Truths, Half Truths and Little White Lies

by Nick Frost

  I needed to do something so I took the first job that I saw. I spent a week working in a call centre off Great Portland Street. Telesales. It was not for me at all. It was full of Wolf of Wall Street wannabees. Guys with headsets on selling, selling, selling. At points they’d stop yabbering to use the telesales professional’s greatest tool . . . Silence. Let the other fucker speak first. Take away every opportunity the guy on the other end of the phone has to say no until the only thing he can say is, yes. Boom! There’s your sale. There’s your commission. I hated watching those cocky twats. I lost count of the amount of smug winks I got from helmets about to make £50 in commission.

  I found it really difficult. I couldn’t do what they did. I didn’t care enough and it felt like a scam. I’d sit in my booth, head down, cold-calling people, reading my lines off the ready-prepared script. People who’d been there a while didn’t need the script, they used it as a frame and hung their own shit off it. There was a skill involved certainly but I didn’t have it. I’d mumble into the headset and get hung up on. NO NO NO! I heard that a lot. I made no sales. In that business you live and die on bottom line. No sales? No commission? Then you’re out.

  After a few days chasing leads I sensed a sale was on the cards. I used the silence and chiselled away every opportunity for the customer to say no until he finally said yes! I leapt up and punched the air. I had my first sale. The company procedure for a sale was this: you took a sales form and faxed it over to the other company, got them to sign it, faxed it back and then boom! The sale and the commission was yours.

  I gathered the documents together and rushed to the fax machine, I wrote the fax number on the back of the last sheet, stuck it in the machine and dialled. A moment, some squeaks, and the fax went through. I was about to get paid. Yes! I was chuffed to bits. Maybe I was cut out for this after all.

  Colleagues now full of pride, and seeing my immense potential, came and patted me on the back. I did it. I shuffled the papers and re-ordered them, placing them in a little file marked ‘Successful sales’. It was at this point I realised I’d actually faxed him my script covered in explicit doodles of giant helmeted dicks and big-titted women, legs spread ready to gratefully accept the aforementioned giant helmeted dicks.

  The guy was furious and complained. I didn’t come in the next day and was unemployed again. Good. I hated that fucking horrendous, windowless, smug-filled anus farm.

  So obviously I went back to the only thing I was good at. I wound up back in a dining room having an interview at a restaurant called Frankie and Benny’s. It was a bad interview as I still struggled slightly talking to people and being outside but I had to do something so fuck it.

  ***

  Having to work in a restaurant again after hanging out with my friends who were my family, these funny, complicated, beautiful, creative, angry fuckers, and knowing there was another life I could be leading was a real pain in my helmet.

  I got the job and was now working in East Finchley. I could do the work in my sleep but I began to enjoy it as I always seemed to.

  It was the same drill. A fiery crew in the kitchen, this time all Portuguese, dishing out pasta and pizza, and a nice manager, Sam Baker, who swore like a trooper and laughed a lot. I liked her. One day I saved her life when we stole a pizza and wolfed it down laughing like drains out the back, she sucked a piece of sausage down the wrong hole, and choked. I intervened when I saw her lips turning blue, performing the Heimlich like a champ. We both watched the Frisbee-like pork assassin fly up and out of her throat. She gasped and we hugged and laughed.

  There were a couple of boys on the bar who I became friends with. They were up to no good. By this time Autoglass had been round and replaced my shattered mindscreen. The Nervy B now long forgotten, I jumped in with both feet. As was my wont.

  One day a new waitress came into the restaurant. Her name was Callie and she rocked my little world for a while. What is it with me and gorgeous waitresses? So silly. I think I was still quite shallow at this point. I didn’t care enough about what was up top or in the heart, I cared about how they looked and something so superficial will only ever bring one thing. Pain. Pain for me anyhow. I’ve left this behind, now as I’ve gotten older but then I was crazy for the perfect nose and glossy red hair of this girl. This would be no flash in the pan. I fell hard.

  Apart from a few bonkers parties with the hardest, naughtiest kind of chocolate buttons, Callie was the most memorable thing to happen to me during my time at that restaurant. That and Spaced of course. Callie had a boyfriend but I sensed they were off-again on-again quite a lot. She wanted to be an actress, I still had no idea what I wanted to be.

