“PAUL! PAUL! STOP! OW! MY MELON! Mate! That is not my vision of the best-case scenario. It’s much more that I’ve fallen in love with her and want to, you know, give her a rose or something.” But Dr Mesmer’s locomotive was not to be derailed.
“You’re fucking her in the arse like the whore she is.”
“Paul! Stop! I want to marry her or at least go on holiday with her.”
I could hear the runaway train of Paul’s brilliant brain juddering into my sentimental station. He paused and reflected.
“Oh. Sorry, Russell. That’s probably some of my shit getting in the way there.” He recalibrated.
“OK … So you’re with her, it’s a sunny day. In a meadow. By the sea, or a lake – water of some kind, like in a book. Something of that ilk.” His references for romance were not so quickly forthcoming.
“How do you feel now? Any better?”
“Yes, I feel a bit better I think, Paul.”
“Good. And how do you feel when you think about her?”
“Erm … I still feel a bit of a twinge in my stomach when I think about her.”
“Well that’s not good, that sounds like it could be emotion. We’ll soon get rid of that. Have you ever seen her looking ugly?”
I conjured the vision of this Venus. “No, Paul, she’s never looked ugly,” I sighed.
The line fell silent and for one terrible moment I thought Paul was stumped, that true love was a force too powerful even for Paul McKenna’s incredible abilities, but he had one more ace in the pack. Drum roll please …
“OK. I want you to imagine her head on a dog’s body.”
The next day Lucy Lawless, Xena: Warrior Princess, was having a barbecue. These are the kind of sentences that make a mockery of actors claiming that making films is just a craft, a job – like being a carpenter and making tables. A carpenter would rarely be asked the question “Xena: Warrior Princess is having a barbecue on Saturday with Mike from Neighbours and Uncle Monty – are you coming?” “No, because I will be making tables.” The only carpenter who would be unimpressed by that invitation is Jesus or possibly Karen.
The Warrior Princess’s barbecue took place at a Beverly Hills pad, a bungalow that looked like David Hockney had painted it, spread out over acres with a Japanese ornamental pond and a giant indoor aquarium where Xena’s kids kept tarantulas and lizards. I arrived with Sharon, remembering two important things: a bunch of flowers for the hostess and to imagine Teresa Palmer’s head on a dog’s body.
To be honest I quite like dogs, so the technique wasn’t that helpful, and she looked amazing that day. Cool she looked, in the garden when me and Shaz arrived. I squeezed Sharon’s hand and palmed off the bouquet. “God, look at her, Sharon, she’s incredible,” I said. “Even with that dog’s body.”
“Go and talk to her, you idiot. Use that personality you’re always on about.” I glared at Sharon and had we not been at a posh barbecue I would have spat at her, which was one of the main ways we communicated. After hours of watching Teresa and pretending to listen to other people I decided to employ the old “be nice to kids to attract women” technique. Luckily the mandatory Mexican housekeeper had brought her son to work. He was about four and a likeable sort of cove. I’d been pulling faces and such like and shooting him with an imaginary gun for ages and he was lapping it up, but as yet Teresa hadn’t noticed my incredible, unaffected rapport with children. I had to up the ante. So I pretended to be a sort of monster-stroke-gorilla creature and chased after the mite and swept him up into my arms with a terrifying roar. “That should do the trick,” I thought. The kid was bellowing with laughter so there was no way she could ignore this move. She looked over, check-mate. But what’s this? Instead of cocking her head to one side and giving me a gooey smile she looked sort of, well, horrified. Well, that wasn’t on the menu. I glanced down at the pocket Pablo I was swinging about between my legs to learn that what I’d taken to be gleeful chuckling was in fact, uncontrollable crying – and not just from his eyes. The melody of his tears was being backed up by the treble of his terrified piddle. “Blast. This kid is blowing my game with his unscheduled waterworks.” I tried to cheer him up with another mock shooting but the lad was inconsolable. Luckily his mum stepped in, shot me a glare and marched off with a tearful tot. I was back on track, no harm done except the wee-wee I was wiping off on to the back of one of Xena’s deckchairs.
Teresa made for the bathroom. I seized the opportunity and caught up with her by the time she’d reached the tarantulas. “Kids, huh?” She looked confused.
