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You had one job, God.
Even though we’d been prepared for the news all day, I was still shocked when I saw a tweet from the Royal Household confirming the worst. Because the news hadn’t yet said anything I even thought that it might be some kind of sick hoax. Because the queen cannot die. But suddenly the news caught up with Twitter (even though they must have known it had already happened but weren’t allowed to say) and it was confirmed. The only monarch that the vast majority of people in the UK have ever known had gone.
I am not a big fan of the Royal Family but this is still a body blow. I wasn’t exactly sad - someone living to 96 and doing as much as Liz had done means the loss is softened. But she’s probably the most famous person in the world and one of a handful of names from our time that will still almost certainly be known in 1000 years time (if there are any people left to know anything) and our already leaking ship of a country has now had a firm hand taken off the rudder and it’ll be interesting to see what madness comes with this loss.
I went ahead and did Twitch of Fun (though I had been hoping that I would be able to break the news on air), but it was a respectful tribute where I showed TV bosses that I could be serious as well as comic and then also explained why you shouldn’t hold in farts. I think it’s what she would have wanted.
God Save the King. Do it properly this time.
In the morning one of our 1990s tour managers, Mark Makin sent me this old publicity shot. What a punchable face. What a burnable shirt. What the Hell was I thinking? The remarkable thing about this photo is that it came from a professional photo shoot and there would have been something like 50 to 100 other shots taken (on film, which would have limited things a little bit) and yet this was the one that I and my faxable management company chose to use.
What was I going for? The shirt I understand. This was all part of my brash double act persona (though I wore shirts like this for real too). I was the uncool one. The loud shirts were there to contrast with my double act partner’s supposed cool facade (would have helped if he hadn’t had such stupid hair, which really stole the uncool focus). But what was I trying to get across from the hand on chin, smug, sideways glance at the news face? I wasn’t in the Friday Night Armistice. Was I just using my hand to try and hide my chubby chin (it looks like I didn’t even have a chin and that my face just went down into my shirt without a discernible neck)? In which case I failed. I can still see it.
I guess I didn’t really know who I was comedically speaking and possibly even non-comedically speaking. Was I a superior know-it-all or a spectacular idiot? I am not really sure I’ve entirely nailed my comedy persona in the subsequent quarter of a century. I maybe veer more towards obsessive, deluded ex celebrity vaingloriously trying to justify his existence by building stone walls and getting back on TV, but then I also write charming comedy dramas like Relativity and books about masculinity and even my RHLSTP interview persona can’t commit - is he childish and inappropriate, putting his foot in it or smart and engaged and talking to authors about the writing process?
Maybe the contradictions are fun, but maybe it’s confusing enough to keep away the riff riff and mean I can enjoy my work without ever having to worry that I will achieve a broad appeal. So well done to that confused young man for setting me off on a path where I would keep the necessary level of anonymity to mean I could have a nice life.
I don’t know. But I do know that if I somehow got a photo like the one I used for PR in the 1990s I would destroy it and not send it out to newspapers and fans. And I certainly understand why 55 year old people in 1995 didn’t exactly take to this fucking buffoon. And why he spent a lot of weekends on his own.
