Invitation to a Beheading

The good news is that I’ve got that job hosting ‘Eye of the Storm 2’. The producers had sent the confirmation via my agent and it only arrived today. The letter gave me the kind of relief I would describe as sexual, if that didn’t imply that I know what it means to have congress with second class mail. And, please, I want no filthy innuendos made about that line. There’s been far too much of that around here lately…

You see, this is a big moment for me. I’ve finally stopped taking my nerve medicine and I’m already beginning to see normality stretching out before me. No, I mean it… And thank God, too. A state of constant misunderstanding has existed between us for months.

Until tonight, I didn’t realise that some of you have been reading this blog in the mistaken belief that it was meant to be funny. I assure you that it wasn’t. Some of you have even been encouraging me to greater excesses, while laughing at a man who, in reality, has been suffering a nervous breakdown. No, don’t laugh. You all seem to have missed the point. I’ve been sick. The medication was playing with my mind.

Luckily, a few new visitors from the colonies saw through my drug induced miasma and diagnosed my problem. Lucky for me, they are viewers of House. That’s a medical drama and it clearly helped them recognise the symptoms of a man suffering the delusions of one who thinks he’s a friend of the Great Fry. A forum reader called Amysusanne was perceptive enough to witness the Emperor with his flaps a-hanging.

“I don't really get it either. I mean once, okay...whatever. But he seems to be beating this joke into the ground and I don't get the "funny" in it. I guess people are responding "LOL" favorably and it's egging him on? Who knows. Maybe there *is* some inside joke I'm not aware of, but otherwise it's just a little confusing.”

Whatever, indeed! Too damn right it is confusing. I’ll be glad to put these last few months behind me. Taking pain medicine with wine is not good. The doctors warned me that I might grow slight breasts, but never did I think they’d appear on my elbows.

Thank God too that He’s gone! Stephen is off to America. I’ll miss him and his spectral presence. But at least he’s over there where he can be canoodled by the febrile young things who are panting hot and ready to lay down their lives on behalf of a living legend in tweed. Being neither a comedian nor having a comedic bone in my body, I fully appreciate what His fans have to say to me. Were wiser words ever put in the form of a forum post than those typed by dear Warycary?

“I don't find it funny either - does Stephen? I think someone should up this guy's medication and prepare the restraints.”

Restraints, certainly! Medication? Perhaps not. I’ve been so high on the stuff it burned my eyeballs and I’ve been seeing Christ in my cocoa. And do you know what? I also don’t think any of this is funny. Who was laughing? Not me. And not Stephen, I’m sure of that.

Were I speaking to Stephen Fry now, I would make this pledge to him.

I, Richard Algernon Madeley, being of unsound mind and addled intellect, do hereby swear that I will not write any more posts that attempt in any way to be funny. I revoke the codes, creeds, and ethos of the comedian and swear that I will uphold the good practises of the TV talk show host, without wit and without humour. I am not funny. Nor have I ever been funny. Funniness shall never be mine.

Thank the Good Lord who has let me see sense before the writs began to fly. To Mr. Fry, I can only express my apologies. In his name, I renounce comedy, blogging, and the words ‘Oddie’, ‘baboon’, ‘bassoon’, ‘elbow’ and ‘Nutkins’.

And God Bless America.

Haircut By Fry

In case you’ve only just noticed my picture: yes, you’re quite right. It’s gone. Do I regret doing it? Yes, I do. And I can’t deny that alcohol played a small part in its demise. I had hit rock bottom. I drank because I was ashamed that I’ve still not had a job offer. But that wasn’t the all of it. I discovered that Stephen Fry is leaving me. Then a tooth divorced itself from a filling. Were the two events related? I cannot say. But my woes were tied into a neat little bundle by Judy who informed that Alan Carr is appearing on tonight’s show…

By the time my chief tormentor retired to bed with her Dick Francis, I was in a much weakened condition. It was probably why I sought comfort with my DVD collection. For one night, I would abandon my books, writing, scripts, and even my beaver. And when Stephen appeared, it seemed only right to spend some time with the man who will soon be touring the Great Lakes in his taxi. To break a confidence, I can tell you that he’s also been feeling pretty rotten about the whole business. He’s heard that Hugh Laurie will be performing the American national anthem before Sunday’s Superbowl. It’s the sort of privilege that makes Stephen just a little jealous of his old comedy partner.

