Truths, Half Truths and Little White Lies

by Nick Frost

  ‘Nick Frost . . .’

  The food was nice too, at Simon’s there was haggis and I love haggis. Love it. All oats and stomachs and pepper. At my wedding we had Moroccan lamb, crispy on the outside and pink in the middle with a delicious tzatziki-style thing. Not traditional wedding fayre but fuck it.

  ‘Nick Frost . . .’

  At Tony’s wedding in Africa I think we had dik-dik, at least it tasted like dik-dik – that said, it could’ve been any number of gamey bush meats. I was best man at that wedding and I think it’s safe to say at that point the first best man in the world to give his speech reading from a BlackBerry. I’d never seen so many one-armed men at a wedding – I asked and was told something about drunk driving. Terrifying.

  ‘Nick Frost . . .’

  ‘What? Stop shouting!’

  ‘You’re on!’

  I was on. The compere’s calling my name. It’s now or never. The ref blows the whistle and the ball is coming straight at me through the glare of the sun. I take a deep breath.

  Backstage is a cheap plastic and metal chair, the type you get on hospital wards and public libraries. I pick it up and throw it out across the stage. Why? I pretend, using the microphone offstage, that I’m having some kind of unseen fracas. After a moment I run on, looking offstage, and make some shit joke about me owing Mother Teresa some money. I’m embarrassed just writing this, to be honest.

  It gets better. My material wasn’t great but I was enthusiastic and showed no sign of nerves once I’m on stage. Simon’s advice about sharks and blood still rings in my eyes. I’d decided that if I wasn’t going to be the best comedian in the world I’d be confident and in these situations maybe confidence can get you pretty far. If you can’t be good be lucky. I wear a pair of white Nike Hi-top trainers, jeans, a white fifties-style bowling shirt kind of thing with a slight beige stripe running through it, and a pair of terrible thick-framed Ray-Ban glasses. Buddy Hollies I think you can call them. As a young waiter I got a lot of shit for those glasses. Shit from tables of lads. Pricks. Now they’re being used as part of a comedy uniform.

  I’m trying to remember parts of my routine now, and like most things in my mind it’s pretty hazy. (It’s not, I’m just too embarrassed.) There’s some cutting edge stuff about a man who has a Treet for a face (Treets later went on to become peanut M&Ms); there’s also a ‘joke’ about stealing an orang-utan from London Zoo and hiding it in my rectal cavity and that’s all I’m willing to tell/can remember.

  It seems to be going really well. There’s a lot of warm applause and, more importantly, lots of laughter and not just from my noisy lot, although I’m sure their infectious noise helps grease the wheels. After eight or ten minutes I reach the end of my material. I’m so happy it just about bursts out of me. I say thanks and say my name, I pick up the chair Mother Teresa’s thrown at me and that was that. I did it. I can hear people clapping and a whooping and I couldn’t help but beam. I was so happy. Simon’s there waiting for me and he’s smiling. The look he gives me was one that I’ve seen him replicate many times with me over the years. Pride. He was proud of me.

  I come off stage and feel the tension pour out of me like a sonic bleat. It was amazing. I get a weird rushy migraine. I got a migraine after every gig. I think it was a release, a relief of getting through this most alien of things. Even though people say I was funny, getting up on stage and being judged was still difficult. Still, I’d finished and I could sit back and relax with the gang, who were now quite pissed, and watch the other poor saps.

  I’m not really a competitive person, at least I pretend to myself I’m not. I’ve never trusted people who are overly competitive. I don’t get it. I get the drive and commitment needed to see something through, a work ethic, what I never got were those people who are desperate to win at any cost. It’s just not in me. I think also when it comes to something as subjective as comedy or literature it’s difficult to accurately pick a winner. I feel if you’re willing to put your heart and your all into something as emotional as art in all its facets and forms then you’re a winner from the get-go.

  After the stand-ups finish we all have to endure a nervous wait while the scores are totted up. I go and have a piss, it stinks, I gaze into the metal trough and I’m joined by a man who comes and pisses next to me. He waggles his eyes suggestively; this, I discover, is the chief judge of the competition. His waggling puts me off. I’m not sure what he expects. I finish and wash up. He joins me at the sink, waggling.

