Booky Wook 2: This time it’s personal

This daft provocation led to an unbroadcastable brawl that was fucking brilliant to watch – the house boiled over into a riot of slamming doors and screams, cameras couldn’t keep up with the action, it was like watching CCTV footage of a 3am liquor store robbery. It was the actualisation of the unspoken incentive for watching the whole damn shebang – you wanna see ’em fight and fuck. It was primal and exciting and obviously too good to go on telly in an unedited form. I got to watch a pre-sanitised version which they sent to my flat so that I could write jokes about it. When an executive producer realised that this sensitive material had been allowed out of the Elstree studios where the show was made he rightly flipped. “What!! That new presenter, ex-junky lunatic, who had to sign a special contract with a ‘sack on sight of substance abuse’ clause, is in possession of a tape that could get the whole show cancelled??!! Get it back NOW!!”

Tiptoeing around my perspective on the footage and hoping to discover what I might likely say, Shed, an exec from the channel and a lovely quirky bloke, asked me what I thought. “It was amazing,” I blurted, “like when it kicks off on the terraces at football or at a protest and chaos reigns supreme and your blood surges and your gut churns. Also it calls to mind the wise words of the World War One general who said, ‘You cannot rouse the animal in man then expect it to be put aside at will’ – I loved it.” He paused. “Could you not say anything like that on tonight’s show, please?” he said firmly.

He needn’t have worried – when the show began I was a tentative little worm in distressed T-shirt and pumps. I’d yet to transmute into the spiky, lacquered Jack Frost sex sprite that would soon, after a princess’s kiss, a saint’s curse and a chat show godfather’s approving nod, adorn the tabloids like a Big Brother winner. I was still but a squirt sat behind a desk all neat and meek.

The show evolved in time, due to the recruitment of two very funny men, Mark Lucey (Irish blood, QPR heart, all sensitive with a sixth sense of humour, like most people I love) and Ian Coyle (giant Elvis Costello, scouse and dour yet suddenly lachrymose). They infused the show with a Reeves and Mortimer-type joy and with me created some of digital TV’s most memorable catchphrases.

Distinctive and puerile idioms sprung up that assisted us in making a show that went out live and was on five nights a week. Under those conditions you need to evolve a structure and a grammar or it’d never get made. We were fortunate in that we were in tune with an appetite to see the by now huge, phenomenal show undermined from within. We didn’t view the main show with disdain but saw in the minutiae of the disputes and tiny travesties endless domestic humour.

Big Brother was always a rich source of comedy for us. Every day something ridiculous would occur and, over the period we worked together, there were events and characters that made a monumental impact: Kinga, who publicly masturbated with a wine bottle, Pete, the Tourette’s sufferer and unlikely heart-throb, the romance of Preston and Chantelle ... But Big Brother also spawned an icon of such magnitude that she rocketed from the confines of the house and its transient, scratch-and-sniff celebrity and into true stardom – Jade Goody.

When my mum first got cancer I must’ve been around six years old, the age Jade’s eldest son is now. Too young, in fact, to properly comprehend what was happening, but old enough to sense the tingling presence of fear, the averted looks, the stifled, thin-lipped sympathy and muddled, neighbourly compassion. My mum, thank God, did not die, and whilst her cancer returned several times, each time more frightening for me as my innocence waned, to be replaced with dread, she lives still, so I can but imagine the sad confusion of the two bereaved boys.

I knew their mother, Jade Goody, not especially well, but Jade’s defining characteristic was her easy warmth that ingenuously enveloped folk, so perhaps like many people I felt more engaged by her than normal and feel more saddened by her death than I ought. I dislike the fetishisation of grief that accompanied the death of Jade’s forebear, the Princess of Wales – it makes me uncomfortable, as I query its sincerity. Sentimentality is often called the unearned emotion, and intrusive carnivals of public mourning unsettle me. In the case of Jade Goody, however, it is understandable to feel morose: she was a young mum from an awful background who got a break and shrewdly capitalised on it.

