The moustache leered at me from beneath the dripping edge of a sou'wester.
‘Could you make it out to Denise?’ it wheezed. ‘And can you write that she looked better as a man?’
The pen made a staggered leap across the page leaving an awkward ‘Madeley’ in its wake. I would have thought it had got used to the odd requests I’ve been receiving during my book signing tour of the country’s bookshops. In Durham, a man carrying a shih tzu in a pink tutu had asked me to make the book out to ‘Bill’. I was happy to oblige. ‘Oh, wonderful!’ he exclaimed, holding his copy at arm’s length and showing my signature off to the dog. ‘Can you see this, Bill? The kind Mr. Madeley has signed a book for you. And after all the horrible things you’ve said about him.’
In Birmingham, I’d been asked to sign a book for a man’s mother. ‘Her name is Beryl,’ he explained. ‘And it would be great if you added something about her pickled onions.’
‘Pickled onions?’ I repeated. ‘What on earth am I supposed to say about her pickled onions?’
The man looked at me as though I were the one wearing the hand knitted cardigan portraying the Life of Judy in a dozen types of stitch.
‘Don’t tell me you didn’t get them!’ he screamed, his face reddening before it headed towards the blue end of the Dulux colour chart. ‘We sent those onions by first class mail! First class mail!’
My pen hesitated over the page. It’s always difficult when a fan has sent me a gift that the production office failed to pass on. It’s even more difficult when the fan has a tattoo on his neck that resembles your own wife. I cast a look to the right arm of his cardigan where Judy was also reading the news in her Granada Reports glory. I had been worn down to a hole which revealed a series of biceps you wouldn’t want to annoy.
‘To Beryl,’ I wrote. ‘Your pickled onions were the finest we’ve ever tasted.’
He took the book from me and slowly scanned my penmanship, which isn’t just easy on the eye but has been praised by Rolf Harris as an model of calligraphy. Finally, the man turned to look at me, a tear taking a slow route down his cheek. ‘Oh, that’s wonderful,’ he said, beaming proudly. ‘Mother will be so happy. She’ll be the proudest girl on E Wing!’ The last I saw of him was a shape running off across a Birmingham car park, sequins forming a large ampersand fading into the night.
This book tour has left me with so little time to write that all these examples crowd for space in this hurried post as I make my way to Rotherham. There was the man in Liverpool who told me he was channelling the spirit of the late Russell Harty.
‘Could you sign it for Russell?’ he asked. ‘He’s your biggest fan on the other side.’
‘I have a wide appeal,’ I said, trying my best to humour him.
‘There’s no need to be smug,’ he replied. ‘Otto von Bismarck thinks you’re a git.’
I fixed him with a stare. ‘But that’s only because we never did agree about the outcome of the Austro-Prussian War,’ I replied as I scribbled my name on his copy of the book and moved on to the next person in the line.
Things were no more normal north of the Border. In Edinburgh’s Waterstones, I met a man who claimed to be the modern Pétomane and told me that he’d be perfect for the show. I didn’t know what he meant until the tune of ‘Scotland the Brave’ began to emanate from beneath his kilt. The first few bars were fine but they were followed by the aroma of partially digested haggis. I quickly scribbled my name on his copy of the book and took a break from signing while the room was ventilated. When I got back, I was entertained by a woman who could play her dentures like castanets whilst her husband danced the flamenco. Both of them bought copies so I was forced to sit through the complete routine. I said nothing when an incisor came loose and bounced from my forehead.
I arrived home tonight. The slight bruising above my right eye has almost disappeared and only the faintest outline of a tooth remains. I found my blog silent, a few emails from outraged fans demanding that I explain my gaff on the Chris Moyles show, and a few are from non-fans who want me to disappear forever.
‘Blog no more, you filthy imposter!’ say some.
‘Write another book!’ say others.
‘Do you want us to send more pickled onions?’ asks one odd man from the Midlands.
Monday, 13 October 2008
From Durham To Edinburgh
Friday, 10 October 2008
Slipping Up On Radio One
You might say that being a best-selling author is all glitz and book signings but let me tell you about the significant chafing around my right buttock which is making it difficult to type tonight. Not only is it typical of the things they fail to mention when you sign your publishing deal but I’m also having flashbacks of the time when Judy and I rode a camel across Southport beach for Granada Reports. Judy thrashed our Bactrian one too many times and I slipped from the second hump. This went out live to the North West and I suffered a terrible wound caused by an impacted mollusk.
This time, the damage was inflicted over a long morning sitting on a PVC chair in a hot Radio One studio while Chris Moyle interviewed me over his breakfast of Sugar Puffs and scintillating wit. It was the latest part of the press junket for my book, ‘Fathers and Sons’ and I continued to rack up the mistakes.
Last week, I told a woman from 'The Guardian' that sherbet was poisonous to tadpoles (it isn’t, I was confusing it with tapioca), and only yesterday I told a crowd of shoppers at a W.H. Smiths book signing that earwigs are the only insect to have an odd number of elbows (they don’t, I was thinking of the Slovakian cockroach). This time, I went and let slip about my blog. Judy thinks it was a stroke of genius. I say it was something much more significant.
It came about because the early viewing figures from ‘Watch’ are only respectable. The pale somewhat beside the figures for the Appreciation Society which is clearly where all the Madeley action is to be found. With readership numbers peaking in the high hundred thousands, it’s here that the hard core Madeley fan comes to smell my musk. And a powerful agent it most certainly is. Moyles was soon under the spell of my aroma. With a large kernel of puffed wheat hanging from his second or third chin, he asked me if I hate Channel 4. It was an unscripted question and I made a glib comment about my blog. You can hear it here (thanks to David over at The Spine for bringing the recording to my attention) or here (about 1h 57m 20seconds) where the BBC have the full show.
‘Brilliant!’ said Moyles.
Well, it was like steaming custard poured on the large pudding of my satisfaction. And as soon as the skin thickened, I set this official recommendation in the middle of a line and pointed at it, thus:
‘Brilliant’ -- Chris Moyles
I came off the show happy but concerned by the damage done to my right buttock by the PVC chair. We Madeleys have always perspired heavily around the flanks but this flood had spread to outlying regions that normally favour dry conditions. The chafing was more toxic that a North American housing market. Yet even as I applied a soothing balm I’d fashioned from the coconut from a dark chocolate bounty mixed with a can of diet Tango (thank you Ray Mears!), I was already having doubts. ‘Well you’ve done it now, Dick!' I thought. 'Your postmodern game of hide and seek has gone too far. This time you’ve locked yourself in the coal cellar and the latch has fallen outside. This is a darkness from which you might not escape. People will never believe in your now...’
Which is why I have to post tonight without a care about the damage I’m doing to the right lower side of the left-hand of the ampersand. I just wanted to let you know that I’m as real as I sit here in my grey flannel trousers, smelling quite manly but vaguely like a taste of paradise. Sorry for what I said and I’ll try to be on my best behaviour tomorrow when I’m off to sign copies of my book for the people of Monken Hadley. Be sure to pop across to Chingford in the afternoon when, buttocks permitted, I’ll be joining other celebrities as we shin up palm trees in aid of the local West Indian community.
[UPDATE: Link now fixed]
