by Simon Pegg
We kissed for a while and nuzzled each other’s necks, copying what we had seen people doing in films and TV shows. Almost as though the needle had stuck on the LP of grown-up sexual activity, limiting us to the first few bars, a never-ending prelude to a song we weren’t quite ready to sing along with. That day, however, I decided to nudge the record player and touch her boobs. Not just honk them seductively but actually lift up her T-shirt, undo her bra and feel them, skin on skin. After the fortieth lips-to-neck cycle I changed rhythm. She didn’t resist.
I remember her skin smelled like Boots. Not the footwear, that would be off-putting, rather the popular high street pharmacy. The Gloucester branch boasted a sizeable perfume and make-up department, where I had loitered many times waiting for my mother to finish buying toiletries. I appreciate that implies some odd collision between the Oedipal and the Pavlovic but now really isn’t the time to get into that.
Meredith had sprayed herself with one of those aerosol perfumes for young girls that supposedly inspired men to go to enormous lengths to deliver flowers with breathless, dopey smiles. Flowers were possibly the last thing on my mind as she permitted me access to her bra strap, which I had no idea what to do with. I had never even seen one on a girl my age, let alone touched one. Meredith obligingly took over with an awkward smile and facilitated our blushing journey to whatever base boob contact qualifies as.
Afterwards, as I cycled home up over Nut Hill, I was suddenly racked with a sense of shame and regret. I don’t know why I felt so bad about what I had done. Maybe I was worried about what my mother would think if she found out (there I go again, skipping through the psychoanalytical minefield), or I was just disappointed with the slightly embarrassed cessation of activity once we had travelled the distance we were prepared to travel at this point in our sexual growth. Whatever the reason, it was with a heavy heart that I pedalled up the difficult hill back towards Upton St Leonards.
About halfway up, the road becomes uneven, requiring a hazard sign at the roadside to warn motorists of the possible danger of tackling road humps. The sign is a red triangle with two symmetrical bumps in the centre. I had seen it many, many times on my travels to and from Brockworth, but today it proved a stinging reminder of my tentative step towards sexual maturity. As it loomed towards me over the hill and I spied those two suddenly significant mounds framed in that scarlet triangle, I closed my eyes and uttered the words: ‘Oh God, what have I done?’
I’m not sure why I felt that way. It lasted only a few days and I never felt like it again as I progressed towards adulthood. It makes me laugh to recall it. My guilt and penitence in the face of this (hazard warning) sign from God seems hilarious to me now. God uses lightning and seas of blood to administer lessons, not the Department for Transport.
I actually waited for the feelings of guilt and remorse to return many months later, after the girl who lived in the house opposite mine came round one night and helped me fully understand what those conversations at the back of the maths room had been about. It was something of a shock. A year before, she had visited the house for a quick snog and protested angrily when my hand had found its way up her jumper (I must have been ready to get back on the proverbial tit bike). Now she was round again, and within a few minutes of necking on the bed, yanked my trousers down around my knees. Twenty-eight minutes later, I waved her off, shut the door and waited for the shame and regret to creep through me. It never did. I felt pretty good. Well, I would, wouldn’t I? I’d just got gobbled off.
I know what you’re thinking. What an absolute hypocrite! I open the book by railing against the notion of pimping my private life, then immediately don a felt fedora with a feather in it and whore out my secrets for cheap laughs. Intimate stuff too. Details of childhood sexual exploits, involving bras and fellatio. Truth is, I’m feeling my way along; it’s a learning experience for me as much as it is for you and it’s helped me understand something key. It’s not talking about personal details that unsettles me, it’s filtering personal details through someone else that makes me want to talk about Minnie. A stranger with a different agenda and priorities might distort, misinterpret or misuse the information, but if this information comes straight from the horse’s mouth, that being the definitive subject – brain zero, me, me, me – it’s not so bad.
2
‘I’m supposed to be writing a book, you mongrel!’ roared Pegg at the shrunken figure sat before him in the reclaimed dentist’s chair.