For a time she and I shared management, and we met when she came to see several shows of mine at the Edinburgh Festival about five years ago. We all hung out, me, my mum, Jade, some people from the agency and a few of my mates. She was a right laugh, she joined in with everyone and created a garrulous, giddy vibe in bars and cars that elevated the perfunctory time between shows into something which retrospectively seems more special now than it did then. Most of all, though, I was impressed with how she formed an immediate and genuinely sweet bond with my mother, chuckling and chatting with the effortless intimacy that strong yet tender women frequently conjure and which has umbrella’d me from anxiety throughout my life. She also came on a few of my dopey TV shows in later years, where she filled the room with her ebullience and wicked laugh, connecting with the audience in a way that most skilled showmen can only dream of.

One of the charges often levelled at Jade was that she was just a normal girl with no trade or practised skills. Well, people didn’t care, and our heroes are not prescribed to us, we have the right to choose them and the people chose Jade. Fame has long been bequeathed by virtue of wealth and birth, and this was the first generation where it was democratically distributed by that most lowbrow of modern phenomena – reality television. She was a person who, I think due to her class, always had the propensity to irk people. When Big Brother 3 made her famous she was vilified in the papers and bullied in the house, but through her spirit she won people back round and became a kind of Primark Princess with perfumes and fitness videos and endless media coverage – because people were interested in her. They remain interested. Nicola, a woman in her mid twenties, is genuinely heartbroken at the death of Jade. Herself a mother from a working-class background, she obviously connects with this sad narrative in a way that she doesn’t seem to with J.Lo or Jennifer Aniston or Posh Spice, most likely because of Jade’s authenticity and accessibility.

I was uniquely situated when Jade returned to the house and through unschooled social clumsiness blundered into a whooped-up race row. As I said at the time, the incident where the Indian actress Shilpa Shetty was poorly treated by a group of young women was not an example of the sickening scourge of racism but simply a daft lack of education. Jade was a tough girl but utterly lacking in the malice upon which true prejudice depends. The real crime was the slick of spilled newspaper ink and the cathode-conveyed H-bomb that followed this innocuous event. Jade was made the focus of a debilitating wave of righteous loathing and condemnation, a gleefully indignant storm of trumped-up wrath that served the cause of racial harmony not one iota; but that was never its intention. The intention was sacrifice. Well, now Jade Goody is no more – claimed by cancer, a disease often brought on by extreme stress. When my mother was sick, someone unkindly informed me that her illness was my fault, induced by my bad behaviour, and for a long time I believed it.

I’m glad that Jade’s death was handled with saccharine mittens by the papers. She lived and died in the glare of their interest and doubtless benefited from it hugely at times. I recall her tearstained face pegged across some rag as she endlessly sought to be forgiven by the media whom her misconstrued conduct had so incensed. It made me a little angry. She wanted to be accepted, loved, redeemed – and now, through her early death, she is. I hope some of the lessons of this modern fairy tale are learned, that the people who aspire to be like Jade observe the price she paid. I hope her sons are OK and that, on some imperceptible level, contrition is felt by the media that gave Jade Goody everything. And I mean everything.

Jade wasn’t the only contestant I became involved with. I had what I like to refer to as office romances with several housemates. These trysts were inevitable given that my waking life was spent working on that show, which meant I was forever gazing at them on screen and thinking about them or discussing them with Mark and Ian or Nicola.

I met Nicola on Big Brother when the regular make-up lady got pregnant and Nicola was rushed in as a replacement. I didn’t get the original lady pregnant – just to be clear, she was married and in a loving relationship, it had nothing to do with me. Although, not long after starting work with me Nicola, too, was gestating a person in her belly. I adored Nicola instantly, she was incredibly maternal even before she turned her uterus into a bastard factory (literally, she’s not married). Her presence immediately relaxes me. She reminds me of where I’m from and of what’s real and important, she smells clean and laughs dirty. Her hair is all reflective like a shimmering chocolate lake and even when she pulls my quiff a bit or gets mascara in my eye I know she loves me. The four of us, Nicola, Mark, Ian and me, would sit in my fart-ridden dressing-room (I think it was nerves, she hardly ever does it now) and laugh about the show.

Once in a while I’d get a crush on a housemate and it would really add to the excitement of the show, knowing they’d soon be out, all pie-eyed from the flashbulbs, and I’d be there with my hair combed and a bunch of daffodils. I didn’t have affairs with that many housemates; as a percentage it’d barely register, but there were a few and it was bloody brilliant. It was like watching Indiana Jones on telly, then looking out the window on to the patio to see him out there cracking his whip, with his top off and his big, gorgeous brown boobs all jiggling about.

