Big Beacon, page 21
Less than forty-eight hours later I was unveiled as the new permanent co-host of This Time.
When you become a Big Deal, things change. Where previously a smile at a pretty lady would have been met with a scowl and a tut, now it’s returned in kind. A blue joke in a business meeting, once met with mild titters, is now embraced with full-throated laughter. You no longer have to drive yourself to work. Or open doors for yourself. Or brush your own hair (unless you want to).100
Point is, when you’re a person with a public profile, people put you on a pedestal. And though that sentence sounded odd because of how many ‘p’s it contained, the fact remains that as co-host of This Time, beamed into living rooms five nights a week, I was now a figure of national prominence. As such, keeping my feet on the ground had never been more important. My own way of dealing with this? Daily affirmations. I’d stand in front of the mirror after my shower, spread my arms and legs like the Vitruvian Man101 and simply say: ‘I am no better than anyone else. I am no better than anyone else. I am no better than anyone else. Even binmen and teachers.’
I’d change the jobs mentioned each day to expose my brain to the full range of menial workers. Dinner ladies, builders, Deliveroo drivers, tanning-salon receptionists, scrapyard monkeys, and so on. I found it to be an immensely powerful technique.
Humility became my watchword, both at work and at play. Once a month, rather than a runner getting my lunch, I’d get theirs. ‘Take a load off,’ I’d say. ‘Today I’ll be getting your lunch.’ And while, as the show’s presenter, I was typically too busy to follow through on that pledge and would have to get one of the make-up girls to do it for me, plus get mine, plus don’t forget the change, the point was made, and powerfully so.
Out on the street? Same idea applied. If someone asked for my autograph I’d say, ‘Uh-uh, you give me yours instead.’ It was a neat and unexpected role reversal that showed me to be a man who wore my celebrity lightly, like one of those silk Japanese dressing gowns worn by women and the gay.
But being a sought-after figure also meant extra demands on my assistant, and I have to admit it took her time to adjust. Invites to openings, premieres and product launches began to flood in, and she would accept them all. It was lunacy. The idea that the opening of a community centre should have parity with the launch of an executive car was patently and morally wrong. In urgent need of guidance, I developed a simple flow chart to aid her decision-making, which she laminated and stuck to the wall next to her desk.
Then there was the post bag. A gentle trickle when I was a DJ at North Norfolk Digital, it was now more akin to a swollen river that had bust its banks, with tens (sometimes dozens) of pieces of mail gushing in every week. They tended to be a roughly equal split between kind letters from elderly women, autograph requests and death threats. The elderly women would receive ‘Pensioner letter 1’ or ‘Pensioner letter 2’ (depending on whether or not they’d sent a gift), the autograph hunters would be ignored and the death threats would be collated, bound and dropped off at the local police station every Friday morning along with a thank you note and some homemade shortbread.
But perhaps the biggest change in my personal life at this time was my ‘almost move’ to London. Because though I’d always hated London and hated people from London and hated people who weren’t from London but liked London, in a lot of ways it would have made sense. I was working there, socialising there, I’d found an excellent spin class and a masseuse who gave me weekly full- body massages (although she didn’t touch my back because I don’t like my back being touched). Maybe it was time to reassess.
I started the ball rolling by setting up appointments with a series of luxury estate agencies. We’re talking a notch or two above your Winkworths and possibly even your Foxtons, though the latter remain my estate agency of choice.102 Yet what I saw on the viewings appalled me. What they were calling townhouses were terraces with quite small gardens. In Norwich a nurse would live in a house like that, and they said they dealt in luxury properties? When one of the guys told me the rent was five thousand pounds a WEEK I had to ask him if he was having a laugh because he must have been having a laugh.103 I also had to repeatedly point out to these people that luxury homes were rubbing shoulders with council accommodation, which surely breached planning law. No, my first instinct had been right. The entire place is a shithole but no one dares say it. Well, I dares. I remained in Norwich.
