by Nick Frost
It was the early afternoon and I think I’d had a couple of Night Nurse margaritas. We had people over, I know that much. Something happens, Simon says something, something about my weakness for giving in and having a ciggie. He calls me weak. Oh no. Oh god no. David Banner walks into his bedroom and shuts the door. His eyes pulse and throb. He loosens his tie in savage expectation. Oh fuck. Weak. Fuck. I get up and steam into his room. There are people there, who I don’t know, don’t remember or can’t see. I explode. (Close up on green mushroom cloud expanding in eyeball.)
Right there and then we have a massive screaming match. Huge. The drink and Night Nurse combined means it’s all pretty nonsensical. I have to hold onto a door frame with two hands because I’m afraid if I have a hand free I may grab at his throat meat. I have a vague notion of people standing around open-mouthed, some kind of intervention, and then it blows itself out. I wake up some time later. All is forgotten. Simon says sorry for calling me weak. He feels bad.
All the rest were just little bullshits. We had a barney once during Hot Fuzz. We’re sat in a car, watching Martin Blower and Eve Draper speed past us. It was awkward because we were miked up and all the crew could hear us rowing. We sat in silence for three hours in that car while the crew eggshelled their way around us. What a pair of dicks.
One night years before when we were still living at Ivy Road, sleeping together on this shitty futon I owned, I got up to grab something from the end of the bed and Simon thought it would be funny to kick me off. It wasn’t very high but it hurt and Simon’s hysterical laughter as I floundered on the floor made it hurt a bit more. I fumed as we lay in bed in the dark in silence. Eventually it broke. I turned to him in the dark.
‘I’ve got a job interview at Trebor tomorrow.’
We both laughed like idiots and it was over.
Simon’s hurt me a lot over the years. The futon thing hurt; he’s also slashed at me with a knife while we were fucking about on set one day, I still have the scar to prove it. The worst injury though was not all his fault. We’d had mates round and the day had got to the point where me and Simon were swigging Harvey’s Bristol Cream out of the bottle. I suspect it wasn’t our first either. Me and Simon find ourselves in my bedroom wrestling topless on the bed. (I promise you we’ve never had sex.) We had people round for fucksakes, why we were wrestling in my room seems weird now, and from a hosting point of view downright rude.
Anyhoo, at one point Simon flies at me, foolish, very foolish, my immense strength means I’m great up close. I do most of my best work up close. He’s now in my arms in a perfect position for me to deploy an Atomic Power Bomb. I hesitate a second, fuck this, deploy! From a standing position I slam him onto and then through my bed with terrific force. The sound of smashing and cracking is frightening but the power bomb has been utilised with such force and elan we’re both pretty fucking proud. We’re also laughing like drains. The bed is completely destroyed. All the legs have fallen off and the mattress struts have shattered into splinters. A moment to get our breath back and we rise, surveying the damage.
It’s at this point Simon notices the thumb on my right hand is hanging off. It’s dangling loose. Just flapping there like a windsock. Oh. There’s no pain so I pick it up and jam it back in. Hooray, I’m cured. It lolls off again, swinging like a catflap. Balls. Being a keen home doctor I prescribe for myself gaffer tape, and lots of it. As we’ve already seen, it’s a technique that has served me well although one the British Medical Council tends to foolishly ignore. Imagine the savings the already creaking NHS could make with my self-care proposals.
While I’m securing the thumb into position our guests, upon hearing the Atomic Power Bomb and the smashing of a bed, come to investigate. There’s the usual mix of horror and laughter. Andrew Maxwell is here and some girls including Chris, my future wife. Maxwell’s attention immediately turns to my shattered bed. He talks ten to the dozen. There’s a large group gathered in my room, and the girls fuss over my loose thumb while the hunky men work out how to fix my bed.
I hear Maxwell holler a command: ‘Let’s put the bed up on its side so we can see how fucked it is.’
It’s only at this point that I realise what’s going to happen in about one second. In about one second, these people, these fine Samaritans, friends, lovely comedy fun-girls, are going to see about five hundred hardcore porno mags under my bed. They’re barely contained by two massive Ikea bags. Some of my Wank Du Jour are loose on the floor, close to hand. I panic – something I tend not to do any more, my embarrassment gland seems to have withered and died the older I’ve got. Back then, though, I panic. I start to flap about and fluster.