The most reported of my affairs was with Makosi, because I believe she spoke to the papers. Well, kiss and tells have never especially bothered me as I am lucky in my vanilla sexuality. I’m not into anything weird, I just love girls. That woman was delicious, she could’ve kissed and told about the darkest corners of my soul and I’d’ve simply raised a glass to her gold medal knockers and Venusian bum. She was lovely. All the better for having seemingly crept out of my TV set at nightfall and brought my dreams pulsating into reality.

For a fella who was a bit of a chubby nitwit at school, the status I was afforded at this new institution was like a late graduation party. Many of the Big Brother housemates were hapless goons, but a considerable number were bloody easy on the eye-hole and now, looking back, I realise I was lucky. Really lucky to have had such a fun job with such lovely companions and such gorgeous people to flirt with. The show became increasingly successful, ratings grew, and childhood comic idols like Bob Mortimer, David Baddiel and Frank Skinner would tune in, which made me feel sanctioned. My stand-up grew from regular “circuit gigs” above pubs to extravagant cabarets with screaming girls and blokes demanding I repeat my daft catchphrases – “Ballbags, you swine! I pulled down my trousers and pants …” See? Daft. E4, the digital channel we were on, offered me new shows, as did other channels. Lesley Douglas, Controller of the world’s biggest radio station BBC Radio 2 as well as its titchy, digital sibling BBC 6 Music, offered me a show on the latter, and MTV, the station I’d been hurled out of in controversy and disgrace as a worthless junky a few years earlier, came back with the amazing offer of a sexy chat show.

Nicola I kidnapped to install in my ever-growing surrogate family. One way or another I felt kind of isolated as a kid, and consequently as an adult, or tall child or whatever it is I am, I’ve been team building like Brian Clough. Animals, children and the working class comprise the company in which I’ll feel most at ease. I suppose then I should look for a combination of those attributes, buy a caravan and settle down. Though half an hour in bed with a pitbull puppy would be most disconcerting. As my friends grow older (whilst I curiously remain Pan-frozen) there are more children in my life. John Rogers, my invaluable moral barometer and good-humoured collaborator, has a pair of sons that I adore and with whom I can retreat for hours into lies and whimsy, lost in the boundless lunacy of their impulses and thoughts. Oliver, the oldest, is seven now and studious, and quizzes more thoroughly my assertions about unseen pixie kingdoms that thrive unseen beneath the Leytonstone streets. Joey, who is four and a half, has a bazooka mind that shells the world with scenarios and commands that would see an adult condemned to Bedlam. The last time I saw him he told me he wanted me to eat his heart, smiling as he spoke with twinkling wonder. And Nicola has since kicked out her belly squatter, Minnie, a delicate, tiny fairy charwoman.

After a recent work lunch at which most of my misfit tribe were in attendance, John Noel, the terrifying anti-hero of my first book, said as he left the table, “You’ve built a family for yourself there, Russell, the family you’ve always wanted.” Then, strolling towards the restaurant door, he added in the thick Manchester accent he has bequeathed to his eldest, Nik, “Bunch of fuckin’ weirdos, but a family.”

It was not only Nicola who was pregnant at work. I too was up the duff with a ghoulish tummy brood. Inside my gut hummed a chimera. A monstrous amalgamation of glam-rock icons and cartoon characters gestated in my womb. As Big Brother’s popularity grew, the delivery of this beast became imminent. Eventually it burst forth – devouring me whole as I bore it – this spindly liquorice man, this sex-crazed linguistic bolt of tricks and tics and kohl-eyed winks. Clad in black like a hangman or highwayman with dagger boots and hurricane hair came my creation. An organic construction sufficiently macabre to contend with the chemical warfare of modern fame, and though this monster bore my name he did not resemble the delicate schoolboy or battered addict that preceded him – no, this creature was ready.

