How to Be Famous

  16

  Suzanne was right—that people wanted to talk about it. That afternoon, I got three calls from The Face, who’d had people on radio shows who wanted me to come on and talk about being a teenage groupie.

  “They do understand I’m not a teenage groupie?” I said, three times in a row. “And that I’m just defending the general idea, not opening my sexual journal? I’ve only had sex with one actual famous person, and he’d read my stuff, so that felt like more of a—fuck between colleagues?”

  That’s how I’m thinking about Jerry Sharp now. A fuck between colleagues.

  “I’m sure they’d love you to explain the difference,” the editor said, wryly. “Although without the word ‘fuck.’ This is daytime LBC. You’ll need to use a euphemism—preferably nineteenth century.”

  “I could say, ‘esteemed peer who troubled my petticoats’? Or ‘respectful mutual tumbling’? Or maybe ‘courteous reciprocal fiddlement’?”

  “You’ll have a ball,” he said.

  “Can I be honest with you?” I asked, staring at my byline picture in the magazine.

  It was taken by a Face photographer in the editor’s office, when I popped by a few weeks ago. In it, the flash is so bright you almost can’t see my nose—I’m just two huge eyes, and a mouth I have concentrated very hard on making pouty. “Having a flash so bright you almost can’t see someone’s nose” is the fashionable thing in photographs in the mid-nineties. The singer-songwriter Cathy Dennis hasn’t had a nose on the cover of her last five singles. Björk’s comes and goes, seemingly at will.

  I felt conflicted about this photograph. On the one hand, I didn’t like how sexy, sassy, and cool I look in it. I have an instinctive worry that having a picture so kind of . . . arrogant . . . will make people hate me. I’d far rather be pulling a silly face. I feel, instinctively, that’s what my soul looks like. A bit silly.

  On the other hand, I loved the nose-less-ness, as I believe I have inherited my mother’s nose, and every time I look at a picture of it, I imagine it sitting reproachfully in the middle of my face, saying, “Johanna,” in a guilt-inducing way. It’s hard, inheriting your parents’ body parts. I often wondered if that’s why Michael Jackson has had so much surgery. It’s not so much being in denial of his blackness, as just not wanting to look at his infamously unkind dad’s nose every morning. I could see how that would be an immediate bummer, every morning. Having a face which, when you look in the mirror, looks as though it’s about to start shouting “Dance! Do it again, Michael! BETTER! HURRY UP AND RECORD THRILLER!”

  Anyway, I digress.

  “Fire away,” the editor said.

  “I am scared of going on the radio,” I said.

  I told him about how, when I was fourteen, I appeared on local TV, reading out a poem about my dog, and got over-nervous, and went temporarily mental, and ended up howling “Scooby dooby doooooo!” as the presenter desperately cut me off, and I subsequently became a laughingstock at school.

  “I’m worried I might have another . . . conversational accident like that,” I finished.

  The editor was laughing so hard, it took him a minute to gather his breath.

  “It’s not funny!” I said, also laughing. “It’s traumatized me for life. I can’t watch live interviews on TV now without getting very tense that one of the people taking part in it might have some kind of nervo, and do something similar.”

  “You have to write a column about this, at some point,” the editor said.

  “Another column?” I said. “So, you’re going to keep me?”

  My heart raced.

  “Magazines love columnists who appear on radio, talking about their controversial columns,” the editor said.

  “Even if they end up howling ‘Scooby dooby dooo’?”

  “Speaking for myself, personally, particularly if they do that,” the editor said.

  I thought about this for a second.

  “Okay. I’ll do it,” I said.

  “Congratulations on your new job,” the editor said. “I think I’m going to enjoy this,” and rang off.

  The radio interviews went okay, I think. I am referred to, variously, in my introductions, as “the new enfant terrible of Fleet Street,” “the new Julie Burchill,” and “self-confessed teenage groupie Dolly Wilde,” but I have plenty of time to correct them.

