CONTENTS

ABOUT THE BOOK

I’m Johanna Morrigan. I’m nineteen. It’s 1995. And I live in the epicentre of Britpop.

I share a laundrette with one of Blur, and have takeaway spaghetti bolognese for breakfast, every day – because I can. Parklife!

As ‘The Legendary Dolly Wilde’, I write a column for The Face about being surrounded by people getting fame wrong. Not least my long-term and unrequited love, John Kite. When his album goes to Number One, he explodes into a Booze And Drugs Hell™, as rockstars do.

More sinister is hot young comedian Jerry Sharp. ‘He’s a vampire,’ my friend Suzanne warns. ‘He destroys bright young girls. Also, he’s a total dick.’

But by that point, I’ve already had sex with him. Bad sex.

And I’m one of the girls he’s trying to destroy. He needs to be stopped.

But how can one girl stop a powerful, famous man?

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Caitlin Moran became a columnist at The Times at eighteen and has gone on to be named Columnist of the Year six times. At one point, she was also Interviewer and Critic of the Year – which is good going for someone who still regularly mistypes ‘the’ as ‘hte’.

Her multi-award winning bestseller How to Be a Woman has been published in 28 countries, and won the British Book Awards’ Book of the Year 2011. Her two volumes of collected journalism, Moranthology and Moranifesto, were Sunday Times bestsellers.

Her first novel, How to Build a Girl, debuted at Number One, and is currently being adapted as a film. Bloody hell, that’s actually quite impressive.

Also by Caitlin Moran

Fiction

How to Build a Girl

Non-Fiction

How To Be a Woman

Moranthology

Moranifesto

Children’s Fiction

The Chronicles of Narmo

AUTHOR NOTE

This is a work of fiction. Real musicians and real places appear from time to time, but everything else, the characters, what they do and what they say, are the products of my imagination. Like Johanna, I come from a large family, grew up in a council house in Wolverhampton and started my career as a music journalist as a teenager. But Johanna is not me. Her family, colleagues, the people she meets and her experiences are not my family, my colleagues, the people I met or my experiences. This is a novel and it is all fictitious.

A playlist to accompany the novel is available at www.caitlinmoran.co.uk

ONE

When I was eleven, I formally resigned from the family dream.

From the earliest moment I can recall, the family dream was simple: that, one day, we would get money from somewhere – win the pools, discover a medieval chalice at a jumble sale, or, least likely of all, earn the money – and leave Wolverhampton.

‘When the bomb drops, we want to be on the other side of those,’ Dadda would say, at the end of our street – pointing across the flat fields of Shropshire, to the distant Black Mountains. We practically lived in the country.

‘If they nuke Birmingham, the fallout won’t reach Wales – those mountains are like a wall,’ he would add, nodding. ‘We’ll be safe there. If we get in the van and drive like fuckers, we’d be over the border in two hours.’

It was the mid-eighties, when we knew, for a fact, that the Russians would launch a nuclear war against the West Midlands at some point – the threat was so visceral that Sting even had written a song about it, warning that it would, by and large, be bad – so we were absolutely braced for it.

And so we made our plans for escape. Our dream house was a survivalist bolthole, with its own water supply – a spring, or a well. We’d need enough land to be self-sufficient – ‘Get some polytunnels up, get your fruit in,’ Dadda would say – and we’d have a cellar full of dried grains, and guns – ‘To shoot the looters, when they come. Or commit suicide,’ he added, still cheerfully, ‘if it gets too much.’

The dream house was talked about so much that we all presumed it was real. We would have passionate hour-long arguments about whether to keep goats or cows – ‘Goats. Cows are fussy fuckers’ – and possible names for the property. My mother, who had been made simple by many pregnancies, favoured a ghastly option: ‘The Happy House’. My father didn’t want to give it a name – ‘I don’t want any bastard to be able to find us in the phone book. Come the Apocalypse, I’m not going to be feeling sociable.’

We were poor – which was a normal thing; everyone we knew was poor – so we all made each other Christmas presents, and that Christmas – Christmas 1986 – I had drawn a picture of The Dream Survivalist House, as a present to my parents.

