Small Man in a Book (34 page)

One of the first things I noticed on entering the world of the stand-up comedian was the smoke. This was before the smoking ban, and clubs would exist in a positively Dickensian fug of cigarette and cigar smoke, which would catch at the back of my throat and make the impressions and singing especially difficult. It would get so bad that I would arrive at a club, let them know I was there, and then stand outside in the fresh air until it was my turn. After a while you acclimatize to the smoke, and I got to the point where I didn’t notice it at all.

Mostly I would gig at the weekends, on Friday and Saturday nights. This wasn’t conducive to family life and, because of what I’ll politely describe as a ‘nervous stomach’, meant that I basically couldn’t eat anything after an early lunch on the Saturday. By the time I got to the venue on a Saturday night I’d be starving, my blood sugar levels low, and desperately wanting to eat something. I’d usually give in and have a Mars Bar, or similar, and this would be swiftly followed by an anxious trip to the toilet where the recently consumed chocolate bar would continue on its journey. It would have saved me some time to just buy the thing, take it to the loo, and flush it away unopened. As I did more gigs, I’d begin to feel an ever-so-slight lessening of the nerves and this would trick me into believing that I could maybe eat something before the show. Always a mistake.

The nervous stomach was one thing; the general feeling of impending doom was another. Again, it would start after lunch on the Saturday and slowly creep up, the fear that I might die onstage.
What if they hate me? What if I don’t get any laughs?
The act in those days was so flimsy, so reliant on a good crowd, a good ad-libbed line, so many variables beyond my control, that it was like starting afresh each time. As the afternoon progressed, I’d become more and more quiet and increasingly irritable. Lovely.

Then to the gig itself: you’re announced; you walk on to the stage. No one knows who you are, so there’s a period at the beginning of your spot where you can feel the crowd sizing you up.
Hmm, what’s this one like? Is he any good?
I’d always make a superhuman effort to appear calm and confident (it’s amazing how people are willing to accept the appearance of relaxation as genuine relaxation). It buys you some time. I would just act the part and wait until laughs came. Hopefully, the wait wouldn’t be too long, and then I’d be away.

I still fall back on this now when things don’t fly from the start; just try and look relaxed. Audiences can smell fear in a comic, if you let them, and the minute they do you’re in big danger of losing them. All audiences want to feel that the comedian is in charge and knows what he or she is doing; they want to feel that all they have to do is just sit back and enjoy the show. I’ve had numerous times onstage where a few lines haven’t gone as I’d hoped and I’m beginning to worry; I’ll try to slow things right down, smile a bit and look like I couldn’t be happier while inside my mind is turning over at a hundred miles an hour.

It changes once you build up your own audience; they’ve made the effort to buy the ticket months in advance and have been looking forward to coming to see you. It buys you time at the top of the show when you’re greeted with enthusiastic applause, a mini celebration. You’re the one thing that the whole audience has in common – their liking for you, the comedian. I say the whole audience, but it’s often painfully easy to spot the partners who’ve come because their wife/girlfriend is a fan, or there was a spare ticket going at work. I’ll scan the front rows: smiley face, smiley face, smiley face … scowl. You learn after a while to block those faces out, to pretend they’re not there; they get filed under the heading ‘You Can’t Please Everyone’. It takes a while to learn the discipline required to phase those faces out. I’ve known so many comedians who will fixate on the one bloke who’s not enjoying the show; I’ve done it myself.

During my West End run a couple of years ago, I was five minutes into the act when I noticed a man in the front row looking at his watch. He then turned to his wife and made a gesture as if to say, ‘At the first chance we get, we’ll go.’ The thing was, we just happened to catch each other’s eye – and he knew that I knew exactly what had just happened. I was furious. I felt embarrassed, insulted, angry. He looked mortified.