On language
During this time, I also got to grips with the way the modern BBC talks to its audience.
The key word? ‘Accessibility’. It’s something BBC-bashers like to call ‘dumbing down’, but take the time to understand it, and suddenly, a way of talking that normally makes you want to kick the TV in makes perfect sense.
A particularly good example comes from the BBC’s cohort of weather presenters. Imagine you tune in to a weather bulletin and hear the weatherman say, ‘And later it’s going to rain.’ How is that going to make you feel? You don’t want it to rain. You don’t like rain. If it rains you might get wet and you don’t want to get wet. And because the weatherman is the one who said it, you’re a bit cross with him and you’re a bit cross with the BBC. You’re a hair’s breadth from flicking to ITV. So what to do?
Well, BBC weather presenters have developed a clever solution. Instead of ‘later it’s going to rain’, a weather person would now do two things. Firstly, they’d pull a sad face, and then they’d rephrase the sentence like so: ‘Well, it’s bad news for later on, folks. I’m sorry to say the sunshine won’t last and it’s going to rain.’ See the difference? Let me walk you through it. On hearing these reformulated words a viewer thinks, That man just said it’s going to rain, but I don’t like rain and I don’t want it to rain. Then again, he did say sorry about the rain, and when he said it he did a sad face, and I liked that because I had a sad face too.
The result? Our viewer isn’t made to feel upset or cross at the BBC and is able to continue watching.
Job done? Well, not quite. You see, the weather presenter still made the mistake of saying ‘it’s going to rain’. Remember again: viewers don’t like rain. But given that the key information is that rain is coming, how could this issue be solved? Could it be solved at all? Well, props here must go to the pioneering work of weather presenter Louise Lear (born Tracy Louise Barden, 1967). It was Lear who first realised that when she replaced accepted meteorological terminology with language used in books for the under-fives, a remarkable thing happened: viewers became less upset. So rather than ‘it’s going to rain’, she would say ‘and you might juuuuuuuust start to feel the pitter-patter of tiny raindrops beginning to fall’. It was a eureka moment for the weather team and was immediately incorporated into weather bulletins corporation-wide.
Yet within months, the humility had gone; melted like a snowman104 in the sun. Instead, my behaviour was now characterised by a sense of entitlement only normally seen in Old Etonians. And while for them it is a perfectly understandable by-product of having to deal with the pressures of running our economy and leading our government, for me it was simply unforgivable. I had become a monster.
Around Broadcasting House, I took to wearing clacky shoes so people would hear me coming before I’d even got round the corner.105 And when they did finally see me, I’d assert dominance by saying their name slightly before they’d finished mine.
‘Ala—’
‘Doug!’
If I was greeting a group of people, I’d shake one person’s hand but already be looking at and saying hello to the next one; then when I was shaking that person’s hand I’d be looking at and saying hello to the next, and so on. It was a technique that required split-second timing, but get it right and it was a quick and easy way to make people feel worthless. Arriving at work, I’d park my car so it straddled two spaces (only stopping when my assistant pointed out that people might think I couldn’t park). In meetings I’d burp and sometimes not say ‘excuse me’. If I was at a party and Tony Robinson was on the dance floor, I’d dance around him so aggressively that he’d get scared and have to go home. And while I don’t regret that one, most of my behaviour was abhorrent.
But it was when I refused to return to Norwich to host the summer fundraiser for Norwich Conservative Federation and the Conservative Party in Norwich North and Norwich South that I knew something was badly wrong. It was just not like me. It was a blue-letter day in the local political calendar – we always had a Gordon Brown piñata which children could hit with sticks until sweets tumbled out of him; it was that kind of day! I hadn’t missed the event in ten years, and even then it was only because I had a swollen face following a cosmetic dental procedure to reverse receding gums.106
It’s only now, looking back with the benefit of Heinzesight, that I can see what was happening. My behaviour was a symptom of a dissatisfaction I had for too long ignored, repeatedly squashing it back down inside of me like when you try to get a double duvet into a vacuum bag and there’s no one there to help you because you live alone. The problem? I just didn’t dig the BBC anymore.
