Going Off Alarming: The Autobiography: Vol 2

by Danny Baker

  I wish I had done that instead of freezing, utterly pole-axed like an overawed serf. Which, of course, is exactly what I was. The Evening Standard when I eventually looked at it carried the story of the Thames Barrier opening, right there on its front page. Had I imagined the whole episode after subconsciously registering the newspaper splash? Even now I wrestle with that, but had I been tripping out surely the incident would not have been so mundane nor occurred in real time. No, there is no doubt that Her Majesty the Queen and I really did share a private moment over by Rambo’s junkyard. The most reassuring part of the tale has to be that even the Queen of England doesn’t just creep across red lights on quiet roads when there’s no one around.

  My Friend The Sun

  The continuing success of both Morning Edition and 606 on the radio quickly spiralled into a welter of job offers from all points of the media compass. Financially, these culminated in the adverts for Daz and Mars Bars, so that during any commercial break it was possible to spot my happy old head popping up in consecutive shills, bellowing assured testimonials about forty-degree washes and promising chewy glucose goodness. I have to report that whatever goodwill the public may have towards a performer can soon be soured by such a brassy assault.

  The Mars campaign was directly linked to my soaring profile as a sports voice to trust, and so I would find myself travelling with the England team on their official coach, all of us wolfing down the toffee-and-chocolate snacks while urging everyone watching to do the same. I can’t quite remember the deathless copy I was required to deliver, but it was probably something along the lines of, ‘These taste sensations are goodlylicious in anyone’s language! Isn’t that right, boys?!’ To which all the England players would nod while trails of lightly whipped nougatine ran from the corners of their mouths. In fact, for the most part we used blocks of wood inside customized wrappers as real chocolate would have melted under the hot TV lights. People still raise an eyebrow when I tell them that Mars, like Birdseye, is a family name. At that time every single ad made for the company worldwide had to be personally signed off by Forest Mars himself, then ninety-three years old and living in New York. In terms of their budget, or ‘spend’ as I believe it is now called, the Mars commercials made Daz look like an old lunatic in sandwich boards walking the streets and ringing a bell. The high point for me came on the morning the 1992 Barcelona Olympics were due to start: I was one of the few people allowed into the final rehearsals of the opening ceremony, where I was filmed walking among the legion of dancers in crackpot costumes, chewing my lips off and holding up a disguised wooden block.

  Another spin-off from 606 came about as a result of a throwaway remark during one of the early shows about there being far too many VHS videos on the market depicting the brilliance of footballers and not nearly enough looking at the game from the other end of the telescope. Why, I wondered out loud, was there no compendium of shocking misses, terrible action and wonderfully bonkers own goals? Within a few days a leading video distributor contacted me to see if I was serious about this. I said I was, and the resultant series of releases – Own Goals & Gaffes – sold through the fucking roof.

  I had, however, featured in one video previously to this: Paul Gascoigne’s The Real Me. It was thanks to this assignment that I first met Paul; neither of us could have anticipated that our friendship would become so close, nor that it would, for a brief while, dominate the tabloid agenda just a few years down the line.

  The two of us had almost met in Italy during the 1990 World Cup. That year England had made it to the semi-finals, where they were to face Germany in Turin. I leave you to recall or imagine how berserk was the resultant mania back in Britain at the time. I was working on Six O’Clock Live and the story we were looking at was about the desperation of England fans to make it out to Italy in time for kickoff. All flights were full and by other means time would be tight. Somebody in production had the idea that there might be something in seeing if I could hitch-hike out to Italy in twenty-four hours, filming my own progress. This was long before the era of blogs or video diaries and the novelty, coupled with the ticking-clock element, was deemed to be worth the punt. As a further incentive, ITV Sport said that if I arrived before the game they would provide me with a ticket to the match. As a little film it all worked pretty well, although it required a little cheating to ensure that events attained the necessary level of drama.

