Rik Mayall - A Young One Gone Too Soon

The news of another friend’s death strikes me more keenly when in the US. It makes me ponder the fragility of life and the time I wish I had spent – and should be spending – with so many people.

   

For the most part, I consider the UK a mere ocean away; in fact, one Christmas, flying from LA, I arrived back at my mother’s house in Bristol in less time than it took my brother to drive there from Clacton, thanks to the joyous M5.

   

But when I receive a call or read on Twitter (which is always first with the news) about another death, that ocean feels very wide, and the UK another planet.

   

The news of Rik Mayall’s death spread quickly on Twitter, and people were quick to pay tribute to his genius and place in comedy history. The suddenness and unexpectedness of it added to the heartfelt sadness among friends, colleagues and fans; his wife and children’s tribute to him on Facebook put them and their loss uppermost in our thoughts.

   

I first met Rik through my first job as TV critic on the Evening Standard in the late Eighties. I had reviewed him in The New Statesman, the political comedy penned by Laurence Marks and Maurice Gran, and raved about him. It was an extraordinary performance: full of menace and, at a time when we weren’t fully aware of just how vile politicians could be (well, I wasn’t, anyway), something of a prophecy.

   

For women, Rik had that rare thing among men: the ability to talk with you, not at you. He was not only a brilliant actor, comedian and lover of life, but a great listener. Having survived a near fatal accident in 1998, he came back from the dead after being in a coma for five days (beating Jesus, he said), and we were lucky for the extra years he gave us.

   

I got to chat to him a lot when he was performing in the West End with Adrian Edmondson, in Waiting for Godot. It was the only time I ever enjoyed the play, and, after the show, I would see him and/or Adrian in the Groucho Club (sans Godot – I tell you, we’ll be waiting forever for that guy), the private members’ establishment in the heart of Soho.

   

I was very new to London, very insecure and pretty depressed. Rik was someone who lent an ear to my woes. Not without his own insecurities, he made me laugh so much at a time when a lot of my hours were spent sobbing.

   

He had beautiful eyes, a gorgeous smile, and a mellifluous voice that brought instant calm. He was caring, sweet, and nobody had a bad word to say about him.

   

His contribution to the world of comedy is assured, but we have lost not only a great performer, but a lovely man.

   

No matter how much we hear about death, no matter how many times we are forced to confront it, no matter how much we acknowledge its inevitability, it still has the ability to shock. 

Hearing about Rik was one such moment.

      

Sex, Death and the Fear Inbetween 29/5/14

Pelvic mesh. 

What’s that all about? 

When I first moved to the US five years ago, I was struck by how many cures there were advertised on TV for conditions I never knew I potentially had. What fun I had trawling the aisles devoted to female hygiene in my local Rite Aid, as opposed to the 12 inch shelf in my local Boots Pharmacy back in the UK. Now, though, it seems to me, there has been a sea change: forget the cures, it’s all about drawing your attention to something not only you never knew you had, but for which there is no cure.

   

Take this pelvic mesh scare. I have no idea what pelvic mesh is, because every time I hear the word “vagina”, I tend to put my hands over my ears. Unlike a lot of women, I am a much bigger fan of the C word than the V word. The V word sounds like you’re offering a nice little boat trip around the coves of a Greek Island; the C word actually sounds like what it is: a whacking great cavernous hole whose main job is to trap unsuspecting penises and never let them out until the alimony cheque comes through. 

   

The States is far more graphic than the UK on BTW (Below The Waist) problems both for men and women. In the UK, women’s monthly cycles on TV are still represented by somebody pouring coloured ink on an all too absorbable material, as opposed to the advertised product, which could, according to the pictures, absorb a Hewlett Packard ocean of ink before you can say “Replace this cartridge now”.

