Life and Laughing: My Story (23 page)

I was basically a dogsbody. Making tea and coffee for the producers, delivering things around London, doing whatever needed to be done. I worked alongside two other ‘runners’, Jamie and Steve, and the receptionist, Zelda. Being a runner is the entry point in the media – most successful people in film and television start out as runners. I was fortunate to land the job; every day we received CVs from well-qualified graduates desperate to make the tea that I was making. In fact, I’m sure they could have done it better – my tea-making was appalling. My toast-making was so bad, I had a tutorial from Pete on how to ‘Butter all the way to the edges’. I think if it wasn’t for nepotism, I would have been fired pretty early on.

Jamie and Steve were desperate to become directors, and Zelda was desperate to become a producer. I was just having fun. I was discovering my sense of humour and becoming addicted to the sound of laughter. It seemed to me that the whole of life was just there so that I could try to make it funny. I was also trying to impress Zelda. She was a 22-year-old bubbly blonde with a wicked sense of humour of her own. Despite her being in a long-term relationship with her ‘drummer in a band’ boyfriend, she became the latest unrequited love of my life. We pranked and laughed our days away. My time would be spent working in the office or on set when there was a shoot.

The first music video I worked on was for the
Big Breakfast
puppets Zig and Zag. Some savvy record producer called Simon Cowell thought he might be able to land a hit single with a novelty record. The song was called ‘
Them Girls
’ and the video featured a club scene with a few boys but predominantly sexy girls dancing around Zig and Zag, as they sang, ‘Them girls, them girls, they all love me.’ I was the runner on the shoot, which meant I was literally run off my feet from very early in the morning until very late at night. My job was to be on hand to help everybody from the director to the caterers.

My Spitfire was now not only leaking petrol but also brake fluid, so I would have to fill up on both several times a journey. The studio was in Bow, and I was running so late that I didn’t have time to fill up the brake fluid. When I arrived the brakes were so soft I sailed fifty yards past the crew entrance and finally stopped at the artists’ entrance. There were about a hundred models arriving, and I was mistaken for one. I think it was more the car than my face, or maybe my coat. My grandmother had given me one of my grandfather’s old coats. It was a very expensive black pure cashmere overcoat. I loved it and hardly ever took it off. I certainly didn’t look like your average ‘runner’.

I should really have said something. I was late, I was in trouble, there would have been people looking for me, I was badly needed on the shoot, but before I knew it, I was whisked into a communal dressing room surrounded by naked models. NAKED MODELS! Naked models who seemed to be flirting with me a bit. One girl asked me to help her out of her dress! She moved her long dark hair to one side as I unzipped this gorgeous woman from behind.

‘Michael!’ cried Jenny, one of the production assistants who was organizing the extras. ‘What are you doing? Everyone’s looking for you!’

‘Sorry, I was just helping …’ I scooted out, leaving behind a half-zipped beauty and returned to my actual job of production slave.

News of my indiscretion travelled throughout the production, and all but a few found it hilarious, and most of the male crew congratulated me on being a bit of a stud. But my out-of-control antics were soon to jeopardize my job.

Partizan was becoming quite successful, mainly due to one of their directors, Michel Gondry, who was and is a phenomenally creative Frenchman. He would go on to direct one of my favourite films,
Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless
Mind
, starring Jim Carrey, and indeed win an Oscar for it. So the company started to diversify and produce commercials directed by Michel. For me, this only meant that I would be delivering and picking up packages from advertising agencies as well as record companies. Very kindly, Pete occasionally allowed me to drive his company Mercedes when on these deliveries.

On the day in question, I was delivering a package to the agency Saatchi & Saatchi. Saatchi & Saatchi was run by brothers Charles and Maurice Saatchi. While sitting in traffic, en route, I heard on the radio that Maurice Saatchi was leaving the agency. ‘That’s interesting,’ I thought, ‘I’m on my way there now.’ So I listened closely to the news about how he was being ousted from the company and would probably start a new one. The big question seemed to be, would his major clients like British Airways follow him.