†

Chapter 4

Enter Sandman

I arrived on set at 1 Leicester Square, the MTV chat show vehicle created for me, fully formed. The junky they formerly employed had died, predictably, at twenty-seven. Now, thanks to Big Brother and John Noel, I was employable. John, our fierce patriarch and himself no stranger to madness, had bullied me into the Big Mouth job, and he used his unreasonable force to get me a very good deal at MTV. I don’t mean financially, though it might’ve been, as I tend not to ask about money, I simply trust that John, and latterly his son Nik, know what they’re doing. What was more important to me on my prodigal return to MTV was control. I wanted Nicola and Sharon with me, Sharon who bejewels me, and gobs at me, and keeps me giggling. And I wanted to write the show with Matt. Matt didn’t work on Big Mouth – he wasn’t needed, the show was fast and flighty and with Mark and Ian on board it was functioning. This new show, though, on MTV, where me and Matt had met, from where I’d been fired for dressing as Osama bin Laden on 12 September and running with crack and smack as my “dual fuels”, this was the kind of “on the edge”, digital stab of madness where me and Matt could flourish.

We were to be joined by a new oddball, the show’s handsome series producer Gareth Roy. I’ve mentioned Gareth already, mostly in his capacity as a twerp – well, that is largely defining but he does have a job as well. He is a creative producer, and 1 Leicester Square was where I met him. You’d never know at a glance that this Hull City-supporting hunk is a French hornist, and likely you wouldn’t care, I mention it only because the introverted nerdiness required to master a wind instrument is in evidence every time he opens his mouth. MTV, as you know, is cool. It is cool above all else, its graphics, its shows, its attitude, its brand are all about coolness, so the fact that their cool new flagship chat show ended up being hosted by a twit, written by a berk and produced by a prat is worthy of note.

Gareth has qualities, of course, he’s funny and silly and understands TV, he’s sweet and thoughtful and charming and a fine writer. What he ain’t is cool. None of us are. Yet, somehow, the show was. So MTV must know what they’re doing. 1 Leicester Square had a beautiful set, trash burlesque, pink chandeliers and leopard-skin chaises-longues. Again, cool.

Geographically it was a nightclub space above, as the name would suggest, 1 Leicester Square in the West End of London, causing friend, comedian, quiz show smartarse and pilot episode guest Simon Amstell to memorably say, “1 Leicester Square? It sounds so glamorous. Number 2 Leicester Square is an Angus Steak House.” We cut that from the show; the guests are not encouraged to have better lines than me. We didn’t, it stayed in. It was only a pilot.

Nik Linnen, my manager, John Noel’s eldest, made an early foray into the perspicacity that would soon make him my partner and move his magical, volatile father into an “upstairs role” (where our more frequent and ultimately loving clashes of character would be curtailed) when he observed that whilst, in the UK, MTV is an obscure satellite channel, in the US it is an institution; meaning the standard of guests the show would attract would be unusually high. He also reasoned that if I met Hollywood movie stars there would be an opportunity for me to impress them – and “Who knows what that might lead to?” This was a shrewd judgement. A few years earlier making a decision that hinged upon me impressing movie stars would be evidence that you ought be offered a residency in “everyone’s favourite nuthouse” – Broadmoor – but now, a few years clean, my ambition gleaming, surrounded by a good team and with a lovely new hairdo, the proposition was prudent.

1 Leicester Square was, indeed, “where the stars came out to play”. Well, maybe not to “play”, but to promote their movies and products and contend with some very unusual questions. With enough insanity in me to keep me amusing but not enough to get me banged up, the shows had a lovely vibe. With guests including Tom Cruise, Jamie Fox, Christina Aguilera, Will Ferrell and Jack Black, it was an embarrassingly rich canvas upon which to jizz up some lunacy.

When Will Ferrell came on, who I think may have been the funniest guest, I asked this question, written by Matt:

“Will. You said your wife has got a big head. If you could make a pact with the devil where your wife’s head would get bigger but it would make you the biggest star in the world, would you accept the pact?”

He reflected, mock-squirmed, then said, “Yes, I would accept the pact.”

The next question was, “What if every time it got bigger it caused your wife pain? Would you still accept this pact?”

Will looked at me like we were in a cat-and-mouse courtroom drama. “Yeah, I would. Damn you,” he grimaced.

Then I called Will Ferrell a cunt whilst playing the part of a cockney mugger in an improvised sketch, and you could see his face change. Will Ferrell, reflecting instantly on the differences between UK MTV and US MTV, made a judgement on me as a comedic adversary, then, with childlike relish, he called me a cunt. It was truly an honour.