   

Durex has come a small way (geddit?) to change the nature of TV commercials, but they are still on the tame side. Among the most recent, a man and a woman are in bed, both in rather nice nightwear, and then . . . To be honest, I’m not sure what happens then, because I’m always distracted by the glamorous nightie (do people still wear clothes to bed? Heck, I don’t wear underwear in the daytime, having worked out you could save eight years of your life by not buying and donning unnecessary clothing – but that’s another story). I’m also distracted by the mystery of how anyone, without eight pints of Stella, would end up in bed with either of these people.

   

I have managed to glean  that the commercial is for a gel that will get women excited in a way they have apparently never been before (again – what’s wrong with Stella?). Trust me on this: the price of said gels when you look at your receipt will quickly diminish any excitement you might have anticipated before you reached the other side of the cash register.

   

By far the biggest BTW problem in the US appears to be an erection lasting over four hours (or is it six? Or eight? I forget; when you’re used to the UK average of 40 minutes - or 40 seconds, in some cases), including tea and biscuits, I’m hardly going to call 911 for a couple of extra hours.

   

These commercials are quite terrifying in their graphic descriptions, but apparently there are even greater horrors out there on the BTW front. Aaron Spelling’s widow, Candy, has just published a new book, Candy at Last, in which she describes dating a man called Larry who, owing to his “penile implant” (I believe the correct word is penial; penile is about slavery . . . actually, on second thoughts . . .) could keep at it for five or six hours. No one, she says, wants to have sex for that long. Speak for yourself, love. I would imagine that having been married to Aaron Spelling, she would have been well used to non-stop serial drama (or should that be penial?).

   

The reality is that all these commercials represent an inherent fear of growing older, especially for men. In the UK, when men start to lose their sexual prowess, they just shrug their shoulders and spend more time in the pub, ogling women they couldn’t even get the first time around, let alone with the melting wax candle between their legs in these later years. But in the US, the ability to keep going is what makes not only men, but women, keep popping pills, because hey, if you’re still having sex, you must still be young. Right? 

Sex is the cross we hold to the vampire of death to keep it at bay for as long as we can.

   

Never mind about the warnings – do stop taking X, if you suffer blurred vision, cramps, muscle weakness, forgetfulness, numbness, or have an erection lasting until Christmas – we all want to believe that we will live forever; and, whether it be good or bad, sex is the one thing that makes us momentarily forget that we won’t.

Another pint of Stella, please.

    

Cops and Robbers

My predilection for being robbed or losing valuables every time I take a trip has been well documented in my blogs. After a month away, first in the UK and then in New York, I can this time report that my travels were almost incident free.

   

I was parted from my iPhone just once, after leaving it on the subway, but it was picked up and, thanks to Find My iPhone on my computer, I was able to trace it and retrieve it.

   

For the first time ever, baggage security staff resisted going through my bags and rifling anything they could sell on eBay, and I made it back to my LA apartment with everything I had taken away, apart from my iPhone earphones.

   

In fact, this trip started to bring me closer to items stolen in the past. Suddenly, the messages “Jaci Stephen’s iPad has been found” and “Jaci Stephen’s Airbook has been found” appeared on my computer. These related to the items I had in my hand baggage that was stolen from LAX when I returned from Miami in January. The messages show up when the items are connected to the internet, and would also have flashed up a message from me, saying that they have been lost and giving a number to reach me on. No one has.

   

Trying to get anyone to do something about this is as stressful as losing the valuables. When the same thing happened in Miami, the Miami police were on it in an instant, racing to the house within half an hour, where, alas, they were still unable to locate the thief. Los Angeles’ Burbank police are showing no such enthusiasm. They say it’s not their case and I have to go back to the airport police, who will then pass it on to them.

   

I have decided against going to the house myself. While never having had so much as a parking ticket (I was brought up to be terrified of the law, which may explain my obsession with that profession), I am unlucky when it comes to law enforcement, having a propensity to over-react.

   

When in Paris for Six Nations France vs Wales rugby match last year, I saved an entire bar from almost certain attack when I yelled at everyone to get down on the floor when a sinister figure in a motorcycle helmet tore in, brandishing what appeared to be a gun. When I, the only person lying prostrate on the ground, finally stood up, it was to be greeted with howls of laughter – the man was a friend of the owner and had been “joking”. Ha bloody ha.

