Memoirs of a Fruitcake Read online

  In going over what had happened I began to see the bigger picture and to recognise the subtle difference between what drained my energy and what charged it. I realised that while I should always do my best, at the end of the day a job, no matter how glamorous, important or worthwhile, isn’t everything and it is always the people you love who matter more.

  TOP

  10

  REASONS WHY I LOVE CALIFORNIA

  10 The mountains

  9 The ocean

  8 The planning laws

  7 The standard of service

  6 The fitness mentality

  5 The positive mental attitude

  4 The possibility to succeed

  3 The confidence

  2 The magic of its entertainment history

  1 The weather

  AFTER BOTH BILLIE AND I had now stepped away from the spotlight, we found ourselves with the time and means to do what we liked, whenever we liked, and wherever we liked. So once again it was ‘California, here we come,’ except this time we could stay as long as we wanted.

  Bill and I skipped through Heathrow as if it were a field of tulips, stopping only to enjoy the delights of the first-class lounge and to buy a video camera. I don’t know why we bothered with the camera; I’ve owned five in recent years, only used two of them – and then only once – and have no idea where any of them are now. Ah well, there you are.

  Once aboard the big white bird, we settled in for another transatlantic movie, drink and food fest, along with the usual game of star spotting. There’s always a good chance of seeing a few famous faces if you sit at the front of a flight to Los Angeles and today was no exception. Amongst the raft of lucky first-class passengers was the delightful Helen Fielding, highly acclaimed author of the Bridget Jones books.

  I had known Helen for a few years via a mutual friend and always found her a joy to talk to. I was also fascinated by how timid she was for a lady with all those clever words and funny ideas inside her. Words and ideas in such demand that the cinema tickets for the movie adaptation of her first book currently totalled $282 million and counting.

  With the flight well underway, and a Bloody Mary and a few glasses of fizz inside me, I excused myself from Bill, who was ensconced in an episode of Friends, and went over to say hello to the lovely Helen. It transpired that she was not making the journey to the States to visit, as I had assumed, but was rather returning from Britain as she now lived in Hollywood with her partner, a writer on The Simpsons.

  ‘Hold on a minute,’ I thought. This was a whole heap of the type of information that is just too exciting for a person like me to take in without having to have a lie down in a dark room for a few days. Helen had been a lowly BBC researcher only a few years before and now she was part of the motion-picture cognoscenti, not to mention a resident of Tinseltown and the sweetheart of a guy who was part of the most successful TV show of all time.

  ‘What are you doing in LA then, Chris?’ she asked.

  I almost forgot to answer, I was still so mesmerised by what she had just told me.

  ‘Oh, er … we’re not actually sure,’ I said, which was at least true if not exactly impressive.

  ‘Sometimes it’s good not to know,’ said Helen with a kind smile. ‘Here, this is our address, come for dinner one night,’ and with that she handed me a card. What a perfectly all-round charming lady.

  I couldn’t wait to get back to Bill to tell her my Helen update.

  ‘Wow,’ she said, breaking off from her beloved Friends to hear more. ‘She is so cool – and so normal!’

  I knew exactly what Bill meant. Helen is proof that you don’t have to be a hard-nosed ball-breaker to be the best.

  ‘You should write more,’ said Bill.

  ‘What, in Hollywood?’ I laughed.

  ‘Sure, why not?’ she said. ‘You’ve never let anything stop you before.’ I looked at her face, trying to spot the irony, but there wasn’t any. She quietly put her headphones back on and returned to Rachel, Ross and the gang.

  My mind began racing. I had always wanted to write and I had especially always wanted to write a movie. Now, here I was on a plane going to LA having met Helen who had done exactly that, and my brilliant and beautiful wife was telling me I should do the same.

  I tapped Bill on the shoulder.

  ‘What is it babe?’ she asked, removing her headset so she could hear me.

  ‘If I did do that – you know, become a writer in Hollywood ‘Yes?’ she replied encouragingly. ‘What would you do?’

  ‘Oh,’ she said, without missing a beat, ‘I’d go back to acting. It’s all I ever think about.’

