by Rik Mayall
My trajectory began to slow down until I came to a halt and was left suspended in a vast sea of nothingness. I looked and my body had returned, but it was a sort of transparent body now and when I looked around there was nothing to see, just millions of miles of emptiness all around me. Then from nowhere, there was someone else. A woman. It wasn’t like she arrived from somewhere else, she was just there as if she’d always been there and I had only just then received the ability to see her. Maybe that, or maybe she had just materialised from another dimension.
I am known as a man of great wisdom in the showbusiness community, a man of insight and towering intellect. I am known as Rik “towering…” – actually forget about that. I’m bright, okay. Let’s just leave it there. No, let’s not. I’m thick. I’ve always been thick. But canny. And clever. Thick and clever. That’s the canny bit. But whatever this was it was beyond my comprehension. It was like my thoughts were not my own. This woman had not only appeared in front of me but inside my mind as well, although where my mind began and where it ended were concepts that I couldn’t get a firm grip on. Don’t forget, this wasn’t scary. It was warm, a bit like being in love. Maybe she was everyone that I ever wanted? Maybe she was an angel? And then I looked at her closer and she began to resemble someone that I thought I knew. It was like she was a composite image of all the most beautiful women I had ever known and I realised that I could engineer her appearance to my own liking. How about that for a present? It was like she was an extension of my own imagination. Then, from out of the blue, she took hold of my wrist, lifted my hand and kissed the palm, and placed it on the side of her face as she smiled at me. She seemed to be becoming more beautiful with every passing second. So this was it, this was heaven. This is a fucking result! “Thank God I led a good life,” I thought to myself and it was then that I heard a voice that said, “It’s only right that you should thank me.”
There was a pause. Quite a good dramatic one.
“Hang on a fucking minute, are you telling me what I think you’re telling me?”
She looked at me with her eyes.
“I don’t know, what do you think I’m telling you?”
“That you’re God. Only you’re not, you’re the most beautiful woman in the world. No, the most beautiful woman in the everything.”
“Rik, you see me however you want to see me. If you want to see me as a kindly old man with a flowing white beard then you will.” And he was right and I did and he was and I took my hand off his cheek.
“I have to say, I think I prefer you this way,” I said. “Although you were pretty fucking amazing the other way too. Whoops! Er, pardon my French…Sir.”
“Oh don’t worry, Rik. Bloody frogs – they’re all a bunch of cunts.” (He didn’t really say that, I just couldn’t resist it. God won’t mind.)
God put his arm around me. (That’s right – me! Little Rik Mayall and God walking together across vast overlapping landscapes of beautiful everything. Just me and the man! THE MAN!!! I mean I can’t speak.)
He twinkled in his way as we walked, you know how he does. He leant down, hugged me with his arm a bit tighter and said, “Well my Rikky-boy, you know what they say about me, all that stuff about God is love. Well, of course I am but let me tell you, I’ve got a lot of love for your work. In fact, I adore it. Look, I know I shouldn’t but you couldn’t do an autograph for me, could you? You know it’s not for me. It’s for my son.”
So I gave him one. An autograph. Come on, I’m not that crass. It can give you a very particular kind of butterflies in your tummy, you know, when you’re standing alone with God himself right at the centre of all the vastness that is the epicentre of all the universes there ever will be and He tells you about his son, Jesus, watching you and enjoying your programmes on his telly.
Then God stopped, turned around and held me by my shoulders. He stooped down to me in his magnificence and spoke.
“The thing is, Richie, I gave the weather a little nudge down there in Cornwall this morning to make it slippery for your quad bike and give you a fantastic ride for Easter. You’ve been working so hard recently. You’re my favourite acter. You’re my favourite man. You’re my favourite all round entertainer. In fact, you’re my favourite everything. The trouble is, you’re such a shit driver, you crashed. You’ve pissed me off a little bit. Here, look at this.” He pointed at a nearby planet and it was vaporised in a fantabulous explosion. “Don’t worry, nobody’s living on it. I’ve been meaning to clear it up for weeks. So the point is, you’ve put a glitch in the plan, Rikky-wikky. You’re not meant to be here yet. I want you back down there on the main stage. Like now. Hello? You’ve only done the first half of the show. You need to get back down there and do the second half. I’ve still got a hell of a – sorry, a heck of lot of work for you to do down there.”