‘Leave it, guys, I’m fine. I’ll just sleep on it like it is, please, yeah? Leave it, leave it, please, put it down, I’ll sleep on the debris, seriously, it’s not . . .’
WANK MAGS!
The room actually goes silent for a moment. I laugh a bit. Mortified. It’s only porn at the end of the day, no one was bothered. I think the boys were impressed and the girls were worried that I wasn’t getting laid enough, which at this point was probably true.
Years later I do a show called Danger! 50,000 Volts! (which I’ll cover in book 2). There’s a lovely young lad working as a production assistant; I’m not sure how it came up but we start talking about porn one day. I’d moved in with Chris who was my gf at the time. She nudged me, and rightly so, into maybe getting rid of these mags. I didn’t want to at first, and it was only after meeting this little Welsh fella who literally fell off his stool in his eagerness to get hold of this nearly pristine catalogue that I gave in. That was the thing. I could’ve got rid of them bit by bit, wrapped in a carrier, under a bridge or in a derelict factory but I couldn’t bear to split the collection. Too much spunk went into these things for me to just fuck them off near a river for kids to find. No way.
This Welsh production assistant was a breath of fresh air. Once I explained my conundrum he sprang up.
‘I’ll have ’em!’ he said.
‘I’m not splitting up the collection.’
‘You don’t have to. I’ll have ’em all.’
And indeed, he had them all. One evening after work he came round in his little red Nissan Micra and we silently moved the two bags from my place into his boot. It felt like moving a gorilla’s body. We nodded, then shook hands while never really making eye contact.
‘Look after them.’ I said.
‘I will.’ he smiled
He got in, started the car and was gone. They were gone. Ten years’ work, gone. I often wonder what happened to those guys. Fuck. Happy days . . .
I wake up with a scream at 3 a.m. I was having a terrible nightmare that I’d broken my thumb and had gaffer-taped the thing back together. Oh. I struggle to turn the light on and when I do I wish I hadn’t. I’m lying on a mattress supported by columns of porn. Splinters and shattered pieces of bed lie all around. My hand is throbbing. Bits of black hand meat throb out through the gaps in the gaffer. Oh shit. Hospital for me. I’d broken my thumb pretty badly. Why did Simon keep injuring me? If I was his wife I think I’d have him put on some kind of register.
***
The thing about working on a show that everyone loves is you know eventually it’s going to end. This is what was happening to Spaced right now. It was ending. It’d been my first job and the thought of it coming to an end made me feel very sad. I was also tremendously proud. I’d done something I’d never done before and I think I bloody nailed it.
I had no idea how popular Spaced would become. No idea if we’d do another one. No idea what to do with my newfound skill in front of the camera. Where next? I did think about these things briefly but I was still concentrating on getting this shit done. Not letting anyone down.
Making what I guess can be classed as cult TV and films is an odd thing. For the fans it’s really important, it’s their escape, the thing they set their Tivos for. It shouldn’t be underestimated. Look at the massive convention circuit for god
sakes. That tells you all you need to know. For me the geek, it was Star Wars, Indiana Jones and X-Files (to name but three!) but for me the actor, it’s something you work on, love, have a hoot making, and then you move on. My brain tends to dump old content pretty much straight away so I can fit more dialogue in.
I think this is difficult for people to understand: why wouldn’t you remember doing Spaced? Of course I do but that was the first thing I did and I’ve done countless TVs and fifteen or so films since then. That sounds like a boast, it’s not meant to. Sorry.
***
During the shoot we were forced to move house yet again. Steve’s dream mews was only ever a temporary measure, as much as it would’ve been nice to stay there living next door to Pepsi or was it Shirley? One day on the way back from a shoot Simon drives past an estate agent and notices a house to let in the window. He gets the car to stop so he can see it and then calls Smiley. Smiley goes up and looks and arranges a viewing. It’s perfect.
