Going to Sea in a Sieve: The Autobiography

by Baker, Danny

  When we eventually arrived back in London, a silence descended upon us both. Not from any doubts about our being together but because now we were going to have to face up to the things we had frankly run away from. We sat in the black London cab at the foot of Maydew House, the tower block where Kelly and I lived. Taking a deep breath, I looked up toward the windows of our place, hundreds of feet in the air.

  ‘Well, mate,’ I said resignedly to Wendy, ‘I better go up and sort things out. Wait here for me.’

  In the lift speeding up to the nineteenth floor I was, internally, all over the place. Kelly and I had not had a marriage, or indeed much of a relationship, in the traditional sense, but this was going to be rotten. What was I going to say? How could I explain events and walk out for good? Where would I go?

  As I made my way along the landing to door 113, my heart felt as if it had broken away from its moorings and was now panting like a gaffed salmon somewhere halfway up my windpipe. The elastic bands operating my legs became loose and stringy. I felt base, wicked, hearing the voice of my old Sunday school teacher intoning, ‘And lo, he was wretched and like the beasts of the field. His tongue did parch and cleave unto the roof of his mouth.’ It did. It did cleave.

  I put the key in the lock, turned, and walked downstairs into the front room. Though it was lunchtime on a Saturday, the place was quiet and still. I tried a couple of weak, if cheery, hellos. Nothing. Then I detected that the flat, while it could never have been described as a cosy love nest, seemed sparser than usual; almost as if half the things were missing. I attempted to compute this and came up with the reason. Half the things were missing. Exactly half. Kelly’s half. She had gone. Left to get on with her life and to save us both the mechanics of playing out a scene neither of us had our hearts in. And I have never seen her since.

  Many years later when I was, one way or another, all over the TV, my then agents received a phone call. It was Kelly. She wanted them to pass on the message that a News of the World journalist had been sniffing about and offering her cash for some greasy ‘Wronged Woman’ splash. She had told them to drop dead, but just thought I should be aware of it going on – which, by anyone’s reckoning, was a terrifically classy and confident thing to have done.

  Meanwhile, back in 1981 at Maydew House, I sailed back down in the lift in a truly euphoric daze. I ran toward the taxi, literally skipping, babbling, and waving my arms. Not only was there no high drama to report, we could unload the bags and pay off the driver. We were home.

  This is Tomorrow Calling

  Twentieth Century Box had come and gone. There were no plans for a third series and, actually, I had not reacted to the process one way or the other. I hadn’t fallen in love with the medium, been ‘bitten by the bug’ as they say, and had zero ambition to find another vehicle for my stuttering presentation skills. I had made some good friends though and the LWT bar was at the handy midway spot between the flat in Rotherhithe and the NME in Carnaby Street. I enjoyed the way TV people could sit around being gossipy and cynical about their work and colleagues, just like any other game, and my initial impressions that this was a serious place for creating Great Art had long since been exploded. I was also pretty good at holding merry court for these poor saps who toiled away in darkened studios and edit suites with my stories of globetrotting freedom and racy rock’n’roll. As with the NME, you would often be joined at the table by great wits and famous names. (Very occasionally, this could be one and the same person.) But do telly for a living? I wouldn’t know where to start. And anyway, don’t you have to at least try for that? Once again, like so much in my life, the opportunity just fell into my lap out of a clear blue sky.

  One evening shortly before Christmas 1981, I strode into the LWT bar full of beans, looking forward to linking up with some former colleagues who were about to don paper hats and pull a few crackers. In truth, I had already had a couple of sharpeners over at Carnaby Street so was, I fancy, in particularly good form. Janet Street Porter was in our circle but, as can be the case with JSP, was wearing an expression like she would much rather be putting a bomb under the building. I teased her about her lack of seasonal cheer and, once she had uncurled her lip, she told me why she was sour.

  ‘It’s this fucking new show they’ve got me doing. I think they want me to be some fucking light relief or something. Honestly, it’s just crap, but I’ve asked for a fortune and they’ve said OK. Now I’ve got to fucking do it.’

