Vanished Years Read online

  ‘Yes. It’s made for you.’

  Now Piers Morgan emerged from the depths towards me.

  ‘You’ve got to call Madonna,’ he boomed. ‘What’s her number?’

  He got his cellphone out ready to dial.

  At the word Madonna, the camera lens dilated and looked at me questioningly.

  ‘Madonna,’ I blundered. ‘I don’t know if I have her number.’

  ‘Course you do. Where’s your phone?’

  Piers was definitely not afraid of the camera. He had been itching to get in front of it for years. This may have been a charity event but it was also a diving board. He was going to bellyflop into the water and splash around until he got what he wanted. (American Idol followed by the Parkinson slot.)

  ‘Come on!’ he said.

  ‘Well, she’s not really talking to me at the moment,’ I said, looking guiltily at the camera.

  ‘Ah!’ mimicked Piers unpleasantly. ‘Where’s your phone?’

  I produced my battered old Nokia with the smashed screen, and waved it hopelessly.

  ‘What am I going to tell her?’

  ‘She’s got to give us a lot of money.’

  ‘She won’t like that.’ I started scrolling.

  Piers looked at me. He was about to speak when our camera spied something more interesting across the room and shot away. The lights snapped off. The scene was over. Piers swam off.

  I went over to talk to the girls.

  ‘God, I wish I was on your team,’ I said.

  ‘I know. Poor you,’ said Jo.

  ‘Are we all meant to stay the night together?’

  ‘Yes. In some hotel.’

  ‘I didn’t bring any things,’ I whined. I was turning into clingy desperate me. Ugh.

  The hospitality girls arranged us in a line and gave us each a cue to go into the next room where apparently Alan Sugar was waiting for us like the Wizard of Oz. One by one our names were called out and we mounted the scaffold.

  ‘Have a fabulous time,’ said Emma, blowing a kiss, as my name was called out.

  Imagine my surprise when I saw Sid James sitting on one side of a large table.

  ‘Isn’t that …?’ I whispered to Piers.

  ‘That’s Alan Sugar,’ Piers replied in a worshipful murmur.

  Our two teams sat opposite him. Sid was flanked by Hattie Jacques and some other Carry On character. Both flunkeys regarded us severely.

  Alan introduced himself to each of us, with that blunt insolence peculiar to all barrow-boy billionaires. I suppose this was all part of the fun. He laid into poor Jo Brand for being too fat. She couldn’t have cared less, rummaged in her bag and extracted a giant bar of Fruit and Nut and threw it at him. It was water off a duck’s back to Jo, but Ross Kemp was slightly more sensitive. Sid made some unpleasant remarks about Ross’s recent divorce. They dripped with innuendo. It was all way above my head.

  ‘What’s this all about?’ I whispered to Piers.

  ‘Apparently Rebekah his wife found him in bed with someone. The police had to be called in to pull them apart.’

  ‘What? Ross and the someone? Had they got stuck?’

  ‘No. Ross and Rebekah, you idiot.’

  Rebekah, incidentally, was the editor-in-chief of the Sun newspaper. It was a juicy scandal. After a few minutes of Sid’s grilling Ross went purple.

  This rough-diamond aggression was Alan Sugar’s trademark, and he worked it to the hilt. It was a strangely Vaudeville performance, and weird too, because in contrast to the blunt insults that came from his mouth, he had the sad hangdog eyes of a St Bernard under a troubled brow. He was quite vain, and a little girl popped up from under the table to adjust the hair that was like beige haircord and powder down the klaxon nose. He was a postmodern clown, tragic and angry, and The Apprentice was this year’s Big Top. His delivery was sheer Sid James. They could have been twins.

  In fact, I am not at all sure, to this day, that the whole Lord Sugar phenomenon is not one great big heist. Maybe the whole Carry On team have been made Labour peers without us knowing it. Barbara, Duchess of Windsor. Anyway, whether he was Alan or Sid, he was pretty unpleasant to everyone, and if that wasn’t enough for one day, he then explained the task. We were to organise a giant funfair for one thousand celebrities that was to take place in three days. We had to raise a certain amount of money, and each group had to set up sideshows, bars and hot-dog stands, parking, security, publicity, everything.

