Big Beacon, page 26
Returning to Norwich has been joyous. I’ve been treated like a prodigal son, with a feast in my honour and a friend’s prize calf slaughtered that same day.125
The oasthouse is looking impeccable. Apparently, we forgot to inform my housekeeper Rosa that I’d be moving to Kent for more than a year, and she’s been turning up five days a week and cleaning it, a financial outlay that has been seeping out of my bank account every month and which my assistant really should have noticed. And she will be spoken to about that.
Not that I’m worried about the cash. God, no. On top of my rental income (seventy-two thousand, remember), my financial health isn’t just rude, it’s positively pornographic. I’m coining it in right now. I left my broadcasting career behind, a decision I have never once regretted, particularly because I’ve since returned to presenting work, enjoying a steady stream of lucratish corporate work from clients in the Middle East and Belarus. Whether it’s hosting an online Q&A for a beachside property development in Oman, voicing an essential guide to Ramadan for Home Office diplomats visiting Muslim countries, showcasing the latest hand cream available for all passengers using the Air Emirates lounge at Heathrow, or just showing off a new product line for an ethical munitions manufacturer, I’m back, and I wish peace be upon you. As-salamu alaykum.
I also have a girlfriend.
As for James Martin, it transpired that he hadn’t fully understood the nature of his golden handcuffs deal with ITV. Under the terms of the arrangement, he was and still is precluded from working with any other UK broadcaster for the duration of the deal, which meant the BBC, and by extension This Time, couldn’t have used any of the material it had shot even if he had completed his build before me. James is now trying to find a buyer for the lighthouse, and This Time is no doubt both licking its wounds and kissing my arse.
As I write, I’m walking through the funfair at Chapelfield Gardens in Norwich, which has returned to the town for the first time since that fateful weekend in 2019. In my hands126 are two fresh candy flosses, although there’s an argument to be had about whether candy floss can ever be described as fresh.
I eat the fluffy pink meal as I walk, nodding at visitors and hawkers alike. The two fairground Morrisseys are there too, though they don’t seem to remember me. Then again, I’m sure dogs die at their funfair all the time.
And before I know it, I’m at the lighthouse-shaped spiral we know as the helter-skelter. I look around, trying to identify exactly where Seldom breathed his last. I find what I think is the spot and crouch down.
‘I did it, Seldie. You wanted that lighthouse? Well, I’ve gone and bloody did it,’ I say, slightly mangling my tenses but I doubt he’d mind. The guy was a dog, it’s important to remember that.
Then I plant the rod of the candy floss into the earth, by way of tribute.
And then, something quite, quite incredible. A single white balloon descends from the sky and comes to rest by my side – just as Seldom used to do if he wanted companionship or my dinner. The very same balloon that had risen skywards when Seldom passed away.
‘Surely you’re not saying it’s the same one?’, you’re thinking. Surely this is just you allowing yourself a big slice of dramatic licence because it’s the end of the book and you think you’ve earned it? After all, the fair gives out hundreds of identical balloons every day and this one would have had to have stayed airborne for four years.
Ah, yes, but this one has a bit of dirt on one side, and I distinctly remember the one that day had a bit of dirt on one side, which proves not only that it’s the same balloon, but also that you are wrong.
Yes, just as I have returned to Norwich, it seems Seldom’s soul has returned to me. How do I feel? Again, always hard to precisely articulate a feeling, but I can tell you I feel nice and I feel good.
Buoyed by the undeniable presence of my former pet, I stand and look at the twirly chute of the helter-skelter. Sod it, I think, I’m going to have a go. And have a go I do, handing over my pound coins and bounding the stairs one, sometimes two at a time. Then I place my mat on the rim of the slide, sit myself upon it, and push myself away while saying the word ‘Awaaaaaay!’
I speed downwards, hurtling along like a luge champ. I’m laughing, my hair flailing behind me. I feel free! Would I have done this on my last visit to the fair? No, but maybe the lighthouse build has changed me. Maybe rising to that challenge has given me new vim and shown me you can do anything you set your mind to.127
But then … what’s this? I’ve stopped. On one bend, the walls of the chute must have tapered slightly, perhaps because the makers didn’t know how to use a set square, and the narrowing has funnelled my hips into a bottleneck. This surprises me. I’m actually quite slender around the hip, certainly no wider than some of the bigger-backsided children you see these days. I try to push off again but I’m jammed, my haunches wedged in the chute like a big human stopper.