  I made Callie laugh and I could feel us getting closer but she was still in love with her boyfriend. I knew from the beginning it would hurt, I suspected she was using me to get back at him, although I’m not sure he ever knew about me, thus defeating the purpose I guess. I wasn’t the kind of hunk girls used to make other hunks jelz. He was, I imagine, a big, handsome fucker, to get her you’d have to be. (Unless you were funny, like me.)

  I think the mistake I made was fairly early on telling her that I loved her. Error. I think I did. I felt like I did anyway. Now obviously looking back it was nothing like love. It was my balls trying to convince my brain that I loved her. As soon as I told her this it was game over and I’d lost. Again.

  This affair went on for a while and coincided with a heavy consumption of dangerous and psychoactive lolflakes. The lolflakes I think helped and prolonged my ‘relationship’ with Callie, added another level of mystique to me. I may not have been a looker in her eyes but I was funny, smart, complicated and troubled. This was almost enough to keep her interested. Almost. I used a cracking technique when we first met, although to say technique would imply some kind of thought process behind it; there wasn’t. What I did was I simply forgot her name. It made her mad that this plain lump would, could, forget her name.

  We had some lovely days. Once in the morning I brushed her hair and we went to the zoo but I could see her heart wasn’t in it. We worked and I made her laugh and I wanted her to love me and it was complicated and I guess secretly I liked it. The fact I ever got her to stay in the Crab Pit was amazing to me. How would any young lady in her right mind ever want to wake up in Tramp Henge? I knew how to treat a woman back then. Once I bought her a lettuce as a present. I woke up and she was gone. Only the lettuce remained. I panicked slightly.

  I think if you took 9 Busby Place as a whole, its inhabitants, the vibe – sorry, me – it was a fairly attractive place for Callie to be. We had some amazing parties in that house. I don’t remember much, which is probably for the best. I once saw two burly northern women holding onto each other for balance while they pissed off a high balcony onto the street below. It was a very dangerous manoeuvre.

  That same party saw the police try and secrete a plain clothes officer into our rave. The police had come round earlier in uniform asking us to turn down the music. We didn’t. So later in the night they pulled up the street a little way in a marked panda car and dropped off an undercover man. Silly tactic. We were all stood out on the balcony and watched the whole thing unfold. The young officer, wearing tight, stonewashed jeans and a fleece – what did off-duty police wear before the invention of the fleece? – hopped out of the vehicle and grabbed a four-pack of generic lager. He set off to infiltrate and realised he’d been rumbled. We laughed and barracked him from the third-storey balcony. He turned tail and got back in the car.

  Some of my favourite times at Busby Place came on Sunday mornings when we had been clubbing hard. Smiley’s records and deck set-up meant it was a perfect place to chill out as the sun came up. Sometimes twenty people would come back, the sexy Antipodean babes would bath and get into some kind of snuggie, while the boys smoked biftas and talked loudly.

  We’d wake Smiley up and pester him to mix for us. He’d be absolutely furious for a second and then his spirit chimp would kick in and the need for him to creat
e a little mischief would overwhelm his urge to kill us. Pretty soon after a Norn Irish breakfast (tea and a fag), he’d start to play records and the night would begin again.

  Eventually we’d run out of steam and we’d all lie in a heap, the girls in their snuggies and all freshly showered smelt and felt amazing. We were naughty, greedy boys and secretly the girls liked it. They’d play with my hair and massage my hands while my eyes rolled. They were perfect Sundays. I think this is a fine dynamic when you’re in your twenties. The longer this goes on the more boring it gets. Especially for the girls. Girls don’t want those types of guys into the mid-thirties and beyond. Very unattractive.

  One afternoon Smiley arrived back from gigging upcountry, I hadn’t been out and Simon wasn’t in. Smiley was acting very weird. He was quiet, not like Smiley at all. He came in and made a cuppa. A few words were exchanged, not much though. He goes upstairs to shower, I light another bifta. When he comes back down his skinny little body is wrapped in a towel and he’s wearing a big cardie. He sits down and watches telly not saying a word. Something bad has happened. I don’t pry at first, the weed gives me a sixth sense that says ‘not now’ so I leave it. A little bit later my weed says ‘now’.