   

A similar incident, also in Paris, took place several years before, when I saved the city from almost certain terrorist annihilation. On that occasion, it had been prompted by a man reading an Arab newspaper, refusing to move his bag from his seat because he said it was a bomb.

   

One emergency cord, one halted train and a dozen armed men later, the centre of Paris was at a standstill. As I sat in a café with my glass of wine, watching the gendarmerie tear down the steps of the rue de Bac metro (naturally, I had waited until my stop before pulling the cord), I pondered whether the “terrorist” had actually said that his bag was on the seat. I only hope that the poodle, yanked at breakneck speed from the train by its screaming owner, survived.

   

I have been just as much a law-abiding liability in my own country. When I lived in Bath, women’s greatest fear was a rapist who had been on the loose for over a decade. Finally, though, it seemed as if the police were moving in, and there were posters all over town of a possible suspect, whose hunting ground was local night clubs.

   

I was having lunch at the Garrick’s Head, a city pub in which one side of the bar was largely occupied by gay men. On the other side, as the afternoon wore on, the man who had joined us from out of town began to look suspiciously like the man on the poster. When he asked me and my friend if we would like to go to a night-club later, that was it: I was sure I had my man. I went round to the gay side of the bar and asked the guys if they thought the interloper looked anything like the man on the poster. 

Asking a gay man not to dramatise a situation is like expecting the Pope to give you directions to a sperm bank: it ain’t gonna happen. Yes, they insisted, the man was the spitting image of the poster suspect.

   

I called 999, which gave the event an air of urgency it did not perhaps warrant, but asked the police to tread lightly and just question the man. Too late. Within seconds, three armed cops were in the bar, frogmarching the bloke out onto the street for questioning. I really hope he made it to the Verdi concert he was in town for, in which he was going to be a starring tenor.

   

So, no, I don’t think I will be heading to Burbank to rescue my items, and I only hope that the LAPD start to act a bit more like they do on the telly, or, at the very least, like the cops do in Miami.

   

In the meantime, it’s back to the Apple Store to replace my earphones. 

The inevitability of that journey after every trip back home is something I have learned to live with.

  

   

Will Gardner - The World is in Mourning

So far, it’s been a very traumatic year in my TV viewing life. First came the news that my daily lunchtime fix, the courtroom show Judge Alex, was ending; then Harvey Specter found himself a girlfriend in Suits (she will, quite simply, have to go); and, last week, The Good Wife killed off Will Gardner. That’s three of the men in my life suddenly out of reach.

   

Tears were shed over Judge Alex; spitting blood was more the case with Harvey; while with Will, I have entered a depression so deep, we are talking coma.

   

How the cast and crew kept Will’s death (I can hardly bear to write those words) a secret for a year is, in itself, a small miracle. Josh Charles, who plays him (utterly brilliantly) . . . I should say played now, I suppose . . . will undoubtedly go on to do other great things; but that doesn’t lessen the devastation on the part of fans of this terrific show.

   

You will notice a common theme here – all the above-mentioned shows relate to the law in some way. I have always been, and am, fascinated by the law. At one stage in my life, I was going to train as a barrister, but on reflection I think I would rather play a lawyer than be one: fewer exams – and you may get to see Gabriel Macht (Harvey Specter) with his kit off.

   

I put it all down to doing The Merchant of Venice at a very early age. Durham Road Junior School in Newport started its kids young with Shakespeare – I was eight, to be precise. I recall the horror when the money lender Shylock set the bond of a pound of flesh, should Antonio fail to repay his loan (I was, and remain in adulthood, happier about the idea of borrowing money you will never be able to afford to pay back). 

But then I was even more horrified when Antonio got out of the deal on the grounds that Shylock could have his pound of flesh, provided that he did not shed a drop of Antonio’s blood when taking it. Even aged eight, I knew that this was some smart defense lawyer (apologies to British readers for my having adopted US spelling; I am an attorney now, you know), but I felt that it was a very unfair loophole. Call yourself a Christian, Antonio? At least Jesus took death on the chin like a real man.

