When I asked her about her husband she said that they’d met in Paris and she told me all about France. She’d studied there for a long time she told me, with a famous Frenchman who taught her how to be a clown. I thought she was joking and I laughed at this, but she looked at me like I was the biggest idiot she’d ever met. Fola said that after you have mastered the art of being a great clown then everything else is easy. And then she pulled a funny face and told me to get home before my mum missed me.
Not long after that her husband arrived from France and he was one of the most weird looking people I’d ever seen. He was the tallest, skinniest person and he had a huge ridiculous moustache. Set against her voluptuous figure, the two of them couldn’t have looked more different. But there was something in the way that he moved that was just as graceful as his wife. When he walked down the street, he looked like he was constantly about to fall over or trip up but just at the last minute his body would right itself and start falling in another direction.
I bumped into them at the shop one day and Fola introduced me. This guy was also very flamboyant and after we met he insisted that I come and see the show. Later that night he came around to the house with a ticket for the following Saturday. I explained that Mum wasn’t keen on my going but he was so charming that he managed to win her around. Either that or she was just anxious to get this broomstick creature off the front step and would have agreed to anything.
So on Saturday I took the bus into the West End. I got there hours early and spent the evening wandering around Charing Cross Road and Shaftesbury Avenue staring up at the huge gilt theatres. I found the show hilarious, with all of these grown men and women running around the stage in costumes so ridiculous that I could barely recognize Fola. She invited me backstage afterwards and I watched in awe as the actors stripped off their costumes and ran around half naked, laughing, drinking and hugging each other.
I received so many random kisses from the cast that by the time I left I was on cloud nine. When the bus driver looked at me like I was a madman I figured it was the goofy smile on my face, but when I got home Mum screamed, ‘Look at your face! Are you a clown now?’ I checked in the mirror and my cheek was covered in different-coloured make-up and I really did look like I’d escaped from the circus.
Fola was the first black performer that I had ever met up until that point. Until then I just hadn’t considered the stage as a decent place for a black person to be seen. Years later, when I decided to go into comedy, my parents asked me in distress (once again), ‘What do you want to waste your life for? Are you a clown?’ I remembered what Fola had said back in her kitchen with a cooker that had never been used and a fridge full of champagne and thought that if it was good enough for her then it would be good enough for me.
11
IT’S FUNNY HOW OFTEN seemingly innocent things can develop a mind of their own and just run away from you completely. You can tell just one little white lie and before you know it you’re on The Jeremy Kyle Show hooked up to a lie-detector test. I’m intrigued by that show, but the only way it could be improved is if you got rid of the lie-detector test and just hooked the guests up directly to the mains. They say that the body gives away subtle signals when you lie. Like if the person you’re speaking to is staring at you without blinking, keeping their hands and legs unusually rigid then he’s probably lying to you. Or he’s about to have a seizure.
But everyone’s guilty of the odd little white lie. I don’t mind telling a lie to spare someone’s feelings. Especially if the person whose feelings I’m sparing are my own. Is honesty really the best policy? When you say to someone, ‘Hi, how are you?’ what you want them to ay is, ‘Fine thanks’, not talk your ear off for half an hour about their bad knee and swollen eye.
The habit of telling lies starts as a child. Mum used to sing me that famous nursery rhyme ‘Hush, little baby, don’t say a word, Mama’s going to buy you a mockingbird. And if that mocking bird don’t sing, Mama’s gonna buy you a diamond ring. And if that diamond ring turns brass, Mama’s going to buy you a looking glass’ and it goes on and on. How sweet, you might think, but I can tell you that was the most disappointing birthday ever.
If you have a younger brother or sister I can tell you that you will probably lie to them just for fun. For instance, my brother Albert used to always tell me that the people on TV could see you as well. I could never watch Baywatch again after that. He also told me that the tooth fairy gave you more money if it was somebody else’s teeth. Well, I believed him and to this day my sister Cordelia still can’t speak to me. Well, she couldn’t speak to anybody then. Not without dribbling.
