Can't Stand Up for Sitting Down (21 page)

I got
through the show, thanks to the help of the so-called Dr Footlights, a way I
think to describe the rush of adrenalin which means that performers have been
able to get through shows with illness, mega-hangovers or bits falling off, but
I would not like to repeat the experience.

My dad
did come to see the show and enjoyed it, so that was another ambition ticked
off my list. And it felt great, being on the right side of the law for a
change.

Although I probably look
like I am well at home in my townie skin, I do actually love being out in the
countryside. I make regular trips up to Shropshire and revel in wearing
scruffy old wellies and wandering round listening to the birds singing.

This is
why I was so pleased when, some years back,
Countryfile
with the iconic
John Craven asked me to judge their photo competition for Children In Need. It
takes two days a year and the initial day is to film a piece to go into the
show, to give people the information they need to enter. Consequently, we tend
to go somewhere country-ish but near enough to London so we can all get back in
a day.

Once we
have made the initial film telling the viewers the rules of the competition,
then John, Chris Packham, the nature photographer and TV presenter, and I get
together somewhere in a posh room full of photos and spend the day pulling out
the best ones. By the end of the day we have chosen the twelve that will go in
the ‘Children In Need’ calendar. It is an absolutely marvellous day Chris
Packham is such a nice bloke and a good laugh, and we enjoy rooting through the
huge piles of pictures to pick the winners.

Countryfile
pursuits have taken me to Ashdown Forest in East
Sussex, to Barnes Wetland Centre in South-West London, and to various animal
sanctuaries in Kent and Sussex. I have been eyed up by deer, chased by otters
and lain on my tummy in the mud trying to get an imaginative picture of a sheep
… harder than it sounds.

Once,
whilst at the British Wildlife Centre down in East Surrey, we held our breath
as a tiny duckling struck out across the pond in the otter compound where the
mother duck had inadvisedly laid her eggs. As the duckling paddled merrily
along, one of the otters slid noiselessly into the water looking for a
pre-lunchtime duckling hors d’oeuvre. Seeing this, I all but waded in to try
and scoop up the poor little bugger. Chris, on the other hand, is far more
pragmatic than me and told me I had to get used to the idea. However, for once
cuteness triumphed and our little hero managed to cross the pond and survived
to fight another day I don’t know for how long, but at least I didn’t have to
witness the food chain in action.

The
photos we judge can be absolutely stunning, and thankfully Chris Packham is
quite good at spotting fakes, because I don’t have a clue. We also see lots of
pictures of donkeys with hats on, groups of people with dogs, and very
occasionally hysterically inappropriate ones — a car, a shop. Who knows what
these people were thinking? My favourite over the years has to be the one of a
caterpillar on a branch — a very unusual critter because it was white with a
red stripe through it. The name should have been a clue —
Colgatus
…
yes, it was toothpaste.

In the days when I had
very few responsibilities, I spent several New Year weeks on holidays round
Britain with a bunch of other comedians and assorted friends. Considering we
were a pretty disorganised lot it was a bleeding miracle that we actually got
it together really Our first holiday was in a rented cottage in Wells-Next-the-Sea
in Norfolk, and there was a group of about ten of us. We walked, went on boat
trips to see seals, walked to the pub, cooked huge communal meals, played
games, drank vast quantities, argued, took the piss out of each other and
generally had a laugh. And always, every year, a couple of poor sods had to
drive back to London to fulfil the requirement of comedy clubs for comics to be
tortured by an audience on New Year’s Eve.

We
always played lots of stupid games. Our favourite game at the time was ‘the
water game’ which is very good, evil fun. You all sit round in a big circle,
pick a category like British Birds and fill a glass half full with water. Then
someone is designated to hold the glass of water and pick a British bird which
they write down on a piece of paper to avoid accusations of cheating. Then you
go round the circle of people one by one and everyone has to say a British
bird. When somebody says the name of the bird that the water-holder has written
down, the water is duly chucked in their face. Simple but effective, and the
drunker you are the better.

On
these holidays the core group consisted of: Bill Bailey and his girlfriend
Kris, Alan Davies, Jim Miller, Jeff Green, Mark Lamarr, Andy Linden, Keith
Dover and my friends Waggly and Jez. Other comics and girlfriends/ boyfriends
drifted in and out of the mix.