“Kids,” I repeated. “I love ’em.”
“Well, you’ve a funny way of showing it,” she said, frowning a beautiful frown.
“Yeah, I’m complicated,” I muttered, staring off into the distance where the child’s sobbing could still be faintly heard. Beautiful girls spend their lives getting chatted up, so to get past their defences you need some pretty potent artillery. I gave her hair a pull. “Fancy coming for dinner?”
“What? I’ve heard about you, mister.”
“Yeah? What have you heard? That I’m a rogue? A heartbreaker?”
I had a good speech for this kind of approach, but before I could embark she interrupted. “No. That you’re a prat.”
Lesser men would’ve been swayed but you’ll get nowhere in life if you can’t skip past a few superficial insults like Alan Devonshire evading a clumsy right-back. “Let’s go for a walk and see if we can’t get past a few of these terrible misconceptions.” Blessedly there was a trampoline in the garden and Teresa and I clambered on; it was one of those ones with mesh round it like a cage-fighting ring. Like all Australians she was incredibly fit and agile so she leapt like a sexy gazelle. I nearly broke my spine trying to match her. Soon, though, the rhythmic bouncing and its obvious carnal parallel coaxed us into flirtatious union. That girl looked good on a trampoline. Her cleavage, her boobs, which I tried to ignore, were more hypnotic than anything McKenna had battered me with. Plus she was really sweet and funny and tormented me as we jumped higher and higher, and for a minute I forgot myself and it was lovely, just to be with a pretty girl, smiling, mucking about, crashing the heavens as we bounded. Other people soon turned up to pop the bubble, but by then it was too late. We’d bounced right into a romance. In the car on the way home I was drunk on it all.
“It’s a shame, though,” I said to Sharon, “that the film Big uses a trampoline to indicate the commencement of an affair when Tom Hanks takes that woman home – it undermines it.”
“Russell, you idiot. This is real life. You can’t go back and do the barbecue again because your trampoline scene lacked originality.”
The next day was the premiere for Adam Sandler’s film You Don’t Mess with the Zohan, and this was where I’d next see her. I was in the right state of mind because I’d had a quick session with McKenna in which he’d brainwashed me into being a heartless psychopath, so I was able to cope. That night she was a Hollywood actress at a film premiere; she was just wearing a dress that was made out of ivory or whalebone or something that ought to be banned. She was cruelly beautiful.
I tracked her at the after-party at the famous Teddy’s nightclub. Completely single-minded, my breath slowed as I watched her.
“Hold my coat,” she said defiantly as I moved in.
“I’m not really that sort of person,” I smiled.
She pushed it into my hands. “You are now.”
All else faded, the chatter and light receded as I edged closer to her. She looked at me across her drink with those eyes. “Are you always going to live like you do?” she enquired. “All these girls, all the promiscuity?”
“I hope not,” I replied, holding her gaze, emboldened by my sense that the moment was at hand.
“Don’t you want a family? Children?” She’d obviously forgotten that little boy I’d traumatised the previous day. Good.
“I would like to one day, yes,” I said, drifting closer to her mouth, imperceptibly on each syll
able. She was moving closer too. These are the times that make it bearable. Perhaps this girl might bring salvation. I am tired of the unsettling whirl, perhaps I can rest here in her eyes.
“Do you think you’ll ever change?” she asked me with breathtaking sincerity, and for the moment I was safe. I fell into the kiss.
“I’ll change for you,” I whispered. And I did. For a week.
†
Picture Section
One week out of rehab, Nik holds me up.
I bought Jonathan that sculpture for his birthday and gave it to him on his show, although he edited it out because it was “in bad taste”. Stick that in your pipe, Daily Mail.
Me at my foppish best. Matt hated his hair that day as he said he looked like “an auntie”. He looks better than Trevor though, who resembles a dog that’d been turned into a man five minutes before the photograph and was wearing a twee neckerchief.
Me and Matt in the good old days. With me as a ringmaster and him as a mermaid – perhaps the clearest actualisation of our relationship. God knows what we were filming it for. No justification could be sufficient.
David and Matt came on my “pain in the arse” chat show and were wonderful – they bought gifts and David held my back, hand and arse throughout to comfort me. In this photo Matt has gone within himself to cope with me and David’s unsettling sexual chemistry.