When I arrived at Saatchi & Saatchi, it was a media circus. Outside the main entrance were cameras, news teams, reporters. I was only dropping off a package, so I double-parked the car and ran in unnoticed. On the way out, however, all the cameras, lights and reporters focused on me, standing on the steps of Saatchi & Saatchi in my expensive cashmere coat.

‘What do you think the future is for Saatchi & Saatchi?’ I was asked, mistaken for an advertising exec.

Well, you see, they asked me a question, so I chose to answer it. I was filled with all the information I had just heard on the radio and said, ‘I don’t think there is much of a future.’

Obviously, everybody else had been saying, ‘No comment’, because as soon as I spoke, there was a media scrum surrounding me, microphones were thrust into my face from all angles, BBC, Sky News, ITN, etc.

‘Maurice was the lifeblood of this agency,’ I continued, repeating exactly what I had heard a commentator say on the radio just minutes previously. ‘I think many of the major clients will follow him out, certainly British Airways will.’ This was massive news; they were scribbling, jockeying for position around me.

‘What do you do here?’ somebody shouted at me.

‘Well, nothing now, I’ve just resigned,’ I said then, cool as a cucumber. I beeped open Pete’s double-parked Mercedes, jumped in it and sped off.

I was exhilarated by my latest joke and told everybody in the office. Pete summoned me and told me in no uncertain terms that what I had done was very funny, but if it came back to him and Partizan in any way, he would have to fire me. I nervously watched the news that night, but nothing was on it. My job was safe, I could continue with my reign of mischief.

One reign that was about to come to an inevitable end was that of my Triumph Spitfire. My car struggled to stop in perfect driving conditions, so when snow and ice entered the equation, there was little hope. Driving home from work in wintry conditions, I applied the brake and skidded serenely. While skidding, I couldn’t remember the advice I had been given; was it to brake, not brake, pump the brakes? By the time I’d remembered, I’d crashed into a parked Volvo Limousine.

I have honestly never seen a Volvo Limousine before or since. Volvos are renowned for their strength and limousines are renowned for being long. So it was hard for me to avoid this long strong car. The result was that my car crumpled into an unsalvageable heap, offering no resistance whatsoever. It was almost as if the car committed suicide, like it had been waiting for the right car to crash into and spotting a Volvo Limousine was too much to resist. I was unhurt, as was the Volvo. I may not have remembered the skidding rules, but I did remember being told that if you’re involved in an accident, do not accept responsibility. The fact that the car I crashed into was unoccupied didn’t seem to affect my denial of blame.

The limo was parked directly outside its owner’s house on West End Lane in West Hampstead. He heard the impact and came rushing outside.

‘What do you think you’re doing?’ he cried.

‘What do you think you’re doing?’ I said, leaping out of my wreckage.

‘Have you been drinking?’ he accused me.

‘Have you been drinking?’ I asked.

‘Yes,’ he said, ‘but I’m having dinner with my family. Are you insane? I’m allowed to drink and eat. Have you been drinking and driving?’

We exchanged details, he returned to his dinner and I awaited rescue. I had lost my car, but I had another funny story to add to my expanding repertoire. The next morning when I went to Partizan, I wasn’t depressed to be on the bus. I couldn’t wait to tell Zelda and everyone else how I’d hit the only Volvo Limousine ever made and blamed it on a man who was eating dinner at the time. The story got big laughs and that made me happy.

Making people laugh made me happy.

15

As my ‘gap year’ neared its end, I had no idea what my next move would be. ‘Clearing’ is a process whereby universities advertise places they still have available and the grades you need to be considered. So I found all the courses that accepted A-Level grades of C, C and D and they tended to be at former polytechnics or working as a janitor or security guard at one of the more prestigious universities.

Then, surprisingly, I found a course at Edinburgh University that only required C, C and D at A-Level. Edinburgh is a top-notch seat of learning. I’m not really sure what the course was; I know it was either Biology or Chemistry or maybe a bit of both. All I knew is that after a few phone calls I was accepted. I was off to Edinburgh.