“Wait, wait a minute. What are you saying? I’m not dead? What?! Are you saying I’m going to miss out on an eternal life of bliss, God?”
“Rik, look at me. You’re Rik Mayall. No, you’re The Rik Mayall. The Rik is how you shall be known henceforward. I’m asking you as a favour.” He came in close. “This is a favour for God, you understand, so it’s got a sort of heavyweight significance hasn’t it? What I’m asking you to do is to go back down there. Now. The fact of the matter is, if you go back, the next seventy five generations of humanity are going to be twenty five per cent happier.”
There was a pause. One of my good ones.
“The next seventy five generations of humanity are going to be twenty five per cent happier because of me? I’d never have thought of that.”
“Modesty is your Achilles heel, Rich.”
“Good point God. Try as hard as I may, I just can’t stamp out that modesty shit.”
Then God threw one of his pauses at me. It was a big one. And a bit scary.
“So, what’s your decision?”
I paused again. It’s all I had left. Then quietly and firmly I said, “What was the question again, God?”
God went to speak just as I hit him with that left eyebrow twitch thing I do so brilliantly and his face lit up: “Nearly got me there, Rich. Nice one.”
“You know there’s only one way for me to go, God. If you want me to do it, I’ll do it. I’m going back.”
God threw his arm around my shoulders.
“How many arms have you got?” I said.
“Let’s not bother about that now. That’s my boy. I knew I’d done a good job with you. The thing is, your mission is more than just to cheer up humanity with your sparkling and almost superhuman maelstrom of powerful intercontinental light entertainment genius. And voice-overs, obviously.”
“Check that God, or whatever it is that the Americans say in current British television programmes. So, what’s the mission, big fella?”
There was a silence. I looked up to God. He looked out at eternity for a while. I let him do it. It was a good shot. Then these huge beautiful sad joyous far-away eyes turned back to meet mine.
“I had another boy like you once. It was a couple of thousand years ago. By the way, I like your weight situation.”
I didn’t say anything, just nodded my acknowledgement. You’re bang on the money God, I thought. I’ve been a thirty one inch waist for the last fifteen years.
“The mortals,” he continued, “need to see that you are more than just a human. You must shine like a beacon in the darkness for them – and the light as well. Although in the light you might be like a small patch of darkness and you wouldn’t be quite so beacony and therefore not quite such a good metaphor. So forget that one, let’s move on. What I’m trying to say is that all your life in light entertainment (and myriad other televisual, cinematic and theatrical formats obviously) up to this point have merely been an hors d’oeuvres to the main event which is bringing enlightenment to all humanity. And for this task, I will give you two foot soldiers to assist you.”
God paused.
“But who…” I began before God held his hand up
to stop me.
“Two words, Richie my boy, two words. Cliff and Tony.”
“A triumvirate?” I questioned.
“Yes,” said God, “although don’t worry about the pecking order because you’re by far the most talented.”
“Thank you your Godship.”
“Not at all, it’s true. Now, first of all, you are going to have to convince the world that Tony is the way forward for global politics and Cliff is the only way forward for popular music. In this way, all the people of the world will receive succour.”
“Sucker?”
“No, double C, O, U, R. Don’t be dirty.”
“Oh right, sorry about that. But how do you suggest I go about this?”
“Use your art, Rik. Tell the people that Cliff is good, Tony is great and Rik is the best. That is the message I want you to take back.”
“Crikey. Lordy-lordy. Sorry, I mean, Lord. It’s a jolly big job. I’m honoured.”
“Love your humility, Rich, you’ll go far.”
“But how come you didn’t wait until the millennium? Isn’t this two years too soon for the Second Coming?”
