Going Off Alarming: The Autobiography: Vol 2
Page 30
‘Well, here you go,’ he said, unscrewing the lid. ‘Have a smell of that.’
There may be people who, when offered a sniff of horseradish from a crouching repairman, would defer the sensation until after he had fixed the leak currently causing their kitchen to assume the aspect of the local lido, but I thought unless I satisfied the request he might do a half-arsed job, this time on purpose. So, leaning over the growing pond beneath my feet, I stuck my nose in the jar and inhaled deeply.
Now, have you ever taken in a full lungful of horseradish vapour? To call it powerful stuff does not begin to do it justice. It is devastating. It is cataclysmic. When the United Nations oversee the destruction of all chemical and gas-based weapons in unstable countries, that they leave them in possession of this stuff surely makes the whole process pointless. I have to tell you that you don’t get too far into the sniff anyway because as soon as the fumes enter your nostrils they cause your head to snap backwards like Mike Tyson has just caught you on the point of your chin after a ten-yard run up. Pow! I jack-knifed to attention and then reeled backwards, falling over a mop and bucket full of effluent from the Hotpoint. Down I went and sat on the floor, a ring of stars and cartoon canaries flying around my head that later even Wendy says she saw. All I could hear was some ghastly demonic laughter. It was the washing machine man, now standing over me like the Jolly Green Giant.
‘Sorry, mate,’ he guffawed. ‘That was a bad one, weren’t it? I catch everyone with that – I was only fucking about! Everyone falls for it! Strong, innit?’
Mind totally scrambled by the blast, I gradually became aware that I had become victim of a hideous and degrading jest. And still he chuckled.
‘Tell you what. If you ever get back on telly, you should use that. It’s only horseradish, but it fucking kills ya, don’t it? Your fuckin’ face is a picture!’
I tried to laugh too but I’m told all that came out was a wisp of smoke. Walking away from the scene, my head throbbing from the olfactory coshing, I pondered the insult he’d added to the injury.
‘If ever you get back on the telly . . .’
Hadn’t I just told the man that I had recently finished the script for the Smash Hits Pop Awards presented by Pip Schofield? You can’t get much closer to the media sun than that.
Horseradish pranks aside, his was an attitude that I was going to have to get used to. From now on, whenever anyone spotted me on the Tube, it wasn’t because I had always used them, and still do, to get around the capital, it would be because I was now on Skid Row and had probably been forced to sell my Rolls at a knock-down price just to buy a pair of winter boots. I was the Daz Icarus who had flown too close to the celebrity sun and found its scorching heat to be way above the recommended forty degrees and now was all washed up himself.
This was really brought home to me a few months after the incident with the nerve gas, as Spud and I were sitting in Manze’s pie-and-mash shop in Tower Bridge Road. Two things happened during that typically delicious sitting that made even my dad look at me from under his eyebrows. The first was when I was at the counter getting served; I noticed that of the two celebrity customer photographs the establishment boasted, only Roy Orbison’s was still prominently displayed. Mine was now obscured on the shelf behind dozens of bottles of vinegar. I was later assured this was only temporary, and I believe it, but a more paranoid personality might have seen it as yet another straw in the wind. What happened as Spud and I wolfed down the liquored ambrosia though was unequivocal and perfectly mirrored the little mise-en-scène with which the first of these memoirs closed.
I had noticed a group of three younger men across the room who’d been casting glances in my direction. As they got up to leave, they stopped by our table. ‘Excuse me interrupting while you’re eating,’ said one of them. ‘But is your name Danny Baker?’
With a mouthful of pie-crust I confirmed that it was.
‘I said it was,’ carried on the bloke triumphantly. ‘Do me a favour. He don’t believe you used to be on telly. You did, didn’t ya?’
Forcing down the now bitter crust I was forced to admit, that like Mr Bojangles, I had indeed once trod the boards. It would be no use producing my diary to show any string of current commitments. Either you are on TV. Or you are not. And now not only was I post-Radio Times but apparently some people didn’t even recall the era of glittering prizes.
Still. As long as you’ve got your health, eh?
To be continued.
Notes
1 A notoriously unsophisticated seventies hard rock act who later became a right-wing blowhard, famous for apparently wanting possession of firearms to be made compulsory in the US. He is best remembered for his line, when ordering a meal in London’s Speakeasy nightclub: ‘Honey, I don’t care what you bring me – just take off its horns, wipe its ass and stick it on a plate!’.
