The Crystal Cube, with Emma and Hugh.
The Crystal Cube. The warty look was created using Rice Krispies. True story.
Back in Manchester filming Alfresco, we began to write in our spare time. Freed from the intimidation of having to match Ben's freakish fecundity, we produced our script in what was for us short order but would for Ben have constituted an intolerable writer's block. It was rather good. I feel I can say this as the BBC chose not to commission a series: given that and my archetypical British pride in failure it hardly seems like showing off for me to say that I was pleased with it. It is out there now somewhere on YouTube, as most things are. If you happen to track it down you will find that the first forty seconds are inaudible, but it soon clears up. Aside from technical embarrassments there is also a good deal wrong with it comically, you will note. We are awkward, young and often incompetent, but nonetheless there are some perfectly good ideas in it struggling for light and air. John Savident, now well known for his work in Coronation Street, makes a splendid Bishop of Horley, Arthur Bostrom, who went on to play the bizarrely accented Officer 'Good moaning' Crabtree in 'Allo 'Allo!, guested as an excellently gormless genetic guinea-pig, and Robbie Coltrane was his usual immaculate self in the guise of a preposterously macho film-maker.
If I was disappointed, upset or humiliated by the BBC's decision not to pick up The Crystal Cube, I was too proud to show it. Besides, there were plenty of comedy and odd jobs for me to be getting on with in the meantime. One such was collaborating with Rowan Atkinson on a screenplay for David Puttnam. The idea was an English Monsieur Hulot's Holiday in which Rowan, an innocent abroad, would find himself unwittingly involved in some sort of crime caper. The character was essentially Mr Bean, but ten years too early.
I drove up to stay with Rowan and his girlfriend, Leslie Ash, in between visits to Manchester for the taping of Alfresco 2. The house in Oxfordshire was, I have to confess, a dazzling symbol to me of the prizes that comedy could afford. The Aston Martin in the driveway, the wisteria growing up the mellow ashlar walls of the Georgian facade, the cottage in the grounds, the tennis court, the lawns and orchards running down to the river - all this seemed so fantastically grand, so imponderably grown-up and out of reach.
We would sit in the cottage, and I would tap away on the BBC Micro that I had brought along with me. We composed a scene in which a French girl teaches Rowan's character this tongue-twister: 'Dido dined, they say, off the enormous back of an enormous turkey,' which goes, in French, 'Dido dina, dit-on, du dos dodu d'un dodu dindon.' Rowan practised the Beanish character earnestly attempting this. In any spare moment in the film, we decided, he would try out his 'doo doo doo doo doo', much to the bafflement of those about him. It is about all I remember from the film, which over the next few months quietly, as 99 per cent of all film projects do, fizzled out. Meanwhile, journalism was taking up more and more of my time.
Columnist
Britain's magazine industry started to boom in the early to mid-eighties. Tatler, Harper's & Queen and the newly revivified Vanity Fair, what you might call the Princess Di sector, fed the public appetite for information about the affairs of the Sloane Rangers, the stylings of their kitchens and country houses and the guest-lists of their parties. Vogue and Cosmopolitan rode high for the fashion-conscious and sexually sophisticated, City Limits and Time Out sold everywhere, and Nick Logan's The Face dominated youth fashion and trendy style at a time when it was still trendy to use the word trendy. A few years later Logan proved that even men read glossies when he launched the avant-la-lettre metrosexual Arena. I wrote a number of articles for that magazine, and literary reviews for the now defunct Listener, a weekly published by the BBC.
The Listener's editor when I first joined was Russell Twisk, a surname of such surpassing beauty that I would have written pieces for him if he had been at the helm of Satanic Child-Slaughter Monthly. His literary editor was Lynne Truss, later to achieve great renown as the author of Eats, Shoots and Leaves. I cannot remember that I was ever victim of her peculiar 'zero tolerance approach to punctuation'; perhaps she corrected my copy without ever letting me know.