No man should ever be subjected to the sight of David Walliams embracing their mother. Moments after this photograph was taken they disappeared together for one month. We’ve never discussed it.
The beautiful conductor of whimsy and elf sex-appeal Noel Fielding loaned me his spectacular talent to raise money for Focus12, the drug and alcohol charity. I think, ironically, he may literally have been drinking while doing it. I mean, look at his right hand.
Over a century after its invention I try to explain the telephone to “prince of the north” Noel Gallagher. Actually he was raising money for Focus12 too. Interestingly, both Noels seem to have to drink to cope with working with me.
Me and Matt, Noel and Gee’s nose receive the Sony Gold Award for Best Radio Show. Noel ruins the prestige employing a gesture he used to spoil the Nineties.
The collective, after Radio Show Live at the Bloomsbury, in which Matt and Noel outed me as “a child who withheld faeces until toy farmyard animals were presented”. Here, they proudly celebrate with a kiss.
Me and Nik and our LA additions, adorable Sean Elliott (left) and my sweetheart, Dan Weiner (right).
Front row at the Staples Center, watching the Lakers with my beloved, kindly Hollywood big-shot agent, Adam Venit. Here I am whispering, “Why the hell do they keep touching it with their hands?”
Jason Segel and me wear the neck pillows (Hawaiian style) that Nik buys for every flight we go on. Jason thoughtfully recreates the expression he wore the previous evening while enjoying some “private time” with Nicola Schuller.
My actual head is in that sludge being moulded for a movie. I felt like a bukkake star.
Here is the costume that slime bonnet was for. A golden robot. Only the emperor remained pink.
Bedtime Stories premiere. Me with Ollie and Nicola’s niece Elsie, who I love.
The Sand Man! Me! Courtney Cox! That was literally the only time I stood near her.
Paul McKenna does the perfect “Paul McKenna” face. Imagine him saying, “Is some bitch twisting your melon?” Go on.
I had sex with everyone in that photo except two of the men and one of the women. At that party. Yep. It was one hell of a barbecue.
VMAs 2008. Tom, my darling assistant and modern-day gay butler, Dan Weiner, Nicola, Matt and Nik, just before we teased the triggers of a billion hillbillies.
On my way to the VMAs and death threats – I’ll get another one when my mum sees I used a photo of her in her dressing gown.
Rusty Brown, Britney Spears and an elephant in the room.
Me and Matt in our VMA backstage wigwam – Matt has the face of a man who knows he’ll soon be sharing that space with bottles of his friend’s urine.
Ma’am as’n Jam not Ma’am as’n Arm. Hmmm, I’d like to lick the back of your head.
I’m trying to force my mind into Morrissey’s mind.
Me and Oliver Stone. Together, surely we can form some sort of revolutionary force.
Jay Leno continues his tireless seduction or my darling mother, Babs.
Me, little Mingo – Nicola’s daughter – and Sachsgate architect, Gareth “What could go wrong?” Roy.
Gee writing a poem during the show. What a talent. He also failed to prevent Sachsgate.
I apologise and resign. Stalin looks on. I like to think he’d’ve been impressed.
An Australian radio station misjudged my persona and filled the studio with attractive girls. Me and Danny approached it like Supermarket Sweep.
Part Three
It’s always funny till someone gets hurt. Then it’s just hilarious.
Bill Hicks
They sicken of the calm that know the storm.
Dorothy Parker
Chapter 14
They Never Forget
If the quest for true love, the pursuit of the ideal partner I’d craved as a lad, before I grew into a clichéd hell-raiser, remained perplexing, at least my career looked to be in good shape. Forgetting Sarah Marshall was doing well in the States and our decision to head for the Hills looked shrewd. As ever, though, I was impatient for more success and notoriety, so when Dan Weiner, our new Canadian PR pal, a jittery, charismatic, Jewish pogo stick of enthusiasm, floated the idea of me hosting the 2008 MTV VMA awards, Nik and I thought, “Why not?” As I observed with the NME Awards, these shows can give an entertainer an anabolic career boost, but as with steroids there are risks. Steroids give you terrible mood swings and, in a twist worthy of Goethe, shrink your prickleberry. So think carefully, bodybuilders, before making that pact. Were there a drug that shrivelled the bicep but sent your privates hurtling to the floor like a greedy flesh drill then I’m sure sexual athletes everywhere would be struggling to open jars and dragging lolloping goolies about like dead dogs.