  My heart sank. It was the week before Christmas! The one week in the whole year when everybody has plans for every minute of every day. Nobody is sitting around during the week before Christmas doing nothing, and if they are, then the last thing they want to do is go to yet another Red Nose Day event in the freezing cold where they have to lay out a whole lot more cash than they have already spent, satiating their starving chicks on the Christmas orgy. It seemed ludicrous.

  I looked for signs of fatigue among the other contestants but their smiles were glued on, except for Ross Kemp who was fuming.

  ‘Any questions?’ growled Sid James. No one answered. ‘Then good luck. Enjoy yourselves.’

  We were dismissed and taken to a bar to get to know each other. I sat on a couch in the corner with a glass of wine and wished I was dead. This was a nightmare.

  Actually it was a dream come true. Ever since I can remember, I have had a recurring dream about being sent back to boarding school. Sometimes I am packing my trunk. At others I am arriving in my dormitory, or going in to school prayers. Everybody whispers as I walk by, because I am not a child in these dreams. I am the person I am on the day of the dream, so usually I am a famous movie star. Sometimes I am going to a première in my school cap and shorts. I can’t take them off because I might be spanked. (Wet dream.) Sometimes I am late for a performance in the theatre in London because I am brushing my teeth at a row of sinks, ludicrous in dressing gown and slippers, in a crowd of tiny boys. (Anxiety dream.) Or sometimes I am on the skids and am sent back to school by my agent. (Realistic dream.) No matter how much I try to explain that I shouldn’t be there, that I have to leave, no one listens. They look right through me because they can see only a small boy acting up.

  ‘But Mummy, I’m famous now.’

  ‘I know, darling. Isn’t that super?’

  How can I go and live in a dormitory with other boys?

  ‘You’re boring me now, darling! Pull yourself together. You’ll love it when you get there.’

  Dreams do come true. This was the first day of school. There were the big boys, with their untucked shirts and terrifying testosterone levels, the friendly matrons and misses, sympathetic but distant, and finally, appearing out of nowhere, everyone’s hero, our very own scoutmaster, Mr Curtis.

  ‘Gather round, everyone!’ he said.

  ‘Hooray!’ we all roared. We jostled in, eager scouts and cubs. Richard was rather like a big blond schoolboy, a white rat. He had that confidence one loves in the school’s most popular prefect.

  ‘Sir. Sir. Sir.’

  We all put up our hands in worship, hoping for a nod, a wink, a wank even.

  ‘Now you all know the form,’ he continued, arms akimbo. Only his toggle was missing. ‘It’s going to be tough. But a lot of fun, I think. I believe you’re going to the hotel now, and the sooner you all get started the better. There’s a lot of work to do. Any questions?’

  ‘Yes. I have one,’ drawled Jo Brand. ‘Couldn’t we just click our fingers like they did in Los Angeles?’

  Polite giggles. Mr Curtis threw back his head and laughed.

  ‘No, Jo, we can’t!’ he said.

  I wanted to ask when dinner was, but didn’t dare.

  ‘Well, good luck everyone. Have a smashing time.’

  Everyone picked up their suitcases, signed their release forms and braced themselves for the next circle of the inferno.

  I was bundled into a car with Alastair Campbell. It was already nine o’clock. Alastair and I were squeezed onto the back seat while two ca
mera sharks and their pilot fish squatted at our feet, pointing their various tools in our direction. There was obviously going to be no off-camera time. We were both rigid with performance as we scrolled through our phones, pretending to look for people to call and ask for money.

  ‘I don’t know anyone,’ I moaned.

  ‘Of course you do,’ encouraged Alastair, looking over my phone. ‘Who’s Joe Escort?’

  I took a moment to think. The camera’s black hole rounded on me enquiringly, dilating into a close-up.

  ‘Um. An escort called Joe?’

  ‘Any money?’ replied Alastair without missing a beat.

  ‘Tons probably. Cash too.’

  We drifted off into our own thoughts. I tried to think of some ingenious way to escape, because I knew I could not spend four days with these people and their cameras in our faces 24/7. I had arrived at my charity Waterloo. Here I was, sitting in a car with the man who sexed up the dossier that took us to war in Iraq. Actually he was rather nice in person, but so was Hitler. Alastair was discreet and world weary, like a retired gym teacher. He seemed big, badly dressed and sexy, and his sad eyes looked medicated. Maybe taking us to war had exhausted him. Being too close to power had eaten a chunk out of him. At any rate he wasn’t going to headbang anyone on this gig, although he did have a big knobbly nose that was made for aggression or at least cunnilingus. It was going to get bigger as he got older. But the old Blair thug was no longer there. Not even a whisper. Thank God. Hopefully the camera was not reading my thoughts because my shark looked briefly from his eyepiece and winked. He seemed exhausted too.