  ‘Hey, mate? Are you okay?’

  He nods silently and gets up and leaves. My feet feel hot. Something’s wrong. Ten minutes or so later he comes in again and turns the telly off. ALERT. ALERT. ALERT. I push my legs back and move the Dead Man’s chair from horizontal into a high vertical position. The weed stutters . . .

  ‘Don’t, don’t, please don’t turn the telly . . .’

  ‘I need to talk to you.’

  ‘Right.’

  ‘You know I said I was gigging up the country?’

  ‘Yeah.’ Oh god help me, I know what’s coming.

  ‘I wasn’t gigging.’

  ‘Oh. Right, where were you then?’ I didn’t want to know.

  Me and Smiley have a long history, Smiley more than me to be fair, of flirting with Simon’s lovely mum. It drives Simon slightly mad and makes Gill laugh, it’s all in good spirits. She is absolutely lovely. She’s one of the nicest people in the world and has been so good and kind to me ever since I first met her twenty-one years ago. We have a kind of mother/son thing going on, but Smiley’s a big flirt and likes to make me and Simon feel uncomfortable so he always pushed it that much further.

  Smiley continued but inside I knew what was coming.

  ‘I spent the weekend in a hotel.’ he said.

  ‘Oh right.’ I pretended to be dead but he continued anyway. Why had I smoked that joint?

  ‘I spent the weekend in a hotel with Gill.’

  BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOMMMMMMMMMMMM!!!

  My left brain shuts down, my right hand shuts down and I piss-fit slightly. Smiley gets up, pats me on the shoulder and leaves me alone downstairs, terrified. My liver hurts.

  I remain paralysed, shut down, dormant for over an hour until I hear the downstairs door open. Simon is home. I know the worst secret in the world and it’s killing me. Our dream, our little collective, is gone and dead and I know and I can’t say.

  Simon senses weirdness from me and it’s all I can do to stop myself grabbing a giant kitchen knife, touching the point to the place on my chest where my heart lives and falling forwards until it’s sticking out the other side and one of my feet is twitching.

  ‘What’s up?’

  ‘Nothing.’

  ‘Smiley in?’

  I nod. Simon puts the kettle on. I’m wearing a sarong and an orange shirt that I love, it has the legend ‘Down By Law’ etched on the back; being a big Jim Jarmusch fan I was very proud of this work shirt. I wear thick-rimmed black glasses and my hair is set in a high backcombed pompadour. The guys used to call it The Goose. I’m almost constantly high, something I’m regretting right now as I lie there unable to speak, hoping Smiley has somehow died in the last hour.

  I hear his door open. I hear his bony little feet padding on the stairs. He’s coming.

  ‘Hey, mate.’ Smiley puts on his butter-wouldn’t-melt voice. Simon smells a rat immediately.

  ‘Hey, mate.’ They cuddle. Smiley pushes it.

  ‘You wouldn’t make me a nice lil cup o tea, would you?’

  ‘Sure,’ says Simon. ‘Everything okay?’

  A pause. I look at Smiley. He looks at me.

  ‘Aye.’

  Simon sits and we all drink our tea in silence. This is too much for me to bear so again I click into a vertical position, stand, retie my sarong and bumble around trying to act casual. Smiley’s watching.

  ‘Where are you going, big lad?’

  Simon’s slightly confused, he senses wrongness.

  ‘What’s going on?’

  ‘Nothing, I’m going up for sleep.’ It’s one in the afternoon. I have to leave. I run into the Crab Pit and pull a box of musty towels across the door. I listen for Simon’s grief-ridden cries as he finds out his best mate has violated not only the sanctity of a lovely friendship but also his mother. I pace and pound around my Crab Pit. Eventually I am forced to go downstairs. I ghost down silently and note the TV has been muted. Simon and Smiley sit next to each other in silence. Oh god. Poor Simon. Will Smiley eventually become Simon’s new stepdad? That could be awkward.

  I walk into the kitchen, fluids pumping around a brain, flabby and numb, make a whooshing noise every time my heart pumps, which, right now, is a lot. I do what I believe is the right thing to do. Let’s have a cup of tea and talk this through.