‘What’s stopping you?’ sneered Needles, a twitchy little informant who often featured in Pegg’s adventures. ‘Writer’s block?’
‘Gah!’ inarticulated Pegg, betraying a frustration he had dearly hoped to conceal.
‘Excuse me, sir.’
Pegg spun round, fire in his eyes. The black glove clutched in his manicured hand hung in the air like a floppy bat, ready to swoop down and give Needles another slap in the cake chute.
‘What is it?’ Pegg insisted through gritted teeth. ‘I’m kind of in the middle of something here!’
‘I’m sorry, sir,’ trilled Canterbury, failing to subtract an air of haughtiness from his computerised vocal nodes. ‘I know you don’t like to be disturbed when you’re interrogating a potential informant. Hello, Needles.’
Needles leaned out so he could see Canterbury beyond Pegg’s hulking mass, which was muscular but nimble, like Oliver Hardy if he worked out.
‘Hi, Canterbury,’ said Needles with an apologetic smile.
‘I was wondering if I might provide some refreshments?’ Canterbury enquired with the kind of immaculate poise that could only issue from an ACH (automated cybernetic humanoid, designed by Pegg).
‘Do you still have the SodaStream?’ enquired Needles.
‘I think so,’ replied Canterbury. ‘Although I fear it has been secreted in some high cupboard, along with various other novelty food-preparation devices.’
‘That’s a shame,’ lamented Needles.
‘We don’t have time for this!’ Pegg blustered, silencing them both. ‘He can have a can of Fanta Orange and that will be the end of it.’
‘Yes, sir,’ conceded Canterbury, with a slight inclination of his thoracic servos. ‘Coke Zero for you, sir?’
‘What do you think?’ Pegg growled with a throaty rumble that surprised even him (although he didn’t show it for fear of losing credibility in front of Needles). Almost imperceptibly, Canterbury’s neo-carbon-fibre shoulders sagged as he registered the disappointment in Pegg’s velvety Patrick Stewart-style voice.
‘Very well, sir,’ he offered, with a hint of self-admonishment. He was almost back in the transit tube before Pegg stopped him.
‘Canterbury?’ Pegg blurted.
‘Yes, sir,’ he replied.
‘That lasagne you made last night . . .’ Pegg’s voice faltered slightly. His internal monologue cursed his weakness, then for some reason reminded him to get more bottled water for the cave and to tape Mythbusters.
‘The lasagne, sir?’ offered Canterbury with just a hint of concern, bringing Pegg out of his personal reverie.
‘It was . . . It was delicious,’ Pegg admitted, eyes fixed on the floor. ‘I thought it was Marks & Spencer’s, until later when I went to the kitchen for a Tunnock’s Tea Cake and noticed you were steeping a dirty baking dish.’
‘That was washed and stowed immediately after you retired, sir. I had to soak it,’ assured the worried service-bot.
‘It’s OK,’ Pegg reassured him with a smile. ‘That doesn’t matter. The point is, you made an amazing dinner last night, that, if I hadn’t discovered to the contrary, I would have assumed was shop-bought. Impressive, most impressive.’
‘You’ll find I’m full of surprises,’ said Canterbury, his mechanical body swelling with pride. They often quoted movies to each other as a means of expressing affection and The Empire Strikes Back was one of their favourites, closely followed by The Shawshank Redemption. Canterbury left, with a spring in his step, literally: his feet were cushioned by
a system of helical metal coils.
‘Good old Canterbury,’ chuckled Needles, with a smile.
‘SILENCE!’ Pegg trumpeted, whacking the squealer in the mush with the black leather glove. ‘Tell me the whereabouts of the Scarlet Panther.’
‘Sorry,’ apologised Needles. ‘I was miles away.’
‘Where is the Scarlet Panther?’ Pegg reiterated.
‘What about my Fanta Orange?’ challenged Needles, defiance in his eyes.
‘WHERE IS SHE?!’
The effect was instantaneous. Needles wilted under the force of Pegg’s demand, his eyes widened and he seemed to shrink in size, and I can’t say for deffo but I think he probably wet himself.
