by Julian Clary
‘I like,’ said Juan, nodding enthusiastically.
‘I’m so pleased.’ Catherine smiled at him. ‘We’d be most offended if you didn’t enjoy it. Tuck in.’
The three of us ate in silence . I glanced nervously at Juan, but he finished his in no time, appearing not to have noticed anything odd about it.
‘Thank you. Is good,’ he said, looking pleased.
‘Was good, Juan,’ corrected Catherine. ‘The past tense has always been my favourite.’
It was only about ten minutes later that Juan began to slur. ‘I tired. Was … tired …’ He tried to continue but couldn’t.
‘Good boy, it’s all right,’ said Catherine, soothingly.
He stared into the distance for a minute, then began to sway. His head lolled from one side to the other.
‘Let’s move him to my bedroom while he can still walk,’ said Catherine, getting up and moving to his side. She held him by the elbow and tucked her other hand under his armpit.
‘Why your bedroom?’ I asked.
‘I know what I’m doing. We’re going to say he was my boyfriend, stupid. As you may recall, you, Johnny Debonair, are a famous heterosexual. It’s another example of my deep, caring nature. Now, chop-chop.’ Catherine had a way of making me feel stupid. She was always one step ahead.
I moved to the other side of Juan and, mirroring Catherine’s manoeuvre, helped to manhandle my unwanted boyfriend into her room where he flopped drunkenly on to the bed. Catherine arranged his legs neatly. The towel had fallen off on our short journey and she glanced at his genitals like a housewife considering the quality of a greengrocer’s produce.
‘I’ve seen better,’ she said. ‘Help me get the duvet out from under him. It’s only fair to make him decent. There’s no sign of him vomiting, which is a boon. This takes me back to my days on A and E.’
We stood back and inspected our handiwork. Juan looked as if he was in a deep sleep. It all seemed remarkably easy and painless.
‘Now what happens?’ I asked.
‘It takes a while,’ said Catherine, matter-of-factly. ‘We need to move all of lover boy’s bits and bobs into my room, wash up our trifle dishes, then you and I hit the town. Your job for the night is to pick up some Muscle Mary and go back to his place. We don’t want you here for all the amateur dramatics later on.’
‘What will happen?’ I was gripped.
‘I shall come home alone in the small hours, discover my boyfriend has topped himself and call the emergency services.’
We placed the suicide note tastefully by the bed, changed into our disco fashions, had a couple of lines of cocaine and took ourselves off to Soho.
In a club called Stretch, I left Catherine at the bar downing double vodka tonics and dutifully went cruising. It was an unusually quiet night for available trade, but Catherine’s instructions were to pick someone up, come what may, so I made do with a dull little man from the East End called Rupert, who had weasel eyes and grey sideburns, and had made the unfortunate error of wearing white socks with black trousers and shoes. Still, it was not a night to be picky.
We caught a taxi back to his pretentious studio in Borough, and I had to listen to his tasteless selection of chill-out albums while he slobbered over me . When we stood up he was so short, his rock-hard circumcised penis could only jab at my upper thigh. To save his embarrassment, I lay down on the futon and he came eventually, crouched over my chest, huffing and puffing like a steam engine. You don’t know how lucky you are, I thought.
He pretended not to be interested in my wonderful TV career, but the next morning I was paraded down the high street and forced to sit for a couple of hours in a trendy café while his equally dubious friends gasped and tittered behind their croissants, their eyes like saucers, partly from the drugs they had consumed the night before and partly in wonderment at seeing me in their local.
When I said it was time I went home, he scribbled his number on a menu and said, ‘I really like you, Johnny, and I want to see you again.’
‘Me too,’ I lied. ‘Thank you for a wonderful night. You’re very special.’
‘Maybe we could meet up in the week for a bite to eat?’
‘Sounds great.’
‘Wednesday suits me. How are you fixed?’
‘Wednesday it is,’ I said. ‘I’ll call you re where and when.’
I dropped the menu with Rupert’s number on it discreetly into a wastepaper bin by the door and caught a taxi back to Camden. As I approached, I couldn’t help feeling apprehensive. Would Juan be furious with a Rohypnol hangover … or …
If he wasn’t, I was going to have to face some cold, hard truths about myself and the unfortunate fate of those to whom I became close. One murder might possibly be excusable. Two were beginning to kook suspicious. Three … Well, I could be sharing a cell with Dennis Nielsen by Christmas, if I wasn’t careful.