  ‘Tea anyone?’ I turn to see them both smiling. Oh. Then Smiley waggles his eyebrows, Simon chuckles.

  ‘What’s happening?’ I wish I was gone.

  They both start laughing. This, it turns out, is a very cruel trick. A very cruel trick indeed. Smiley, seeing me high, had decided to play a joke of such life-rocking proportion I had internally peed into my own bladder. Why would you play a trick like that? Simon wasn’t in on it but when I fled Smiley saw his chance to rope him in. What a willy. We laughed.

  ***

  Our time at Busby Place came to an end. We knew our time was up one afternoon when me and Simon were watching TV. With no warning at all the ceiling of the kitchen/living room simply detached and fell onto our heads. We could easily have been killed. After a second, once an internal health diagnostic had been run, we laughed. The landlord never really had the drive or the gumption to do the place up. I think eventually he decides to sell that big lump of a house. So we move out.

  Simon’s career had gone from strength to strength. A couple of years before he found himself touring with Steve Coogan on his live show, The Man Who Thinks He’s It. It was a great show. Steve and Simon became mates off the back of it and I guess, through him, me and Steve got to know each other a bit too. I like him a lot, he’s funny and very generous.

  When he found out we were being put on the street he offered us his mews house in Archway. What a Mensch. Next door lived either Pepsi or Shirley, from the band Pepsi and Shirley. They started out as a backing group for Wham! in the eighties but went on to have a nice little career of their own. I never found out which was which and we never really saw them very much so it didn’t matter. It was a really lovely house and we paid very little for it.

  I was still half seeing Callie, still in love, still working in the restaurant but something was about to change. Simon, along with an ultra-talented loony called Jess Stevenson, had been approached by Channel 4. He’d met her making a TV show that Edgar directed. They really enjoyed each other and Simon thought Jess and Edgar were friggin geniuses. He was right. They hung out a lot and came up with the idea for a flatshare comedy which became the show called Spaced.

  It was great seeing Simon potentially get his own series, he was cockahoop. After a lot of meetings with the channel they agreed to commission seven episodes of network television. What a great thing.

  Me and Peggy went to Camden one day to drink cocktails and meet Jess. Once she’d arrived they put a proposition to me: ‘How wou
ld you like to come and be in our show Spaced?’

  He wanted to use a slightly tweaked version of my character Mike Watt in the show and wanted me to play him. I’d never acted before and didn’t ever think it would happen so I shrugged, ‘Fuck it, I’ll do it.’

  That was that. Anything to get out of waitering. I never thought it’d happen and I’d ever have to do it so what was the harm in saying yes?

  This gave me the chance to lord it up a bit over Callie at work, she wanted to be an actress so badly, she seemed amazed that I’d be so casual given an opportunity like this. Maybe she was a bit cross that this thing had flopped into my lap when I didn’t really give a fig about acting or being famous.

  I put the meeting in Camden out of my mind until I started to receive phone calls about costumes and sizes and my availability etc. What was happening? Simon would come home every night buzzing about what he and Jess had written that day, jokes they’d laughed at, characters they’d crafted. It was exciting. Still I waited tables.

  In the evenings we’d sometimes all hang out together, go to a pub, party, dinner, drinks. I knew everyone more or less by this time and I wasn’t afraid any more but I still didn’t have much of a voice. Who cared what I had to say, what I thought was funny? I was good in small groups. Fortunately Edgar and Jess had seen me in small groups so they had got to know me better.

  That said, it was only fairly recently that I discovered Edgar had had a conversation with Simon one day shortly before the pre-production of Spaced began. He questioned whether or not Simon was sure I could do it, whether I could act, whether I could perform in front of people. It’s a perfectly understandable question to ask. I think Simon said yes – I think. What a gamble, what a risk to take. I hope I’ve repaid that trust over the years. I’m glad Simon was confident because I sure as shit wasn’t. I didn’t want to be an actor in any way, shape or form. No sir. It seemed too much like showing off for me and if there’s one thing I’m not it’s a show-off. (Maybe a little bit in the kitchen.)