Can't Stand Up for Sitting Down (37 page)

One of
my favourite guests was Martha Reeves (her of Martha and the Vandellas) who
really is a pop legend. She seemed constantly bemused by me and Mark, but
joined in with enthusiasm. I am not sure how old she is, but at her age I would
have been in bed with a hot-water bottle and a bowl of Complan, not slogging it
round the world on planes.

It’s
such a weird situation when you get to meet some of your heroes and heroines.
Nick Lowe was pure joy in every way, as was Jimmy Perry who wrote
Dad’s
Army.
I was sad when the job came to an end, but as I said earlier, when
the top dogs change jobs, brooms start to sweep clean, and it’s entirely
possible you might be swept out on your arse.

Writing this book has been
bloody hard work. Not in the sense of working in the fields or down a mine, but
just the sheer volume of words required to make up a whole book is terrifying
when you stare at a blank computer screen and try to think of a witty first
sentence.

I have
a degree in work avoidance and will do almost anything to sidestep getting down
to work. My strategies include tidying up. The only time I ever tidy up is when
I’m shying away from getting down to work, and as I do this with remarkable
frequency. my house is extremely tidy. Another favourite ‘displacement
activity’ is Finding a Pointless Task That Doesn’t Really Need Doing. This
could be something like getting out a map to look up the route to a gig I’m
doing in two months’ time, even though I have a satnav, or phoning up one of my
friends who I know will be on the phone for ages. Or any of the following:

Trying to find my passport for a holiday next year

Cleaning my laptop

Reorganising my drawers — the wooden things with clothes in, not my
pants

Checking my emails

Checking whether the post has come Going to the shops to buy
something I don’t need, like stain-remover

Playing
Bubble Boom Challenge

Handwashing a pile of ‘Handwash Only’ clothes that have been in a
pile under my bed for three years

Crushing up cans for recycling so they are marginally smaller

Sorting out piles of stuff in my office into other piles Doing the
crossword in the paper

… and so on ad
infinitum.

This is a difficult
question to answer, since on the whole, most famous people I meet tend to be
pretty polite —possibly because they may consider me to be a celebrity too. So
you have to examine how they treat those they may consider to be ‘lesser
mortals’, like runners (the lowest stratum in TV the poor sods who have to make
the tea or go to the shop and try to find a chocolate éclair with fish oil in
it), and it’s not very often you get to see these interactions.

In my
experience, the well-known stars in our culture who are accorded the title
‘National Treasure’ do tend to be National Nightmares, with a few notable
exceptions like Julie Walters. Conversely, lots of people the tabloids try to
encourage us to hate are perfectly sweet and decent people.

I once
took my nephews, who were thirteen and fifteen at the time and moved their lips
roughly once a month, to see
TIFF Friday
and watch the proceedings. I
loved that show, because it was at the Riverside Studios in Hammersmith, which
is one of my favourite places. It backs onto the river, according it fantastic
views of the sort of goings-on that go on near water — like boats, joggers
along the towpath, swimmers occasionally, and birds.

The
show was a hotchpotch of music, interviews and general silliness presented by
Chris Evans, and my favourite character on it was The Lord of Love, played by
the veteran actor Ronald Fraser, star of many sixties’ films who had one of
those instantly recognisable faces, but not a name that went with it. As The
Lord of Love he would sit in a comfy chair and recite love poems to women in
the audience. When I met him he said to me, ‘If I was twenty years younger, I’d
chase you all round Europe.’ As a woman who tends not to garner compliments
from men, I was hugely entertained by this and retain a fondness for his
daftness to this day.

After
the show I introduced Chris Evans to my nephews and expected him to give them a
cursory hello and then bugger off to more interesting people. However, to his
credit, he sat and talked to them for a good half an hour and even though they
were too dumbstruck to reply a lot of the time, he kept at it and I know it
really meant a lot to them, and certainly did to me.

Apologies
if I have not peppered this section with scandal-laden slag-offs of celebs. If
that’s what you’re after, buy the
Daily Mail.

Hello, and
congratulations. Welcome to the end of this book. Please feel free to prop a
door open with it (which you may already have done) or draw a moustache on the
picture of me on the front. God knows, women of my age struggle with that, as
Trinny and Susannah have made perfectly clear to me in the past. The only thing
I hope is that you’ve got something out of it — a few laughs, an idea for a new
book to read, an insight into the comedy scene in the eighties and nineties, or
perhaps some new ways to avoid getting down to something you don’t want to get
down to.

And
rest assured, this comes up to the present day in my life, so I won’t be
picking up my trusty electronic pen for a good few years to come, God willing.
Now go and have a multi-ingredient sandwich.

The
(real) End