Because it was just a drawing, I had spared no expense on this house: there was a swimming pool in the garden and an orchard at the back. The front room was painted the colour of a peacock’s wing, all the children had their own bedroom, and Krissi’s had a slide in it that went out of the window, and straight into his own fairground. The house was magnificent.

My mother and father looked at it with tears in their eyes.

‘This is beautiful, Johanna!’ my mother said.

‘This must have taken you ages!’ Dadda marvelled. And it had. The roof was covered in fairies. Their wings had taken hours. I’d drawn veins on them. Wings, I reasoned, must have veins. There must be a vascular system.

Then my mother looked at it again.

‘But where’s your bedroom, Johanna?’ she asked. ‘Have you forgotten to draw it?’

‘Oh, no,’ I said, eating my breakfast mince pie. The pastry was very tough; my mother was not a gifted chef. I was glad I had topped it with a slice of Cheddar cheese, by way of precaution. ‘I’m not going to live there. I’m going to live in London.’

My mother cried. Krissi shrugged: ‘More room for me.’ My father lectured me. ‘It’s absolute certain death to live in a city!’ he said, at one point. ‘If the Russians don’t get you, the IRA will. Civilisation is a trap that will blow your knickers off !’

But I didn’t care if the Russians, or the IRA, did drop a bomb. They could drop a million billion, and I still wouldn’t want to live on the side of a mountain, with goats, and rain. Even if it was radioactive, and full of mutants, and lead to my certain death, London was still the place for me. London was where things happened, and I wanted – with utmost urgency – to happen.

And so at nineteen, here I am in London – and London, it turns out, is the place for me. I was right. I was right that this was the place to go.

I moved down here a year ago, to a flat in Camden, to pursue my career as a music journalist. I brought three bin bags full of clothes, a TV, a laptop, a dog, an ashtray, a lighter in the shape of a gun, and a top hat. That was the sum total of my possessions. I didn’t need anything else.

London provides everything else – even things you’d never dreamed of. For instance, I’m so near Regent’s Park Zoo that I can hear the lions at night, fucking. They roar like they are trying to let the whole city know how sexual they are. I know that feeling. I want to let this whole city know how sexual I am. I see them as another one of those unexpected London bonuses – en-suite sexy lions. This is something Wolverhampton would never give you. Although the downside is that the sexy lions drive the dog crazy. She barks until I order a Meat Feast pizza, and I give her the meatballs whilst I eat the crusts, and cheese. We are a good team. She is my pal.

If I imagine the dog is a horse – which is easy, as she’s very large – I live a life that could largely be described as ‘that of Pippi Longstocking, but with whisky, and rock music’. To live in a city at nineteen, alone but for a pet, is to engage in adult pursuits, but with the vision of a child.

I spent three days painting my flat electric blue, because, in Sound & Vision, that is what David Bowie did, and there is no better person to take interior decorating tips from than David Bowie.

I then tried to paint white clouds on the wall – to make it celestial – but it’s surprisingly hard to paint clouds with a big paintbrush and some white emulsion. The clouds look like empty speech bubbles; the walls look full of spaces where things should be said, but I don’t know what those things are yet. That’s part of being nineteen. You don’t yet know what your memorable speeches are. You haven’t said them yet.

When I have money, I have takeaway spaghetti bolognese for breakfast, every day, because that is the most treat-y meal, and children buy themselves meals that are treats. When I don’t have money, I live on baked potatoes – because they are treat-y, too.

I wake at noon, and stay out until 3 a.m., and then I have a bath, when I come home, because I can. It doesn’t wake anyone up. Every single one of those baths makes me happy. You leave home to have baths in the middle of the night. That is true independence.

My phone is regularly cut off, because I forget to pay the bills – they come so often! Who opens their post in the month it arrives? Only the dull – and, when the phone is cut off, people ring my local pub, the Good Mixer, and leave messages there for me. The landlord complains about this often.

‘I’m not your fucking secretary,’ he will say, handing over a pile of multi-coloured Post-it notes, when I come in, with the dog, for a pint.