Twisk was replaced some time later by Alan Coren, who had been a hero of mine since his days editing Punch. He suggested I write a regular column rather than book reviews, and for a year or so I submitted weekly articles on whatever subjects suggested themselves to me.
By now I had bought myself a fax machine. For the first year or so of my ownership of this new and enchanting piece of technology it sat unloved and unused on my desk. I didn't know anyone else who owned one, and the poor thing had nobody to talk to. To be the only person you know with a fax machine is a little like being the only person you know with a tennis racket.
Cryptic in Connecticut
One day (I'm fast forwarding here, but it seems the right place for this story) Mike Ockrent called me up. Me and My Girl was by this time running in the West End, and we had all been thrilled to hear that Stephen Sondheim and Hal Prince had been to see it and had written to Mike expressing their admiration.
'I told Sondheim that you have a fax machine,' Mike said.
'Right.' I was not sure what to make of this. 'I see ... er ... why exactly?'
'He asked me if I knew anybody who had one. You were the only person I could think of. He's going to call you. Is that all right?'
The prospect of Stephen Sondheim, lyricist of West Side Story, composer of Sunday in the Park with George, Merrily We Roll Along, Company, Sweeney Todd and A Little Night Music, calling me up was, yes, on the whole, perfectly all right, I assured Mike. 'What is it about exactly?'
'Oh, he'll explain ...'
My God, oh my good gracious heavens. He wanted me to write the book of his next musical! What else could it be? Oh my holy trousers. Stephen Sondheim, the greatest songwriter-lyricist since Cole Porter, was going to call me up. Strange that he was interested in my possession of a fax machine. Perhaps that is how he imagined we would work together. Me faxing dialogue and story developments to him and him faxing back his thoughts and emendations. Now that I came to think of it that was rather a wonderful idea and opened up a whole new way of thinking about collaboration.
That evening the phone rang. I was living in Dalston in a house I shared with Hugh and Katie and I had warned them that I would be sitting on the telephone all night.
'Hi, is that Stephen Fry?'
'S-s-speaking.'
'This is Stephen Sondheim.'
'Right. Yes of course. Wow. Yes. It's a ... I ...'
'Hey, I want to congratulate you on the fine job you did with the book of Me and My Girl. Great show.'
'Gosh. Thank you. Coming from you that's ... that's ...'
'So. Listen, I understand you have a fax machine?'
'I do. Yes. Certainly. Yes, a Brother F120. Er, not that the model number matters at all. A bit even. No. But, yes. I have one. Indeed. Mm.'
'Are you at home this weekend?'
'Er, yes I think so ... yup.'
'In the evening, till late at night?'
'Yes.'
This was getting weird.
'OK, so here's the deal. I have a house in the country and I like to have treasure hunts and competitions. You know, with sneaky clues?'
'Ri-i-ght ...'
'And I thought how great it would be to have a clue that was a long number. Your fax number? And when people get the answer they will see that it's a number and maybe they will work out that it's a phone number and they will call it, but they will get that sound. You know, the sound that a fax machine makes?'
'Right ...'
'And they will hear it and think, "What was that?" but maybe one of them, they will know that it is in actuality a fax machine. They might have one in their office, for example. So they'll say, "Hey, that's a fax machine. So maybe we have to send it a message. On a piece of paper." And they will fax you for help.'
'And what do I do then?'
'Well, here's the thing: beforehand, I will have faxe
d you their next clue. So when they fax you asking for help, you fax that clue back in return. You understand?'
'Yes, I think so. You send me a fax which is the next clue. Then I wait by the machine on Saturday afternoon ...'
'Evening, night. It will be afternoon in Connecticut, but in London it will be like nine, ten, maybe eleven o'clock. You're not going out at all?'
'No, no.'
'Because it is crucial that you are in all the time and that you are right by the fax machine so you can hear it when it goes off.'
'Absolutely. I'll be there. So, just to make sure I've got this right. Saturday night I wait by the fax machine. When I get a fax asking me for a clue, I send to your fax number in Connecticut whatever it is that you will have faxed me earlier?'