I sit helpless on the slide, looking at the mums and dads with a look that says ‘sorry about this’. Unfortunately, their children are oblivious to my plight, and before long one, two, three kids have slammed into the back of me, unable to get by.
As I wait to be rescued, I imagine the chute is a visual metaphor representing the pipeline to professional success. The wailing children are younger TV presenters, coming up behind me, only to find that I’m not going anywhere. I’m at the head of the pack; they wait for me. And with that, a huge smile breaks out across my face.
Oh, and if you’re wondering about my one-time bed and breakfaster Cynthia and if she ever learned to cook a decent egg? The answer is I don’t know, we didn’t stay in touch. Thank you!
* * *
124 Wheelchairs must be left at the door.
125 Accidental tractor collision.
126 I’ve put my pad and pen away now and am writing this later.
127 Within reason.
Plate Section
This picture was taken on a walk in Derbyshire shortly after Seldom ate the keys to this man’s van. We waited for a number of hours for nature to take its course so that we could retrieve the keys from the animal’s dung; the man and I sitting atop a drystone wall taking in the beauty of the Peak District, Seldom in the van with the radio on. Once the keys had emerged, me and the man swapped numbers and promised to keep in touch, but never have.
Cromer leisure centre sports hall. The location of my chance meeting with carpet impresario Brendan Coyle, ultimately leading to me fronting Norwich puff piece Welcome to the Places of My Life. The hall is used every Tuesday by a local secondary school, with a modesty partition erected down the middle of the court so the girls can get changed on one side and the boys on the other – although if you sit where the photographer is sitting here you do get to see both.
Publicity shot to promote my North Norfolk Radio show, Mid Morning Matters, 2012. I had the idea for this photoshoot while driving through Birmingham. Make of that what you will, but there was a certain streetwise quality to the show that I felt wouldn’t be captured by the normal ‘grinning DJ sitting behind mic holding a branded mug’ shot. It’s not for me to say if we were reinventing mid-morning local radio in East Anglia from the inside out (we were), but there was certainly no topic we weren’t prepared to grapple with, apart from Israel. Also in these photos, my on-air sidekick Simon Denton, a man so camera-shy and with (by his own admission) so little presence that when these images were developed, I wasn’t even sure he would appear in them! I’m glad he did.
Karl Howman wears floral print waistcoat, C&A spring/summer collection 1988.
Scissored Isle, 2016, and my interview with the female mayor of Greater Manchester. City Hall may have been hoping for a softball chit chat, but I had other ideas and sought to address the drug epidemic that had blighted the city on her watch. In a daring act of political theatre, I took a pellet of ecstasy just hours before the interview to confront the hapless politician with the visible after-effects of drug use – after all, what could be a clearer indictment of her administration’s catastrophic failure to tackle substance abuse than a respected broadcaster sweating and groaning just yards away from her? If a veteran TV presenter could get sucked into Manchester’s vortex of drugs, who else was at risk? Vicars? Grandmothers? Dogs? A stunningly powerful piece of television.
Few men alive have flown in a Spitfire, fewer still have done not one but two full loop-the-loops, as I did when taken for a flight by Captain Paul Wheeler in a piece for This Time about the unsung role of female RAF pilots in the Second World War. Oh, and the G-Force didn’t even make me spew up.
As a committed direct debiter to Help for Heroes, I was privileged when This Time producers asked me to spend a day with these ex-Special Forces lads learning how to rescue a hostage from a building. I was fascinated to learn that as well as all the standard kit, British Special Forces wear knee protectors in case they need to discharge their firearm while sliding into a cave. In this photo I have removed my mask because it was making my face too hot.
Simon Denton. There’s nothing wrong with him, this is just how he looks.
Joe Beesley and Cheeky Monkey. A temper problem, a weakness for alcohol and profound mental health issues have kept him off our screens for almost thirty years. And that’s just Cheeky Monkey! I jest, but I learned an important lesson from Joe’s appearance on This Time: never, ever give people a second chance.
Spending a night in a detention centre for boys aged 14–18 was a sobering reminder that even though I am a fully-grown adult, I could quite easily get battered by a child. And while my age and the fact I am a father meant I imagined myself (like Ray Winstone in the 1979 film Scuzz) going in there and saying ‘I’m the daddy now’, it turned out most of the lads had more children than I did. One of them had five! Hilarious.