‘I know, Keith. I know. Can I borrow your phone?’ I will reply. ‘I just need to get back to the most urgent ones. They want me to interview the Beastie Boys in Madrid!’

And Keith will hand over the phone, from behind the bar, with a sigh, because it is the responsible thing to do, when a lone teenager needs to make a call. It takes an innercity village to raise a child!

I keep all my dirty clothes on the floor – because who would waste their money on a washing basket, when you could spend it on roast chicken and cigarettes?

Once a month, when all the clothes have made it to the floor, I put them in my rucksack, and take them to the laundrette. One of Blur uses the same laundrette. It’s nice to use the same laundrette as a pop star. We nod at each other, silently, and then read the music press, whilst popping out every so often for a cigarette. I once watched him read a bad review of Blur, as he was doing a whites wash. I have never seen anyone transfer their underwear from a washer into a dryer so sadly. It’s hard to combine being a public icon with your day-to-day domestica. The disjuncture is jarring. Grace Kelly never had to unclog lint from tumble-dryer filter while Pauline Kael shouted abuse at her.

And what this makes me aware of is that London isn’t just a place you live: London is a game; a machine; a magnifying glass; an alchemist’s crucible. Britain is a table, tilted so all its loose change rolls towards London, and we are the loose change. I am the loose change. London is a fruit machine, and you are the coin you put in – with the prospect if it coming up all cherries, and bells.

You don’t live in London. You play London – to win. That’s why we’re all here. It is a city full of contestants, each chasing one of a million possible prizes: wealth, love, fame. Inspiration.

I have the pages of the A-Z stuck to my wall – so I can stare at the entire of London, trying to learn every mews, alley and byway. And when you take four paces back from the wall – so you’re pressed up against your chest of drawers, staring at it – what those network of streets most closely resembles is a computer circuit board. The people are the electricity jumping through it – where we meet, and collide, is where ideas are hatched, problems solved, things created. Where things explode. Me, and the sad man from Blur, and six million others – we’re trying to rewire things. We’re trying, in whatever, tiny way we can, to make new connections between things. That is the job of a capital city: to invent possible futures, and then offer them up to the rest of the world: ‘We could be like this? Or this? We could say these words, or wear these clothes – we could have people like this, if we wanted?’

We are Henceforth-mongers, trying to make our Henceforth the most enticing. Because the secret of everyone who comes to London – who comes to any big city – is that they came here because they did not feel normal, back at home. The only way they will ever feel normal is if they hijack popular culture with their weirdness, inject themselves into the circuitry, and – using the euphoric stimulants of music, and pictures, and words, and fashion – make the rest of the world suddenly wish to become as weird as them. To find a way to be a better rock star, or writer. To make the rest of the world want to paint their walls electric blue, too … because a beautiful song told them to. I want to make things happen.

TWO

I am trying to explain all this to Krissi, as he sits on the sofa of my flat, in Camden, in August 1994. It is difficult, for the following reasons: 1) Krissi viscerally hates London, because; 2) Krissi loves Manchester, where he is currently at university, and; 3) Krissi is very, very stoned, because; 4) he and my father have spent the last two hours smoking a massive Sunblest bag full of weed.

Krissi and my father are visiting me, in London, because tonight, Oasis are playing the Astoria, and they want to see them.

At any other time, I would be surprised by both of them wanting to see a band like Oasis – they’re not jazz enough for my father, who so regularly refers to Charlie Parker that, until I was twelve, I presumed he was someone he knew from down the pub – his name really does sound like someone who works in the warehouse at B&Q – and Krissi is currently so deeply into dance music that he regularly shouts ‘Bring the BASS BACK!’ in the middle of conversations he finds boring.

But in the autumn of 1994, Britain is in the middle of a collective, homoerotic love-swoon over Oasis. They’re like the rough, cool boys at school you fancy, even though they’re beating you up – because they look so handsome while they’re kicking you. There’s nothing more intoxicating than a swaggering gang coming into town, who have a plan, and Oasis have a plan – ‘To be the best rock’n’ roll band in the world’.