Bill
Bailey as you would imagine, is an absolute delight. Gentle, warm and
easygoing, he is the perfect house-guest, because he is happy to do anything.
He is a huge animal lover and a musical genius, so can be relied upon to
provide musical accompaniment to any pissed singsong and is one of those
people, like Jools Holland, who can pretty much play any request you care to
throw at him. Considering my musical repertoire extends only to ‘Chopsticks’,
‘Love Story’, which I learned when I was fourteen, and that hideous Celine Dion
song from
Titanic
which I learned for a joke, I am unsurprisingly rarely
asked to take a seat at the piano.

Bill
has a problem similar to mine, which is an inability to say no to requests for
benefits. Consequently, I think he works far too hard — but any attempt on my
part to persuade him to slow down would be a bit of pot and kettle.

Alan
Davies is a good friend with whom I have had some massive laughs over the
years. He is loyal, fun and very amusing. He is also good at arguing and I love
a good argument, but one can guarantee that it will never get out of hand or be
antagonistic. We have similar political views too and have never fallen out
over anything.

His
only flaw is that he is an Arsenal fan, but perhaps I am just jealous because
they have a much nicer ground than Crystal Palace, the team I support.

The
year after Norfolk we went to Cornwall and stayed in a fantastic house
overlooking the sea in St Mawes. Again there was just a huge amount of being
very lazy after staying up all night playing games and drinking.

Several
people waded into the sea in the dead of night because they were too pissed to
realise it was foolish, and everyone else thought it was too entertaining an
idea to warrant trying to stop them. Nobody drowned, I am pleased to report.

We went
back to Norfolk again the following year and stayed near Diss. This was a
slightly bad-tempered holiday and I seem to remember some allegations of people
not pulling their weight domestically but again, most of it passed in a haze of
laughing and hangovers.

A
brutal round of the water game also produced some retribution, with my friend
Waggly chucking her water at the wrong person, because I had actually said the
same thing she’d picked (Mother’s Pride, since you ask — yes, we were doing
bread) and then chucking it over Jeff Green who had picked an obscure make of
bread from his home town in Cheshire which she couldn’t possibly have heard of.
Dear old Waggly didn’t want to chuck it over me in case I was upset!

There
was also an incident in a hotel pool where Waggly got into trouble in the deep
end and very quietly attempted to sink to the bottom. Thank God, she was spotted
by two blokes who immediately dived in and dragged her out. I apparently was
sitting on the side of the pool and didn’t even notice. It all happened so
quickly The first thing I saw was her being hauled out of the pool. So much for
all those life-saving lessons at school when you had to wear your pyjamas. I
just didn’t have time to run up to my room and put them on.

We went
on long walks and also went bowling, which I hate for some reason. I can’t see
the skill or enjoyment in chucking a heavy ball down a runway So I would sit
there slightly bored just waiting for people to finish so we could go home.

Our
final holiday was in Devon near Chulmleigh, pronounced Chumley We’d moved from
a communal house by this time to a set of cottages laid out round a courtyard.
One of our party met and romanced a cheese dealer, which meant that the fridge
was constantly full up with bloody massive bits of cheese, and we spent New
Year in the village carousing with the locals and being generally badly
behaved.

After
this, people seemed to drift apart a bit and no one got it together to organise
another jaunt, but they were good fun while they lasted.

My mum and dad are still
going strong. My mum’s now seventy-five and my dad is eighty They don’t live
together any more, though they never got divorced, but live about ten miles
away from each other, and keep in touch regularly.

On the
whole they have had good health, although after having a stroke in his late
fifties my dad all but retired from work.

My mum,
on the other hand, finds it almost impossible to stop working since her
retirement. Having been a very senior social worker in the field of child
protection, she is frequently called upon to give advice, sit on boards,
tribunals and the like.

Some
years ago she had a minor heart attack and, true to form, didn’t tell us, her
children, until she had come out of hospital. To say she doesn’t like to make a
fuss is an understatement. I went up to see her afterwards and had a terrible
scare. I was in the kitchen downstairs and went up to the sitting room on the
first floor to find her lying on the floor on her tummy My own heart skipped a
beat and I rushed into the room, only to find she was attempting to programme
the video.

Similarly,
it used to worry me if I called her and she didn’t pick up. One evening about
nine I called and got no answer, although I knew that she should have been at
home. I ended up phoning her neighbour and good friend, John, and persuading
him to go and check she was OK as he had a key Actually Mum had gone to bed
early because she was tired, and was alarmed when she heard a man’s voice
calling up the stairs in the dark. She said she thought it was the spirits come
to get her!