I let myself into the flat. ‘Hello?’ I half hoped to hear that Spanish accent calling, ‘Hey, Johnny, where you been, huh?’ But instead I heard a faint ‘In here!’ from the lounge. I went in.
Catherine was huddled on the sofa in her dressing-gown, sobbing quietly, and a policewoman was sitting next to her with a comforting arm around her shoulders.
‘What’s going on? What’s the matter?’ I asked.
‘Sit yourself down, Mr Debonair,’ said the policewoman. ‘I’m WPC Helen Jackson, a Bereavement Support Officer.’
‘Pleased to meet you, WPC Jackson.’ I took off my leather jacket and sat on the chair, aware that I smelt of stale alcohol and cigarettes. ‘But why are you here? What’s wrong with Catherine?’
WPC Jackson gave me a concerned kook and tightened her grip on Catherine’s shoulders. ‘I’m sorry to say that Catherine’s boyfriend took an overdose last night. I’m afraid it’s not good news.’
‘Oh dear,’ I said. ‘How awful.’
At this point Catherine leapt from the sofa and flung herself at me, crying hysterically. ‘Why?’ she wailed. ‘Why, why, why?’
‘It’s all right, baby. It’s not your fault,’ I cooed, patting her back and stroking her hair.
WPC Jackson looked on, impressed by my sympathetic behaviour, I felt sure. ‘When did this happen?’ I asked her.
‘Last night, sir. Juan wrote a suicide note, then took an overdose.’
‘I’ve been out all night,’ I explained.
‘No law against that,’ said Helen.
‘I knew I shouldn’t have left those pills in the bathroom cabinet!’ wailed Catherine.
‘It’s not your fault, Miss Baxter, you weren’t to know. If someone’s determined to do it, they’ll find a way.’ The policewoman turned back to me as I rocked the bereaved, broken Catherine. ‘The body has been removed by the pathologist and the police have examined the scene. I’ll leave you to look after Catherine, Mr Debonair. We’ll be in touch as we’ll need statements from both of you. And may I say again how sorry I am?’
‘Thank you,’ I whispered. ‘You’re very kind.’ I stood up to shake her hand.
‘And, by the way, may I say, too, that I’m a very big fan of yours?’
‘Oh, how sweet! Would you like a signed photo to take away with you?’ From the sofa I heard a suppressed snort.
After the policewoman left, clutching her photograph, Catherine and I froze for a couple of minutes, still clinging to each other. Slowly Catherine began to vibrate with suppressed giggles. I joined her and we didn’t break apart until we were helpless with laughter and gasping for air.
‘I thought you were never coming home!’ she said at last. ‘I’ve been giving it the full Gwyneth Paltrow for about ten hours!’
This only produced a fresh wave of laughter in me. ‘Oh, poor you!’ I managed. ‘But I’ve been on a labour of love, too. I’ve had to suck off some dwarf on your account.’
‘It’s like being in a Mike Leigh film,’ said Catherine. ‘God, isn’t it beautifully peaceful? No more Carmen Miranda. No more “Johnny, I love you!” thir
ty times a day. I know it might look callous to an outsider, but let’s celebrate.’
I couldn’t stop laughing and crying at the same time and underneath it all I had the creeping feeling that some kind of line had been crossed. We really would stop at nothing, it seemed. I was exhilarated by our power and yet frightened by it. I felt sorry for Juan yet highly tickled by what we’d done.
Eventually we pulled ourselves together enough to snort a gram of cocaine and drink three bottles of Laurent Perrier rosé.
The battle between Latino lover and Essex girlfriend was over.
Fortuitously, just as my star was at its zenith, my contract with the BBC came up for renewal. The latest series of Shout! had been a riotous success, but Catherine decided it was time to move on. ‘I want to see you interviewing Hollywood royalty, not East 17.’
‘I like them!’ I protested.
‘You’re bigger than that now. This is your chance and we must go for it,’ she said. Now that I had ‘suffered’ over Bernard’s terrible death in public, I was somehow thought to have grown up and matured.