'Right. Isn't it great? It will be the first-ever fax treasure hunt. But you have to be by the phone all Saturday night. You will be?'
'I'll be there. I'll be there.'
'OK. I'll give you my fax number. It should appear on the top of the fax anyway, but I'll give it to you. And I'll need your fax number.'
We exchanged numbers.
'Thank you, Stephen.'
'No, thank you, Stephen.'
Between that call and Saturday evening he called four or five times to check that I had not changed my plans and was still happy to sit by the fax machine and await developments. On Saturday afternoon at about four I received a fax from him. It was an impenetrable diagram with some sort of code written alongside it.
I faxed back a note to say that I had received his clue and would fax it as soon as I received a request from his treasure-hunt contestants.
I sat with a book, ears flapping, for the next five hours. I had not put out of my mind the possibility that Sondheim might yet ask me to work with him on his next musical, but the thought that he only wanted me for my technological toys could not be entirely dismissed.
Some time before ten o'clock the fax machine rang. I put down the book. It was Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand, I remember quite distinctly, which was hypnotically dreadful. I stared at the fax machine as it answered the call. Its shrill cry was cut off. The caller had hung up. I imagined a garden in New England and a group of capering Sondheim friends.
'How odd! It made a kind of awful chirruping sound.'
'Oh! Oh! Oh! I know what that is. It's a fax machine!'
'A what-all?'
'You know. For sending documents? Stephen's got one in his den, I'm sure I've seen it there. Let's go to it. My, such larks!'
I counted off the minutes as the gang made their way (in my imagination at least) to Stephen's den, whose mantelpiece was crowded with Tony Awards. On the very piano on which he had composed 'Send in the Clowns' I saw in my mind's eye signed photographs in silver-gilt frames of Lenny Bernstein, Ethel Merman, Oscar Hammerstein and Noel Coward.
Just as I was wondering if I might have misjudged the scenario, my fax machine screeched into life again. This time a handshake was made across the ocean and a fax chugged out. I ripped it off and there on the curling thermal paper was scrawled 'Hi! Do you have something for us?'
I duly fitted into the machine the fax Sondheim had sent me earlier, dialled the number and pressed 'Transmit'.
A cheerful 'Thanks!' was returned a few minutes later.
I had no idea how many teams there might be playing and realized that, for all his neurotic calling to ensure my vigilant presence for the evening, Stephen had not told me whether or not this would be a one-time deal.
I woke up at three with Atlas Shrugged on my lap and the fax machine free of further intercourse.
A week later a case of Haut-Batailley claret arrived with a note of thanks from Stephen Sondheim.
The treasure hunt was a great success. Due in no small measure to your kind participation.
With thanks,
Stephen.
Not a hint of a call to collaboration. I still await his summons.
By the time Alan Coren became the Listener's editor, fax machines had become a signature ubiquity of the age, and there was nothing strange about my delivering copy to him that way without visiting the offices in Marylebone High Street from one month to the next. My next struggle, some seven or eight years later, would be to get newspapers and broadcasting companies to sign up to log on to the internet and furnish themselves with email addresses, but that is a whole other story for a whole other book for a whole other readership.
Contortionist
Perhaps the most stylish and beguiling figure in the London magazine world in those days was the caricaturist, editor and boulevardier about town Mark Boxer. Under the pen name Marc he had illustrated the front covers of A Dance to the Music of Time, all twelve volumes of which I had lined up along a bookshelf, next to the Simon Raven Alms for Oblivion sequence (which I much preferred, and still do). In the sixties Boxer had supervised the launch and life of Britain's first colour supplement magazine for The Sunday Times and now he edited the Tatler. One day in the mid to late eighties I got a letter from him, asking me to call his office.
'Ah yes. Stephen Fry. How do you do? Let me take you out to lunch. Langan's tomorrow?'