Sometime later we move into Shepherds Hill in Highgate. It’s amazing. I have, mostly, the nicest memories of that house. We had the whole bottom floor of a large Victorian mansion. It had a massive garden, which, as I’ve said many times before, was a real hotspot for European Jays. It felt like a big boys’ house, new carpets throughout and its own fridge. It was really lovely.
The rent was split three ways at this place. It would be the first time I could properly pay my way. I spend a few hundred quid getting the bed me and Simon would later kill, some shelves, a simple table, a lamp. I felt so grown up. I had my money from Spaced and I thought the salad days would never end.
We finished shooting the show and it was a fabulous experience. It was the first time in my life I realised what I wanted to do. What I wanted to be. Thank heaven, I’d left it so late. All those years I’d lain in bed at night listening to my Jiminy Cricket tell me everything would be okay were finally justified.
For the first time ever in my life I had money in my bank. Not a lot but . . . I think people assume if you do a TV show or a film you’re immediately a millionaire. I think I got paid a high four-figure sum for Spaced. It was more than I’d ever been paid before in one lump! I was earning £1.92 p/h at Mexican Restaurant Inc. It’s all relative. One would be forgiven for thinking I’d been paid 600k the way I was living though. I was in a nice house with my best mates, money in the bank, just finished a TV show that everyone said I did great in. What could possibly go wrong?
I have no idea what I thought I’d do immediately after Spaced. I guess I imagined the work would just roll in. Right? Well maybe after the thing gets aired, but that wouldn’t be for another year at least. I paid this no mind however. I also, through complete ignorance and the misguided belief that I, Nick Frost, someone who was above all this kind of shit, thought I wouldn’t have to pay tax on it. What was I thinking? I just spent. I raved and drank and fucked about and had a great time.
***
During this period I was invited by Adam and Joe to a fancy party. I was chuffed and began to feel included in the scene. I’m not sure what the occasion was but my party instinct tells me either wrap or Christmas. No matter. For some reason I’d spent two months regrowing a big Zapata moustache after shaving my Spaced one off when we wrapped. I gave it to Edgar in a matchbox as a gift. He still has it although now it looks like a red marble. Gross.
I’d left the party at around two o’clock to get home in time to watch the first Evander Holyfield/Lennox Lewis fight. I was pretty pissed up as I walked around Farringdon looking for a taxi. I was outside a BP garage on the outskirts of an estate when I turned to see five youths bowling up towards me. Fuck!
As a man I had always been terrified of this happening – one on one fine, fair game, but this was different. This was the thing where, despite your best intentions of a noble fightback, through sheer weight of their numbers you would be completely emasculated and there was nothing you could do to prevent this. Nothing.
Many times as a younger man I’d mulled over the eternal question. Stabbed or slashed? For the record I’m all for the stabbing. Here’s my logic: for someone who is terrified of having stitches the thought of having two or three hundred in a gaping chest or back slash is unthinkable. But the thought of being stuck and having an operation under a general anaesthetic was complete bliss. How did we get here? Oh yeah, the guys surrounding me. The great stab or slash question now flickered through my processor. It was rudely interrupted by this . . .
‘What are you fucking looking at, you fat cunt?’
As an opening remark it leaves little or no confusion as to what their intention is; as direct approaches go it’s actually quite refreshing.
I’m fucked. I quickly formulate a strategy, this buys me the precious seconds I need to figure out a Jack Reacher-style plan to get me out of the pickle that’s come to be known as ‘The incident of the wrong moustache in danger town’.
Here’s what happens next . . . With a powerful, fast-paced right hook I knock the main cunt out. Sparko, gone, jaw pops, eyes roll, he does the thing boxers do where their arms spasm into the sky, flapping at white ravens unseen. He might be dead. Gutted.
This completely throws a fox into the hen house. This has never happened to them before, their random victims never fight back. It’s not the done thing. The toilet muffin behind me beeps and starts to panic. Whatevs. I spin, laying a pointy elbow into his soft human temple. He vomits and groans like a grieving widow. He collapses into a puddle of his own council estate honk. Three left.
A handsome, long-limbed simpleton swings one of his rangy paws at me. Christ he was slow. I step left and one step forward quickly rotating. I flick out a shattering back fist. Poor lad, he’d have to undergo four hours of painful NHS dental surgery.