‘What else do you have in mind?’ I asked. I wasn’t sure how I felt about abandoning the goose that had laid such a spectacular egg.
‘I’m thinking, Cowboy, I’m thinking. Maybe you could be the new Trisha — but without the Norwich fashions. It’s time you were attracting an older audience. We should do a photo shoot with you dressed in black and looking serious — in fact, maybe you should say you’re into classical music and listen to Radio 4,’ she mused. ‘Perhaps you should buy a place in the country.’
It sounded very exciting and, as usual, I was willing to go along with whatever she suggested. The two of us were bound up together now. Only one person on earth knew the deepest, darkest secrets in my life, and that was Catherine. She knew about Georgie, about Bernard and the truth about Juan’s ‘suicide’. There was no way that our fates could ever be separated.
The police had accepted Juan’s death as suicide — after all, the medical evidence supported Catherine’s story. And, in any case, why would they not? There was no one to care much about whether or not some Nicaraguan boy had topped himself. All the official channels accepted the outcome, and two weeks after his death Juan’s body was sent discreetly home in a black ziplock body-bag. Even more amazingly, we managed to keep the whole thing out of the press. When one or two reporters sniffed round the story of another tragic death closely connected to Johnny D, Catherine did some swift trading to stop it coming out. Instead, I gave an exclusive interview to a Sunday newspaper about my battle with depression since Bernard’s death.
‘I sometimes wonder if you and I are part of a new super-breed of human beings,’ Catherine said, when we grasped that we’d got away with murder once again. ‘Can it really be so simple, or are we the clever ones?’
I was certain that Catherine, at least, was one of the clever ones. Everything she touched seemed to blossom. (Apart from Juan, of course.) The minute I was out of contract, she skilfully created a bidding war for my services to the television industry, with the BBC, ITV and Channel 4 slugging it out with their cheque books. The amount of money being waved around was ridiculous. You’d have thought I was a priceless painting by Picasso.
The winning bid was a Friday-night chat-and-music show on Channel 4, which included a satirical look at the week’s news. It was a three-year deal that would earn me almost nine million altogether and leave me free to work on other projects with anyone I pleased. The new vehicle was simply to be called The Johnny D Show.
‘You’ve arrived, sweetheart,’ Catherine said.
‘All thanks to you.’
‘It is, rather. Lucky you to have clever me. I think I’m worth forty-five per cent, easily.’
I might have arrived but where was I? I still felt very much in transit. Maybe it was the drugs, but I felt as if I was forever chasing some elusive goal, be it Tim, celebrity, peace of mind or just the dealer. Wherever I was, it wasn’t the paradise I’d hoped for.
It wasn’t that I disliked fame — I didn’t. I still loved the attention I got, and the way everything seemed to come to me so easily. But away from the razzmatazz, the parties, awards shows and restaurants, I was, to my surprise, still me. Catherine and I might have upgraded to a bigger and better flat, but I couldn’t escape the memories. Sometimes I thought back to sitting on the veranda with Sammy and Georgie, sipping G and T while they talked about their glory days, and felt that that was when I had been happiest. The fact that Tim was in my life again should have made me delirious with joy — and, certainly, it was what I had thought I wanted. But, like so much else, the reality had proved different and the bitterness I felt that we couldn’t be together outweighed the sweetness of our stolen liaisons.
And then there was the burden of darkness that I had pushed into the depths of my soul and tried to forget. But at night, as I tossed and turned and tried to sleep, the faces I wouldn’t let myself think of during the day reared up in my imagination. Here was Georgie, breathless and desperate for me to kill him again. Here was Bernard, rising once more from his pool of molten clay, eyes wide with shock as mud dripped from his fingertips. And here was Juan, pleading with me, saying, ‘But I love you, Johnny. Why you kill me, huh?’
Only now did I understand the phrase ‘night terrors’. I longed to tell someone how I felt. But Catherine, with her steely heart, didn’t understand and I couldn’t risk losing Tim’s affection by confiding in him. He thought I was a glamorous, successful star. How would he react if he knew that I was really a coke-addled killer? I’d lose even the small part of him I had managed to claw back.