That feeling of coldness after my first time presenting This Time? That was a feeling I should have listened to; a feeling I should have sat down with, looked in the eye, and quite simply said, ‘Wa gw’aaaaaaaan?’
But the volcanic eruption, the red-hot spaffing of those suppressed feelings was to come later. For now, and for nearly one hundred episodes of This Time, I would be living life as a muddled-up feelings-squasher.
* * *
99 What I can confirm is that he did pay a visit one afternoon to the home of commissioning editor Lake Palmer. Flanked by his broadcaster dad Peter and broadcaster uncle Jon, it was a show of strength, or as they like to call it, a ‘Snow’ of strength (pathetic). Over tea and scones in Lake’s walled garden, Peter and Jon took the opportunity to compliment him on the wonderful colour variation of his hydrangeas and peonies, but the underlying message was clear: give Dan the job or we’ll put your fucking windows through. Thankfully, though, Palmer is made of sterner stuff. He told them there’d be no nepotism on his watch and showed them to the door. And as they walked away, tails between their legs, he shouted after them, ‘Oh, and they’re not hydrangeas, they’re viburnums, you dicks.’
100 I did.
101 Look it up – I use these references for a reason.
102 Attitude.
103 He was not having a laugh.
104 Or woman!
105 Doesn’t work on carpet.
106 As we age, our gums recede, hence the phrase ‘long in the tooth’. The experimental procedure I underwent, which at the time of booking was just described to me as ‘a procedure’, was designed to reverse this, effectively de-ageing my smile by between ten and fifteen years. With an incision placed at either side of the tooth and blood flowing into the mouth, the gum was lifted, yanked downwards and anchored back into place. When the flap of gum didn’t hold and Dr Chatterjee’s working theory was disproved, he quickly pivoted and took grafts from the roof of my mouth to see if that would work instead.
The six-hour treatment, for which I paid £12,000 in a single upfront payment, is uncomfortable but not painful. The month after, however, is a different story. Searing pain in the gums and roof of the mouth are barely tempered by over-the-counter pain killers. Codeine is more effective but can only be prescribed for a short course and causes almost total constipation. Avoiding alcohol and eating only blended food fed into your mouth via a feeding pump, your face is so swollen you could genuinely pass for a cartoon hamster or Björn from ABBA. Facial deflation occurs in three to four days, and I’m happy to say the bleeding smile of a vampire soon gives way to the healthy smile of a TV evangelist – job done.
The procedure, the results of which I am largely happy with, is no longer available in the UK.
GUANO
March 2023
A man grunts and pants and huffs and strains. Bent double at the waist, in the honest throes of work, he stands suddenly, statuesque in the baking sun, proud and strong. Sweat glistens on his brow, cheeks and neck, and also on his tummy. His T-shirt has been removed and tied around the circumference of his head as a makeshift sweatband – like Stallone in Rambo or De Niro in The Deer Hunter or a lady action hero in a more modern film.
The man is me. I am labouring. If my contractors won’t lift a finger, so be it. I’ve got eight of the buggers,107 plus two enthusiastic thumbs, and I will simply lift those if need be. With the Lighthouse Board promising to come and see the renovated building, I am hellbent on getting the job done myself.
It’s been a steep but rewarding learning curve, gleaning practical tips from a million YouTube videos and a hitherto-unopened DIY book I bought when I first married Carol called The Practical Man: Handy Hints for the House-proud Husband.
I have laid wooden flooring panels, I have sanded windowsills, I have screwed doors onto hinges and hinges onto doors. I have painted and hammered. I have damn near broken my back, but I sleep well every night (and for two hours after my lunch), my heart full with the sheer pleasure that comes of physical exhaustion.