   

I’ve always thought that being a defense lawyer must be a lot tougher than being a prosecutor. If they’re in court in the first place, they must be guilty, that’s my instant reaction (Guilty until proven more guilty, in other words). In defense, you have to come up with so many more ridiculous excuses. Take the televised trial of Oscar Pistorius case going on in South Africa at the moment. He claims that he accidentally shot his girlfriend Reeva Steenkamp, mistaking her for a burglar on the other side of the bathroom door. Neighbours claim to have heard her terrified screams; Pistorius’s defense lawyer is arguing that the athlete screams like a girl. 

Frighteningly, I think the judge (there is no jury in the case – how weird is that?) might go for it, not least because the defense lawyer, Gene Hackman lookalike Barry Roux, has cut a rather impressive figure. “Teeeellll me,” he says, in his thick South African accent, “how keeeen eeeet beeee. . . ?” And off he goes with his absurd, unbelievable concoction of stories about cricket bats and gunshots and men who scream like girls when they’ve just committed murder. “Eeeeet keeeennnnnnnot beeeee!” he insists, at every turn; and, for a moment, you sort of believe him.

  

Then, reality hits home, and, quite frankly, I’m not buying into the girlie screaming defense. If you can win an Olympic medal with a couple of blades strapped to the leg stumps you’ve had from birth, I imagine you done all the girlie screaming you’ll ever need in one lifetime. Let’s get Oscar on the stand, poke him with a very hot stick, and let’s test that screaming is what I say.

   

Alas, the case has been halted because one of the two assessors who accompany the judge has been taken ill. If she can’t return, the whole case will have to start again from scratch; I suspect Barry is already clearing a space on his mantelpiece for that Oscar he undoubtedly deserves – in both senses of the word.

   

Anyway, back to the lovely Will Gardner. Will is – or, rather, was – a very good defense lawyer. In fact, it was defending his client that got him shot, when the man grabbed a police officer’s gun and went berserk in the courtroom. I still haven’t quite worked out why one of Will’s shoes came off in the fracas, but then I haven’t seen Sunday’s flashback episode yet, which might explain why a man so fastidious in his work can’t tie his shoelaces properly.

   

I’m going to have to wait a few weeks before seeing it, too, as I’m off traveling again (or travelling, as they say in the UK). I'll be going back to LA via New York, where I would love to meet Joey Jackson, the defense lawyer expert who regularly appears on Vinnie Politan’s On the Case show on HLN (Vinnie’s another hot lawyer, by the way – again, in both senses of the word; and he’s a prosecutor, to boot). With Judge Alex, Harvey Specter and Will Gardner out of my life, it’s my new fix.

   

I tell you: Joey could get Judas off on the grounds that he thought the 30 pieces of silver were chocolate coins. I’ve told him that if I’m ever in trouble, I want him heading up my team. 

And if he fails in his duty, let’s just hope it’ll be Judge Alex, Harvey Specter or Will Gardner putting me in the handcuffs.

   

AA (Alexoholics Anonymous) - and why Fox TV should pay for our treatment!

The news that Fox has not renewed the brilliant TV courtroom show Judge Alex has been met with great distress among fans, who rely on it for their entertainment fix. Here, for those who might need treatment, is a 12 Step Program that might help you through the traumatic days to come when the show comes off the air in August. Feel free to bill Fox for your treatment.

       THE 12 STEP AA (ALEXOHOLICS ANONYMOUS) PROGRAM

1.    We admitted that we were powerless over the TV show Judge Alex – that our lives had become unmanageable without it.

2.     Came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity. That person is Judge Alex the human being (you see how easy it is to fall at the second hurdle?).

3.     Made a decision to turn our will and our lives to the care of God AS WE UNDERSTOOD HIM i.e. that good looking bloke Judge Alex off the telly, so ditto number 2: if we understand God to be Judge Alex, we are right back where we started.

