than I ought. I dislike the fetishisation of grief that accompanied the death of Jade’s forebear, the Princess of Wales – it makes me uncomfortable, as I query its sincerity. Sentimentality is often called the unearned emotion, and intrusive carnivals of public mourning unsettle me. In the case of Jade Goody, however, it is understandable to feel morose: she was a young mum from an awful background who got a break and shrewdly capitalised on it.
For a time she and I shared management, and we met when she came to see several shows of mine at the Edinburgh Festival about five years ago. We all hung out, me, my mum, Jade, some people from the agency and a few of my mates. She was a right laugh, she joined in with everyone and created a garrulous, giddy vibe in bars and cars that elevated the perfunctory time between shows into something which retrospectively seems more special now than it did then. Most of all, though, I was impressed with how she formed an immediate and genuinely sweet bond with my mother, chuckling and chatting with the effortless intimacy that strong yet tender women frequently conjure and which has umbrella’d me from anxiety throughout my life. She also came on a few of my dopey TV shows in later years, where she filled the room with her ebullience and wicked laugh, connecting with the audience in a way that most skilled showmen can only dream of.
One of the charges often levelled at Jade was that she was just a normal girl with no trade or practised skills. Well, people didn’t care, and our heroes are not prescribed to us, we have the right to choose them and the people chose Jade. Fame has long been bequeathed by virtue of wealth and birth, and this was the first generation where it was democratically distributed by that most lowbrow of modern phenomena – reality television. She was a person who, I think due to her class, always had the propensity to irk people. When Big Brother 3 made her famous she was vilified in the papers and bullied in the house, but through her spirit she won people back round and became a kind of Primark Princess with perfumes and fitness videos and endless media coverage – because people were interested in her. They remain interested. Nicola, a woman in her mid twenties, is genuinely heartbroken at the death of Jade. Herself a mother from a working-class background, she obviously connects with this sad narrative in a way that she doesn’t seem to with J.Lo or Jennifer Aniston or Posh Spice, most likely because of Jade’s authenticity and accessibility.
I was uniquely situated when Jade returned to the house and through unschooled social clumsiness blundered into a whooped-up race row. As I said at the time, the incident where the Indian actress Shilpa Shetty was poorly treated by a group of young women was not an example of the sickening scourge of racism but simply a daft lack of education. Jade was a tough girl but utterly lacking in the malice upon which true prejudice depends. The real crime was the slick of spilled newspaper ink and the cathode-conveyed H-bomb that followed this innocuous event. Jade was made the focus of a debilitating wave of righteous loathing and condemnation, a gleefully indignant storm of trumped-up wrath that served the cause of racial harmony not one iota; but that was never its intention. The intention was sacrifice. Well, now Jade Goody is no more – claimed by cancer, a disease often brought on by extreme stress. When my mother was sick, someone unkindly informed me that her illness was my fault, induced by my bad behaviour, and for a long time I believed it.
I’m glad that Jade’s death was handled with saccharine mittens by the papers. She lived and died in the glare of their interest and doubtless benefited from it hugely at times. I recall her tearstained face pegged across some rag as she endlessly sought to be forgiven by the media whom her misconstrued conduct had so incensed. It made me a little angry. She wanted to be accepted, loved, redeemed – and now, through her early death, she is. I hope some of the lessons of this modern fairy tale are learned, that the people who aspire to be like Jade observe the price she paid. I hope her sons are OK and that, on some imperceptible level, contrition is felt by the media that gave Jade Goody everything. And I mean everything.
Jade wasn’t the only contestant I became involved with. I had what I like to refer to as office romances with several housemates. These trysts were inevitable given that my waking life was spent working on that show, which meant I was forever gazing at them on screen and thinking about them or discussing them with Mark and Ian or Nicola.
I met Nicola on Big Brother when the regular make-up lady got pregnant and Nicola was rushed in as a replacement. I didn’t get the original lady pregnant – just to be clear, she was married and in a loving relationship, it had nothing to do with me. Although, not long after starting work with me Nicola, too, was gestating a person in her belly. I adored Nicola instantly, she was incredibly maternal even before she turned her uterus into a bastard factory (literally, she’s not married). Her presence immediately relaxes me. She reminds me of where I’m from and of what’s real and important, she smells clean and laughs dirty. Her hair is all reflective like a shimmering chocolate lake and even when she pulls my quiff a bit or gets mascara in my eye I know she loves me. The four of us, Nicola, Mark, Ian and me, would sit in my fart-ridden dressing-room (I think it was nerves, she hardly ever does it now) and laugh about the show.
Once in a while I’d get a crush on a housemate and it would really add to the excitement of the show, knowing they’d soon be out, all pie-eyed from the flashbulbs, and I’d be there with my hair combed and a bunch of daffodils. I didn’t have affairs with that many housemates; as a percentage it’d barely register, but there were a few and it was bloody brilliant. It was like watching Indiana Jones on telly, then looking out the window on to the patio to see him out there cracking his whip, with his top off and his big, gorgeous brown boobs all jiggling about.
The most reported of my affairs was with Makosi, because I believe she spoke to the papers. Well, kiss and tells have never especially bothered me as I am lucky in my vanilla sexuality. I’m not into anything weird, I just love girls. That woman was delicious, she could’ve kissed and told about the darkest corners of my soul and I’d’ve simply raised a glass to her gold medal knockers and Venusian bum. She was lovely. All the better for having seemingly crept out of my TV set at nightfall and brought my dreams pulsating into reality.
For a fella who was a bit of a chubby nitwit at school, the status I was afforded at this new institution was like a late graduation party. Many of the Big Brother housemates were hapless goons, but a considerable number were bloody easy on the eye-hole and now, looking back, I realise I was lucky. Really lucky to have had such a fun job with such lovely companions and such gorgeous people to flirt with. The show became increasingly successful, ratings grew, and childhood comic idols like Bob Mortimer, David Baddiel and Frank Skinner would tune in, which made me feel sanctioned. My stand-up grew from regular “circuit gigs” above pubs to extravagant cabarets with screaming girls and blokes demanding I repeat my daft catchphrases – “Ballbags, you swine! I pulled down my trousers and pants …” See? Daft. E4, the digital channel we were on, offered me new shows, as did other channels. Lesley Douglas, Controller of the world’s biggest radio station BBC Radio 2 as well as its titchy, digital sibling BBC 6 Music, offered me a show on the latter, and MTV, the station I’d been hurled out of in controversy and disgrace as a worthless junky a few years earlier, came back with the amazing offer of a sexy chat show.
Nicola I kidnapped to install in my ever-growing surrogate family. One way or another I felt kind of isolated as a kid, and consequently as an adult, or tall child or whatever it is I am, I’ve been team building like Brian Clough. Animals, children and the working class comprise the company in which I’ll feel most at ease. I suppose then I should look for a combination of those attributes, buy a caravan and settle down. Though half an hour in bed with a pitbull puppy would be most disconcerting. As my friends grow older (whilst I curiously remain Pan-frozen) there are more children in my life. John Rogers, my invaluable moral barometer and good-humoured collaborator, has a pair of sons that I adore and with whom I can retreat for hours into lies and whimsy, lost in the boundless lunacy of their impulses and thoughts. Oliver, the oldest, is seven now and studious, and quizzes more thoroughly my assertions about unseen pixie kingdoms that thrive unseen beneath the Leytonstone streets. Joey, who is four and a half, has a bazooka mind that shells the world with scenarios and commands that would see an adult condemned to Bedlam. The last time I saw him he told me he wanted