‘The last I heard, she was in the Red City.’ The fight left Needles (like a shameful guff) as he gave up this vital infospurt.
‘Liverpool?’ questioned Pegg.
‘No, Marrakesh, she was in Marrakesh.’ Needles seemed all floppy like a smashed doll.
‘Was? Was?’ Pegg said twice for effect and to cover the fact that he thought the Red City was Liverpool.
‘That’s all I know,’ sagged Needles, his puny shoulders shuddering in a way Pegg could never achieve due to his size and courage.
‘“Was” is no good to me, Needles, I need to know where she is now.’ Softer but no less insistent, Pegg closed in on the pathetic wanker.
‘Can’t you use your ESTB and go back to last week? She was walking across the Djemaa el Fna away from the Koutoubia Mosque and towards the souks at 10.15 a.m. last Wednesday.’
‘Shitballs!’ said Pegg breathily.
‘What?’ persisted Needles.
‘It doesn’t work,’ Pegg admitted, cherrying up a bit. ‘It never did. That’s not to say it won’t though,’ he insisted, regaining some of that legendary composure.
‘What about that piece in Time Out?’
Pegg didn’t say anything. How could he admit to a lowly informant that he had fibbed to Time Out about inventing time travel?
‘You’ll never find her now,’ cheeked Needles. ‘Hell, you wouldn’t have found her if you’d arrived there one minute later. She knows those alleys like the back of her hand.’
‘So do I!’ spat Pegg. ‘I know them better than she does. I bought a riad off Sean Connery in 1998 and I go there twice a year.’
Needles was silent. Top Trumps.
Canterbury appeared at the passage pipe, pushing the drinks trolley.
‘Your Fanta’s here,’ Pegg growled, putting an end to the conversation. Pegg snapped open his Coke Zero and took a long manly slug (unlike Needles, who sipped his fizzy orange like a Brownie). Pegg’s thoughts turned to the Scarlet Panther.
‘She’s out there somewhere. The question is, where? Looks like I’ll be taking a little trip to Morocco. I’d better pick up suntan lotion and some new Birkenstocks – my old ones are well knackered.’
‘What?’ said Needles.
‘Nothing,’ Pegg snapped, embarrassed that he’d said all that out loud. ‘Drink your Fanta or I’ll tip it down the sink in the downstairs toilet.’
‘You wouldn’t!’ gasped Needles.
Pegg’s expression said it all (he would).
A Little Racist
T
his is the first joke I ever wrote. When I say wrote, I mean thought up. I didn’t purchase a small black book at the age of six with the intention of penning a library of classic material, which I would eventually leave in the back of a cab, forcing me to launch a heartfelt appeal to the thieves as part of an item towards the end of the second half of London Tonight. For many stand-ups the notion of writing material is actually a euphemism for just thinking stuff up and committing it to memory. Even when I was at my busiest, performing six or seven shows over a weekend, I never physically wrote material down. It existed intangibly in my mind, kept alive by constant performance, like a spinning plate or a campfire maintained by a lonely soul whose very existence depends upon its warmth. Looking back now, years after I hung up my microphone or legs or whatever it is retired stand-ups hang up, I can barely remember a single line of the routines I would perform nightly on the London circuit.
I never actually used my first joke in any of my stand-up routines. It was site-specific and traded somewhat on my status as a six-year-old child. I remember it very clearly though. I think the process of creating it secured it in my memory forever. It was, after all, a very significant moment for me. The creation of the joke and the subsequent reaction to it by my mum represented the first cycle of a process I would often play out through my childhood and into my professional life as an adult which, according to the number of years spent existing, is what I am now.
I was sat at the dining table at my nan’s house in Gloucester, having lunch with my mum (shortcrust-pastry meat pie and veg). We were talking about school and the various friends I had made, in particular one friend whose father was a dentist.
‘Nathaniel’s dad is a dentist,’ I declared.
‘Where does he practise?’ Mum enquired.
‘He doesn’t,’ I replied. ‘He’s a real one.’
