by Nick Frost
They ran me ragged. After the desserts, which they were too pissed to eat, Prince Money Bags, who smells of deep Italian leather and Aramis, raises a perfectly threaded eyebrow that denotes he’d like the bill. It was £2,400! The biggest bill I’d ever seen in that place. He pulls out a pack of fifties big enough to choke a pig and rolls off three grand in cash. I thank him, nod to the party and leave the table. I’m stopped, I feel a firm, manicured hand on my arm. I turn, his deep mahogany chocolate eyes blaze and crackle, he smiles gently. I think I’m in love with the handsome Omar Sharif-a-like, he mutters the words every waiter longs to hear: ‘Keep the change.’ He just told me to keep the change! I am in love. He just gave me a £600 tip and I didn’t have to suck ONE cock. Not one! KER – FUCKING – CHING!!! That was the biggest tip I ever got and like most of my money at that point it went pretty quickly. Six hundred quid buys a lot of beer, green and king prawn madras.
At some point along my meandering timeline a girl came to work in the restaurant who would eventually and inadvertently change my life for ever. She was a wee Scottish thing I’ll call Charles Mouse. I really liked her a lot. She was quick to laugh, funny as fuck and so smart. At that point I’d never met anyone like her. I must admit for a moment my heart sank when eventually I found the nerve to ask whether or not she had a boyfriend. She did. All the best ones do. I caught a glimpse of this sexual Tyrannosaur one night. It was the first time I’d ever seen a man under thirty-five wearing elbow patches on a corduroy jacket.
A few weeks into knowing her we had a party at 142. A big sound system was brought in, the front room was emptied of all our shit-brown furniture and a big bag of crisps was opened. This party promised to be a roadblock.
I’m a bit nervous to be honest, her boyfriend – her stand-up comedian boyfriend – was coming. I’d heard a lot about this guy, I felt any man would have a problem living up to this kind of expectation. The Mouse felt sure we’d get on. (As an aside, if you want me to dislike anyone tell me we’ll really get on.) Happily though this was to be the exception to my brain’s stupid stubbornness. I wasn’t working that night so we began the party a little early, with half-pints and shots first in the pub across the street. By the time people start turning up I had become, with the aid of Red Stripe, either a charming bon viveur or a lumpen jelly bag, I can’t remember which – no matter.
I was actually really nervous waiting to meet Mouse’s boyfriend. Sure I was funny, perhaps in the top five, maybe even top three, funniest people at Chiquito Staples Corner. That’s no mean feat when I was working with Flea (the template for Mike Watt). And Harry, a Nigerian arms dealer who looked like Rango.
We offered an open-door policy at 142 and at some point Mouse walks in, I crane to look, and there he is. I hide in the crowd, I’m not ready, I flit from inside to out, I host, I avoid, I spread confusion, a little fear. Mouse catches up with me in the kitchen and we say hello.
‘Are you coming outside to meet him?’
‘Sure.’ I’m hammered and think WTFN.
She leaves, I follow. He’s there chatting to some of my friends and they’re really laughing, some of the girls are even tossing their heads back, really guffawing.
I realise, oddly, I now have a toothpick in my mouth. No idea how or where it came from. I gob a foul brown liquid from my chewing tabbacy into a bucket, it dings loudly. The crowd part and that’s when I see him for the first time, Simon fucking Pegg . . .
For the next two hours we spar, jab and comedy counter-jab, our eyes narrow as we size each other up, we drink and, at points, we go separately to the toilet. In truth I remember very little of this meeting. I know we laughed a lot and that there, on that balcony in Cricklewood, was where our (at this point) twenty-one-year best-friendship began. We did impressions, Rick from The Young Ones, Matthew the kindly Nigerian from Desmond’s and of course sports commentator David Coleman.
Things then get dark and blurry, party business takes over, and in the confusion and flirting with Simon I’ve neglected my job as host. Other faces come and go, drink is quaffed, girls are kissed or not kissed, people become shapes and silhouettes and eventually sound is the only sensation to remain until that gradually drifts away and I die.
I’m glad people were there to tell me what happened. Apparently and actually pretty early in the night I drank myself to a standstill. Sitting to take a breath and to gather my thoughts I fall asleep, cross-legged, leaning against a giant Bass Bin and that was where I stayed all night. People had to step over me to get out. Simon tells it that I was slumped against the speaker while the speaker rumbled me to pieces, reggae and Red Stripe will do that to a man.