“No time like the present. I want you to go back down there and get started straight away. For the first few years, I want you to carry on as normal, lightly entertaining people like only you know how, adding to your vast international hordes of followers and admirers who want to touch your clothes. And then, you must write a book that will become the new bible, and then your mission will begin in earnest.”
“I won’t make a joke about being in Earnest.”
“Don’t pull back on my account.”
“No, it’s okay, the moment’s gone.”
“Right you are. Anyway, good luck.”
“I don’t need luck. I’ve got you on my side, God.”
“That’s right, you have, Dick. Sorry – FUCK! What was your name again? Oh it’s Rik, isn’t it.”
“That’s it, God. Well, that’s me gone then is it?”
“That’s right, Nick, see you, take care.”
“Bye God, nice to meet you. Er…er…I hope you keep well.” And he slapped me on the back and was gone. Although I could have sworn I heard his voice around the corner a second later, shouting, “Who is that little shit? Has he gone yet?” I think it was one of his great jokes. Well I laughed. A bit. But then suddenly, I started falling. Only this time it really was falling. I turned cartwheels through the cosmos tumbling over and over for what seemed like an age until SPLAT! I came to in a bed! Somewhere on earth. All I remember is opening my eyes and looking at the ceiling and thinking where the fuck am I? At that time, I couldn’t remember anything of my time with God. Nothing at all. That all came later. But I didn’t feel panicked at all. I’m an acter and we often wake up in other people’s bedrooms. Instinctively, I reached down to make sure that my equipment was okay. That’s what us acters always do. You never know what’s been going on. But this time when I put my hand down there to check that everything was okay, I found out that it wasn’t. There was a fucking tube sticking out of it. A fucking tube sticking out of my nob! This woke me up a bit I’ll tell you. But I’m not stupid, I didn’t make a sound or make any movement or anything because I had no idea who I was in bed with of course. And I didn’t want to wake up whoever it was and face up to the ghastly truth of whatever it was that I’d been getting up to the night before. So, gently, I felt the piece of plastic tubing that came out of the end of my cock. Oh Jesus, I thought, what have I been doing? Right, I decided, I’d better get rid of this sex equipment, find my clothes and make a run for it. I just hope to God I didn’t tell her my name was Rik, I thought, and I couldn’t even remember if I’d written her name on her back in biro like you should for the morning after. I pulled as hard as I could on the tube to get it out and YOWSER! Right deep up inside my cock – a good nine inches inside it – there was the most awful stabbing pain. I kept pulling on the tube but it wouldn’t come out and the pain was agonising. How the hell did it get up there? I gave it a really good yank and the next thing I knew, there were four nurses on top of me. Jesus Christ, I thought, I’m still in some kind of pervy club. How much did I pay for these? Two of the nurses held my arms out spread eagled. The other one held my feet down and the other one straddled me and started shoving the tube back up my cock. That’s when I completely flipped and yelled, “What the fuck is going on?” But I couldn’t! I couldn’t fucking speak! Nothing came out of my mouth! My mouth just wasn’t working properly. I tried to say something else but I couldn’t get any words out.
The nurse on top of me held me tight and said, “Don’t do that Rik, don’t ever do that. You could really damage yourself if you pull this out of your penis.”
“Okay,” I tried to say but only mumbling came out of my mouth. Then I passed out. When I came around again, I was all alone in the room. I could hear the rhythmic beeping of a life support machine like they have in all those hospital dramas that I’m not in. At the time, I knew nothing at all of the last ten pages or whatever it is that you’ve just read. It took a long time for my poor head to put itself together again and recover from having 3/5 – that’s right, three fifths – of my brain totally clogged with loose blood from somehow fracturing my skull by falling off my quad bike and lying on my back in the rain. The only exits for the blood from my head wound (head wound? Seriously fucking life-threatening head accident, that’s what) could find were my eyes, my mouth, my ears and my nose. That’s how Barbara found me. She did disregard me for the first five minutes. She though I was playing an “amusing serious accident joke” and didn’t see why she should have to go out in the rain and pretend to laugh convincingly as is obligatory on these occasions. She did eventually come out to laugh to avoid me having a tantrum about everyone ignoring my great quad bike joke. Poor Barbara got a pretty hefty shock out there in the rain when she found me lying there dead.