The last greatest rock’n’ roll band in the world, Nirvana, ended when Kurt Cobain became so unhappy with the pressures of fame that he shot himself, which put the world on a massive downer, to be honest.

By way of contrast, Oasis are loved because it’s understood that they will not put the world through that kind of trauma again. No more rainy vigils, no more turning the radio off at sad news.

This upswell of Britpop – gathering speed in late-summer 1994 – is all about bands whose unspoken vow is to be as alive as it’s possible to be. In reaction to the cold rains and angry storm-front songs of American North-West grunge, they are about the simple brilliance of life in Britain: football in the park, booze in the sun, riding a bike, smoking a fag, fry-ups in a cafe, dancing at a wedding reception in a working man’s club, playing a new record over and over again, getting pissed on a Friday, getting loaded on a Saturday, hugging your friends as the sun comes up on Sunday morning. They have turned everyday life into a jubilee. They have reminded us that life is – above everything else – a party. They have rewired the circuit board.

And Britain has fallen in love with this simple promise. To celebrate the everyday glorious. There is a sudden, tremendous hopefulness. All the news is good – the Berlin Wall comes down, Mandela is free, and Eastern Europe has walked out of the Cold War, and into the sunshine. There is a lot of sunshine. When I think back to that time, it feels like it was always sunny, like you were always walking out of the house without a coat, and with nothing more than keys, money and fags. Every week, the radio pumped out more treasure. Every weekend, there was some new, big, anthem to sing.

You could rent a flat in London for £70 a week, at a push; coffee was 20p a cup, in a cafe, and fags were £2.52 for twenty. It was cheap to live. It was cheap to slowly kill yourself. What better time to be an nineteen-year-old girl?

‘Parklife!’ my father says, rolling another joint, and then leaning back on the sofa.

And, unexpectedly, what better time to be a forty-five-year-old man? For my father has taken to Britpop with the startling glee of a child waking in the middle of the night, wanting to play.

‘It’s like the sixties, all over again,’ he said, approvingly, watching Top of The Pops. ‘Same hair, same trousers, same chords. They’re all ripping off Bowie, the Beatles, The Kinks, The Who. The best shit. It’s Mods vs Rockers, all over again. I, of course,’ he said, taking a drag on the joint, ‘was always a Mocker.’

He wasn’t. I’ve seen the pictures. He was a classic hippy. He had an Afro like a sunflower, and wore bell-bottoms that would have been hazardous in strong winds.

And, just like a child waking in the middle of the night, he has become a problem. For this sudden cultural shock wave, rolling out across Britain, has unleashed his dormant tendencies. Like King Arthur being roused from his sleep by a blast on a magical trumpet, my father’s rock’n’ roll tendencies have resurrected. Always a regular and chaotic drinker, my father has now stepped things up a level by reverting to his teenage habits: he’s started smoking weed again. He’s started buying the music press again, and getting angry about certain things: ‘The Wonder Stuff – what a bunch of fucking jesters,’ he would shout, rattling the paper around. ‘I thought we got rid of this shit with Jethro Tull.’ Or: ‘The Lemonheads – nice tunes but fuck me, that bloke fancies himself. He needs to piss off and surf for a bit.’ He’s asked me if I can get him some E: ‘That ecstasy – is it good stuff?’ he inquired. ‘The name suggests so,’ even as I tried to explain I had never done it, didn’t have any in the house, and would always be unwilling to procure some for a parent with such rampart genes for addiction.

Most crucially, however, my father has started rebelling against authority again. In 1994, the biggest authority figure in his life is my mother, and he has rebelled against her by taking out a huge bank loan, and buying himself a second-hand MG sports car, for ‘nipping around’.

The rows about this have lasted months – my mother screaming about the repayments, versus my father’s disingenuous claims that it’s ‘improved’ their credit rating – and have resulted in the inevitable: my father getting in the car, and driving down here to see Oasis.

He is, in short, having a mid-life crisis, prompted by Britpop.

‘Hey derrr Rasssmon,’ my father says, in an appalling Jamaican accent, whilst dragging on the joint. ‘Smoke de’erb.’