HAHAHAHA!!!
‘Stop laughing, Nick! It’s not funny. Didn’t you realise you had a terrible and burgeoning drink and drug habit?’
‘Stop shouting at me!’
Peggy Poo and me see bits and pieces of one another over the next couple of weeks. A drink after work here and there, the odd house party, but it was at the Pink Rupee where our love truly blossoms.
A bunch of floor staff had gone out after work one Friday night for a nice Butter Chicken and a few cold ones. The management had pushed together a number of tables and Simon and me found ourselves sat opposite one another. We’d reached a place, pretty quickly actually, where we could make ourselves laugh like drains. We still have that today. We’ll find something funny and work the shit out of it until it reaches its zenith comedically and then it dies. Game over. Next!
As we talked and laughed drunkenly that night Simon did something that would change me for ever, change us for ever. He picked up a condiment and moved it across the table making this sound: Birbirbigitt Birbirbigitt bigitt. I knew exactly what this was. Time slowed around us, a warm bubble of light inflated and for a moment I couldn’t see or hear anything but SJP. He was making the sound of the mouse droid that Chewbacca roars at in Star Wars. It was as if we were the only two people in the world. He got it, whatever it was. I understood him completely and he understood me.
I’m not sure how long we were in that golden bubble of self-indulgence but once it popped our mains were on the table. It must have been a while though as my naan bread was floppy and cold. This was the beginning. From this point on, me, Simon and at first Miss Mouse were pretty much inseparable. I didn’t know what was happening but I’d made a new friend really quickly, and I wasn’t afraid or nervous, it didn’t feel weird – on the contrary it felt great and it’s been that way ever since. I guess one could argue we fell in love that day. It’s never really left us either, it’s obviously changed and evolved as all long-term relationships need to do if they’re to survive, but we still make each other laugh more than anyone else.
We can also fall into fits of laughter without talking which some people find unnerving. I always know exactly what he’s thinking. An eyebrow cocked or a brow un-crinkled at just the right time can be like an A-bomb going off for us comedically. Not talking can be just as effective as repeating over and over again the phrase ‘Would you like a white eel?’ Let me explain.
We were on a plane a couple of years ago coming back from the Dublin leg of the World’s End press tour. We were sat together at the front of the plane, we’d been delayed for some time so by the time we boarded we were tired and emotional. After take-off a lovely old flight attendant shuffled up to us and almost whispered in the softest Irish brogue, ‘Would you like a light meal?’ We both declined but there was something about the phrasing that got us going – once it happened it couldn’t be stopped. I imagine it’s probably how David Banner feels before turning into the Hulk; it can’t be stopped so the best thing to do is to embrace it and enjoy the helplessness that comes from laughing so much you cry, laughing so much that eventually no sound comes out accept the odd ‘Eeerrrrffff’. I turn to Simon: ‘Would you like a light meal?’ The change begins. We have a thing that others call ‘Rainman’, it’s where we say the same thing or a variety of the same thing over and over again.
‘Would
you like a light meal?’ suddenly became ‘Would you like a white eel?’ And on it went. At one point we imagine that she’s vigorously woken us from a deep sleep to offer us refreshment.
‘Oh, I’m so sorry to wake you, I noticed by your eyelids flickering that you were in a deep state of REM sleep but . . . would you like a grey seal?’ We had this from the start and it’s something that’s never left us. Some of the in-jokes and lols we have now are based on and evolved from things that started all the way back then.
***
We were a cool little crew at the restaurant round about this time. Being a waiter was good but unrewarding, it was easy, I was good at it and it was never much of a push. I was a big fish in a small pond and that was cool. I was cool like this. It was enough for me. At that point I wasn’t sure what I wanted, I never felt like I had to make a decision in terms of something long term. My parents never pushed me to get into a career. It literally never came up once.
Every Thursday Miss Mouse and I would rush back to the place she shared with Simon. Expecting our arrival he’d set up a kind of nest in the living room and we’d run in full of excitement, open some wine and watch Northern Exposure. We loved it. Even now if I put on an episode and see grumpy Dr Flieschman or Ruth Anne in her ‘Born to bingo’ jumper it takes me back to that nest. It makes me happy.