And while I have no interest in joining a union and waging war on self-made employers who are just trying to create wealth that will trickle down to me anyway if I just bide my time instead of biting the hand that feeds me, I am in every other respect a working man. Mine is a life of honest toil, sore fingers, high-cholesterol processed foods (e.g. microwavable hamburgers), wolf-whistling, cans of Relentless and industrial language (‘fuck a duck, someone pass me that shitting hammer’).
I like to call myself Handy Alan or Alan the Builder. I drove to a branch of Screwfix and bought myself a hard-wearing pair of work trousers. I decided they looked too new, so I set about them with a cheese grater and spattered them with paint to create a pleasing careworn look.
Unfortunately, when I went to put them on I realised I had left my handprints in paint on the bottom. The trousers now look both cheeky and fruity, which is the one thing I didn’t want to happen.
Still, the trousers I subsequently did buy have become scruffy through genuine graft, and I like the way I look in them. I was unloading materials from the boot of my car one afternoon and I was delighted to see Red walk past and notice me. Yes, I really did look great.
I have made some impressive headway with the rebuild. And while some days are frustratingly slow, and some days have seen me achieve little more than tracking down the customer-service department for Gorilla Glue and asking them why the nozzle has become jammed with hardened glue and how they must see that there’s a design flaw there, like British Rail used to say: We’re getting there!
‘Scrub and clean and dust and polish! Soak and sponge and wipe with relish! Scrub and clean and dust and polish! Soak and sponge and wipe with relish!’
My assistant is cleaning with gusto, we both are, swept along by her singing ‘The Cleaning Song’, a workmanlike ditty she appears to have penned herself. Leaving aside the fact that polish and relish simply do not rhyme, it’s an unpleasant listen. Julie Andrews she ain’t, managing not just to be out of tune, but almost anti-tune. Each repetition of the lyric seems to find new and unexpected melodic pathways, each of them bad and wrong, the overall effect being of someone who fundamentally misunderstands the accepted norms, the basic principles, the very purpose of music.
Then again, she’s no great lover of music, not really. Her record collection is divided into the only two genres she knows: hymns and not-hymns.
‘You should record this,’ I say. ‘They could play it in Guantanamo.’
‘Thank you very much,’ she smiles.
I have to say, though, it’s keeping us motivated. We’re making excellent headway, but there’s still much to do, sprucing up a site that has become – and I hold my hands up – a bit of a shithole. Since the workmen withdrew their labour and I threw myself into completing the work myself, the ground floor has become a cesspit of unfinished sandwiches, fag ends, dirty boot marks and at least one pornographic magazine that I didn’t even know they sold anymore. The walls are slick with candle smoke and grime. Outside, the walls need to be whitewashed, algae needs to be chipped off, and the smeared windows need de-smearing. All the soft furnishings need to be laundered and the finished rooms need to be rendered homely.
I would hate for anyone from the Lighthouse Board to see the place like this, so I’ve insisted we at least try to make the place presentable – hopefully spick/span enough for the fellows to suggest to their patron (Her Royal Highness the Princess Royal Princess Anne) that she could one day visit the finished’ house.
Outside, the builders’ equipment has been tidied and materials stacked. Sitting on a pallet is a recently delivered new lantern which will soon need to be crane-lifted up to the top of the structure. Verfoofen was meant to liaise with a crane-driver so we could get the installation booked in, but clearly he hasn’t done that, so the new lantern lies wonky on the shore, like the Statue of Liberty at the end of Planet of the Apes. But aside from that, I am happy with our progress. Just goes to show what can be achieved with a bit of elbow grease and panic.
My assistant tableclothes the table, sets it for two, and pops a daffodil in a glass tumbler. ‘There,’ she says. ‘Fit for a king. Or should I say princess!’
And she laughs, quite a lot. I have to concede, though, she is a damn good worker. She stands back to admire her handiwork.
I feel a breeze on my face and enjoy the coolness, imagining I am a bowl of custard and the breeze is a woman blowing on me. Suddenly, I open my eyes. A breeze?