  This catastrophic outrage that Janet already despised was to be called The Six O’Clock Show, a weekly silly round-up of local news, with a big studio audience, star guests and hosted live by Michael Aspel. A colourful, souped-up version of BBC’s Nationwide, the show went on to become a massive, much-imitated runaway success whose legacy can still be witnessed today in such huge frothy hits as The One Show, despite being, as Time Out magazine put it, nothing more than ‘a red-nosed, trouser-dropping Picture Post’.

  Sitting with Janet that night, all I could see was its value as a thundering good bladder-on-a-stick to whack her with if ever she became too grand about her CV. There was certainly no suggestion that I should be part of it, or could add to its planned gaiety in any capacity. Then a completely chance remark set in motion the chain of events which, over the next fifteen years, would see me become so ubiquitous on Britain’s TV screens that eventually everyone would, quite rightly, become sick of the fucking sight of me.

  The director of this new show was Daniel Wiles, who, you may recall, had previously tried to get me into a double act with a crocodile. Danny listened to Janet and, though naturally cautious himself, tried to lift her mood by saying she might, just might, have fun being an all-round entertainer.

  ‘Oh, shut up, Wiles,’ she barked. ‘You’re gonna try and get me to take part in knees-ups in filthy old pubs with a load of pensioners. Well, I won’t, so don’t ask.’

  It was here that I opened my mouth and jumped into show business.

  ‘Old pubs? When was the last time you went in an old pub? They’re all wine bars over our way now – the OAPs sitting there with cocktail umbrellas in their Guinness!’

  Wiles didn’t say anything at the time. But not long after Christmas I got a call from the show’s producer, one Greg Dyke. Would I like to come in and have a chat?

  The very first Six O’Clock Show went out live at teatime on Friday, 8 January 1982. Roughly fifteen minutes in, there I was on tape, presenting a short film about the demise of the traditional London pub in favour of the new ‘sophisticated’ wine and cocktail bars. This time they let me write the words myself and – though things would broaden considerably over the run of the programme – it wasn’t a bad little intro. Seen at night with the Old Kent Road behind me, I began:

  ‘This is the famous Old Kent Road. A sepia-coloured land of flat caps, jellied eels and where the trams still run – presumably chased by The Sweeney . . .’

  This wasn’t the me of Twentieth Century Box. This was a far more lively chap, with a glint in the eyes and some zip in his blood. Possibly a little too much zip. I had, of course, no actual interest in the subject, but I had known exactly what the programme wanted, which was simply a bit of pep – and saucy pep if possible. As I vox-popped playful OAPs and tipsy old mums, I could see where the editing scissors would get in and out, and who the live wires would prove to be. I was given carte blanche with the questions too. To be honest, freed from the editorial earnestness and journalistic rigour of Twentieth Century Box, this was fun, like setting up my old aunties for their punchlines. And they delivered them better than Michael Jackson did.

  Six minutes later, it ended; the audience clapped noisily, Michael and Janet talked about the story’s implications, and then, with studio guest Des O’Connor, they all pretended to react to some flamboyantly prepared cocktails. As I stood backstage watching the onscreen trio sip and mug their way through a series of violently coloured concoctions, my elbow was grabbed by the show’s executive producer, John Birt.

  ‘W
ell done,’ he beamed. ‘Great. Full of energy. I hope you do more.’

  I had been paid five hundred pounds for six minutes’ work. Five hundred pounds. Nobody in my family, not even knocking stuff out ‘the other way’ had ever earned £500 just like that. When it was broken to me that that was to be my fee – I wouldn’t have an agent until 1989 – I tried to react like this was the type of news I got on a regular basis, all the while picturing myself as the man on the Monopoly board trailing £10 notes in my wake and wearing diamonds on the soles of my shoes.

  After a tremendous amount of thought, at least as soon as my power of speech returned, I accepted their offer and would do so with something approaching marvel every time it was increased over the upcoming years. Of course, it never occurred to me to salt some away for idiotic trifles like tax and VAT. And when we get to that particular Armageddon in the next book, you will see that I probably should have done. But back then? John Birt was ‘hoping’ I’d do some more. ‘Not half as much as I fucking do, John,’ I felt like saying.