‘Krissi!’ I say, brightly. ‘Ptarmigan!’

‘Ptarmigan’ is our code word for ‘we need to have a crisis meeting right now’.

One minute later, I am locking us both in the toilet. I sit on the edge of the bath, whilst he sits on the toilet.

‘I am uncomfortable with our father being stoned and racist in my front room,’ I say, lighting a cigarette, and flicking the ash down the plughole. ‘This is not why I pay rent.’

‘I want him to stay stoned,’ says Krissi, who is already quite stoned. ‘He was straight all the way down, and kept banging on about how much he hates Mum. I don’t want some hippy being continuingly emotional. Racism is far easier to deal with. Racism won’t make him cry. Have you ever seen him cry?’ Krissi asks. ‘He started just outside Coventry. It’s horrible to watch in a man of that age. His wattle vibrates.’ Krissi shudders.

‘Mate,’ I say, sympathetically.

‘I know. He also tried to tell me how good Mum is in bed.’

I put my hands over my ears.

‘Do not pass your trauma on to me, Krissi,’ I say, warningly. ‘My head must be kept free of my parents’ sexuality.’

‘Too traumatised to hear what you’re saying, old friend,’ Krissi says. ‘Gotta share the trauma by making you think about Mum and Dad having sex.’

‘I can’t hear you,’ I say, pressing my hands tighter.

‘Think about Mum and Dad having sex,’ Krissi mouths. ‘I am making you think about that.’

I throw a towel over Krissi’s head. He leaves it there.

‘This is calming,’ he says, reflectively. ‘I like it. It’s like a cheap sensory deprivation tank.’

‘I don’t want to take Dad to this gig,’ I moan. ‘I hate it when he meets people I know from work. Remember when he met Brett from Suede?’

I’ve interviewed Brett a few times. When my father met him, at a gig, he greeted him with ‘Mate, I’d shake your hand – but I’ve just had a wazz, and my hands are pissy’cos the sink’s bost.’ It’s not the kind of vibe I want to project to sexy rock stars.

‘Oh, he won’t be coming to the gig,’ the towel said, mysteriously.

‘What?’

‘I top-loaded that joint with skunk-weed – he won’t be able to move for a week,’ the towel continued.

And, indeed, when we got back into the front room, Dadda was laying splayed out on the floor, listening to Abbey Road very loudly, and staring at the ceiling.

‘You coming to the gig, Dad?’ I said, cautiously.

‘No, no, my love,’ he said, rubbing his stomach dreamily. ‘I’m going to while away the afternoon in my sunshine play-room. Leave your old Dadda here, with his dreams.’

Krissi bent over, to pick up his weed. A hand shot out, with the terrifying power and rapidity of the Terminator, and clamped down onto the bag.

‘Those are my dreams, mate,’ Dadda said, in a slightly pained voice. ‘Leave them here.’

THREE

Walking towards the gig, Krissi explains that he’s got ‘too stoned’, and needs to ‘get very drunk’, in order to counteract the weed. We go into a pub and knock back several shots, in a businesslike manner, but the booze – contrary to Krissi’s theory – doesn’t seem to ‘straighten him out’, but merely – as I predicted – just makes him even more smashed. Still, it’s a happy smashed. He keeps hugging me, which is very un-Krissi-like, and telling me I’m a ‘dude’, which I graciously accept.

When we get to the Astoria, there’s a huge queue for the guest list. We stand in line, smoking cigarettes, and are chatting away about Liam Gallagher’s unique walk – ‘It’s like an aggressive baby, in a nappy’ – when Krissi suddenly nudges me in the ribs.

‘Look! Look!’

Six ahead of us, in the queue, is comedian Jerry Sharp. It’s the nineties, when comedy is ‘the new rock’n’ roll’, and Jerry is one of a slew of young, hot comedians telling story-jokes about sex, love, death, and their obsession with The Smiths. His sitcom, Jerry Sharp Will Die Alone, is about his continuing inability to find love in the modern world. Every week, he meets a new girl he falls in love with, who bins him off by the end. It has made a whole generation of teenage girls desperately believe they could be the ones who could make him happy. Obviously, I believe I really could. Who would not be delighted by me? If I wanted to, I could save him.