  And there it was in a nutshell – our immediate future for the taking. We had the money, we had the time and most importantly, we had each other. As Bill returned to Friends,

  I felt fit to burst with excitement. It was time for me to have another beer – for everyone’s sake.

  As I drifted off into a deep and happy sleep, I started to dream our dreams of tomorrow, and Hollywood. When I finally awoke I heard the pilot announcing that we only had half an hour more of our flight to run. Billie, far brighter eyed than I could possibly hope to be, had already eaten breakfast and was now transfixed, staring out of the window, looking down over the vast Grand Canyon, which was beneath us.

  As we touched down, my mind was already racing once again. I wasn’t sure what our next move should be exactly, but I could feel something rather big looming on the horizon.

  As we prepared to disembark, Helen came over.

  ‘Oh, hi Billie,’ she said. ‘It’s lovely to meet you and Chris. Here’s the card of the guy who found our house for us. He knows all there is to know about getting you into the hush-hush houses that aren’t officially for sale. You never know when you might need him, good luck and don’t forget that dinner.’ And with that she was off.

  ‘You didn’t mention that you were talking to her about us buying a house here,’ whispered Bill as she stood behind me in the aisle.

  ‘I didn’t,’ I whispered back.

  ‘So why did she give you that card then?’ Bill enquired.

  ‘I’m not quite sure.’

  ‘Would you like to live here then?’

  ‘Actually, I think I would – would you?’

  ‘Hell, yeah.’

  The next morning over breakfast I dialled the number of the real-estate guy. We weren’t seriously thinking of shelling out several million dollars for our very own LA pad, but we had already decided on an extended stay, and thought renting a house for a few months might be fun.

  There was no answer from the guy’s cell phone but we noticed from the address on the card that his offices were just down the road. We decided it would be just as easy to drop in on him and so five minutes later we found ourselves in the reception of a swish set of LA offices. We were greeted there by a young lady busy answering the telephone in between taking sips of water from the designer plastic bottle that was sitting on her desk. It’s obligatory to drink water in LA, I think it might be the law. Everyone does it all the time.

  ‘Hi, may I help you?’ she asked.

  ‘We’re looking for a Mr McGeachy,’ I said, reading the name from the card.

  ‘I’m sorry, its Gordon’s half-day today. He’s out of the office until tomorrow. May I leave a message or get him to call you back?’

  I was just about to reply when someone walked in behind me.

  ‘I’m Gordon,’ he said. ‘How may I help?’

  We looked around to see a man who was probably in his forties but who, at a glance, looked a good ten years younger. Dressed in white shorts, white sleeveless T-shirt, white socks and white trainers he was handsome, tanned, fit and at a guess probably gay, but in a very LA, almost macho way.

  ‘Hello, my name’s Chris, this is my wife Billie and we’re interested in renting a property.’

  ‘I’m sooo sorry but I don’t do rentals, you’ll need to talk to a colleague of mine.’

  He was about to
turn away, but Bill had other ideas. ‘Really? You came highly recommended by a good friend of my husband’s. Helen Fielding.’

  This stopped Mr McGeachy in his tracks. He paused and then smiled. ‘Any friend of Helen’s is a friend of mine. I was just going home but I popped back to pick up my cell. Come into my office – I’ll point you in the direction of the people you’ll need to talk to.

  Alright let’s see what we can dooo for youooo twoooo,’ he announced as he plonked himself down behind his desk and started to flick through his Rolodex. Bill and I smiled at each other in that typically couply fashion.

  ‘OK let’s see-dar-dar-dar-deee, what we have here

  Gordon was completely in the zone, like a mad chemist looking for the ingredients for his next concoction, blissfully unaware of anyone or anything around him.

  After a few more tum-tee-tums and the frantic scribbling of several numbers on a Post-it note, he paused.

  ‘Heck, how well do you really know Helen?’

  Bill glared at me.

  ‘I, er, I worked with her at the BBC, when Bridget was still just a daily. Her diary, she used to read it to me.’ That was as big a lie as I could come up with at such short notice.