  “I would prefer ‘enfant lovely’ I think—no one wants to be ‘terrible,’” I told one DJ; whilst the one who called me a “self-confessed teenage groupie” had it explained to him that I’ve had more sex with people called “Russell” (two) than I have with famous people (one), and so I’m technically not so much “a groupie,” more “a member of the Russell Group.”

  But he didn’t get this reference to the slightly obscure organization that represents the UK’s seventeen leading universities—and so, yet again, I observed my humor to go without honor in its time. I had long intended to get a notebook, to keep a record of all the jokes I made that no one got—so that future, more humorously advanced generations would still be able to appreciate them, when their evolution kicked in. I knew John would get all these jokes. It was another reason I knew I must marry him. There were so many jokes I was making for him, still waiting to be laughed at.

  All the interviewers missed the point. To a greater or lesser extent all said, “So, you’re suggesting teenage schoolgirls should down their textbooks, and go off to have sex with rock stars?” whilst I patiently explained that I was not telling them to do this, merely acknowledging that quite a few already wanted to, and that it was a perfectly sensible desire, inasmuch as desire can be sensible.

  One of them went full Bill Grundy, and asked me which famous people I’d had sex with, and it was only when I was halfway through a list that included “all of The Goodies except Graeme Garden, but including the big kitten” that he realized I was taking the piss, and got quite arsey.

  Before each interview, I felt a kind of anxiety I’d never felt in any other situation—as if my belly was a cradle of filthy nerves, all of which are fizzing, and shorting out—but afterward, I felt so high and triumphant that they went okay—I pulled it off! I didn’t fuck up! I was actually funny on a few occasions! It was easy! I could do it again! It’s just talking!—that I arranged to meet Zee in the pub, because his new record company offices were just around the corner from the BBC, and I hadn’t seen him in a while, and I wanted to drink a celebratory drink to me in his presence.

  “You’re famous!” he said, clinking his pint of milk against my whisky and Coke. “You’re everywhere right now!”

  He showed me a piece in today’s Evening Standard, in which Martin Amis had railed against me “Talking like a bloke” about sex. I read it in disbelief.

  “He thinks only men talk about sex?” I said. “That just makes him look weird. He’s basically saying no woman he knows has ever talked to him about sex. That’s embarrassing for Martin Amis.”

  “Famous,” Zee said again. “You used to talk about Martin Amis. Now Martin Amis is talking about you.”

  “I’m not famous,” I said. “I’m just . . . not not famous. I’m . . . point zero zero one percent famous. Like, a homeopathic amount.”

  “The Face must be delighted,” he said. “You are a creditable employee.”

  “Talking of creditable employees,” I said, lighting a cigarette, “how’s The Branks’ album going?”

  Suzanne has been signed to Zee’s label—now called Jubilee—for five months, and their debut album is scheduled to come out at the beginning of spring. However, when I mentioned this, Zee looked a bit worried.

  “She’s got so many great ideas,” he said. “She comes into the office, and tells us about what she wants to do, and how it’s going to change the world—but she’s not let us actually listen to anything yet.”

  “I’m sure it will be amazing,” I said. “I’ve got a massive girl-crush on her. She’s the revolution. She makes me excited.”

  “Sometimes I can’t
tell if I’m excited, or scared,” Zee said. “My parents have remortgaged their house for this label. So far, the time she’s spent in the studio amounts to their front room, and half of their porch. If this tanks, they’re going to have to live in their kitchen.”

  “I think she’s the safest bet you could have,” I said, soothingly. “I don’t know anyone who wants more to be famous than Suzanne. She is a star.”

  “Yes,” Zee said, unwillingly. “But I’m not sure if she’s realized yet that stars have to do something to be famous. Anyway, talking of which, shall we make a move?”

  John Kite is playing his first UK date in eight months tonight, finishing off his world tour with a night at the Astoria. It sold out the day tickets went on sale—it’s the month’s big gig. He is the homecoming hero: “all” of London is going tonight, by which I mean “some other people in bands, some comedians, and me.” It has given me an absolute thrill to be able to ring John, and suggest we meet up, beforehand, and then go into the gig together. We agreed on the bar over the road from the Astoria, a little bar underneath the Phoenix Theatre, which for some reason we all refer to as “Shuttleworth’s.”