But the problem is kids don’t know how to tell plausible lies. I used to write little sick notes to the teacher to get out of sports lessons and sign them from my mum. The power of the note at school was like having a get out of jail free card in your back pocket. The only problem was I just knew the names of a lot of the diseases from old books and TV, but I didn’t know what they actually were. So I started with ‘Stephen’s got the flu’, which seemed pretty safe. But after a while I had to choose another illness: diarrhoea worked well because nobody really wants to dwell on that. The teachers were suspicious when I got over appendicitis in an afternoon. When I said that I had Bell’s palsy so I couldn’t play rugby they knew something was up.
I wasn’t the only one in school who got caught out telling stupid lies. I had a classmate who told all of us that his dad had the car KITT from Knight Rider. All day long he was Mr Popular until it came to the end of the day when everyone asked him where KITT was. Suddenly, the lie came crashing down around him. He actually went to the gate and talked into his lapel ‘Uh, school’s over now. You can come and get me.’ He’s in a home now.
Lies are everywhere. Annie Lennox sang ‘Would I lie to you? Would I lie to you honey?’ She also said, ‘Of course not, Dave Stewart, I have no intention of going solo. We’ll be together for ever.’ In fact, lies are so prevalent that most of us can just translate them to truth in our heads. ‘I lost your email’ means ‘communicating with you is not important to me’. ‘At least I’ve got my health’ means ‘my life has been a total failure’. ‘I can’t believe we reached our thirtieth wedding anniversary’ means ‘I can’t believe I haven’t killed you yet’. ‘A for effort’ means ‘you talentless loser’. And ‘Can you keep a secret?’ means ‘I expect you to post this on Facebook within the next ten minutes’.
When you start afresh in your life, for example if you get a new job, move to a new city or change schools or colleges, you can reinvent yourself. In other words you can tell bold-faced lies about who you are and where you come from. I had to move schools very frequently as a kid and the main effect on me of moving so much was that I constantly had to make new friends repeatedly. Some of the schools I was in for such a short amount of time that I could literally have told them anything and been out of there before anyone had time to fact-check. The problem was that the frequent moves always came out of the blue. So I never knew if my new school was the kind where I could get away with the ‘I am the Prince of Nigeria’ type of big lie or if it was more of the ‘of course I have a girlfriend but she lives in Whitstable and doesn’t have a phone in her village’ kind of little lie situation.
On one occasion I got badly caught out with a fib. What began as a little white lie grew into a monster whopper and it cost me a lot to get out of it. It was when I was sixteen and I had just started at sixth-form college. I told all of my new classmates that I was related to 5 Star. I told them that Denise, Stedman, Doris, Lorraine and Delroy were all my first cousins. Looking at those names I thank God that it’s not the eighties any more. Who would call their child Doris these days and expect them to reach super stardom? Names in show business are important. With a name like Whitney Houston a star is born. Gene Pitney ditto. But what if they were to get married? Whitney Pitney would never have worked on stage.
Naturally, with 5 Star appearing on Top of the Pops all of the time,
my friends were huge fans and they all asked if we could get tickets to see them when they came to town. I said, ‘Yeah sure,’ hoping that everyone would forget about it or I’d have to move again before I’d have my hand forced. Unbelievably only a couple of weeks later someone came into college saying 5 Star would be playing at the Wimbledon Theatre and that it would be the perfect time to go and see them. I was seriously in the shit. Sixteen years old, at a new college and trying to make friends. There was the potential here for a kind of social catastrophe that would have meant changing my name to Whitney Pitney and moving to Brazil.
I decided that there was nothing for it but to try and style it out. I actually went to Ticketmaster and bought five tickets for the concert, marched proudly into school and gave them to my friends. My entire life savings to date gone in one fell swoop. But then what’s a sixteen-year-old going to do with money if he hasn’t got any friends to hang out with? What made it worse was that this was the very first concert I’d ever been to. So not only had I been forced to spend a fortune on tickets for my new ‘friends’, but I wouldn’t even be able to relax and enjoy the concert because I’d be so busy having to keep up the pretence. 5 Star really were my favourite band and I’d have loved to go with Stella. But that wouldn’t have worked because she is incapable of lying and would have just laughed in my face if she found out the predicament I was now in, and told everyone what an idiot I was being.