  Having arrived at Dover, I was filmed walking along the long line of lorries waiting to board the ferry, saying that the next leg of my trip would be trying to get to Paris. Beyond that, I was hoping to get a succession of private cars to inch me towards the Alps. Walking up to the lorry at the front, I tapped on the driver’s window. As I did, I think my speech to camera went something along the lines:

  ‘Now, fingers crossed one of these drivers will not only speak English but be willing to drop me somewhere near Paris where I can put out my thumb and begin the next leg of this adventure . . .’

  The driver wound his window down.

  Excuse me, where are you headed?’ I asked him.

  ‘Turin,’ he said. ‘Want a lift?’

  This of course was a hopeless answer in terms of our proposed nail-biting epic. Just seeing me get in a trucker’s cab and get out again at the stadium would hardly sustain dramatic interest. So we waved away driver number one and tried several others in the queue, but it was hopeless. Everyone, it seemed, was going my way and only too happy to drop me almost on the centre spot of the Stadio delle Alpi. This was not how we had excitedly imagined the story back in London. Once again tricky old real life had failed to acknowledge the fantasies of a feverish media. Eventually we did find a man who agreed to be filmed saying he was going in the direction of Paris and would get me as close as he could. In fact, he was going to Turin with a load of cherries, but we slipped him a tenner so that our epic thriller could at last begin with the required difficulty.

  These days there would be an outcry that we had manipulated everything and we’d be forced to show the truth – me making small talk with an HGV driver from Poplar for seven hours. Allow me once more to direct you toward my earlier remarks about what full disclosure did for radio competitions and prizes. While we’re here, I can tell you that when we all got ‘caught’ making stuff up, I introduced a phrase to our culture that has now been eagerly adopted by the political classes. During a particularly thin item about how the fans of Matt and Luke Goss, then Britain’s leading pop sensations, Bros, had been upsetting the residents of the swanky new neighbour-hood they had moved into, we found that nobody was upset in the least. This inconvenient detail rather put a crimp in our exclusive, so a friend of one of our researchers was filmed mouthing all the necessary disapproval. Even the producers on a programme as slight and knockabout as ours thought this was a bit much and so the item was shelved until some genuine crazy people could be tracked down. These were scraped together a few months later, happily for us while Bros were still hogging the notoriously fickle teen agenda. However, on the night of broadcast the original edit went out, featuring our researcher’s chum. This caused many of those who lived near Matt and Luke to ask who on earth this posturing oaf was, spouting all the fury. A few local papers then went to town on this, and once the London Standard hopped aboard the growing imbroglio LWT found it had landed itself a reputation as television’s leading deceit sewer, where supine stooges queued up to badmouth national treasures for the price of a hot meal.

  At the height of the furore, I was stopped outside the studios by a journalist who asked how on earth we had thought we could get away with such horse feathers. I told him what had happened and, as a sort of sign-off, concluded, ‘It should never have gone out at all – but it was a cock-up, not a conspiracy.’ This diffused the scandal somewhat and today whenever I hear those last six words uttered, usually against the backdrop of Westminster, I roar out the chorus of ‘Drop the Boy’ in fitting tribute.

  Back at the 1990 World Cup, the footage of my travels to Tu
rin was adequately massaged to make it appear I got there in the nick of time and settled into my seat to watch England lose on penalties in a game they really should have won. This was the match of Gazza’s tears and Gary Lineker’s ‘have a word with him’ signal to the bench. Although there had been talk that I might talk with the team after the final whistle, the result and general mood in the stadium at the finish put paid to all that.

  So I was not to meet Paul until a few months later, when I was asked to play the public’s guide on The Real Me, a light documentary officially endorsed and starring the nation’s darling himself. Our introduction came in the Tottenham Hotspurs’ treatment centre, adjacent to their Middlesex training camp. We were left alone in one of the rooms and at first Paul busied himself with something, anything, rather than attempt eye contact. He then sat pretending to read a copy of the Daily Mirror while I spouted off stories. Every now and then he would look up, his face alive with pleasure, saying, ‘Is that right? Fantastic! Tell me again . . .’ Half an hour later the pair of us were exchanging rapid jokes and opinions about TV personalities, the kind of kids we’d been to school with and the way the man who just came in to fix the sunbed spoke. It was an instant and joyful bonding and set the scene for some of the wildest times I have known in my life. There was hardly a week in the years immediately after that first encounter when we didn’t see each other; rarely a day passed without flurries of phone calls. Whenever we met up – though I have never been and never will be a larky sort – the infinite possibilities of each passing moment definitely became more heightened.