4.     Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves. If you have never been before Judge Alex in court, you should be covered on the moral stuff. If he has yet to take out a restraining order on you, that moral inventory might be something to cover at a future date.

5.     Admitted to Judge Alex, to ourselves, and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs. If Judge Alex is happy to come to your house and lets you bring along another “human being”, should he like that sort of thing, feel free to beat yourself to absolve you of your wrongdoing. Be careful: this is where the 12 Step program can go VERY awry. Possibly time to give it up as a bad job and go to the pub.

6.     Were entirely ready to have Judge Alex remove all these defects of character. Handcuffs might do the trick, your Honour.

7.     Humbly asked Him to remove all our shortcomings. Most JA addicts want no comings removed, short or otherwise, so that’s going to be an issue.

8.     Made a list of all persons we have harmed  (Judge Judy’s viewing figures, your friends and family sick of hearing about JA, JA himself) and became willing to make amends to them all. Be warned that JA may be less amenable to your willingness to approach him on the subject of amendment than you are.

9.     Made direct amends to people wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others. As with Step 8, do not assume that the Judge is as keen on the directness of your approach. He can run faster than your Air Miles can catch him.

10.  Continued to take a personal inventory and when we were wrong promptly admitted it. You are not wrong. You watched his show. You supported him. And now Fox TV have ruined your life. It is THEY who should be admitting wrongdoing to YOU.

11.  Sought through prayer (“Please, God, make Judge Alex marry me”) and meditation (“Hmmmmm, Hmmmmm, Hmmmmmarry me, Judge”) to improve our conscious contact with JA, as we understood him (that very, very good looking bloke off the telly), praying only for knowledge of His will and the power to carry it out. If you pray that His will is to declare undying love to you, don’t waste the little power you have left. Or your Air Miles.

12.  Having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these Steps, we tried to carry this message to Alexoholics and to practise these principles in all our affairs. Bring tissues to share your grief. There are a lot of people in the same position as you.

13.  And we have an additional step: boycott Fox TV.

Los Angeles Singles - A Singularly Bad Experience

Their website, Los Angeles Singles, claims they are “Los Angeles’s  #1 Dating Service for High-Calber, Sincere Singles”, claiming that the people on their books are “quite a catch”. They begin with a “personal consultation” and the offer of “quality singles” “you have always dreamed of dating”.

  

Several months on, I am well over $1000 down, no match, and enduring considerable upset dealing with people who not only did not deliver what they promised, but showed a breathtaking lack of understanding and sensitivity when my circumstances changed.

  

They came to me by accident. Having given up with dating agencies and having failed to meet even a halfway decent man on three continents, I inadvertently found Los Angeles Singles online. Having lived in LA for five years, I had toyed with the idea of meeting someone but, having had bad experiences, had not pursued this actively. Then, ads kept appearing on my Facebook page along the lines of: “Bill the fireman is just five miles down the road from you and really wants to meet”.

  

I managed to resist. Bill the fireman might look all right at the moment, but what would he be like after his next job? I didn’t want to be a fireman’s wife, swabbing Bill’s disfigured face over breakfast every morning. I didn’t want to be a fireman’s widow, either (although that might be preferable to the disfigurement scenario).

  

But once you click on any similar ads, they’ve got you, and somehow, this particular the matchmaker pursued me. I decided to fill out their form, but changed my mind halfway through. Then the phone-calls started. Non-stop. And so I found myself in Brentwood, in an office, being assured that there was a veritable plethora of men out there who would be “perfect” for me.

  

These people, I quickly discovered, operate like Timeshare merchants. They shut you in a room to do the form-filling and then, when you get them face to face, they show you pictures of how your life could be if only you were to surrender everything about the old you and hand over everything to them – which, in this case, was $8000 for “the 12 man package”.

