I shove a can of Insignia up my INXS T-shirt and spray my own pits. Looking in the mirror, I wonder how long it will be before I need the brand-matching shaving foam and aftershave. Does Tess Rampling approve of Insignia? She surely doesn’t approve of Rick Astley, but what if she doesn’t like the way I smell? If she ever gets close enough to smell me. What if she sees the show and thinks it’s crap? What if she doesn’t even come? The appalling possibility sinks in. I look carefully in the mirror to see what happens to my face when an appalling possibility sinks in. Oh, it does that.
It’s fine. There’s the funny dance. When in doubt, do a funny dance. I already feel sorry for Mum who’s going to have to listen to ‘Never Gonna Give You Up’ coming from behind this door about seventy-four times as I practise the dance. First, the words. I clear my throat, set the record turning and release the Pause button on the tape. This needs to be good. This needs to be better than it needs to be.
*
The dance isn’t perfect, but I get through it just fine. Despite all the practice, this is the first time I’ve done it from start to finish without stopping. Moments before I went out on stage, someone in the wings had said, ‘We reckon about seven million viewers.’ I see. I wonder if Tess Rampling is one of them. The year is 2009 and this is Let’s Dance for Comic Relief. I’ve just done my version of the audition scene from the eighties movie Flashdance.
Tall, Welsh and handsome, the presenter Steve Jones beckons me over and says, ‘I’m almost speechless, what the hell just happened?’
‘Something,’ I say, trying to catch my breath, ‘very intense.’ Co-presenter Claudia Winkleman randomly says, ‘I actually love you.’ The audience are still making a huge racket. Right . . . so it went better than I thought. Be cool. Steve Jones turns to the judges. Anton Du Beke says, ‘It’s a complete thing of beauty.’ Baby Spice Emma Bunton says she thinks I must be a trained dancer. That leaves Michael McIntyre, whom for some reason I identify as a threat. Naturally, I lean an elbow on Steve Jones’s shoulder and glare at McIntyre as if I’m about to kill him. I imagine this looks like Han Solo leaning against Chewie, except this is Han Solo in a black leotard with a massive curly wig. Michael blinks and then starts saying something about how he used to have a French girlfriend. The audience likes this, so I soften up and try to give him a sweet smile. I cross my hands over my crotch: now that the dance is over and I’ve dropped the lunatic aggression, I’m suddenly just a bloke dressed as a woman. Even if Tess Rampling isn’t watching, I know that Dad is.
McIntyre has been listening to the audience too and senses that he’s under-doing it. He ends with a shower of compliments and I nod gratefully to him, even though part of me still wants to head-butt him in the ear à la Matthew Finney. This is, after all, a charity event. So it’s no time to be ‘minty’. I had a ‘minty moment’ earlier which I now regret.
The term ‘minty’ is used for that precious moment in the life of an actor where he or she is in possession of a complaint about the way they feel they’re being treated but haven’t yet expressed that complaint. Try it now: keep your mouth closed while running your tongue over your front teeth – savouring that minty freshness – while rolling your eyes at the ceiling with long-suffering patience. It’s safe to try this at home, but I wouldn’t recommend doing it in public or you may be mistaken for Trevor Eve.
I was as frightened before the dance as I feel shy now. Michael gets cartoon super-aggression; the make-up artist just got passive-aggression. Either way, the solution, apparently, was aggression.
Earlier, in the make-up room, Roxy had driven another hairpin through the curly wig and the sensation was like a Smurf ice-skating on my scalp. She might as well have been using a staple-gun. ‘I think it’s probably quite well fixed on now,’ I say as I try to relax my grip on the arms of the make-up chair, ‘you can probably stop now, if you like.’
‘No, darling, just need a few more,’ she says. I’ve known Roxy, the TV make-up lady, for about eight minutes and this isn’t going well. Young, distracted and phenomenally good-looking, she’s the kind of girl who wouldn’t have given me the time of day at school. She doesn’t look like Tess, but she has a Tess-like aura. I try not to hold this against her, despite the fact that she keeps stabbing me in the head. She’s blithely reaching for another kirby grip and I suddenly know what it’s going to be like when we have androids for dentists.
‘It’s just – it’s on so tight already that I’ve got a massive headache. I’m a bit worried that if my head hurts this much I won’t be able to remember the dance.’ Roxy is only half listening. In the next chair along, Les Dennis is discussing the terms of his mortgage in bitter detail. Another pin makes a forced landing into the back of my neck, strafing three layers of skin on the way. The room judders. ‘The thing is, Rocky –’
‘Roxy.’
‘Yeah, the thing is, I know it’s a big wig, but I’m really, really sure that you can give it a rest with the pins now.’
Ooh, that came out a bit minty.
The tone I’m aiming for is suave and avuncular, a professional gravitas which may or may not be undermined by the fact that I am currently wearing a sparkly leotard and a padded bra. I’ve also attracted some attention. Les Dennis has broken off from his mortgage monologue and sips his coffee in the mirror with studied nonchalance.
Roxy hesitates. ‘If it falls off during the dance, I’ll get the sack.’
‘I promise you it won’t fall off. Even if it did, I will make sure that everyone knows that it was my fault and I promise you won’t get the sack.’
The fear, the adrenaline, the headache, the thing the bra is doing to my chest and the thing the ‘dancer’s support garment’ is doing to my testicles all contribute to the following: ‘I promise it won’t fall off. I swear on the grave of my dead mother that it won’t fall off.’
I say it with enough emphasis to make half a joke of it, but I know that this is a low move. In any argument, the ‘dead mum’ card is the one you play as a last resort. It doesn’t change anyone’s mind, but it usually embarrasses them into a more receptive mood. This is cheap. I want the dance to go well, but it’s always important to remember that there’s a very fine line between being a perfectionist and being a minty fuckwit.
I cross one bare leg over the other. Roxy obviously thinks I’m nuts. ‘OK, Robert, I won’t put any more in and I’ll take a couple of the top ones out.’ She says this loudly and slowly, as if to an old geezer in a care home who just complained about the exact number of baked beans on his toast. An old geezer in a leotard. ‘That would be great, thanks.’ I look across at Les Dennis. He gives me a smile and a wink, which is nice of him but now I feel even worse.
Not long after, I’m in the back seat of a car on the way home from Ealing Studios. I didn’t forget the Flashdance routine. And twenty-two years earlier, I didn’t forget the Rick Astley one either.
I check my phone: on Twitter, a man who used to be very important to me has said something kind. And I have a voicemail from another man who is even more important who has been even kinder. These two messages will change things, and my reaction to them informs this book. But the journey will be a slow one. That night, I’ll get back to the flat to find a bunch of friends who came round to watch the show with my wife Abigail, who is pregnant with our first daughter. And after everyone has left and Abbie has gone to bed, I’ll sit in our little garden and drink another two bottles of red wine and smoke about thirty Marlboro Lights. Tomorrow I’ll do something similar – but in the pub in the middle