  However, as it turned out, and as the Six O’Clock Show progressed on its gargantuan run, I wasn’t getting asked back at all.

  When the cheque for £500 came through our door roughly six weeks later, I had already hammered the life out of it in advance. The bank, to whom I had given assurances that not only was this payment on its way but it was simply the first of thousands of such arrangements, swallowed it up hungrily. In fact, once I had deposited it, it looked for some reason as though I still owed them £117. This was because I did still owe them £117. I managed to keep this infuriating snag from Wendy, who had been busy in Heal’s and Liberty, furnishing and nourishing our high-rise home, chiefly because I actively encouraged her to buy anything she wanted because, frankly, I had the stuff in handfuls. Or would do. You know, soon.

  To bolster this financial fantasy – and simply for the hell of it – I decided to teach the bank a lesson for its impudence by doing one of the most sensible things a chap can do in such circumstances. I booked a holiday to Hawaii. When the holiday company called to say my cheque had bounced, I told them to present it again immediately because I was about to tear a strip off Barclays Bank that might be heard clear around the world. And so help me, that’s exactly what I did. If ever you have been impressed by something I have done or said on the radio then I must tell you that you’ve heard but a pale echo of me at my 1982 best. My apoplectic tirade against a bank manager who had been nothing but patient and generous with me and my barely established tinpot account was one of the great performances of my life. I railed, I thundered, I spat with contempt. Hadn’t I patiently explained about my bright future until I was blue in the face? Hadn’t I just deposited the first of these £500 cheques I told them about? What the HELL did they think they were doing, embarrassing me with a reputed travel agent simply because they couldn’t envisage the sort of sums I was about to enrich their shareholders by? If they were lucky, I would be big about this distasteful mix-up this once, but for the love of God, don’t you dare put me in this situation again! Do I make myself clear?

  Incredibly, I had. A fortnight later, Wendy and I were touching down in Honolulu. As the rubber hit the runway, I now owed the bank about £750. Oh, and I’d recently left the NME staff to go freelance, so that avenue of regular income was closed to through traffic for the time being.

  We had a fantastic time in Hawaii. The only hiccup came when, arriving at Los Angeles, we were told that our connecting flight wouldn’t leave for four hours and then it was roughly a six-hour flight to the islands. Six hours? I always believed that Hawaii was off the coast of America like the Isle of Wight is off the coast of England. Before we left, I’d even thought about hiring a little boat and rowing across to it. Six hours? To kill the initial wait I said to Wendy that we should pop into LA, get some coffee, and look at the Hollywood sign. Wendy asked if that was possible. Naturally I, the sophisticated seasoned traveller, told her not only was it possible but we might even have time to take in a movie too. Two hours later, on a jammed freeway in a stifling cab and still nowhere near the centre of town, I was begging the driver to do a U-turn and get us back in time to catch our flight. Wendy and I had just had our first blazing row – the first of six I calculate we’ve had since then. We’d argued because she is not now, nor ever has been, a demure shrinking violet who, when something annoys her, will count to ten and try to think of blue skies and buttercups instead. She had told me there wasn’t time for this lark and I had overridden her common sense and tried to will it to happen. Now, amid the thick waves of engine noise and humidity soaked with petrol fumes, she was pointing out that I was a blustering idiot. A fair point, if a little too forcefully made in my book. Thankfully, it’s hard to remain angry with even a blundering bonehead when a plane to paradise awaits and, with what I still insist was a generous amount of time to spare – twenty minutes – we boarded an Aloha Airlines flight to Hawaii. (Yes, Aloha Airlines.)

  God, but we had a sublime time there. Stone in love, on the other side of the world and walking the beach at night beneath palm trees festooned with multicoloured paper lanterns. The Hawaiian alphabet, I learned, has only thirteen letters, that’s why it’s all Waikiki, leis, luau and Honolulu. Waikiki Beach itself is not a real beach at all but a man-made structure with the sand barged over from Australia just to attract the tourists. Hawaii once tried to deal with a chronic rat infestation by shipping in hundreds of mongooses who, they’d been assured, would keep the numbers down. Sadly, somebody forgot to do their homework and it was only when they found the rat population increasing that it was discovered the mongoose is nocturnal, the rat isn’t, and so the two species had never actually met. Suddenly Hawaii had a rat problem and a mongoose problem. These things are why I love Hawaii. However, it was also where, as Wendy looked on, taking photos, I very nearly died.