It wasn’t just Northern Exposure, it was Reeves and Mortimer and The Day Today as well. I’d never seen things like this before. I’d felt them, felt that they were possible and that they might exist out there but I’d never seen them. I guess this is what happens when a university-educated Rik Mayall-a-like and a Dagenham bell-end hook up. The pot gets stirred.
The three of us really were inseparable. We did everything together. Mouse and me would work, Simon would gig and come to meet us, and we’d eat and drink and fuck about and laze around in Soft World and laugh. It was like Y Tu Mamá También without the rimming.
This was also the time where the character of Mike Watt TA, or roly-poly gun-mad Mike from Spaced, first fell out of my mind. He was a bit different at that point though, older, an actual veteran whose combat experience had driven him underground, a woodsman with advice on a million different and exciting ways to kill a man. Covering a foe in Tizer and then letting fire ants eat the flesh from their bodies being just one. Another was finding an enemy asleep, cutting his legs off, while still asleep, replacing them with table legs and letting termites do the rest. That kind of stuff. Simon and me laughed a lot at Mike. We loved his misogyny it wasn’t really a fear or dislike of women, it was more like they didn’t ever show up on his radar. He didn’t know how to deal with or talk to them. ‘How you doing, little lady? Mike Watt TA.’ This was Mike’s seventies-style greeting to Woman.
Mike was a mixture of two people I knew at the time, one was a really close mate called Lee, although people called him Flea. He was a curious one. A big, giant, baby of a man, tall and heavy with long greasy hair. He was bonkers and made me laugh a ton. I know he wasn’t a Nazi but he liked Nazi memorabilia. It confused me. It was wrong but he was a lovely man, kind, gentle, an alcoholic lunatic but definitely not a racist or a fascist and absolutely not an anti-Semite as I’m sure his Jewish girlfriend at the time would attest. He just liked the design of the stuff. We hung out and got drunk together a lot, sometimes we’d head out to some dark shit hole in Camden and drink two bottles of JD while listening to some band called Stinkpipe or Ovaryfart. I once saw Flea slide down the middle ramp-like centre between two escalators in Camden tube station. He probably flew fifteen feet off the end of that thing.
The other man responsible for the other half of Mike was a brawny lump we called Kippy. He was a member of the TA by day and a mediocre bartender by night; someone my dad might’ve referred to as a Bullshit Merchant. He was tall and muscular and the girls loved him. Me and Tony and Dion would tease him about his part-time army career. Kippy was to have the last laugh though: years after our time together he actually made the regular army and went on to do several tours in Iraq and Afghanistan. Who knew? All that bullshit was actually true. I opened the paper one day and saw our glorious leader David Cameron being protected by Kippy. He had dark Oakley shades on, a PLO neck scarf and a fat M4-style battle rifle. Amazing. Good for him. What the fuck do I know?
Pretty early on in Simon’s, Mouse’s and my time together I casually mentioned to Mouse, in a moment of reflection, that maybe I could be doing something more with my life. Simon had moved down to London from Bristol to pursue a flowering stand-up career, and she suggested I try stand-up too and that Simon could help. I wasn’t sure. The very notion of performing made me immediately frightened.
Simon kindly wrote me a note, which I still have somewhere, telling me where I should go to do open spots. (Open spots are the little five-or ten-minute bits that new stand-ups do.) This unpaid gig was the chance to hone your skill. To feel real terror in a relatively low-pressure environment. I remember on the note he’d written, ‘Don’t be afraid. Audiences smell fear like sharks smell blood.’ It was so fucking true. I didn’t like the idea of doing stand-up, it filled me with unease, but I went home and began thinking about writing a set. I had no idea where to start.
***
I’d called a bunch of the promoters and comedy bookers on Simon’s list and secured my very first open spot at the Cosmic Comedy Club on Fulham Palace Road. I’d worked on a little set and was as ready as I would ever be. This seemed very unlike me, putting myself out there, but I’d reached a point where I kind of said, ‘Why the frig not?’