So the magical night came around and we were all at the front of the theatre dancing away and everyone was having a great laugh. Except for me who had to spend the whole time making eye contact and waving at the singers. After a while they even acknowledged me. Not by waving back or smiling at me but more by making eye contact with their security and motioning in my direction. I stopped waving for a bit at that point.
After the show finished, my friends were all trying to get me to take them backstage to meet the band. I even approached the roped-off entrance to the VIP area, but as the security guard saw me approach he physically turned me around and pushed me away. I had to go back to my friends and tell them that there wasn’t a backstage area at all and that the band had gone home. I just hoped that they’d failed to notice the raucous music emanating from behind the door and a steady stream of sexy young hipsters funnelling in behind us to party the rest of the night away.
So I’d managed to get away with it and if anyone guessed that I was bullshitting they never said anything to me about it. I stayed friends with those guys until I finished my A levels, so it was £75 well spent. However, from then on I learned to keep my mouth shut.
That wasn’t the first time that I’d claimed a famous person was my relation. It always seemed like a good way to get attention and I even tried it at primary school. This was less to make friends and more to stop the kids from making fun of me and pushing me around. Being the only black kid (except for my sister) gave me a certain notoriety.
The James Bond film Moonraker had just come out at the cinemas and everyone was raving about it. Although we were all too young to get into the cinema, everyone had bootlegged copies of the film since most of the other kids’ parents were market traders (or in prison). I didn’t get what the fuss about Roger Moore was all about – he was nothing compared to Sean Connery – but I always thought the character Jaws was really cool with his big smiley face full silver teeth and his ability to eat metal. In fact for years I thought the Steven Spielberg film Jaws was going to be a feature-length movie about the big friendly giant who wanted to eat Roger Moore, and was disappointed at Christmas time when I tuned the TV in to catch Jaws only to be confronted by a long movie about a big fish.
One day in the playground I told a pretty bold-faced lie that would go on to haunt me. Yes, you guessed it. I used to say my mum was Shirley Bassey. Kids, as I’ve mentioned, will believe almost anything, and they believed me. For once everyone gave me loads of attention and not as a prelude to chasing after me and trying to hang me up by my coat again. And I milked it like any kid would. I talked about how she’d got to meet James Bond in the flesh and how next time she’d promised to take me with her on location. I was going to drive the James Bond car with her. I was going to go to America with her. I was going to meet Q, M and all the rest of them.
The story went around the school like wildfire and for the rest of the week I was a mini superstar. It was amazing and even the teachers got wind of it. On Friday the head teacher came up to me tentatively and asked me if my mum was really Shirley Bassey. I said, ‘Yeah she is you know! Shirley Bassey, that’s just her stage name. Lots of singers use them.’ Well, she was no genius herself, being a primary school teacher at a school that the local education authority classed as just one rung above a young offenders institute. She bought it and she asked me if I could get my mum, Shirley Bassey, to come and open the school fête. A teacher who would normally just ignore me in the playground or shout at me in class was actually treating me with respect. I have to admit that I got a bit caught up in the moment and I said yes, of course she would come.
It wasn’t until several hours later when I was home that I had time to think about what I had said. I was only eight years old but already I hated school. Mum and Dad knew that I was being bullied by the other kids and it was going to get a lot worse if the school fête came around and there was no one to open it. I’d have to get her to come one way or another. That night at dinner I went for it.
‘Mum, there’s something happening at school.’
‘Is it those white children again? What have they done to you this time, my boy?’
‘No, it’s nothing like that. They’re having a school fête next week. And they always get one of the mothers to come and open it. This year they want you to do it.’
‘This year? Why have I never been asked before?’