2 Several people have pointed out that I never did get round to explaining what eventually happened in that bombsite game of chicken. Well, here’s your spoiler alert: I did not die.
3 And if that paragraph is your sort of thing – just wait till we arrive at volume three!
Plate Section
The only known photo of the whole family together: Mum, Dad, me, Sharon and Michael. Norfolk Broads, 1963.
First photo of me. I’m on the right, playing with Stephen Micalef by the rubbish chute in the flats.
Debnams Road, where I lived until I was twenty. Ours was the first door along.
We were big on blue in my set. Spud can be glimpsed here employing a shop-bought saveloy as a comic phallus. My father, folks.
Mum and Dad: Bet and Fred.
Spud typically enjoying both life and the Courvoisier. My brother’s picture is beside him.
Outside the caravan shortly before shattering my legs in the ill-advised Dr Syn fiasco.
Dad and me at the ‘van. It was twice runner-up in Horse & Hound’s Britain’s Most Luxurious Dwelling poll.
Michael Aspel and me on The Six O’Clock Show. Or possibly Waiting for Godot.
This was how I fed and clothed my loved ones for six years. Note the Taser he’s holding to force me into such public ignominy.
Wendy holding Bonnie in Deptford Park. Our house is roughly centre in the row behind.
At work with Bon-Bon, 1985.
46 Scawen Road, Deptford.
I forced Sonny out to make his own way in the world when he was three. I presume he’s doing OK.
When you enjoy a short rest at Christmas, possibly after a Tio Pepe or two, somebody will always take your photograph.
Twizzle confined in his alley. You can just glimpse the gate on which he hanged himself – before resurrection – at top left.
Twizzle again. We never suspected he was mad.
The only picture I have of my time in panto. Here I am appealing for any loose change.
The cover of the programme from The Great Dick Whittington Scam.
Meeting my absolute hero Anthony Newley while dressed as my own five-year-old son.
This is weird. Made up to look like an old man and pictured begging money from my old man. I wildly overestimated how much hair I would have at that age.
Breakfast at the caravan. People often take pictures of food now but this was the first-ever one and started the craze.
My father-in-law Jim possibly recalling the night a molten lampshade scarred him for life.
In Spain with Rodney, who stumped up my VAT cheque. The surgical wadding in my ear is part of a terrific story that I just realized is not in this book.
Our wedding in 1988. I just realized that is not in this book either. Which will go over big I’m sure.
Wendy and Sonny with Jonathan Ross, Jane and Honey at Universal Studios in 1992. I take Jonathan on holiday with us in case I get awards that need presenting.
Thumb chums. Sonny in our front room with Paul Gascoigne. Paul is on the right.
At the beginning of Donald Duck films he looks like this, like he can’t believe his
luck. It is my default expression whenever I’m asked to pose. ‘Don’t do your DD face,’ begs Wendy. I always do. (Craig Easton)
Atop a mountain in Spain on yet another holiday. I convinced my thinning hair to gather on the western slopes of my skull to fool the camera.
In New York at 5am with the Saw Doctors who I’d met in a bar. We were broadcasting live, loud and very drunk back to Radio 1.
Burying pianos on beaches for Radio 1. Stunned, I have just realized I will be needing this shirt for the cover of Going to Sea in a Sieve.
My Spitting Image. As I got balder the puppet strangely began to grow more hair. (See Oscar Wilde, The Importance of Being Gormless.) (Spitting Image Productions Ltd)
Saturation Point in 1993. Within thirty minutes of this portrait I was utterly bald and as fat as a house.
The Zapruder footage of the Kennedy assassination has been reproduced more than this photo. The story behind it is, arguably, more shocking. (Fiona Hanson/PA Archive/Press Association Images)
Also by Danny Baker
Going to Sea in a Sieve
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Copyright
An Orion ebook
First published in Great Britain in 2014 by Weidenfeld & Nicolson
This ebook first published in 2014 by Weidenfeld & Nicolson
© Danny Baker 2014
The right of Danny Baker to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of the publisher, nor to be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover than that in which it is published without a similar condition, including this condition, being imposed on the subsequent publisher.
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
ISBN: 978 0 297 87012 8
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