‘Oh my God!’ Krissi says, staring. ‘I really fancy him. I can’t believe he’s here!’

Jerry is pale – troubled-young-man pale – with blond hair, shades and a leather jacket, despite the heat.

‘He looks like a hot Nazi,’ Krissi says, longingly.

Krissi has never talked to me about who he fancies before. This is a novel and delightful thing.

‘Like Rolf, the evil post boy in The Sound of Music,’ he continues.

‘Oh, are you Rolf?’ I say, surprised. ‘I thought you’d be more Captain von Trapp. I’m Captain von Trapp. I would come when he whistled,’ I add, longingly.

Krissi stares a bit more.

‘Would you not do him?’ Krissi sighs. ‘I would.’

‘He’s all right,’ I say. ‘Seven out of ten.’

We have further chance to observe Jerry Sharp when he gets to the guest-list booth, and announces his name, in a faux-modest way.

‘Jerry Sharp,’ he says, in an ‘I’m pretending it’s a normal name – but, yes, it is a famous name’ way.

The woman on the guest-list booth, however, is having none of it.

‘Sorry, love – you’re not down,’ she says.

Jerry can’t believe this.

‘I’m pretty sure I will be,’ he says, with a dangerously self-deprecating smile.

‘Nope,’ she says, briskly.

Jerry pushes his sunglasses onto his head.

‘Does this change anything?’ he says, pointing at his face, and smiling in a tightly charming way.

The woman looks at him.

‘No,’ she says. ‘Do you want to stand to one side, love? So I can serve other people?’

Furious, Jerry stands to one side, gets out a mobile phone and starts punching in numbers, sighing heavily.

He’s still standing there by the time Krissi and I get to the booth. I can feel Krissi vibrating with the joy of standing near Jerry Sharp.

‘Dolly Wilde – it’s plus two, but I’m only using one,’ I say.

She’s just started to tick me off on the guest list when something occurs to me.

‘Er,’scuse me,’ I say, turning to Jerry Sharp. He ignores me. ‘’Scuse me.’

He looks up, in a ‘Fans, please – I’m off-duty!’ way.

‘Erm, I couldn’t help but hear you’re having problems with the guest list,’ I say. ‘I’ve got a spare plus-one … you can have it, if you’d like? And then I will have done my noble deed for the day. I’m currently on a “noble” tip.’

Jerry’s expression changes in a second – from tetchy hostility to a fully charming, grateful and hot reverence.

‘You’re Dolly Wilde, aren’t you?’ he says, like he’s just realised I’m actually a human being, and not a farm animal, getting in his way. ‘From the D&ME? You’re the positive girl. You love everything!’

He says this in a way that conveys that ‘loving everything’ is an eccentric and foolish position to take, but whilst beaming at me, from behind his sunglasses. It’s quite discombobulating.

‘I am one of Jesus’s sunbeams, yes,’ I say.

‘Good job I’ve got my shades on, then,’ he says, still grinning.

The women in the guest-list booth makes an annoyed sound: ‘Hrmff.’

‘So I’ll give Mr Jerry Sharp my other guest-list place, then, please,’ I say, to her.

‘Well, this is extremely convenient,’ Jerry says, with a rakish smile. ‘I don’t think Mother Shipton there is a comedy fan.’

He gestures to the woman in the booth. She gives him a sour smile.

I hand him his ticket. There’s a pause. His hand is still out.

‘Don’t you have an aftershow pass as well?’ he prompts, in a slightly pained way.

‘Of course!’ I say, and take the spare pass out of the envelope.

‘See you at the party, cheerful Dolly Wilde! I owe you a pint!’ he says, disappearing into the crowd.

I expect Krissi to say, ‘He asked for a pass as well? How presumptuous! How rude!’, which is what I’m thinking, but instead he just says ‘So hot’ again, so I change my thoughts, and just think ‘So hot’ like Krissi. I am a woman. I am open to other people’s thoughts. The more the merrier!