Simon thought it would be a good idea to go and see some stand-up before I dived in. I’d never seen live comedy before, naively I didn’t realise it even existed, or that as a scene it was so big. I had no idea, apart from The Young Ones, that there was an alternative comedy scene. Yeah, I knew about Bernard Manning, Wheel Tappers and Shunters, Norman Collier and the like, but my life up until that point had been deals for tiny amounts of hash in shitty pubs, watching Irish men fight, a father who was a workaholic cum nervous wreck and an alcoholic mother who died a bit more each day. I had never before tasted these delicious little cutlets of culture that were now, thanks to Simon, being served up to me. I liked it, they tasted sweet like barbecued lamb.
The Cosmic was a big place, much bigger than I’d been expecting. I thought most comedy was done in grubby basements or upstairs in shit boozers. The Cosmic was part of the new wave, built using the swelling coffers that a hungry audience desperate for a laugh brought in. It was like a small theatre but instead of rows of chairs facing the stage there were long benches and tables. It was pretty dead that Tuesday night, twenty or so people, maybe thirty if I squinted my eyes a bit.
The room was really quiet too, the only noises I could hear were the low rhubarb of chatting and the clatter and squeak of knives and forks as the sparse audience hacked their way through chicken and chips. These are perhaps some of the worst conditions for comedy to thrive in.
We stood at the bar and the guy who ran the place came to say hello to Simon who was fast becoming a major player on the London circuit; they chat for a bit and he bustles off. Simon and me have a couple of beers. It fills up a little more but it was no way what you’d call busy. The booker came back over, another chat. He heads off again, Simon turns to me.
‘The compere hasn’t shown up. They want me to do it!’
I would’ve been so nervous but he took it all in his stride. He left me at my booth drinking beers and disappears through a door, emerging on stage five minutes later. There’s a polite ripple of applause although some seem cross that a comedian would spoil their supper by coming on and trying to do some stand-up.
After some classic Pegg-style jovial banter he brings on the first act. I’ve no idea who any of the stand-ups are that night but they were all pretty brutalised. It certainly didn’t make me want to do stand-up. Simon returned looking down. He didn’t think it went too well. In fact he states that he died on his arse but I thought he was good.
I don’t remember him dying.
Tomorrow I’d be on the same stage doing my first ever stand-up gig. What an idiot. Don’t do it!
The details of how and why it happens elude me now but for some idiocy I’d been entered into an open-spot competition as my first ever gig. Sadly, lots of people from work had been invited – I don’t think inviting people would’ve been my thing at the time. I would’ve been happy doing it quickly on my own and running off into the night from whence I came. No, inviting people sounds like it might’ve been Chicky or Jo’s doing. The kind of thing where you tell them quietly looking for some gentle support, and before you know it most of the restaurant was involved. Looking back though it was a good thing. I was glad of the support.
My lot take up two whole benches, maybe twenty people give or take. After my gig we were having a big party back at 142 no matter what the outcome. I couldn’t wait for the party. Several hours before the gig I’d begun to feel something I had rarely felt before, nerves. Real terrifying, shit your pants nerves. It made me sick to my stomach. The only time I think I’d felt anything near this was the moment before the referee blew his whistle to start a rugby match. This wasn’t a rugby match though, this was going to be much rougher.
I was there predictably early. I’m always early. I can’t help it. I stand around not being able to talk or eat, friends come and talk to me, I barely respond. I smile weakly and shake a hand, my hand, why am I shaking my own hand? In the end I hide behind a curtain silently going over my routine in my head. Simon’s there but knowing what I’m going through he keeps his distance and advice to a minimum, he watches me like a great corner man, assessing me, geeing me up where necessary.
The lights go down and the competition begins. This is the first competition of any kind I’ve ever entered. I’m second on the bill out of ten or so terrified souls like me, which is something at least. I think it’s always best to get it over and done with. I develop a mantra at this point, it’s a kind of countdown to release: ‘this time tomorrow it will all be over’ becomes ‘in twelve hours it will be over’ then an hour, then ten minutes, you get the idea. I still use this method today if I’m ever going through something stressful or unpleasant. I never quite understand why all the speeches at a wedding come after the meal. It’s stupid. I’ve given two best-man speeches and one groom’s speech in my life and they both took place after dinner. Like all the other A-list top-table speechmakers, I’m too nervous to eat. By the time you finish and you’re hungry again everything’s cold.