  ‘I shouldn’t tell you this but . . .’

  ‘What?’

  ‘No, I shouldn’t.’ He turns and dries his hands. I don’t push.

  ‘Okay, I shouldn’t tell you this but between you and me . . .’

  ‘Yeah . . .’

  His face softened . . .

  ‘You’ve won the competition. Congratulations!’

  He leaves and I lean on the sink. I can’t believe it. I’d won a comedy competition at my first attempt. It meant that I’d now go through to a regional heat. What. The. Fuck. I went back to Simon. Sat down, he noticed something.

  ‘What’s up?’

  I told him what had happened in the bogs. He was so happy. I think I made the mistake of telling someone else, and before long all my lot were coming up and congratulating me.

  The lights drop and the compere takes to the stage. This was it. This was my night. It was the first time that I could actually, justifiably call a night mine. There was applause and the room fell silent.

  ‘Blahblahblahblahblah. Comedy. Comedy, blah blah, comedy, and the winner is . . .’

  I smile, it’s totally Robbie Williams in its smugness. My leg muscles get a premature message from my brain. It says:

  ‘Prepare to stand and receive your accolade, bigman.’ They twitch. This is it. Here we go . . .

  ‘And the winner is . . .’

  A girl on the table next to mine stands – no, leaps – into the sky. She’s screaming, her crew rush to embrace her. It looks like the famous Iwo Jima flag pose but with chicken in baskets on the table.

  What the actual fuck. Boos ring out around the venue. People are angry. My legs are angry that they even bothered getting their coats on. They go back to bed and I slump into my chair. I watch the girl skip onto the stage and collect her book token. My spirit sags.

  I’m told later by an impartial third party that there was a great deal of impropriety and vote rigging from the winner and her posse in the final moments of the count. I’d been robbed. Cheated.

  A similar thing happens years later at some kind of shitty comedy award. We’re sat near the stage, always a good sign. A producer tells us minutes before the show that Shaun of the Dead has won. I’m so fucking proud and happy. In between that premature announcement and the award being handed out they’d managed to secure Jack Black on a live video feed from LA.

  Desperate to add Hollywood credence to the event they’d given the award to School of Rock. Gutted. Not that School of Rock won, it’s a great film, but who doesn’t like to win every once in a while?

  Me and the crew leave the club. I’m crestfallen but happy, I’d done my first ever gig. I was proud and I proved to myself that I could do it. There was a big party at mine and everyone came. They all made me feel like a winner that night. I think I even signed an autograph for Keith and Michelle, just for fun like, but it was nice.

  This was the start of my career as a stand-up comic. I did twelve gigs in all. It was a short career. Six were great and six were, perhaps, the lowest points of my life. The good ones generally went very well except for my post-gig head pounder. Some were just okay – did the open spot, got a few laughs and off I went. The bad ones were really bad, really terrible. I think my problem with stand-up was this: I was a funny person but not a good stand-up. I find it hard to explain. It was mostly the same material give or take but the reactions of the audiences were completely different. There were so many variables, not least of all the confidence or lack of from gig to gig. Stand-up f
or me was a bit like golf. I wanted to be good straight away and when I wasn’t I lost heart. Like everything in life these things take time and effort.

  Although I had great gigs I never once found my own voice. Being a fan of Reeves and Mortimer and the stand-up of Harry Hill, Sean Lock and Simon Munnery, I really wanted to be a weird surrealist and the problem with that is I wasn’t using my own voice. Get me in a small group and I could be frigging hilarious. In a room full of people looking at me expecting something funny I found it tough. Often my voice would crack or when heckled I’d forget where I was and stand there saying ‘ummmm’ for what felt like six hours, blood pumping out of my ears until the slow handclaps would begin and I would die a terrible terrible death.