The gig is one of those gigs that’s not so much ‘a band playing their songs whilst people enjoy them’, and more like ‘people turning up to vote for a new future’. This is a rock election; a landslide victory; a coronation.

The sound is ferocious – tight; fierce; like something trying to claw and swagger its way out of a small space.

Coming from the same kind of place as Oasis – a small, dull estate in a run-down industrial town – I know this feeling: it sounds exactly like getting the bus uptown with your friends on a Friday night. Already half-drunk, shouting ‘Come on!’ at each other as the bus bombs past the tiny houses – all lit with the blue of the TV – and accelerates down the dual carriageway, and the orange street-sodium blurs, and you can’t wait to explode into the white lights of a club, and spend the next five hours swaggering around the place like a king or queen of misrule.

Krissi – in his drunken, euphoric state – is both amused by, and immersed in, the manness of it all.

‘We’re the LADS!’ he roars, grabbing me, and jumping up and down to ‘Shakermaker’.

During ‘Live Forever’, he cries – but then, everyone does.

‘Oh my God, you haven’t cried since Harriet Vale refused to go out with Lord Peter Whimsey in the Dorothy L Sayers Mysteries!’ I shout into his ear.

‘Shut up!’ he roars back. ‘We’re gonna live forever!’

It’s nice to see him so in touch with his feelings. Well, Liam’s feelings.

When the gig ends – Liam staring at the audience, blankly, as ‘I Am The Walrus’ spirals to its conclusion – the sweaty shuffle for the aftershow party begins, everyone sticking on their passes, and saying ‘That was amazing!’, whilst everyone else replies ‘What? Sorry – I’ve gone totally deaf.’

‘We going to the aftershow?’ Krissi wobbles slightly, under the impact of so much booze.

‘But they’re collections of the worst people on God’s earth, herded into a mosh pit of cuntery, all blahing on about how brilliant they are,’ I tell him.

‘Who said that?’

I’m so happy he asked.

‘You,’ I reply. ‘Last time I took you to one. You were not gracious.’

‘But, Johanna,’ Krissi says, looking deadly serious, ‘I done it with a doctor, on a helicopter.’

At the aftershow, upstairs, in the amazingly named Keith Moon Bar, I bump into a couple of people I know, and Krissi disappears.

When I find him, an hour later, he’s standing by a window, looking both triumphant, and slightly furtive.

‘What are you doing?’ I ask.

‘It’s a free bar!’ he says, triumphantly. ‘FREE! I asked them what the most expensive drink was, and then asked for “a trayful”.’

He stands back to reveal that the windowsill has fourteen glasses of booze on it, arranged in neat rows.

‘What’s that?’ I ask.

‘Double brandy and orange – three pounds twenty each each,’ he says, proudly. ‘I am a honeybee, and I have gathered my nectar,’ he says owlishly, taking one and knocking it back. ‘I have laid in provisions. We are ready … for the winter.’

We’ve only drunk three alcoholic pods of our honeycomb when a voice next to us says, ‘Is this a shop? A booze shop? Are you selling it to fund the Guides?’

We turn around – and Jerry Sharp is standing next to us, looking amused.

‘Well, hello, Plus One,’ I say.

‘Hello, Jesus’s sunbeam. I was going to buy you that thank-you pint – but it seems you are several steps ahead of me,’ Jerry says amusedly, gesturing to our booze shelf.

‘Would you like some of our provisions?’ Krissi asks, offering him a glass. I’ve never seen Krissi’s ‘fancying face’ in action before. It’s amazing, like rainbows are coming out of his eyes.

‘What is it?’ Jerry asks, politely.

‘It’s three pounds twenty – yet free,’ Krissi says, proudly.

Jerry takes one.

‘What did you make of that, then?’ he asks, gesturing to the recently vacated stage.

I’m just about to reply when Krissi – who has just lit a fag, and taken a drag – says, very quietly, ‘Oh, dear,’ and does a small bit of sick into his glass.

‘It’s OK!’ he says, nobly, and then does a bit more.

‘Is that how you filled the glasses in the first place?’ Jerry asks, looking into his.