  Gordon howled, ‘Oh – my – God, are you serious! Don’t you just love that woman?’

  Where was this going?

  ‘Look guys, I’m looking at some rentals on Tuesday that are yet to go to market. Admittedly three of them are porn locations, but that only means the decor has to go. You can be sure they will have views to die for. You are very welcome to “come with", if you wish. I like you guys, you’re cute.’

  And that’s how we met the great Gordon McGeachy, ironically Glasgow born and bred but now totally LA, and with enough energy and chutzpah to take on this world and the next any day of the week.

  Tuesday arrived and Gordon picked us up in his black Range Rover, the calling card of the successful gay Los Angeles realtor, accompanied by his gorgeous golden retriever, Belle. It’s important to point out at this juncture that American realtors bear little or no resemblance to British estate agents. They are superstars, as are the lawyers, the plastic surgeons and the doctors in Los Angeles. Realtors are also among the top five richest professions in California, way ahead of actors. There are so many astronomically expensive houses in LA and Malibu – and all the way up Highway One towards Santa Barbara, Carmel and Monterey – that these guys can earn millions of dollars a week. And they do.

  They also have a much more sensible way of marketing houses than we do, with regular ‘open-house’ days being held every Wednesday and Sunday. This system allows everyone who’s buying and selling to do so at the same time. Balloons and flags are put up outside the properties for sale, and the doors are flung open to all and sundry. Everyone knows where they stand and there is no hanging around waiting for buyers who might not turn up, whilst the buyers that do, get to see a whole host of properties in just one afternoon. Tuesday is also an open-house day but exclusively for the realtors to recommend potential properties to their clients. Helen had been right about Gordon. He was the man to help us jump the queue.

  As we set off east down Sunset Boulevard and turned right to go up to the Hills – not Beverly Hills, which is in fact a rather sedate, very flat suburban affair, but the Hollywood Hills, the real McCoy, overlooking the whole city – Bill and I were about to receive a masterclass in how to conduct a day of house-viewing, Gordon-style.

  From our hotel there had appeared to be no more than a couple of hundred of idyllic movie-star-style cribs perched up on these hills, but once we were up there we were amazed to discover there were literally thousands upon thousands, and almost all of them beautiful.

  The narrow access roads just kept on spiralling skywards and what we thought was one hill led to another and that in turn to another, and so on. With every corner we had to catch our breath as the next piece of glorious architecture or jaw-dropping vista revealed itself. If someone says they don’t like Los Angeles, ask them if they have ever seen the Hollywood

  Hills.

  If Gordon was trying to sell his adopted homeland to us, he was doing a damn fine job. But he had a question.

  ‘Hey guys, do you know anyone who may own three rather large 4x4s?’

  ‘No, why?’ asked Bill.

  ‘Because they’ve been following us for close to the last hour.’

  Ah. That would be the paparazzi, then. The British paps are almost more prevalent in LA than they are in London. No doubt because a lot of British stars go there. Plus, it’s much sunnier than it is in the UK, so people spend more time outdoors and with fewer clothes on, which makes it easier to get a more sellable picture. They’d been tailing us on and off since we’d arrived.

  We explained to Gordon whom it might be, to which he replied, ‘Who the hell are you guys?’

  Now for someone who had no idea, this was potentially a long story. But we gave him the short version, which seemed to suffice.

  ‘Well shit, I wish you’d told me before – I look a mess today!’ he exclaimed.

  What a perfect reaction. We were both falling rapidly in love with Gordon.

  The potential rentals he proceeded to show us were the best three houses I had ever seen. One of them was definitely a porn location, as Gordon had forewarned. The cameras were still set up and the ‘director’ was still in residence. The second house really did belong to a rock star and the third was empty but had a bedroom that hung magically over the infinity pool below. Suddenly, Britain seemed a long way away – even with the paparazzi in tow.

  ‘Alright, you two troublemakers, I need to take you back to your hotel now, unless you wanna stick around for the afternoon session?’