  The shortest gig I ever did happened at a pub venue in Ealing one Tuesday night. I was on a day shift at Chiquito and from early in the day I could feel the panic rising, ‘In twelve hours this will all be over.’ The day shift was busy so at least I could throw myself into the work. This coincided with a time when for some reason I was taking a lot of Pro Plus. Not a good idea. The day shifts were always chilled out, more or less, there’d be a slight rush from noon until three and then you had a couple of hours to kill until the evening staff came in. Once you had a tidy-up and a restock of clean, polished cutlery, you’d stand about doing fuck all – hopefully there’d be a bartender on so you could have a chat and a laugh but usually you were on your own. Sometimes a couple of very young Indian lovers would come in and you just knew they were not meant to be together. They’d naughtily giggle and laugh in fear that they might get caught at any time. I liked that. Young love will always find a way.

  This day there was boredom and, thanks to the handful of Pro Plus I’d fisted down with four cups of strong espresso, anxiety. I had to leave at five o’clock sharp. There was a saying an old manager of mine used to have. It was fucking annoying but sadly true and I was always early anyway so he never aimed it at me, but hearing it would make me want to strike him in his fat ginger head with an oar. It went like this:

  ‘blubblubblub early, blahblahblah, on time, blah blah bluch, late’.

  I struck him hard and he fell backwards into the turbulent ocean. He blubbed, his wide, white face fixed with an ‘I can’t believe you did that’ look. He jolts and is pulled down. He rises back to the surface briefly but is wrenched downwards once more by an unseen Goliath, he smiles, not at me, it’s just his brain turning his mouth up at a sweet memory long forgotten. One more jerk by fuck knows what and the foaming water blooms deep red, his sweaty ginger bonce was gone for good.

  I once watched this mirthless Honeymonster of a manager give the chefs and me an early morning masterclass on how to make the perfect green tomatillo sauce. He made us stand around and watch while he stirred a massive cauldron with a giant metal spatula. That day four poor Ugandan men and myself were forced to witness six litres of salty fluid drip off his nose and forehead into someone’s meal. He was so wet by the end of it that he had to go home and change. And what had we learned? Nothing. We had learned nothing. Those men had fled Idi Amin’s brutal dictatorship only to be met with this new, more sinister brand of fuckery. Poor men.

  At a quarter to five I had still not been relieved. The phone rings and someone in the office answers before I have a chance to. It’s also getting busy. I can feel a rage building within me, a tiny baked bean-size rage.

  A voice shouts from the office, ‘So and so can’t be in until six!’

  Fuming! More Pro Plus, another triple espresso, more tables, more ear steam. Where in the human body is ear steam generated? At six-ten the waitress saunters in, I change out of my uniform that smells like old milk and I bolt into my pre-booked cab.

  We turn left out of Staples Corner and slam into a traffic jam three hundred miles long. A hiss of steam pisses out of my brain. I sit still for as long as I can, I pay angrily, and run out of the taxi. We’d travelled less than a mile. My head pounds, fists itchy with rage. I run and try to board several buses that are bulging at the seams. It begins to rain heavily. Balls.

  I eventually find a bus that takes me to the tube which then takes me to another bus, and then from there it’s a simple thirty-minute walk to the venue. This is not going well. I should’ve turned round and gone home there and then. I should’ve known that this was a bad sign. An omen of the most terrible portent, like a crow shitting on your hat. I was so fucking cross. I’m soaked to my skin. I take a breath and try and get my shit together.

  The venue was an old hall attached to a shitty fucking pub. From inside I can hear a noise that begins to fill me with dread. The noise sounds like an inexperienced compere starting a vicious heckle war with twelve cunts all from the same Sunday league pub football team.

  As I push through the swing doors I see an empty hall save for an inexperienced compere starting a vicious heckle war with twelve cunts all from the same Sunday league pub football team. A crow shits on my hat. The compere sees me, understands who I am and waves me up. I’m not ready for this. I’m totally unprepared. I haven’t even taken my coat off. I scamper towards the stage, I can feel angry low-browed meat bags eye fucking me. I may not even get as far as the stage. The compere introduces me as Nick Roast! I should run, that’s what my eyes and legs are compelling me to do. I don’t.