  I will admit, imagining this for the last two months has been my main motivating dream. The outfit I’m wearing—a moss-green silk blouse, tights, shorts, and boots, with an Afghan coat—has been designed to be the perfect “Of course I’m with the hero!” outfit. I am going to bank this memory hard. I’m seeing John!

  “Come on,” Zee says. “We can walk it in ten minutes.”

  17

  When I got to the bar, John was already there, and already quite drunk, and already with other people. This is the worst thing about knowing someone famous—aside from the fact that they are always busy, they are never alone. They are always surrounded by people. You can always tell where a famous person is in a room—they will be at the epicenter of the cluster of oddly overanimated people, all essentially queuing to talk to them.

  I didn’t like the look of the people he was with—there is an immediately identifiable aura to people who take a lot of cocaine. For ages, I struggled to put my finger on it—until I realized that they all basically remind me of the Child Catcher in Chitty Chitty Bang Bang. Black leather, silly John Lennon glasses, greasy hair, twitchy noses.

  I felt an emotion I had never had before, when looking at John: disappointment. Who were these new people? They weren’t his usual friends—the sleepy-eyed librarian; the man in the jumper called Rob; the roadie who can balance 10p on a lemon floating in a pint glass; me.

  “I’m going to the bar. Drink?” Zee said.

  “Whisky,” I replied.

  I waved at John, in a kind of “I’m here, but not going to bother you” way, but he stood up—slightly unsteadily—and roared, “DUCHESS! DUCHESS! I DID NOT KNOW YOU COULD GET HEAVEN BIKED TO HELL!” I did not know if that was a reference to me—or to all the drugs he’d clearly had delivered here.

  I pushed through the crowd toward him, and—as there were no spare chairs—he pulled me onto his knee, where I observed how he was vibrating on a different frequency to the one I was accustomed to, and which I didn’t like; but he still smelled like John as I kissed his greasy, sweaty, dear forehead. And there—there came the rush. The same jolt, the same flood of love. It was beyond reason, these days. I am a dog, and he is the bell.

  “Dutch, Dutch—you’ve got to meet Mike. Mike—Dutch. Dutch—Mike.”

  A ratty man looked at me, and his thought receipt was, clearly, “Here is a fat child I have absolutely no interest in. This is not crumpet.”

  “Mike’s got some pretty punchy theories about the murder of JFK,” John said. “Hit her, Mike!”

  Mike looked like the kind of man who, a few drinks down the line, might take that command literally, and so I said, “Mike! Hello! Tell me the story of Mike, with your voice!,” just to clarify things.

  “Well,” Mike said. He had a very unlovable voice. Like a rat trying to sound like an undercover cop. “Think about this, right? We’ve had all these claims, over the years, about who killed JFK. CIA, right-wing conspiracy, lone nutter. But who had the most to gain from him dying? Whose lives were changed instantly the moment he got his head blown off? You gotta follow the money. Who? WHO?”

  “I don’t know, Mike!” I said, pleasantly. John handed me his whisky. I sipped it.

  “The fucking Beatles,” Mike said, looking triumphant. “JFK dies, America has a vacuum for a new hero and, four weeks later, the Mop-Tops turn up—and they fucking coin it. Think about it! They’ve even got a ‘tell’! All that shaking their heads—what does that look like? Someone having their brains blown out. Like their victim. And what are they saying when they do that? ‘Yeah yeah yeah.’ It’s a confession! They fucking did it!”

  This sounds like a theory Mike came up with as a joke at some point—but which the years of retelling, mixed in with the drugs, have seen calcify into something Mike now pretty much believes. Because he’s very dim.

  “It’s an intriguing proposition,” I said, as positively as possible, whilst John shifted me slightly on his knee, to a more comfortable position.

  “Alley-oop!” he said, jovially.

  On seeing this, Mike’s face became a little shinier and more rat-like.

  “You almost in?” he asked John, ignoring me as if I were a deaf-mute child, or a ventriloquist’s puppet.