  Bill and I couldn’t imagine what could be more fun than what we were already doing.

  ‘Do you think we could stay with you?’ Bill asked.

  ‘Sure, why not? Belle and I are sick of the sight of each other anyhow, but the deal is you buy the coffees, OK?’

  That wasn’t a deal, it was a steal as far as we were concerned. When we arrived at the Coffee Bean coffee shop on Sunset, two doors down from the world-famous Mel’s Diner, I volunteered to get the drinks while Gordon and Bill found a table outside. Armed with three skinny grande lattes, along with various pastries and muffins, I went back out into the dazzling sunlight. But when I spotted Bill and Gordon, there was clearly something untoward going on. Gordon was looking to one side, tight-lipped, as if refusing to divulge a secret, while Bill looked like she’d seen a ghost.

  ‘What’s the matter with you two?’ I said quietly out of the corner of my mouth.

  ‘Don’t look now,’ Bill whispered through gritted teeth. ‘But Matthew Perry’s sitting at the next table.’

  Suddenly I got it. If Matthew Perry – Chandler Bing from Friends, Bill’s favourite television show ever – really was behind us, Bill might well pass out at any moment. I looked over to Gordon.

  ‘Is it him?’ I mouthed.

  Gordon gave an almost imperceptible nod, as if he were a member of the CIA identifying a potential assassin in a crowd.

  Holy shit, this wasn’t such a big deal for me, but Bill really was a Friends fanatic. She looked like she was about to cry. I handed the coffees around and tried to pretend that everything was normal but it was impossible. We were no more than six feet away from one of the six people in the world Bill actually wanted to be. And here he was simply minding his own business, reading a newspaper, totally unaware of the stress he was causing a young girl at the next table. Until, that is, the paparazzi who had been following us reappeared.

  ‘Oh fuck,’ I thought, as I saw Matthew spy them out of the corner of his eye. Not that it was difficult; they were descending on us like a herd of elephants.

  Seconds later they attacked, their cameras like guns. Bang, bang, bang, one shot after the other. Matthew was about to launch into a counter attack of Hollywoodesque proportions, when he suddenly realised that the lenses of the offending mercenaries
were not pointing at him but at Billie and me instead. He looked at us, totally baffled.

  ‘It’s alright, Matthew,’ Gordon said, as we made a hasty exit past his table. ‘I have no idea who these guys are either, but if it’s any consolation, she thinks you’re just the best.’

  Back in the car and back on the road, Bill screamed. ‘Can you friggin’ believe that?’

  Even super-cool Gordon was not immune to the irony of it all. ‘I have to admit, that was quite fucking funny. He needs to lighten up by the way and have a drink!’

  Not the most sage advice to hand out to a recovering heavy drinker, but I knew what he meant. Now if someone had told the three of us at that juncture that our encounter with Chandler Bing from Friends was not going to be the highlight of our afternoon that day, then we wouldn’t have believed them but LA just never knows when to stop surprising you.

  And it hadn’t finished with us yet.

  TOP

  10

  CELEBRITY ENCOUNTERS

  10 Michael Jackson on stage at the Brits

  9 Madonna in one of my favourite pubs after one of her gigs

  8 Bill Clinton at Elton John’s house

  7 The Queen at Radio 2

  6 George Harrison at Jools Holland’s 40th

  5 Clint Eastwood at a private screening of his new movie – none of us had any idea he was coming

  4 Dennis Hopper in the back of a minibus at St Andrews

  3 Mick Jagger wearing a blue track suit at 3 am in Chicago

  2 Michael Douglas in a meeting room at the Celtic Manor in Wales

  1 Half of the cast of Friends in my new kitchen

  WHAT GORDON HAD PLANNED FOR THE AFTERNOON was different from the morning. He was previewing several houses for a specific client of his, a major player.

  ‘Alright guys, now here’s the deal,’ he began. ‘I am Scottish, everyone knows this, and for the purposes of avoiding a whole croc of shit that I won’t bore you with, you two are my relatives from London. Chris, you are my cousin, and Billie, you are his child bride – goddit?’