  I still have my jacket on as I mount the stage, the compere passes me, thrusts the mike into my hand and whispers, ‘Good luck.’

  I look at these hate-filled baboon-rapists and open with a tried and tested goodie.

  ‘Hello!’

  I notice a big man stand up from somewhere in the middle of the pack. He must have something really important and insightful he needs to share. I’m all ears. Two ears. Here goes . . .

  ‘FUCK OFF, YOU FAT CUNT!!!’

  Oh. He seems so very cross. I slowly clip the microphone back into its stand and hop down off the stage. I feel deaf, it’s a mixture of intense rage and heart-crushing grief. A terrific heat flash ensues. I trudge out of the hall still soaked and out into the deluge. Inside I hear them laugh and roar.

  It was gigs like this that made me want to stop. A half-decent stand-up would’ve taken those men to pieces. After the day I’d had and the build-up and the transit and the rain and the Pro Plus, it was all too much for me.

  I had another gig where two businessmen sat in the front row chatting and laughing at me. Not with me, at me. Throughout most of my set. It got so bad that at one point I dropped my microphone and leapt into the crowd. I managed to grab one of them round the throat and subdue the other with my big right leg before security put me in a choke hold and bundled me down the stairs. I wasn’t asked back. There were one or two more gigs but my heart wasn’t in it. I stopped. I was disappointed in myself. At that point I wasn’t what you’d call a starter finisher. That came later.

  During this time though Simon and I became closer and closer. We really were a mismatch in terms of background. It worked though. I was a bit rough and had no idea what PC was or meant. Simon went to Bristol Uni and was all about feminist cinema. He even knew what an acronym was. He showed me things and I taught him that it was okay to say the word ‘black’.

  While my stand-up career died, SP’s bloomed and I was happy to be along for the ride. I loved watching him gig. We worked out that one year I saw him gig over two hundred times. We’d drive all over the country in his little white Renault 5. One wintry afternoon we were about to settle in for the evening when Dawn his agent rang to make sure he hadn’t forgotten his gig in Hull that night. He had forgotten. We threw our shoes on and ran out of the house. This was a time long before sat-nav. We used maps. Maps are basically static versions of a satnav but printed onto large sheets of paper and bound into a big book and, do you know what, they actually worked pretty well.

  It took us an age to get to Hull. Part way up the country it started to snow really heavily; eventually we got to the gig at Hull University students’ union, which sadly was virtually empty. He still did his gig, the show mu
st go on darling, and he put just as much effort into this as any he did, full or not. Good lad.

  He finished, we jumped in the car and fucked off. On the way back the snow was so thick and heavy we were forced to pull over onto the hard shoulder. While there we began to get the fear that a lorry, unable to see us in a small white car in heavy white snow, would plough into the back of us doing one hundred and forty miles per hour. The car and everything inside it, us, would be completely obliterated. They’d have to identify me by using my dental records. It was close, lorries would thunder past us and we’d scream and grab onto each other. We became hysterical and laughed till our tears froze. We couldn’t stay there. Eventually we got the courage to start the car and drive home.

  Simon would soon be going up to Edinburgh to do his first Fringe solo show. It was a really big deal. He put a lot of effort into that tour. It really took it out of him but predictably he smashed it. While he and Mouse were in Edinburgh I got to stay in their little flat in Cricklewood. Absolute bliss. The only job I had apart from taping Reeves and Mortimer and Northern Exposure was to look after Simon’s lovely big goldfish, and what a noble beast it was. I’d never seen a plumper, longer-tailed, more beautiful fish. I think he’d had it for a long time, a firm friend and confidant throughout his university education. What a fish.

  They were due to return on a Monday; I returned home from a day shift on a Sunday to find the fish dead. It was dead. Oh god. Any pet looked after by a friend or relative will always die the day before the owners return. Always. One day before. So it was the case with mega fish. I fell to my knees and sobbed, more for me than for the fish actually. I pulled it out and gently blew into its gaping mouth hole. Nothing. I placed it back into the tank and used my hand to create a turbulent current with the hope I could push some oxygen through its pale, lifeless gills.