I pull one of his oversized incisors from the back of my hand, I toss it to the floor and giggle like a wet Geisha, I close my eyes, and let the man chemicals flood through my brain. I cum.
The last two combatants are completely horrified. I get the feeling they’ve never seen a man involuntarily ejaculate during a Fatty Bash before. I see them think twice. Seeing me on all fours tasting my own seed they decide to fuck off. I survey the pile of human shit around me, and pulling Willy out I take a post-fight piss on them. I notice one of them has a Cadbury’s Double Decker in his pocket. I reach in, open it and feed. Fuck, it tastes good. A black cab pulls up and I jump in.
‘Where to, Guvnor?’
‘Highgate please, Driver.’
‘Good night?’
‘Excellent.’
Job done . . .
My fantasy ends and to my horror I find I’m still surrounded. Skins, geezers, faceless, mirthless, dead behind the eyes. I mutter a cowardly retort to his original quesion:
‘Nothing, mate.’ My eyes cast down at the pavement.
The tension builds to a point where I think my femurs might snap and to my utter amazement they just saunter off. The ringleader gobs on the floor as a goodbye and they bowl off into the garage. Deep breath, big boy. Important decisions are now made quickly, decisions that could save my life. Don’t run, this will trigger their chase response and you’ll be killed, pray for a taxi.
A taxi doesn’t come and I’m still there when they stalk out, all bogging me down. I should’ve run, they didn’t need to see me still there. It’s some kind of diss. They wander off. I breathe easy. I may have even smiled a bit. I’m free, you lucky twat.
From behind my right shoulder I hear a powerful haymaker whizzing past my ear. It catches me square on the button. Right on the chin. Flat footed. Pop. Lights out. Gone. Down like a sack of shit. No defence, no chance, knocked the fuck out.
I’m asleep for quite a while. Fortunately I come to just as they’re changing shifts. Punches have now been replaced by penalty kicks to my head and its face that lives around the front. A refreshing change in martial techniques. Through all the violence and punch-guffing I can sense them tiring. I recall a weird calm descend on me, I’m either dying
or I’ve just wet myself. After years of being terrified of this kind of thing happening I actually remember thinking that it wasn’t too bad. This block of abstract thought lasts two seconds, no, one. Then I remember thinking that I’d quite like to go to sleep. One last giant boot to my face granted me my wish. I’d finally tired them out.
As I lay on the street in a puddle of my own claret, blind – they’d kicked my contact lenses out of my head – I remember a maroon car pulling up, screeching up, two men jump out, and chase these fuckheads off. What a brave and noble thing to do. I never got a chance to thank those men. I truly feel if it wasn’t for them I would’ve died that night.
I miss the Lennox Lewis fight. Simon arrives to pick me up. He puts me to bed and soaks my once-beige now-claret jacket in a bath of cold water. What a sweet sweet man. He really looked after me.
I didn’t feel afraid after that, didn’t feel like I couldn’t leave the house. On the contrary, I felt like statistically I’d had mine. I think I was relieved that the person who got the fuck kicked out of him was me and not some frail old lady. Like my brother Marc, I could take it. Just.
***
I begin to realise my massive Spaced pay cheque had all but disappeared. I’d pissed it up the wall. It was all gone. I don’t even remember what I did. I wish now I could see that as a good thing. I don’t. I think now, looking back, it fills me with shame. A little bit of shame.
I try and eke things out for as long as I can. It’s not long. I have no money, no job, a girl who wished I looked more like David Beckham. What am I going to do? I know what I have to do but I deny it, deny myself, pride punching me in the tool at the very notion of what I was thinking.
I’d found a great little pub just round the corner called The Shepherds. Me and Simon walked past it a few times but it looked old and piss-soaked, so we avoided it for quite some time.
Being an unemployed actor now, I had most of my days free. Walking past one day with an Evening Standard under my arm I thought, ‘Fuckit, go in.’ And I did. If I ever write another one of these I’ll go into it more, but that pub was massive. It became a massive part of my life. Of Simon’s life. But back then it was a place to eat a lasagne and chips (lashings of white pepper), drink a pint of Stella, and look at the job vacancies in the back of the paper.