  You could tell when he’d done something. He’d disappear for five or ten minutes and then return hopelessly casually, bristling with nonchalance, unable to prevent the corners of his mouth from turning up and giving off a sort of silent alarm. Also it had been twenty minutes since the last ‘thing’.

  ‘Paul, I know you. You’ve done something. Please don’t have done something.’ I would plead with him, ‘No, Paul, this is a great restaurant – I come here a lot.’

  ‘Ha’way man, you’re paranoid. I just went for a tab . . .’ And he’d fix you with dancing eyes, bursting to let you in on whatever booby-trap he’d just set beneath your social standing. This would rapidly evolve into a smile that would disappear clear around his jaw-line.

  ‘What?!’ he’d splutter. ‘What?! Relax, y’old bastard. I swear, I just had a quick puff.’

  And I’d receive a concentrated beam of inner hysteria, unbridled laughter in all but sound. Whatever it was this time, he was particularly proud of it and we’d all find out before long.

  It could be anything. Paul was very fond of introducing stray cats and dogs to high-end locations. He could be found in the kitchens of unspeakably fashionable eateries, searching for ‘real bread’ in order to make an egg sandwich. And nudity was only ever a heartbeat away.

  At Champneys health spa in Piccadilly – admittedly an unlikely rendezvous for the pair of us at that time – to the horror of both staff and clientele Paul arrived smoking an enormous Cuban cigar that thoroughly stunk up the entire reception area. On being told to extinguish it immediately, he physically jolted at his thoughtlessness, profusely and genuinely apologizing. Then, in the absence of any ashtrays, he placed the burning tip into the desk fan, sending not only a thousand shards of stogie into the atmosphere but extending the hearty smell of it to hitherto untouched portions of the club.

  Going out with Paul Gascoigne was like taking to the town with a case full of wet dynamite. Like promenading with a hybrid of Hunter Thompson and Norman Wisdom. Like nothing mattered.

  Everybody at some point in their lives deserves to know someone like Paul Gascoigne, someone so reckless and magnificent they have seemingly been raised by lightning. For several years I knew him intimately, and I cannot think when I’ve laughed more or felt more alive.

  Few people can, as the saying goes, ‘stop the mighty roar of London’s traffic’ simply by appearing on its streets. I know Madonna can’t because I’ve seen Madonna shopping in London’s West End and the sight of her pootling along Bond Street barely caused a pizza-bike to backfire. But Paul Gascoigne could.

  Shortly before the above described cigar faux-pas I had watched him crossing the road in Piccadilly and every car, every bus, every taxi came to a halt and started sounding its horn. People leaned from windows hollering jokes and hellos that all became lost in the swell of the rising din. The tourists knew him, the policemen knew him, the newspaper sellers knew him. The social anarchy that followed his every move in the mid-nineties was totally genuine. He had no ‘people’ to organize and manufacture his celebrity, no agenda other than to simply get through each tumultuous day that his gift and nature had bequeathed him.

  On an early visit to Paul’s family home in Newcastle I was shown his trophy room. Though not a large space it was completely shelved and every shelf was full of cups, medals and prizes. The startling part was that only about a third of these were for football. Virtually every other mainstream sport was represented here, from cricket to snooker, and there were very few silver awards or runner-up certificates. Like Dustin Hoffman in Rain Man with his uncanny mathematical abilities, Paul could ‘do’ sport as easily as draw breath – and plainly had been able to do so since taking his first baby steps.