  We finally arrived at some West End hotel in a suite that reminded me of Tutankhamen’s tomb. The bedrooms had been stripped of furniture and crammed with all the apparatus of reality. Behind their closed doors, directors and assistants huddled over banks of screens, whispering instructions on walkie-talkies, while in the large sitting room Piers and Ross were warming up, lobbing chit-chat back and forth. Thank God for the painkillers I had stolen from my mother’s bathroom. A couple of Tramadol and a large vodka in the bar on the way up, and the flooding panic began to subside. Sort of. I sat down. A little round make-up lady scuttled from a cupboard to powder me down and then ran back in, slamming the door behind her. Cables coiled across the floors, dragged by unseen forces round the furniture and under doors. Piers paced the room talking at length to Philip Green, another bright light on the charity scene, while Alastair Campbell called Tony Blair’s office. Maybe I should phone the escort called Joe and liven things up a bit. I began to feel sick.

  ‘Tony’s going to try and come down,’ said Alastair. Cameras U-turned and screeched to a halt at our various faces to catch the ecstatic reaction.

  ‘Wicked,’ said Ross, making a thumbs-up sign. (Big hands, incidentally.)

  I have never been a very ‘interior’ actor, but I learnt fast. Vomit was about to explode from my mouth (Tramadol OD, vodka and Tony) but I managed to make it look as though I were simply blowing my cheeks out in orgasmic disbelief. Meanwhile I swallowed hard and raised my eyebrows. Luckily I could that month. When I got the puke back down to my stomach, I added a little knowing giggle. I must have been purple under the powder because the make-up lady elbowed aside the camera that was three inches from my nose and shoved hers right up close.

  ‘Look at you,’ she whispered, placing a Kleenex over my face.

  ‘Just leave it there,’ I said.

  ‘What, dear?’

  ‘Nothing.’

  This make-up lady was a giant lazy bee, buzzing around the table with her little bag of tricks, bumping into a camera, bouncing back, and hovering over her blooms as she patted and primped and sprayed us down before zooming at a sedate pace back to her hive.

  We were each given a writing pad and a pencil, and sat around the table to start our first meeting.

  ‘When you want. In your own time,’ shouted a voice through a door, which then slammed, and we were off.

  ‘OK,’ ordered Piers. ‘Let’s get organised.’

  How much longer could I look constantly intrigued without having a stroke, I wondered. My camera looked at me accusingly. ‘Do something!’ it seemed to be saying, so I scribbled frantic doodles on the pad.

  ‘Philip Green is providing all the champagne!’ bellowed Piers. I wrote that down, just in case I forgot. I’m sure they’ll all be thrilled to pieces down at the sweatshop in Bangladesh. Maybe Lucifer could bring the nibbles.

  ‘Now. What about the hamburger stand?’ asked Alastair.

  ‘Ah yes. We need to make ten thousand quid on it if we’re going to beat the girls,’ replied Piers.

  ‘That’s not going to be easy,’ said Ross. ‘Ten thousand pounds’ worth of hamburgers! That’s a thousand hamburgers.’

  ‘And stars don’t eat, remember,’ I ventured.

  Suddenly I saw a chink of light.

  ‘What about if I leave the show, and come back and buy one hamburger for ten thousand pounds?’

  Everybody and their lenses turned to me.

  ‘What?’ said Alastair, thrusting slightly. He glanced at Piers, who raised his eyebrows in disbelief.

  ‘Yes. I was thinking. It could be quite good. Why don’t I leave? And then you don’t even need to buy the burgers. Or cook them, for that matter.’

  ‘You’re not serious,’ said Piers. It was a statement, not a question.

  ‘Deadly. It could be a solution. I really don’t think I’m cut out for all this.’

  ‘For God’s sake, pull yourself together,’ boomed Piers.

  ‘OK,’ I replied meekly.

  ‘You can do it if you pay a hundred thousand,’ was his generous last thought on the subject.

  ‘No, I don’t have that kind of money.’

  ‘Then stop whining and get on with it.’

  ‘OK. Right.’