I’d begun performing stand-up at the Roxy on Sunset Boulevard, a smoky little sex den where the Pistols, Bob Marley and the Doors had played. We got MTV execs to come and watch me play there, and they were sufficiently moved to offer me the VMA gig.
This was a big deal, as American readers will know. British readers will be thinking, “VMAs? What in Her Majesty’s name is that?” Well, it’s that big music award show where Michael Jackson went mad and mistook a birthday cake for a lifetime achievement award (which I suppose in a literal sense all birthday cakes are), where Madonna snogged Britney, who herself at a subsequent show writhed around with a white python in a display of phallus worship that Ron Jeremy would have rejected as vulgar. So now you know, it is an event with a certain amount of national significance; more than I’d anticipated.
One thing MTV still does well is promotion. Nik and I flew to New York to discuss the campaign that would launch the event. In a pop-cultural coup they secured the involvement of saucy snake handler Britney Spears, who’d had perhaps the most eventful year in tabloid history, having been denied access to her children, publicly shaved her head and been photographed using her baby as a pair of driving gloves. Britney and I would make a series of promotional films together. Me and Nik met with big-wigs for a powwow in a skyscraper to iron out the details.
“We want you to be edgy,” said the MTV marketing guru, adjusting his specs.
“OK.”
“But don’t say anything rude to Britney.”
“Right.”
“Be rock’n’roll and dangerous but don’t mention any of the year’s disturbing events … But do be edgy.”
“Well, that’s going to be tricky,” I said. “You want me to be dangerous, rock’n’roll and edgy but not to bring up any of the things that a dangerous, rock’n’roll, edgy type of character might mention.”
“Th
at’s right,” said the exec. “Is that going to be a problem?”
“Well, you’re asking me to walk a bit of a tightrope there.”
The exec nodded. We were all quiet for a bit, and I for one had a jolly good look out the window at the Manhattan skyline and imagined playing Tetris into the gaps in the buildings. This took me approximately one hour, after which I returned to the discussion.
“I mean, chaps …” I began, “everyone’s going to be thinking about those cartoonishly scandalous events – if I don’t mention anything, don’t you think there might be a bit of an elephant in the room?”
Then there was some more quiet and I scanned the premises, which like all media offices was full of toys and trinkets and gimmicks; kidult claptrap.
“What if …” began the exec – let’s call him Kevin because that’s his name – “there was LITERALLY an elephant in the room?”
I regarded him for signs of devilry. “What? A real elephant?”
“Sure.”
“What! You know where to score an actual elephant?”
“Believe me, I can get an elephant.”
“So … I’m gonna meet an elephant?” I was naturally excited. One frequently meets pop stars in show business, but elephants? They seldom make an appearance. There was nothing more to discuss, we had our concept – an elephant.
The day of the promo, back in LA, I’d begun to consider the elephant an icon of forthcoming fortune; after all they provide a symbol for the Republican Party, the head of Hindu deity Ganesh, and are famous for never forgetting – although this last is somewhat spurious as there is no evidence of an elephant ever remembering anything either. Britney was there, fragile and pretty. Just a girl, of course, when viewed away from the circus (although as I keep saying there was one elephant), like an ambassador visiting us from the nation of her own notoriety. “Fame, fame, fatal fame,” said Morrissey. “It can play hideous tricks on your brain but still I’d rather be famous than righteous or holy, any day, any day, any day.” When you meet the famous, be it Kate Moss or Jonathan Ross, Sandler or Britney, their humanity, good or bad, seeps into the encounter and you acknowledge that in fact like all objects of fetish, all icons, they are a reflection of your perception. They are used like saints or gods; here to tell stories, to give us warnings of the perils of success or to be held aloft as examples of contemporary ideals. One figure can be used to represent either extreme, depending on the culture’s mood; David Beckham or Lady Diana can be an example of domestic excellence or individual indulgence depending on the tabloid, depending on the day. But away from the page they become nothing more than people. No more remarkable than you or I.
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