scrawling a regrettable poem on to the dressing-room mirror. I still have an unsophisticated notion that women are ministers of redemption, that one day in the arms of a perfumed saviour I’ll be rendered complete. Perhaps it’ll be Juliette Lewis – she came on, we got on great, I thought she might be the one – or Rihanna, I foolishly pursued one of her backing dancers; had I not I could even now be sheltering beneath the umbrella (ella, ella, ella) of her perfection. Whilst 1 Leicester Square did not provide me with a wife, it did as Nik had hoped propel me into a new realm of artistic possibility when I was “talent spotted” by one of the biggest comedy stars in history, Adam Sandler.
He came on as a guest, bringing with him, as most performers of his magnitude do, an entourage including his legendary agent, Adam Venit, some writers, Jack Giarraputo his business partner and a bunch of Teamster-looking mates. We prepared in the usual ad hoc fashion, with me fighting tooth and nail to not go and see the movie he was promoting, Click. Gareth had to try and persuade me to fulfil my basic, contractual obligations. “Come on, Russ. He won’t come on the show if you don’t watch his film. Please?”
“Why should I? What’s it about? A remote control that can alter reality? It can’t be done! I will not watch a film with such an unfeasible premise.”
Having my own show had reawoken the prima donna in me. “Can’t you watch it and then tell me what happened?”
“No, mate. His people insist.”
“Can’t you fast forward to tomorrow after the screening, so I don’t have to watch it?” Secretly I knew I was being a ponce, so I yielded and agreed to do my job, for which I was, presumably, well paid.
When Sandler came on I was struck by how mild, pleasant, charming and unassuming he was. This caused me to briefly feel a pang for having been such a git about the screening.
“I saw your film Click, Mr Sandler, and if the Academy ignore it they are fools.” The interview, as usual, suffered from having no real questions in it and from being conducted by a man who rather enjoyed the sound of his own voice and considered Hollywood A-listers a senseless distraction from the improvised monologue.
There’s a distinction between the American character and the English character in show business. With us it’s a jaunty hobby, skylarking around: “What ho! Pip pip, tally-ho, let’s get some money and knock up a picture show.” The Americans make films methodically, industriously. They’re not overwhelmed by the “magic of the movies”, it’s a job. Adam Venit, Sandler’s Ming the Merciless-looking agent, who also looks after Sacha Baron Cohen and Dustin Hoffman, is exemplary of this mentality. “This ain’t my first rodeo, kid,” he once said to me when I complimented him on his fine work. Venit later told me that before Adam came off, Sandler’s entourage discussed the interview: “I wonder what Adam will make of that mouthy English oddball?” When they asked him he said, “He’s great, you should sign him, he’s got a future in movies.” They contacted the guest booker at MTV and asked him to tell me they were interested. I knew this was monumental. I’d always believed I could be a movie star, from the first time I spoke on stage it was my intention, but when those things materialise it punctures long-held fantasies with actual possibility and you have to make choices.
For this to happen I would have to negotiate with Nik and John and ensure cohesion without detonating Gelignite-John Noel, Nik’s dad and the man who Heimliched out my bellyful of demons. He is a man whom it is unwise to cross, especially as he’d just negotiated a fantastic deal with Lesley Douglas. I was to have my own show on BBC 6 Music, and if it went well it would transfer to Radio 2. John told me that Lesley had said they’d let me do whatever I want.
†
Chapter 5
Digital Manipulation
My quest for fame was so diligent and harrowing that it makes the Knights Templar and their millennia of endeavour in pursuit of the Holy Grail resemble a bunch of giggly divs scrabbling around a city farm for Easter eggs.
For a torturous ten stretch I hobbled through a steel and glass Hogarthian London with bandaged hands and bare feet, a destitute vagabond, and all the while within my ragged heart an agonised orb of white light hummed and sought its purpose.
I don’t want to worry you, but this journey has never been about Opportunity Knocks or a seat on Celebrity Squares, no. I have a fire in me the flames of which rage further than personal ambition. Even through the parched impecunity of my adolescence and the drivel of childhood I knew beyond the burr of words there lay a place of wonder. I feel it still, now that I have drawn comfort in around me, snug with wealth and chance, praise cosy, I hear yet the call of something higher. Of course there was no way I was about to go all quiet and Trappist, tending some garden within or without until I felt appreciated. So I quested on with jokes and shows, then telly and magazines and now films and arenas. I enjoy it but I know there’s more. I feel there is something wonderful we can do together.
Once in a while, after John Noel had dragged me from the mayhem of addiction, I’d meet someone who saw possibility in me. Lesley Douglas was one such. Lesley is a powerful woman, an old-fashioned impresario who rebuilt Radio 2 in her image as a modern, fun and relevant organisation without alienating its core listeners. Her and John appear trapped in some good-natured quarrel, like bickering siblings playing swingball with Dermot O’Leary’s head.
John coerced Lesley into seeing my stand-up in small venues around London. I was pleased with the work I was doing, a blend of giddy spontaneity and well-honed yarns. After seeing me for the fourth time and with the ever-growing swell of interest in my TV work, Lesley offered me a pilot on cool indie music station 6 Music. Initially I was paired with Karl Pilkington, Ricky Gervais’s savant-ish sidekick, who is an excellent comedic foil and hugely funny in his own right. I suppose Karl maintains the perspective of some articulate bumpkin, straight from King’s Cross, casting yokel wisdom on our urban ways. Karl, though, was already well known for his work with Ricky and Steve Merchant, Ricky’s writing partner, so he had already been branded. I had my own coterie of amusing mates and was double keen to create a wireless wonderland with them.
My mate Greg, known as Mr Gee, a mysterious hard-shelled, soft-centred, confectionery-obsessed south London poet who had done gigs with me in Brixton and held me back from the precipice of unwinnable drug deals several times. Then there was Trevor Lock, Cocky-Locky, an ageless philosophy graduate, a dishy square, tiny, handsome face, a thick brush of Hugh Grant hair and an incredibly diverse, profound knowledge of alternative, indigenous, shamanistic jungle culture. He was a wise nerd. Then there was Matt and his dry, neurotic, mischievous mind, my hoppo, the commentator minstrel of my picaresque misad-ventures for the six years previous. Matt is like a sulky, comedically blessed liability. We have a powerful connection and a deep, annoying friendship. Like all good double-acts we are forever on the brink of never speaking again. It was to make for good radio.
We did a couple of pilots in which I designated Matt and Trev specific roles – Matt was to run the desk (that means he was in charge of the buttons and playing in tracks), while Trevor would take care of listener competitions. In truth both these roles were arbitrary, really they were there to provide me varying surfaces to bounce off, then Gee would sum it all up with a rhyme he’d write as the show was in process.
Once I read of myself, which is a habit I ought work to dispatch, that I was Britain’s first digital star. This I liked. I like being the first, primary or inaugural anything, it appeals to the pioneer in me. Thank God I’m good at showing off and telling jokes, or there’d be a real risk that I’d crop up in The Guinness Book of Records winking into a beard of bees or a bath of beans – anything to feel the Neil Armstrong rush of stomping on virgin moon dirt. This bit of self-obsessed reflection, however, was pertinent. The Big Brother show was on digital TV, the MTV show likewise, and 6 Music is a digital station. This meant that the first audience I garnered had to deliberately seek me out. I wasn’t splashed all over terrestrial telly or bellowing out on commercial radio, I was sequestered off at the esoteric end of the dial, learning, developing a relationship with my audience (some have argued a little too intimately), a relationship that was fortified by the convenient advent of social networking sites like MySpace