I had heard of Langan's Brasserie but had never been. Founded by Peter Langan, Richard Shepherd and the actor Michael Caine, it had acquired a reputation as one of the most glamorous and eccentric restaurants in London. The glamour was provided by the art collection, the Patrick Procktor menu design and the daily presence of film stars, aristocrats and millionaires; the eccentricity came in the form of Peter Langan. This pioneering restaurateur, an alcoholic Irishman of uncertain temper, was notorious for insulting customers to whom he might take unpredictable dislikes, tearing up the bills of those who dared to complain, stubbing cigarettes out in their salads and ordering them to leave. A bottle of Krug in one hand and a cigar or cigarette in the other, he would lurch from table to table, beaming and barking, grinning and growling, hugging and shoving. The food was good but not great, the atmosphere magical, and the experience, when Peter was around, unforgettable. Don Boyd told me that his wife, Hilary, had once found a slug in her salad. As Peter lurched hiccupping past the table, Don had stopped him and pointed out the unwanted gastropod in his wife's greenery.
Peter bowed forward from the waist to examine the plate.
'Why thank you,' he said, taking up the pulsing, living slug between thumb and forefinger. 'Thank you very much indeed, my darling.' He dropped it into his glass of Krug, drained it down and burped. 'Like a nice juicy snail, only without the nuisance of a shell. Fucking delicious.'
I arrived early, as I always do for appointments, and was led upstairs. Mark arrived exactly on time.
'Hope you don't mind it up here,' he said. 'It's quieter. In case Peter's about. Do you know him?'
I confessed that I did not.
'Keep it that way,' said Mark.
Boxer was an attractive-looking man aged, I suppose, about fifty, but youthful in a twinkly, almost elfin way. He was married to the newsreader and co-founder of TV-AM, Anna Ford. Over the first two courses Mark was charming, funny and inconsequential, as if the reason for his invitation to lunch was entirely social. He kept me in raptures with stories of his time at Cambridge.
'It was quite the thing then to present oneself as homosexual. I used to wear fantastically tight white trousers and tell the rugby players that they were the creamiest darlings in the world. It was actually very odd not to behave like that. Amongst my set at least. No one batted an eyelid if you came on as gay. And of course it made the girls simply throw themselves at you. Did you know that I am the only person aside from Shelley to be sent down from one of the universities for atheism?'
'No! Really?'
'Well, not quite. I was editor of Granta and I published a poem by somebody or other that the university authorities said was blasphemous. They demanded I, as editor, be sent down, but E. M. Forster and Noel Annan and others simply leapt to my defence, so they changed it to a rustication, which they meanly set for May Week so that I
would miss the May Ball, but of course they overlooked the fact that balls go on way past midnight. So on the stroke of twelve I returned to King's in my white tie and tails and was chaired around from marquee to marquee like a conquering hero. It was too marvellous.'
It was hard to believe that this man was the same age as my father. He had the gift, if gift it is, of making me feel more than usually bourgeois, ordinary and unexciting.
'So, a nos moutons,' he said as the cheese arrived. 'Tatler. I know you have written for us once before. Wonderful piece, by the way. Is it really true?'
He was referring to a feature to which I had contributed earlier in the year and which we will come to later. I blushed fiercely as I always did when that article was mentioned.
'Yes. Quite true.'
'Heavens. Anyway. The magazine ... Do you read it, by any chance?'
'Sometimes ... I mean, I don't positively not read it, but I don't think I've ever actually bought one. Except the month my piece came out, that is.'
'That's all right,' he said. 'Here's next month's number. The covers are wonderful these days. We have Michael Roberts as our art director. He's too splendid for words.'
I took his proffered copy of the magazine and flipped through the pages.
'It's all fine,' said Mark. 'Nothing wrong. It's just that there's something ... something missing.'
'Well whatever it is,' I said, 'it isn't advertisements.'
'Ha! No, we're doing very well, really. But I need someone to come in every month to ... to smell the issue before it goes to print.'