You can see that we were both in moods that might easily be described as tender. Put alcohol on the coffee table and even our plan to sit and chat over a classic film had an element of risk. Not that choosing the film was easy. I wanted something that reflected my mood. Stephen wanted a film that taught him something about driving across America.

‘Thelma & Louise,’ suggested Stephen.

‘Treasure of the Sierra Madre,’ suggested Madeley.

‘Two-Lane Blacktop,’ came back the Great Man’s reply.

‘One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest,’ I returned, thinking I might have won the day.

In the end, we reached a compromise. I shut all the doors, turned down the lights, and set the amplifier to 70% to really appreciate Bernard Herrmann’s score to Taxi Driver.

‘I’ve not actually see this film,’ said Stephen after a few moments. It was a rather frank confession from a man who I thought knew everything about great culture. He gazed at the young De Niro driving a yellow taxi through New York a night. ‘But this is indeed promising,’ said the owner of the nation’s favourite black London cab marked ‘Fry’.

I waved down his chatter. ‘Listen,’ I said, ‘I just love this speech about cleaning the seats in the back of a taxi…’

Only Stephen didn’t, and, as the film went on, he began to tut more and more as he realised that the story had less to do with taxis than it had to do with one man's descent into his own personal hell. I did my best to calm my guest by pouring him more wine until, eventually, an equilibrium was reached. Stephen began to enjoy Martin Scorsese’s bleak portrayal of Paul Schrader’s almost toxic script and I began to understand why the world is treating me so unfairly. There is a bit of Travis Bickle in Madeley and the events of the last few days made it all the more apparent.

‘My filling fell out today,’ I said to Stephen, who was, by then, looking just a little bleary eyed from all the wine.

‘Typical,’ he said, raising a glass. ‘Here’s to decay!’

‘And I didn’t land the job to which I’d been pinning all my hopes for the last couple of weeks.’

‘Here’s to failure!’ he responded.

‘And Judy has gone and invited Alan Carr onto tonight’s show. I’ve got to be pleasant to the man who once rear-ended me on Hamstead Heath.’

‘Damn his eyes,’ cried Fry and gazed up at the screen before raising a finger. ‘Were I a man in the mood to have a psychotic episode, that’s what I would do,’ he said as De Niro appeared for the first time sporting a Mohican.

‘Judy would kill me if I did that,’ I said. ‘Could you imagine what they’d say at Channel 4?’

‘Well shave it all off!’ said Stephen with sudden passion. Even in the depth of an alcoholic murk he has the answer to every problem. ‘Your Uncle Stephen is not a man for being unduly blunt, Dicky, but you’ve become something of a national laughing stock. You’ve had that same haircut for nearly twenty five years on our screens. Your hair is older than some BBC executives I could name, damn their poxy adolescent hides!’

‘I thought people liked my hair,’ I protested, jumping to the defence of one of my twenty seven features rated by World Heritage as sites of historic importance.

‘You hair is the reason that people think you’re conservative and safe,’ said the only man I know who wears tweed pyjamas. ‘They don’t respect you and they certainly feel no fear when you’re around them. As a great and intoxicated woman once said: play hard to get, Dicky. Hard to get!’ He eased himself up, his plaster cast not making it easy, but with his natural grace and athleticism, up he soon was. ‘Come on, we’ll do it now. I’ve got the perfect thing in my room.’

He returned a minute later with an electric razor designed by New Zealand farmers to sheer the wool from sheep made hardy by the harsh winds of the southern Pacific. I was in no mood to argue with Stephen, whose natural command comes through even when soaked to his gills with juice. As De Niro began his bloody rampage on the screen, Stephen began his buzzing rampage over the Madeley scalp. I can’t say which outcome was the more satisfactory for the protagonists concerned.

After that, I remember very little except drinking more wine and then waking up on the sofa this morning. The DVD menu to Taxi Driver was still lighting up the screen but now the Special Features option was being pointed out by an arm in a plaster cast that was sticking up from the other side of the coffee table. It was only when my own hand instinctively went to arrange my fringe that I felt the cold dome of my head and I began to remember about the job, my filling, Alan Carr, and Stephen Fry shaving me bald...

Judy was less than complimentary when she first saw me and retired sobbing to her room. Stephen was less than complimentary about his hangover and soon tip toed gently to bed. I now have to spent my afternoon finding a suitable wig before the tonight’s show. Being chatty with Alan Carr will be the least of my problems. If you see my brow slip, then at least you’ll know why. My world is falling apart and I with it.