So that’s how I got all that loose blood locked inside my head. That’s right, loose blood locked in my brain! And it couldn’t find an exit for seven whole weeks! So my poor brain had to somehow work out a new system of thinking. What it did according to the doctors afterwards was that it used a lot of its previously unused dark dormant sections. So my brain was thinking in ways that it never had before and probably no one else’s has either* which was extremely weird indeed. I could hear colour, I could see sound, I could smell movement, I could feel things I could only imagine but couldn’t see, and I could see people’s skulls jabbering but not their faces. Everyone was the same. And I couldn’t talk. I could only manage to think and say two words, “Mummy,” and “Barbara†.” It was scary. I was alone in a place of jabbering identical SKULLS who had obviously trapped me in this weird compound and were experimenting on me and wouldn’t let me out. That was why I couldn’t think properly. They had obviously fucked up my brain as an experiment and were observing me as part of whatever terrifying medical project they were doing. I could barely walk, I couldn’t think, but I knew that I had to escape from that place. Now. But they’d obviously somehow found out that I was trying to escape and they followed me everywhere, locking the doors every time I got near one, claiming that the whole place was a hospital. A hospital!
It was a desperate situation so I pretended to go along with them. I decided to bide my time until I could think of a good solid escape plan to put into operation.
Then, after a few days, suddenly everything changed. My wife told me that what they call the Easter school holidays were over and that everyone was “going to London”. Then it turned out that they were indeed going to London! I was taken outside. I could feel the sun on my skin and smell fresh air again. This was going to be good. They put me into a very convincing ambulance on a stretcher and we were out on the motorway. It was exciting. I could see all the fields and cars from my old world smiling at me and talking to me. I can’t remember what they all said clearly but there were some very nasty hedges who didn’t like me at all. I’m pretty sure I was strapped to the stretc
her – for “safety reasons” they claimed of course. But then I was taken to a “private hospital in Harley Street”. I was unstrapped and allowed to walk almost unguarded into this new place. This didn’t seem like such a secure prison. My new cell in there was more like a hotel suite. A nice man carried my suitcases and unpacked them for me. Then he asked if he could use the toilet in my bathroom and he left me alone! Chance. I was straight out of the room, down the corridor, down the stairs and straight out onto Harley Street in my pyjamas. I hailed a taxi and went home. My friend, Geoff, was babysitting the kids and he answered the door when I rang the doorbell. There’s a friend at last! A man I know. I grabbed him and kissed him and hugged him all over. He looked shocked. He could barely speak. He looked amazed that I had managed to escape from the authorities. I shouted, “Geoff! I’ve broken out, let’s get pissed!” Words, important words, were coming back to me! Geoff looked a bit pale. Maybe he was a bit poorly and needed a drink as well. He told me to just sit on the sofa, please, while he found all the booze. Don’t worry, he said, he didn’t need any help finding the booze. But I was impatient and kept trying to find it. Geoff managed to stay one step ahead of me though and as fast as he could he hid the alcohol or poured it down the sink before the loonie man (that’s me, viewer) could find it, neck it and go completely one hundred per cent insane. Then he came back and sadly told me that there was nothing to drink in the house. Perhaps I should have some food? He said he would phone for a pizza because I looked like I should get something inside me. So he would go into another room, he said, and make the call while I sat and watched some telly. So I watched some telly. Free at last. Bliss. Except that the telly was freaking me out a bit – horrible loud garish indecipherable drivel jabbering at me from the corner of the room (no change there then). Then at last the pizza delivery man arrived but he wasn’t the pizza delivery man at all. He was a woman. She was my doctor. But she was wonderful. She was on my side and she spoke to me very calmly and reassuringly and she took me upstairs to my bed (no, sadly). She said I needed to relax, forget about everything, and said she was going to give me a very powerful injection. Which she did. The next thing I knew was that I was coming round in the Charing Cross Hospital. Prison again. Shit. Double shit. In fact, quadruple shit with bollocks on it.