This Time’s roving reporter Ruth Duggan. I enjoyed a fantastic working relationship with Ruth. We got on great, I enjoyed our interactions, there was no issue. It’s a little-known fact that Ruth doesn’t have any journalism qualifications.
TV offers an immediacy that radio sometimes cannot. Here – in a piece for This Time on the Peasants’ Revolt of 1381 – I use a bucket of butcher’s waste to bring to life the tragic deaths of countless soldiers. I later discovered that though the butcher charged me £10.50 for the bag of pig bits, he normally gives them away for free. The following year a hike in business rates combined with increased competition from discount supermarkets saw him go out of business. Ain’t life a bitch?
My tenure on This Time saw me push for a move away from the dross, fluff and flim-flam to a focus on hard-hitting investigative journalism. Here I’m mounting a hidden-camera sting operation to prove that certain BBC presenters (in this case Donty Mon) were in the business of accepting money in return for mentioning brands or products on air. And while on this occasion, Mr Mon refused the bung and acted with total propriety, is this always the case? I remain unsure. And surely it is not for me to prove his guilt, it is for him to prove his innocence.
Her Royal Highness Princess Anne The Princess Royal. A fan of lighthouses since childhood and patron of the Northern Lighthouse Board since 1993, she is pictured here with a hairstyle that is an exact replica of waves breaking over Portland Bill lighthouse.
Rear view of Her Royal Highness Princess Anne The Princess Royal. Even from behind, Her Highness emits a dignity and grace that most other women can only dream of. She is just – and I hope you and she will excuse the profanity – a fucking brilliant royal. In the background, Jennie Gresham, shin reflected in table.
A lighthouse. While there’s nothing unusual about wanting to restore one of these, the former TV doctor, Hilary Jones, suggested my desire to own such an obviously phallic structure stemmed from sexual inadequacy and anxiety over my ability to maintain an erection. I pointed out that his insistence on wearing tight-fitting t-shirts stemmed from anxiety that he has a girl’s name (which he does), and a desire to show everyone he doesn’t have tits (which he does).
The Kraken, the legendary sea monster so feared by mariners down the centuries. First written about by Italian priest Francesco Negri in the year 1700, if real, it would be the largest fish ever discovered.
My friend and confidante, Likeworm. From Rod Hull to Mary Poppins, to the lad from Kes to the late Bernard Matthews, humans have always sought to befriend birds – although to be fair, Bernard also slaughtered them. My assistant snapped this photo and was so pleased with it, she later told me she thought it was good enough to win a competition. I disagreed because it’s just a gull eating his lunch.
A redhead. I’ve long been fascinated by the British redhead but had previously had a dalliance with only one – a woman called Jill from my production company who is now a grey-haired lollipop lady in Holt. That was until I fell in love with Red, the local girl from the Kent coast who (very briefly) stole my heart. Would I ever have a relationship with another redhead? Probably not. While the odd one or two (Elizabeth I, Bonnie Langford) have admirable qualities, most other redheads I’ve met (Sir Robin Cook, Geri Halliwell, the Duchess of York, Eddie Redmayne, Cilla Black) have been deeply unpleasant individuals. The woman pictured isn’t the local girl who (very briefly) stole my heart, she’s just a woman from Google Images with similar curls.
A photo of my hairdresser’s son. He’s not mentioned in the book and I’ve never met him in real life, but I was told if I included the picture I’d receive a 30% discount on any haircut valid until December 2024 and I was happy to agree.
Copyright
First published in Great Britain in 2023 by Seven Dials,
an imprint of The Orion Publishing Group Ltd,
Carmelite House, 50 Victoria Embankment,
London EC4Y 0DZ
An Hachette UK company
Copyright © Rob Gibbons, Neil Gibbons and Steve Coogan 2023
The moral right of Rob Gibbons, Neil Gibbons and Steve Coogan to be identified as the authors of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act of 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.
Images courtesy of Baby Cow/BBC here, here, here, here, here, here, here; Baby Cow/Dave Lambert here; Colin Hutton here; Getty Images here, here, here, here, here, here, here
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
ISBN (eBook) 978 1 3987 1924 8
www.orionbooks.co.uk
Alan Partridge, Big Beacon