There was no point in mentioning Shirley Bassey or James Bond as Mum would have no idea who either of them were. She did, however, like the idea of being invited to the school fête. Mum and Dad never went to any school events. From parents’ evenings to school plays, the Amos household were mysteriously left off the mailing list. So Mum actually jumped at the chance and agreed.
I basked in everyone’s attention for the next week and quickly the big day arrived. It was the typical cheap school fête held under a tarpaulin cover in the rainy car park. There was a stale cake sale and a raffle and a little display of the kids’ finger painting and that was about it. Normally, I wouldn’t even have wanted to go, but this time I couldn’t wait. It was a Saturday morning and Mum dressed up for the occasion. She arrived at the school gates in Dad’s car and when she stepped out of the car all the kids surrounded her in awe. Mum has a way of oozing class when the occasion fits, but with all the adoration she was receiving she didn’t let it get to her head. She knew that these were the kids who were bullying my sister and me and she made sure to say a few choice words to them.
‘Ah. You mouse-faced child. How sweet. Are you a boy or a girl? It is hard to tell with those clothes on.’
‘Ah, little boy. Tell me do you wash your hair every week or every month? Your mother should buy shampoo.’
‘Hello, little girl. You shouldn’t chew chewing gum. It makes your cheeks fat. Oh! You aren’t chewing chewing gum? Don’t worry about it, little chipmunk cheeks.’
‘Are you looking for something on the grass or do you always have a hunchback?’
Mum was having a ball and when one of the kids (Hunchback) came up to her and asked if she could sing the James Bond song, she said ‘Sure, why not? Yes, my dear. I will sing you the James Bond song.’ And then to the tune of ‘Camptown Races’ she sang, ‘James Bond, James Bond, James Bond Bond! James Bond! James Bond! James Bond Bond Bond, James Bond Bond! James Bond Bond Bond Bond!’
The kids loved it! The teachers loved it! (They really weren’t that smart at my school.) I couldn’t believe that everyone bought it and really thought that Mum was Shirley Bassey. You have to remember that this was back in the early eighties and the
teachers were always getting my sister and me confused. When we pointed out that we were not only different people but different sexes, they just said, ‘Well, all black people look the same. Don’t they?’ Well, guess what? To them all black people really did look the same because they asked Mum to come back and open the fête two years running.
Mum really stood up for me that day at school. After that fête, the worst of the bullies diverted their attention to pulling the wings off flies. It’s a shame that neither your mum, your dad nor the sick notes that they used to write to get you out of shit can follow you throughout the rest of your life. Otherwise, the next time I have to perform at a rowdy late-night gig in Leeds and the compere says, ‘Amos! Get up on that stage and make the crowd laugh.’ I’ll just be like ‘No. I got a note from my mum. She says no way. Not in these shoes. They’re brand new from the shop.’
12
LOVE IS ONE OF those elusive things that everyone is constantly on the lookout for. Pubs and bars exist to exploit the fact that we will do almost anything to find it. I mean, who hasn’t walked down to their local town centre late on a Friday night and thought, Hmmm. Maybe love is in that Yates’ Wine Bar. You go in, drink too much, and the next morning you wake up to find that Chewbacca is lying next to you? Or who hasn’t woken up in a stranger’s house, empty beer bottles strewn across the floor, Ginsters’ pies smeared against the wall. You drag yourself to a stranger’s bathroom mirror only to realize that YOU are Chewbacca. Just me? Oh well.
And what is love? Barry White seems to be the only person able to describe properly. Which is weird because it seems to be the number one concern of most music, art, theatre, films and everything else. It’s something that we think we’re going to like because everyone tells us it’s so great but we have no idea what it is; it’s a bit like using Twitter. There are a lot of odd sayings about love. You can be ‘lovesick’, ‘love-struck’, and Mum used to say, ‘Ah! Love! You’ll know it when it hits you,’ which makes love sound dangerous, violent and quite sinister.
I Used to Say My Mother Was Shirley Bassey Page 11