  

Pictures of overweight, smiling couples in hideous wedding gear adorned the room, and already I wanted to run. If Bill the fireman was going to be a pain in the arse, imagine being married to George the overweight salesman in a pink shirt for the rest of my life.

  

I was asked about my dating history and the type of man I liked. I specially stressed tall. Over six feet. Someone who would protect me from a bear. Apart from David the plump ginger cheat, I had never been out with a man under six feet in my life, nor did I intend to start (have you seen how many wild bears there are out there?). The interviewer tried to stress that sometimes life could take you by surprise and you might go for someone entirely different. This did not bode well. At this point, I knew they had absolutely no man over six feet who wanted a short, dark, clever, funny, successful, and not bad looking Welsh bird.

  

What about Danny DeVito, she asked. Wasn’t he an example of an attractive short man? Nooooooooo, I screamed. She pushed me on the subject. Wasn’t there ANYONE under six feet I might go for? At a stretch, I reckoned James Spader (Boston Legal – lawyer, albeit acting one). I could do Mark Harmon (NCIS – cop, albeit acting one), too. Or that lovely Latino bloke from Law and Order: SVU (cop – okay, another acting one). 

She looked slightly relieved. Finally, she thought she was getting somewhere. But I still want Judge Alex, I wailed (TV courtroom show, but real life ex-cop, lawyer, Judge – and an ex-pilot, too. Uniform. Tick, tick, tick, tick). Tall, dark, handsome, clever, funny. TALL! Are you listening to me, woman? Her sigh shook the building.

  

I negotiated them down to $2000 for the 12 man package (don’t believe them when they say their rates are non-negotiable – they are; they whacked mine down in the hope of future publicity), although they told me that I could have more dates, should I need them (trust me, a dollar a man was not even going to come close to their finding me what I wanted – I could already see that).

I told the interviewer I had changed my mind. Then the pressure started. It would be such a shame if, having come so far, I were to leave now . . . I would be “so easy” to fix up with someone . . . I was so eligible . . . so funny . . . The flattery was piled on, quickly followed by a contract and a pen. Like I said, it’s like a Timeshare: they grab you at a moment of vulnerability. I even ended up crying when the key low points in my romantic history were repeated to me. So I ended up staying.

  

After several weeks (and many phone-calls from me), they sent me the details of an interested man. Five feet seven. FIVE FEET SEVEN! That's not a man, it's a hobbit. The bear could eat him for breakfast and still have room to consume an entire McDonald’s chain. Not only that, he was living in rented accommodation – at the age of 60 – and spent our phone-call moaning about how unhappy he was in his job (that’s another thing I can’t stand: people who hate what they do and do nothing to change it). He also told me that he didn't like TV and didn't watch it. Quite how they thought that putting him together with a TV writer was a good idea is anybody's guess.

I complained. As a homeowner (one in the UK, one in Spain, plus a US rental), I at least expected someone who owned his own home. I’m not after anyone’s money, but “high caliber” carries a lot of expectations. They did not offer me anyone else - quite obviously, because they clearly had no one.

Then, my circumstances changed owing to a personal situation back home and I told them I might have to return to the UK. I was very distressed and was told there would be no problem with my having a refund.

None was forthcoming. Not only that, no one returned my calls. It was only when I left a voicemail with the threat of legal action that they got back to me; this was followed up by a letter telling me that I was entitled only to a partial refund, as I would be charged $1000 for the consultation and $125 for the one-man intro - a man I never even met because he did not fulfil even the most basic criteria. Yes, it’s in the contract - in very small print, of course - but to me the contract is null and void because they 100% could not and did not offer what they told me they could in that consultation. The additional clause, claiming that they will offer someone "close" to what you want is, of course, ridiculous, when what they offer is a million miles away from the essentials you stress.

  

So, I find myself, in my mid-Fifties, pursuing a company for having taken $1025 on the grounds of their having grossly misrepresented what they could offer me.

They are having none of it and, again, are ignoring my correspondence, so the best I can do is share my experience and warn others not to be taken in.

In my opinion, these people couldn’t match a match to its box.