’s for the beer.” Beer means alcohol, alcohol means whisky, whisky means gin, gin means a rowing boat. Rowing boat, punt. Punt, Oxford. Oxford, Cambridge. Russell went to Cambridge, so you’ve won Russell!’
At the end of each show I wound up the proceedings by singing a song from my growing repertoire, accompanied by Russell with Barb Jungr and Michael Parker. My glamorous assistant was Hugh Jelly, in the real world called Philip Herbert, an old chum from the circuit where he worked as Randolph the Remarkable. His function was to assist and agree and read out the scores after each round.
We knew we had a hit on our hands after the first few recordings. John Henderson created a jolly, carefree atmosphere in the studio and set me loose to do my thing. Recording was rarely interrupted for any technical reasons. Audience, contestants, crew and performers were all happy and it showed. When it was broadcast even the critics liked it. Paul and I did go on Right to Reply to defend the show against two rather lame viewers who, it turned out, had only watched five minutes of the show before they complained. Just prior to the recording the producers had sat them down to watch a video of the entire show. Much to everyone’s chagrin, they discovered they rather liked it so there wasn’t much of a heated debate after all. Channel 4 commissioned a second series.
When he returned from a holiday to Africa, Paul’s behaviour started to become a bit strange. He’d march in circles round the office during meetings, then lie down on the floor and try to calm himself down. He spoke rapidly and excitedly, ideas and thoughts fighting for expression. It was amusing for a while, and as Paul had always been eccentric and excessively imaginative no one took much notice. But I could see he was getting worse by the day, bewildered by his own thoughts. The strange mixture of anxiety and wonderment soon resulted in paranoia, most of which centred round the Freemasons. He was sure they were watching him at all times. When some workmen built a canvas hut outside his flat, he was sure this was just a flimsy cover for their spying activities.
Eventually his girlfriend at the time, Julie Balloo, took him to the Maudsley psychiatric hospital, where it was discovered that the antimalarial pills he had been taking were the primary cause of his malaise. He was there for some weeks and I visited him several times. Once he passed me a note. It read: ‘The lunatics have taken over the asylum. Get me out of here.’ It was a grim, scary place, but I knew he needed treatment and was probably in the best place. Nevertheless, I felt duty-bound, as a friend, to respond to his plea for help. I had a word with his doctor and it was agreed I could take him out for a few hours.
That night there was an incredible gale-force storm blowing. As we drove through Dulwich the car was almost lifted off the road, and tree branches swung menacingly overhead. We found a restaurant but on the next table an American woman was talking loudly. After ten minutes Paul could stand it no more and asked me to take him back to the ward. It would be a few more days before he was able to cope with the real world again.
I WAS 30, newly famous, bank account swelling nicely. Since I was a teenager my ambition had been to live in Camden Town and drive a Citroën 2CV. I could now afford to do both, so I tore myself away from Seymour Place and bought the ground-floor flat at 5 Albert Street, Camden Town in north London. It was long and narrow, laid out like a railway carriage, with bedroom, bathroom and kitchen-diner leading off the hallway. Through the French windows was a small patio garden featuring an established vine. It was something of a love nest. Christopher and I curled up on the new Chesterfield sofa with Fanny and counted our blessings. The pendulum of my good fortune was now
at full swing.
Christopher worked at the Marks and Spencer headquarters in Baker Street doing something with computers but because of his illness he was able to ‘retire’ with a pension.
We went on holiday to Portugal where we swanned about wearing matching pastel shorts (like you do when you’re in love) and people-watched the package-holiday folk for our entertainment. At our hotel we met a couple called Mr and Mrs Plank. Their name amused us no end. ‘Here come the Planks,’ we’d say whenever we saw them waddling towards us. They were both barely five foot tall and none too bright. ‘They’re as thick as two short Planks,’ said Christopher.
Every few weeks he’d go to the Middlesex Hospital for blood readings or scans. The results were never encouraging so we just took no notice. He was given more and more pills to take, got thinner and slept a lot, which Fanny loved as there was always someone warm to curl up with. We’d get up most nights and change the sheets because his night sweats were torrential. At this time the first series of Sticky Moments had just been broadcast and I was rushing about doing interviews and chat shows and the like. Christopher came with me when he felt like it, but often I’d leave him and Fanny sleeping, putting a Post-it note by the bed with a mound of pills, instructing him when to take them. For some reason the ritual was I’d kiss them both 15 times before I left.