  I later found out that his genius for games was so acute that it became difficult for him to find competition willing to play against him, even among his supposed soccer equals. Thus, at the England training camp, if Paul was playing snooker he was only allowed to hold the cue with one hand. If he played table tennis he would have to put the bat aside and just play with his hands. He could only get a game of darts on the condition that he threw his arrows with the point facing toward his nose. Not only that, he would simultaneously smoke, talk and keep an eye on the horse racing while doing all these things.

  One Wednesday morning on the pitch at St James’ Park – where we were filming The Real Me video – I challenged, possibly threatened, him to a penalty shootout. I mean, you would, wouldn’t you? Anyone can win at penalties. Immediately, Paul began compiling a list of handicaps that he would take on.

  ‘Right, you can take ten – I’ll just have six. I mustn’t have a runup. I can only kick the ball by putting my right foot around behind my left foot. And I have to tell you in advance where I’m going to put it.’

  Now look. I understand that I am not in Paul Gascoigne’s class. I’m not even in the same school, city or universe. But there is a limit to the amount of patronizing tosh a chap can take. And he wasn’t done.

  ‘Even better. You can tell me where I have to put it. And on the last one, I have to run up backwards and heel it in with me eyes shut.’

  It was then that it dawned on me these insane, self-imposed rules were neither a display of ego nor arrogant grandstanding. This was the only way he knew of giving tasks the edge necessary to engage his ferociously competitive drive. Like the chronic gambler who will agree to sit in on a poker game he knows to be crooked, Paul needed to stack the odds against himself in order to feel anything at all from the resultant victory.

  Everyday life and action bored him. It always had. The constant need to assuage this gnawing inner ennui ran deep within him. By the nineties he was attaining the power, freedom and means to temporarily fend off the void by cranking up the heart-stopping risks on a daily basis. Even then he knew it was an addiction that would never be satisfied, no matter how spectacular its manifestations became. He knew it would eventually drive him insane. The brighter his star shone, the more its inevitable collapse into a black hole haunted him.

  On many days, and with growing frequency, I could glimpse the fear of that impending sentence burning wildly behind his perpetually teary eyes. Gazza cried when he laughed and he cried when he hurt. He cried while telling stories and while miles away in thought. There is an argument that he was among the prime movers in making crying such a queasy modern British phenomena. Yet his were no tears for effect. He simply ne
ver wanted any feeling, any fleetingly distracting pulse of experience, to stop. The tears marked the moment. He was ‘there’ then. Soon the restless agonies would swallow him up again, denying him peace, denying him even a few hours’ sleep.

  For a while though, the ‘cures’ for his pain were both explosive and exhilarating.

  I have a store of extraordinary stories about Paul, each one presenting a unique, astounding, sometimes hilarious, often portentous facet of a personality so huge it eventually obliterated normal everyday function.

  But let me here simply reproduce one particular sack of monkeys that might help people glimpse what life in his orbit was truly like.

  There is an infamous, much-reproduced photograph that shows Paul, Chris Evans and myself standing in the reception of the Grosvenor House Hotel, London, looking as if we had been drinking all day, out all night and had no intention of wrapping things up for at least another thirty-six hours.

  It was actually taken at about midday and the build up to it, and the events that followed, pretty much sum up the circus that was Paul’s life back then.

  The first thing to say is that we are all stone-cold sober in that shot. Moreover, if you look at Paul, he is frozen to the spot in out-and-out terror. You’ll discover why.

  The plan – hastily arranged via a few phone calls earlier that morning – had been to go and spend the day at the races. Why, I have no recollection – none of us are gamblers. Paul was playing for Glasgow Rangers at the time and rarely made it down to London, so probably he was looking for something more to do with his furlough than just watch DVDs and down a few Budweisers.

  Paul, Chris and I were three extremely close friends then, bonded by a love of basic proletarian low-life laced with liberating high jinks. We had no interest at all in the celebrity circuit and its fascination with exclusive media venues like the Groucho Club. Indeed, the fact that when we did have a drink we’d do it openly in ordinary pubs somehow set the tone for the whole ‘Three Muska-Beers’ tagline that has dogged the three of us to varying degrees ever since.