I decided to direct everything at him and, for the next twenty minutes, after every laugh I would look at him, stare him down as if to say, ‘See? They think I’m funny!’ He was looking more and more uncomfortable until suddenly (and imperceptibly, at first) he turned the tables on me. He began, rather cleverly, to laugh a little too much at the jokes. This unnerved me enormously; it really put me on the back foot. You won’t be surprised to hear that the couple did not return after the interval. I now wish I’d simply ignored him. What I did was futile; it’s just self-flagellation, and ultimately pointless. It’s also unfair on the rest of the audience, who are enjoying the show, as it gives the comedian a warped view of the crowd as a whole, which in turn impacts on how he relates to them.

If I’m giving the impression that I feel I can predict how an audience will behave, then I’m giving the
wrong
impression; an audience can so often surprise you. When you’re on tour and a rhythm is built up of good show after good show, it can be easy to become complacent. This is when the shock usually comes along. I remember walking out to an audience somewhere in the north of England with great confidence after a run of excellent shows in similar towns.

Within ten seconds, I knew tonight would be different.

It was as though they’d all had a little meeting before I came on, the conclusion of which was that they’d give me a chance but that each and every one of them should be on their guard and treat me with the greatest suspicion. Very weird. After a while, things settled and the show was fine. But that initial shock was disconcerting and only overcome through experience and being able to keep faith that they (the audience) would eventually come around if I just carried on and did what had worked every other night.

While slowly building up my experience as a stand-up, I was also picking up the odd television gig here and there, always in tiny roles that never seemed to make a difference to the overall picture as far my career was concerned.

I was in a couple of one-off films for Hat Trick Productions. The first,
Eleven Men Against Eleven
, starred James Bolam and was set in the world of football. I played a commentator, and we filmed on a hot summer’s day at The Den, home of Millwall FC. The only thing I remember from this job was my delight at watching James Bolam during the read-through; it was another of those moments when you get to work with someone you’ve grown up watching.

The next film was
Lord of Misrule
, starring Richard Wilson, in which I played a policeman. We filmed in the beautiful seaside town of Fowey, in Cornwall. My part involved no more than standing on a ferry boat as it crossed the river and asking Stephen Moyer, playing the lead in his pre-
True Blood
days, if the car belongs to him.

He then dives overboard and Prunella Scales steps out of the car and says, ‘Well, go after him then.’

It would be nice to report that Prunella and I sparked with the kind of brilliant onscreen chemistry she’d enjoyed with John Cleese in
Fawlty Towers
.

But, alas, all that happened was I replied, ‘You go after him, ma’am …’ and the scene ended.

As with James Bolam, it was great to work alongside Prunella and Richard Wilson but, beyond that, I knew it was unlikely to have any real impact on things. A couple of weeks after I’d returned from Cornwall, I received a call asking me to head back and reshoot the scene. Driving from the unit base to the location, I was sitting in the car with Jimmy Mulville, former comedian, star of
Who Dares Wins
and now head of Hat Trick Productions. Fishing for compliments, I cast my line and asked, in an admittedly light-hearted way, whether the scene was being reshot due to any shortcomings on my part.

‘Is it my fault?’

Without missing a beat, and slightly too chillingly for my liking, Jimmy replied, ‘If it was, you wouldn’t be here.’

I quickly put away my rod.

Perhaps I had expected a bit of unsolicited praise after my recent experience on
Married for Life
, the short-lived British remake of the hugely popular and long-running American series
Married with Children
. Our version starred Russ Abbot and was filmed up in Nottingham. I had a small part in one of the episodes as a co-worker at the shoe shop where Russ’s character is employed. I got on so well with the team that they wrote me into another episode, this time as a newsreader. The series also featured a little-known Hugh Bonneville and we would often all eat together at the hotel at the end of the day’s filming. At one of the meals we were joined by some of the executives from the television company. After dessert, with everyone chatting away ten to the dozen, Russ began to sing my praises to the executives, saying how funny he thought I was and that there was quite a buzz going around on the show about me. When they weren’t looking, he gave me a sly wink and a smile.

Later, when the executives had gone, he came over and, in conspiratorial tones, whispered, ‘That’s what you’ve got to do, get them talking about you.’

What a nice man.