  We had ventured into part of the island’s lush jungle area and found the most beautiful meandering river that led to a waterfall straight out of a Dorothy Lamour movie. Needing little encouragement, we jumped into the river to swim. Actually, let me refine that sentence. Needing little encouragement, I jumped into the river to swim. Wendy didn’t join me in this spontaneous expression of joy at nature because she doesn’t swim well and really hates getting her hair wet if there’s not a very good drier within reach. I on the other hand was keen to show her that my reckless can-do personality could sometimes find outlet in the physical, so in I went.

  Even today, if people ask me whether I can swim, I will tell them that I am a strong swimmer. By this, I mean that I can swim. Not amazingly, not for any prolonged amount of time, but enough so I don’t drown or flap about hopelessly like my friend Stephen Saunders. However, one aspect of the aquatic life that I’ve never really mastered is simply treading water. I’m useless at it. I was reminded of this quite brusquely the second I surfaced from my leap into the icy depths of this waterway. The current in this river was moving faster than an Aloha jet and immediately I felt everything below my neck start heading off strongly toward the waterfall without first informing my head of the trip. You know that expression ‘go with the flow’? Well, how it ever came to mean taking things easy is a mystery to me. Dear Lord, I may as well have tried to do the Hucklebuck between the carriages of a moving express train. Whoosh, off I went. But so as not to alarm Wendy, I rotated my arms to create the illusion that I was not only a powerful swimmer but apparently could circle the globe in under an hour. On and on I was carried, with Wendy running along the bank laughing, ‘Come back!’ as though I was goofing around, pretending to get away. Little did she know! I felt as if I’d been fired out of a cannon.

  By this time I’d arrived at the little lake before the waterfall and the current eased off as the waters widened. Wendy, unaware that I was both terrified and exhausted, started shouting, ‘Swim up to the waterfall! I want to get a picture!’ Weak, rattled and cross-eyed, I found myself doing as I was told. However, and I don’t understand how any of these things work
, now the pull of the maelstrom seemed to be forcing me the other way, back out of the lake. It took every ounce of strength I had to go forward half an inch. It shows how strong my love for her was and how much I didn’t want to shatter her image of me as a ‘proper bloke’ that I struggled on with the task, every muscle screaming at me to stop and let my body sink out of sight to become dinner for the bottom feeders. My one goal, the only thing that gave me hope, was the thought that when I got to the waterfall I could cling to a rock and, while pretending to pose artfully beside one of the many rainbows that shimmered in the spray, get my fucking breath back.

  Maybe I should have checked that there were rocks to cling to in the first place. When I arrived at the churning, swirling torrent, drained of every last scintilla of energy and fight, I reached out for purchase – only to discover that the rockface had been worn sheer and shiny, not to mention slick with a super-slippery coating of lichen and moss. My hand slid straight off the granite and I sank below the surface. Worse yet, I could feel the tumbling waterfall keeping me down. At this point I have to drop all comic reflection and say I really, actually, properly thought I was going to die. It’s entirely possible that I did die, and the rest of my life has been nothing but a dream. Thankfully, a kick of my leg connected with an underwater outcrop of stone and the pain of this made me snap into the foetal position, which, I’m guessing, altered the flow of the water over me. The next thing I knew I was shooting back out to one side of the cascade. Here there was a boulder of sorts and I hung on to it as though my life depended on it – because it did.

  My lungs and ears felt as if they were going to burst, but I managed to peer through the sopping hank of hair hanging in my eyes – ah, those were the days! – and saw Wendy, fifty yards away, smiling broadly and waving at me to stay where I was because she was framing up a good one. I hung on to that rock for a good ten minutes before making for the bank a few yards beyond.