I packed up my belongings and, after an emotional farewell, I left home. I was fleeing the nest and heading to a student flat where I would be living with two unknown flatmates. When I arrived, they were already there. We said hello awkwardly, like at the beginning of
Big Brother
. It was immediately obvious that my new flatmates were partial to smoking marijuana. One of them was wearing clothes made of hemp and the other one only packed a guitar. They both needed a good bath but weren’t going to get one as the flat only had an out-of-service shower. They became the best of friends following this exchange:

‘Have you got any Rizla?’ asked the guitar one.

‘Yeah,’ said the hemp one.

We were each given a ‘starter pack’ containing leaflets, spaghetti hoops, loo roll and a condom. I joked that maybe it was a leaflet telling you how to have sex with the spaghetti hoops and then clean up afterwards. They didn’t laugh, then both wolfed down their spaghetti hoops straight from the tin, unheated when it clearly states ‘best served hot’. Shocking.

I unpacked and burst into tears. I now had to fend for myself, in the big bad world. Well, that’s what it felt like. In reality I was in student accommodation with a pretty healthy allowance from my grandmother. But like a baby, I missed my mum. ‘You take me for granted,’ she had been shouting at me for years – well, now I would realize that for myself. I had no idea how to look after myself. I smoked several cigarettes, also ate my spaghetti hoops cold and straight from the tin (actually not that bad) and fell asleep in my clothes.

In the morning, I headed off to a laboratory on campus for some kind of induction to my course. Well, for everyone else it was an induction. For me, it was an opportunity to find out what course I was studying. I assembled with about thirty other similarly nervous and self-conscious students. I scanned the lab for the most attractive girl and settled on this cute blonde in the Kylie Minogue mould. I was then handed a lab coat and safety glasses. This is not a good look for me, for anyone. I don’t think any girl in history has uttered the words, ‘Who’s that guy with the long white coat and the massive plastic glasses?’

I think the course involved Biology and Chemistry in the first year and then you specialized in one after that. The good news for me was that in Scotland university courses are four years as opposed to the three years in England. So everything that we were taught in the first year, I had already studied for at A-Level. So I decided to take the rest of the year off.

Later that day I ran into several of Sam’s friends from Westminster. They were a close-knit bunch of public school boys and girls who had been friends for years. I sort of tagged along with them and during my tagging along ran into a friend from Woodhouse, Jonas, a Swedish gentleman whom I had always liked. Jonas tagged along also. So now there was the ex-Westminster mob, Jonas and myself, and we never really separated for the remainder of that year. I soon left my student flat (I don’t think Hemp and Guitar noticed), and we all rented a flat together on Blair Street above the City Café, a hang-out for Edinburgh’s grooviest residents.

My flatmates were a lovely couple, Will and Poppy (posh), a lovely couple, Nicky and Mellow (posh), Ben (posh), Jonas (Swedish) and myself. The flat was ex-council and in relative disrepair. It had a unique design. A central kitchen surrounded by five bedrooms. Home improvements were first on the agenda, so we each painted our own bedrooms. I purchased some silver spray paint and sprayed everything, including my television. I had a silver television. I also painted around my bed, which was positioned against the wall. I didn’t see the point in moving the bed and painting behind it as nobody would see that bit. I have the same theory today when ironing shirts – because I always wear a jacket I tend to only iron the visible ‘V’ on the front.

I was already living with two couples. This is what was happening, people were getting together and having serious relationships. Will and Poppy ended up getting married and now have three kids. I still hadn’t had a girlfriend. Nothing. I had been obsessively trying to meet somebody since Arnold House and had nothing to show for it. I remember thinking that statistically there must be someone who never ever has a girlfriend just through bad luck, and I thought that might be me. At university I was surrounded by young couples in love, and I found some of their relationships unfathomable. I would chat and giggle with girls, make them laugh until they were wiping tears from their eyes: ‘You’re so funny, Michael, you’re the funniest guy I’ve ever met.’

I’d be thinking, ‘Great, let’s have a relationship’, but they always had a boyfriend, some guy back in Leeds or Southampton or wherever they’d come from. Or sometimes the boyfriend was sitting right next to them, not saying a word, with a hairstyle hanging over one eye, so he couldn’t see out of it. ‘This guy? What are you doing with this guy?’ I would want to say and occasionally did. Nobody wanted to be with me.