So, I tried to lose myself in my constant companions — sex and drugs. The nightmares weren’t so bad when I was in someone else’s bed, their arms wrapped round me and the gentle rhythm of their breathing lulling me to sleep. And I could forget my depression and hopelessness when I was riding high on cocaine and speed, manic with alcohol. I took more and more to get the same fleeting feelings of release and happiness, sinking great wads of cash into my habits. In all senses, Catherine was my partner in crime, and as greedy for narcotic highs as I was. Together we went on extraordinary binges that sometimes lasted days, taking anyone with us who wanted to come along for the ride, dropping them and picking up new party pals for the next keg of debauchery.
The Johnny D Show went live to air for the first time at ten p.m. on a Friday night. I hadn’t managed to stay in on the Thursday, but Anita the make-up artist was on hand with her magic wands and powders. Anyway, the heavy eyes and unshaved chin made me seem more grown-up. A new look for a new show. Tom Cruise was my first guest, and he patted me on the back as if we were old friends. He laughed and shook his head when I made jokey references to his height and to Scientology. ‘Only you could get away with that!’ he said, tears of laughter running down his cheeks.
Although some in the press predicted that I had bitten off more than I could chew in moving from children’s to adult television, I handled the transition well. In fact, the later time slot allowed me to reveal more of the sex appeal that I had kept below the surface on Shout!. I flirted outrageously with the actresses I chatted to on my sofa, and was laddish with the boys. The strand of the show that was different, and which swiftly proved the public’s favourite, was a part we called TLC. Here, I would chat gently to someone who was not famous but who had recently been involved in something either tragic or heroic or both: a policeman’s widow or a burns victim, that type of carry-on. I coaxed the gruesome details from them by mining the still-raw emotions of my own recent experiences. I had been there. I was one of them. The reviews were unanimously complimentary. The Times said I had enough star quality to light up Milton Keynes for a fortnight. Even Jonathan Ross didn’t get reviews like that. I enjoyed the shows, knew I was being sexy and enigmatic — but I wasn’t excited or particularly motivated. If appearing live on national television in front of millions didn’t get me going, what would?
To my surprise, I found my
thoughts turning more and more often to Bernard. I missed him. Juan seemed like a distant bad dream, but Bernard had left a gaping hole in my professional life. I found myself looking for the fidgeting figure in the flowery shirt at the back of the studio, wanting his helpful advice after every show. He had always been first through my dressing-room door after a recording, smiling and nodding reassuringly. He had been bound up in Shout!’s success, of course, but it was me he had cared about. Now it was Catherine who came tottering in, wearing a power suit and brushing away my questions on how she thought it had gone.
‘Whatever. We still get paid even if you kook like Benny from Crossroads so who gives a monkey’s?’
Or she was already there, racking us out a couple of celebratory lines of cocaine and opening vintage Cristal, as we pursued our endless quest for forgetfulness.
Before long, the results of our hedonism began to show. Forever hung-over and tired, I had long since stopped reading my scripts before a show. Sometimes it was as much as I could do not to sound surprised when I read out the name of that day’s guest from the autocue. My mumbling, bumbling interviews were shocking and inept, but compulsive viewing nevertheless.
Elaine Paige even asked me during her interview if I’d ‘been at the cooking sherry’.
‘Cooking sherry? Fine Madeira wine, if you please,’ I retorted, to a good laugh.
It wasn’t long before the papers cottoned to what was happening and printed thrill stories about my show and my behaviour on it. They became more and more outrageous, thus creating more stories. I was becoming the king of car-crash telly and the more trashed I was the more my producers rubbed their hands. As long as my viewing figures flourished, everyone was happy. Shots of vodka were slipped to me during commercial breaks. I famously fell asleep while interviewing some old slapper from EastEnders and was considered a master of irony in the next day’s papers. Simply, I could do no wrong.
Once or twice I told Catherine I thought I was cracking up. She stroked me under the chin and said, ‘It’s all rock ‘n’ roll, Cowboy. You just need a line.’ She laughed off articles in the Daily Express and the Mail on Sunday that insinuated I was on a downward spiral. Photos of me looking wasted and much older than my twenty-five years appeared in the tabloids.