  Piers then went upstairs to try to sell me to the girls’ team, but unfortunately they weren’t buying.

  I went to the loo, so that the others could have the bitch about me I could tell they needed. As I came out I passed a small door. It was ajar. I peeked through. Outside was a service staircase. I felt like the character from Midnight Express. I looked around. There was no one in sight. I slipped through and shut the door behind me. I leant against it, my heart racing so hard, my vision throbbed. Did I dare? What would everyone say? Someone walked past talking loudly. Probably Philip Green had arrived with the champagne. Fuck it.

  I ran down that staircase three at a time. I crashed against the emergency door. An alarm screamed inside the building, and I ran across the road. I have rarely felt so exhilarated in my life. I sprinted all the way to Piccadilly, crossed the street and nearly crashed into Richard Curtis getting out of a taxi. I swerved into the Ritz. It was a narrow escape. In the Ritz everything was going on as usual. I collected myself, looked back to make sure the scoutmaster wasn’t following and about to blow his whistle at any moment. What a stroke of luck that I was wearing a suit. There seemed to be only one thing for it. I straightened my tie, did up my jacket, smiled at the receptionist, and breezed down that beautiful long corridor, with its cream walls and gilt mirrors, its sconces with their wonky little lamp-shades, past the Palm Court, where a fat bald man played the violin accompanied by a grim spiritualist on the piano, and straight into the restaurant.

  ‘Do you have a table for one, by any chance?’ I asked the maître d’.

  ‘Of course, Mr Everett. This way, please.’

  He led me through the half-empty room to a table in the window. I sat down and stroked the crisp pink linen. I was in heaven. The restaurant at the Ritz was one of the most beautiful dining rooms in the world. At night it had a soft pink glow and a slightly religious atmosphere. Conversation was hushed, delicate, and broken only by the sound of corks being drawn from bottles. Candles fluttered in the breeze from the waiters’ tailcoats, and ghosts of a thousand dinners could be heard under those ceilings of pink and blue skies if you listened very carefully. Outside, Gr
een Park stretched down towards the Palace. Lamps shone in necklaces laced through the bare winter trees.

  I called my agent.

  ‘Michael. I left. You’ve got to tell Richard. Say I’m sorry. I couldn’t take it.’

  ‘What happened? Why are you whispering?’

  ‘I’m very upset. It was just hideous. I can’t talk.’

  I had a delicious dinner and then went home.

  I never slept so well in my life as I did that night. When I woke up it felt like the first morning of the school holidays. I went out with my bike to get the papers and have a leisurely breakfast, but on my front doorstep was the lady who had collected me the night before.

  ‘What are you doing here?’ I asked, without stopping, panic suddenly exploding through me again.

  ‘They want you to come back,’ she said.

  ‘No. I can’t.’

  I got on my bike. Another lady appeared. Christ, maybe they were going to abduct me. The second lady grabbed my handlebars.

  ‘Look. I’m sorry. I’m very late. I am not coming back. Ever.’

  ‘They just want you to do a scene on London Bridge, with the others, of you leaving.’

  ‘Sorry.’

  I took her hand from the bar and set off as fast as I could round the corner and didn’t stop until I reached King’s Cross. I went into the station. Now I knew what it felt like to be a spy on the run. I was seeing Apprentice folk everywhere. What should I do? How could I escape?

  ‘The train leaving from platform five is the eight-eighteen for Ely and King’s Lynn.’

  There is a God. I ran towards platform five and jumped on the train. Within five minutes the guard had blown his whistle and the train was straining laboriously into action. I looked out of the window as the station receded, half expecting to see the two lady producers burst onto the platform, but the guard turned and ambled back towards the barrier and I settled down in my seat, sighing with relief. I would get off at King’s Lynn and cycle all the way to Burnham Market. My grandmother lived there. I hadn’t seen her for at least ten years. I could hide out until the storm blew over.

  There was another man in the first-class compartment. He was older and dressed rather lavishly for an English train journey in a bottle-green corduroy suit, with a brightly patterned silk handkerchief gushing from his breast pocket. His face was obscured by an extravagant black fedora. Two fleshy lips – framed by stubble, hanging slightly – were all that could be seen under its rim. After about three minutes I nearly screamed. It was Clement Freud, Emma’s father. My life was turning into The Lady Vanishes. Any minute now I would disappear without trace.