As 1997 progressed, the television roles began to dry up again – as a result of my poor performances, I feared (with perhaps a little paranoia). I was getting by handsomely on the money coming in from voice-overs, and in the evenings I’d slip out and try my stand-up routines at tiny clubs.

Martina was pregnant again, although this time not in the presence of Sir John Gielgud, and as the summer came to an end she gave birth in September to a baby boy – my first son, Harry. Having had a girl when we’d suspected it would be a boy, we now had a boy when we were expecting a girl. We were both surprised and overjoyed at our beautiful new addition.

Hurrah!

A new member of the family meant more responsibility for me and, while money was no longer the problem it had once been, I still felt unfulfilled creatively and dreamed of wider success, the chance to create and act in something of substance. At night I would lie in bed wondering what more I could be doing. Why wasn’t I breaking through to where I wanted to be? The more I wondered, the more I’d stay awake, and so I developed a routine that would help me get off to sleep.

I’d imagine myself on television, being interviewed on
Parkinson
, coming out at the top of the steps, strolling down with confidence as the crowd cheered and Michael stood waiting, arms outstretched and smiling.

‘It’s been a remarkable journey, hasn’t it? Tell me about your roots …’

He would quiz me about my incredible rise from voice-over artist to beloved actor and comedian, expressing amazed admiration that I’d been able to make the leap from the one world to the other. Sometimes it would be a one-on-one interview, sometimes I would be the final guest in a line-up that would include perhaps Steve Martin, Paul Simon and James Taylor, who would all at some point interrupt Michael’s flow to offer up their own praise. After twenty minutes or so I would drift off to sleep perfectly content. It was, I suppose, a form of positive visualization – and, given that some years later I went on to descend the steps for real, it could be considered to have been very effective and successful (although the reality, as is often the case, was not quite as sweet as the fantasy).

It was 2002; I was a couple of years into my eventual success and had finally been asked to appear on
Parkinson
. I’d already appeared on a few other chat shows and been interviewed by a generous handful of journalists and presenters, yet none of them came close to the excitement of appearing on the show that I’d watched for as long as I could remember. While waiting in my dressing room before the recording, there was a knock on the door and in walked Michael Parkinson himself, to welcome me to the show and to generally wish me well. He mentioned what he might cover in the interview: how the Celts could be prone to depression, and that he’d heard I did an impression of Anthony Hopkins which he might ask me to do. With that, he was gone. To say that I was nervous about appearing on the show was an understatement. I had a real fear that I would bomb – that I would
die
on the show – although whenever I’d have these thoughts, I’d reassure myself that I was being silly and that while I might not storm it, there was no real chance that I’d die. The worst that could happen, I reasoned, was that I’d be OK, nothing special.

Waiting in the wings, I was sitting with fellow guest Timothy Spall while Chris Tarrant was already out in front of the audience being interviewed. Soon I was standing at the top of a rickety stairway waiting for my introduction, heart pounding in time with Bryan Ferry who was singing his latest song, unseen, just feet away. Peter Sellers, Morecambe and Wise, Kenneth Williams and Richard Burton had all made this same entrance; had they felt as nervous as this? Suddenly it was time to make my move, I stepped forward into the lights as the band played loudly to my left, and I descended the stairs (trying desperately hard to look relaxed while battling the thought that I might well slip and slide my way to the bottom). I remember walking across to Michael Parkinson with my arm outstretched, we shook hands and I sat down, still trying to affect the air of a very relaxed man.

He spoke.

I stared.

Rabbits and headlights sprang to mind.

The thing about appearing on
Parkinson
is that it’s not like watching it at home. While this is of course true of every interview programme, it is especially true here due to the frankly iconic nature of the show. Firstly there was the proximity to Mr Parkinson; I remember very quickly noticing how close we were to each other, our knees practically touching. Then there was the fact that, when looking at Michael, he didn’t appear to be sitting on the set; the chairs were angled in such a way that it looked as if he was sitting in front of an inky blackness that stretched off into the distance. On top of this, there was the sound of the audience – or, rather, the lack of any sound from the audience. They were so quiet, so reverential; it was quite unnerving.