Jack Black came on with his Tenacious D partner, Kyle Gass. Jack Black, as is all too apparent, is a joy. Ebullient, wild-eyed and sweet. The commodity we buy into when watching his films is tangible when you meet him. The pair of them were a right laugh. They ambled on in Paddington Bear duffle-coats and were twinkly and polite. It was Jack’s coat, however, that caught the attention of Gareth Roy. So enamoured was he of this unremarkable garment that it lodged in his peculiar mind, where it remained untroubled for two years straight, only to come gurgling out as a senseless faux pas when Jack Black once more entered our company.

Understandably I was nervous. I was backstage at the David Letterman Show, perhaps the most challenging talk show in the States because Letterman is so laconic a foe. If you displease him he’ll lazily bring you down like a lame antelope. I was mulling over such matters in my dressing-room, surrounded by now with a good team of trusted, highly professional colleagues – Nicola (Aunty Make-Up), Nik, Jack Bayles (Essex, sharp-dressing, quick-mind, West Ham fan), Ian Coburn (long-time promoter, harsh voice, as if sourced from a Beverly Hills Cop laugh) and Gareth. Ian’s measured drone draws me from my preparatory musing. “Russell, Jack Black is outside. He wants to pop in and say hello. What shall I tell him?”

Obviously Ian is being polite. If Jack Black is at the door, there is but one response: to welcome Jack and douse him in glucosey adulation. Duly Ian fetches him. Jack enters, unassuming and garrulous. I stand and greet him. One of the peculiarities of meeting famous people is the tendency to bend established protocols to accommodate them. For example under usual circumstances I’d introduce a newcomer to the group to all present with a cursory namecheck and nod. With a famous person you tend to eschew this ritual. Presuming they spend their lives encountering new people they’ll never see again, you spare them the rigmarole of all that ceremony and just say, “Jack Black – these are my mates.” If there were just one or two you might do names, but more than that it starts to feel tricky. Maybe Gareth felt short-changed by this slight, I don’t know. All I can tell you with certainty is while Jack Black offered up all manner of heart-stopping flattery – about my performance hosting the MTV VMA awards, and my turn as Aldous Snow in the film Forgetting Sarah Marshall – Gareth Roy was providing a metronomic beat beneath the conversation, contrived from the Rainman-ish observation that Jack Black was wearing the same coat.

“Man, I gotta congratulate ya – you did a swell job out there …”

Tick-tocking along under the compliment I can hear Gareth, chewing his way through a thought, like a mouse gnawing electric cable. “He’s wore that jacket on 1 Leicester Square.”

I try to meet Gareth’s eye, but it is trained on the jacket, a jacket upon which he is so fixated that had it been heroically returning from Vietnam, his interest might still’ve been thought excessive.

“Jack Black’s got the same jacket on. Same buttons, same hood. Same jacket.”

Jack, ever the professional, ignores the tinnitus of Gareth’s commentary. A DVD extra that no one had selected. “It’s great to see ya man.”

Gareth draws nearer. “It even smells the same. Crisps. It smells of crisps.”

Eventually the autistic soundtrack becomes so intrusive that I have to say, “Is that a new jacket, Jack?” A question I wouldn’t have dreamed of asking had it not been necessary to subdue Gareth’s Forrest Gump-ish detail fetish. If only, three months later, when editing a pre-recorded radio show I’d made with Jonathan Ross, Gareth had employed the same fastidious obsession with procedure, perhaps the BBC might not have been facing destruction. But these are thoughts for a later chapter, for now America is a long way away. We sit in the dressing-room at 1 Leicester Square devising risible enquiries to blurt at … well, movie stars.

The best question Matt wrote was this one: guesting on the show were a composite boy band constructed for a reality TV show from members of ’N Sync and Boyzone and a boy band called 911 (which is the number for US emergency services but also looks like the numerical date for September 11th, which is pertinent to the bad taste punchline). The question was: “So, Steve, you were in Boyzone?”

“Yeah.”

“Pete, you were in ’N Sync, that must have been fun, was it?”

“Yeah, yeah, it was.”

“And Chris, here it says you were involved in 9/11. What on earth were you thinking?”