  “What?” John asked, drunkenly befuddled.

  “You know. You almost there?”

  John and I both realized at exactly the same time that what Mike was asking him, is if he’d managed to get his cock into me, whilst I was sitting on his knee.

  I hadn’t even had time to start having an emotion about this when John stood up, put his arm around me, and said, to the crowd, “Gotta go!”—herding me toward the door.

  “Yeah—alleyway’s the best place!” Mike shouted after him, conspiratorially. “Keep her warm for me!”

  John said, evenly, “Excuse me, Dutch,” went over to Mike, placed his face very close to Mike’s—which was still beaming, brattishly—and said, “Friend. Friend. If I hear you say something like that again, about this, or any other woman, you’ll spend the rest of your life pissing through a straw.” Then he came back to me, and ushered me out of the bar.

  The sudden cold dark air, combined with the rapidity of the mood switch, meant that, for a minute, I didn’t know what to say.

  “I’m so sorry,” I said, eventually, because that’s what girls automatically say when something bad happens to them.

  John grabbed me by the arms, and looked me right in the eye.

  “No one talks to you like that, honey,” he said, firmly. “If anyone ever talks to you like that again, take their name. I will end them.”

  “I don’t know if you would ever have time. The world is full of evenings like this,” I said. I mean it to sound jaunty, but it comes out unexpectedly sad. John tilts my head up.

  “You okay, babe?” he said, concerned.

  “Yes, yes,” I said. Why have I sadded this moment? This moment should be amazing! I shake my head, and re-amazen it.

  “My first column in The Face came out this week! I am now a national columnist!”

  “Ah, you fucking maven!” he said, picking me up, and whirling me around, and then dumping me back on the pavement with a kiss. “Oh, we must celebrate this! With champagne!”

  He turned to the cashpoint next to us, and punched in his PIN. “No! Not champagne! Dolly—have you ever had a martini? Here is their mechanism: they set fire to tomorrow, to make tonight glorious. They send away the watchmen of the mind. They are, without doubt, the fastest route to prison. I recommend them highly.”

  And then he stopped, staring at the screen.

  “What? What?” I asked, as he’d gone quite pale.

  “Look,” he said, quietly.

  I came round, right behind him, and looked at the screen. It said, in little green letters on black, “Available balance: £1,203,833.00.”
br />   18

  If John was drunk before—and he really was very drunk—in the hour that followed he essentially became vapor. When Zee—slightly confused—came out of the bar to see where we’d got to, he found John carrying me down the street on his back, screaming “I’M FILTHY FUCKING RICH! LET’S SPEND IT! QUICK!” and desperately trying to find somewhere to buy something on Charing Cross Road at 7:00 p.m.—not a place overburdened with shops that are not antiquarian-book shops.

  “But what do you want to buy?” I was asking him, clinging onto his back.

  “ANYTHING! EVERYTHING! I AM MIDAS!” he replied, going into the WHSmith’s and picking up a gigantic Toblerone, a calculator (“To work out HOW FILTHY STINKING FUCKING WEALTHY I AM NOW!!!!”), a VHS box set of Seinfeld, and a two-liter bottle of Fanta.

  “The millionaire must have stuff,” he said, paying for it, before pinballing back out of the shop, and to the back entrance of the Astoria.

  In the dressing room, downing a shot before he even took his coat off, he went for a piss with the door of the toilet open, shouting “Behold—the sound of my millionaire’s urination!”

  “Don’t forget to wash your hands,” I said, primly, and he stuck each of his hands under the two available dryers, and stood, legs apart, like Henry VIII having his hands blow-dried, shouting “BEHOLD! I AM AS A GOD!”

  I was just in the middle of pouring John a drink, as requested—well, not quite as requested. He’d told me to serve it in my shoe. I had gone for the more prosaic option of “a glass”—and cheerfully punching John’s arm when John’s new PR, Andy Wolf, entered the room.

  “Quick word in your shell-like,” Wolf said, beckoning me into the corridor. He had an eternally peevish air. Like a man who has, in his time, sent back a lot of soup.