I clearly remember calculating the double meaning of the word ‘practise’ and seeing the opportunity to create a joke that would make my mother laugh. Not in a knowing sense, I wasn’t a junior Groucho Marx; I saw the deliberate misunderstanding as a means of being amusing in a ‘kids say the funniest things’ sort of way. I had no intention of admitting that my comment was wilfully intended as funny. For some reason it seemed funnier to me if I played innocent and worked the humour from an accidental standpoint, so in that sense it was my first stab at character comedy too; the six-year-old me playing a slightly more guileless version of myself. A Simple Simon if you will.
It was around this time that I was suddenly lifted out of my exclusive Gloucestershire private school and supplanted to far more inclusive inner-city pre-school, with a far greater variety of class and ethnicity. Away from the rarefied rituals of Gloucester’s King’s School, the interior of which doubled as Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry in the Harry Potter movies, I began to learn life lessons.
One of my clearest memories of Calton Road Junior School involves a girl whose name I think was Karen, all hair and a tartan flannel dress, the faint smell of must surrounding her in an invisible cloud. Without any prompting, she leaned over to me in assembly one morning between hymns and asked if I wanted to hear the rudest word in the world. Intrigued, I nodded, at which point she shielded her mouth with her right hand, in case any morally indignant lip-readers were watching from the gym ropes, and whispered the word ‘cunt’ into my ear. I remember her solemn monosyllabic whisper, the way the ‘c’ formed a glottal rasp in the back of her throat, the way that the word itself sounded like a sort of nasal cough. This alien, magic word I had never heard before seemed dark and portentous to me, like I’d just been let in on a secret, the burden of which I did not wish to carry and nothing would ever be the same again. It made complete sense. I believed her. It sounded like the rudest word in the world.
I never told my mother about it, despite always feeling able to talk to her about anything, and always being keen to impart anything that might garner a reaction.
In fact, even by this tender age, I was already prone to showing off and was often accused of it by my peers, in that slightly bitter way that stifles creativity and shames children into shrinking into invisibility, although that didn’t entirely work on me. Even as a baby, I would do impressions of my grandfather and send my parents into paroxysms of giggles. He was a conductor of brass bands and whenever my mum or dad would ask, ‘What does Pop-Pop do, Simon?’ I would wave my arms in the air, not because I understood the concept of coordinating the mood and tempo of a throng of musicians, but because such an action would elicit a peal of approving laughter, essentially what the comedic mind craves, an immediate external validation by way of an involuntary, positive emotional response. At least that’s what my therapist said before I stabbed him in the cheek with a biro.
You could argue that the comic is the most impatient and neurotic amid the ranks of the insecure. Not only do they require approval, they require it immediately, that evident and tangible assurance, asserted by an unquestionable reflex of confirmation: laughter. ‘You love me! YOU LOVE ME!’ internalises the mad clown, whilst looking confident and a tad smug.
Stand-up comics in particular are at the most severe end of this need to be liked. Such is their desire for affirmation, they stand before a group of strangers and risk hostility and disdain in the pursuit of their goal. This becomes easier the more experience you gain. Good stand-ups can go out in front of any crowd with an air of confidence and assertiveness that wins the crowd’s attention before a word has been uttered. Even if, as sometimes happens, the gig isn’t great, the comic is able to rationalise the factors behind this as being anomalous and move on to the next performance with the same self-assured swagger. This comes with time and experience and most budding stand-ups survive on nerves and adrenalin during their formative years; or, if you were me, the promise of boiled sweets.
I performed my first stand-up comedy set (I say set, really it was a single joke) as a seven-year-old, stood in front of a weekly gathering of old women at the local Salvation Army centre. Staying with my nan over the summer holidays, I would always accompany her to the Home League on Tuesdays, where she would sing hymns and socialise with similar cloud-haired, lavender-soap-smelling old dears who had nothing better to do. I can’t remember if I was invited up on to the lectern to tell a joke or if I suggested to Nan that the service needed a little comedy to counterpoint all the hymn singing and tambourine battering, but step up to the mike I did. Unbeknown to me, it was a journey I would take many, many times and not just at the Salvation Army building on the Bristol Road.