Krissi starts laughing, and then clamps his hand over his mouth. He’s gone pale green, and is sweating profusely. I go to put an arm around him, as the first part of some manner of alcoholic triage, but he pushes me away, urgently.

‘Whitey. Home. Now,’ he says, and starts walking away.

‘Our coats are in the cloakroom!’ I shout after him, fumbling around for my rucksack. ‘We have to get our coats!’

‘Can’t,’ Krissi says briskly, breaking into a rapid trot, and reeling down the stairs.

I fish my cloakroom ticket out of my pocket. ‘Oh God, look at the queue,’ I say. There must be fifty people in it, waiting. The Astoria coat queue is legendary. It would be easier to queue for the last chopper out of Nam.

‘Your boyfriend looks like he needs to get home,’ Jerry says, taking a calm sip. ‘Let him go. Have these –’ he looks at the shelf ‘– twelve drinks with me, and wait for the queue to die down. It’s the only sensible thing to do. It’s what the Guides would recommend.’

‘He’s not my boyfriend. He’s my brother,’ I say. ‘I don’t have a boyfriend.’

‘Well, then,’ Jerry says, eyes lighting up. ‘Let’s drink to … waiting for coats with unattached girls!’

We clink glasses.

Twenty minutes later, Jerry and I are smoking fags, and I’ve asked him what his favourite albums are at the moment, because the rules are that the non-famous person asks the famous-person questions. The non-famous person is in charge of effortful Conversation Admin; they must lay on the schedule for the more well-known. And the conversation should be about, of course, the famous person. That’s just a given.

We’ve mutually enthused about Julian Cope – ‘Oh my word, “Safesurfer”!’ – and Jerry’s tried to tell me I should like Slint, which I am resistant to, as, to me, they sound like people who are deliberately making horrible music that make their mums sad.

‘The album’s called Spiderland,’ I say. ‘Spiderland would be the worst possible place you could find up the Faraway Tree.’

And Jerry laughs! I’ve made a famous comedian laugh!

I was still high on the laugh when Jerry starts to explain to me that – despite my loving them – I should actually hate REM now, as, ‘They’ve sold out, now they’re on Warner’s. We’ve lost them.’

‘But four million people bought Green, and twelve million people bought Out of Time. So quite a lot of people have found them,’ I say. I am proud of having remembered these statistics. I saw them on The Chart Show. They were the first ‘fact caption’ on the video to ‘Shiny Happy People’. The second was ‘Michael Stipe once ate fifteen packets of crisps’. I love the fact captions on The Chart Show.

However, Jerry dismisses all this with a wave of his hand.

‘They’re for sad fat mums in Oklahoma now,’ he says, as if this is a bad thing.

Personally, I thought making music for sad fat mums in Oklahoma sounded like a lovely thing to do. I mean, they are a hard audience to write for! They only have the time and money for one album a year. If it’s yours, you must be good.

I started trying to explain this to Jerry, but he shook his head, and said, ‘Let’s talk about someone good. Afghan Whigs’s, Gentlemen. The Bible of how love, and sex, are dirty and dangerous – if you’re doing them right.’

He lit my cigarette, and gave me an intense stare.

‘Although one of Jesus’s little sunbeams, hanging with the fat sad mums in Oklahoma, would probably disagree.’

Ah, if I could go back and talk to me then, I would say, ‘Johanna! Never trust a man who says sex and love are dirty and dangerous! Never go along with it – because to nod is to check the “I agree to terms and conditions” box on man who is telling you he is dirty and dangerous. He’s telling you, right up front, what his world is like. He’s showing you the contract.’

But I am nineteen, alone in a big city, excited to be talking to the edgy comedian, and there is a huge body of evidence to suggest he is right. Half the songs I love. Half the books I love. Last year’s terrible affair with Tony Rich at D&ME, where he tried to inveigle me into a threesome. It does, surely, mark you out as dangerously innocent and jejune to argue against all this – to still claim, despite everything you’ve so far experienced, that love and sex can be … lovely? Jerry wants to talk to a sassy, fast-talking, streetwise broad. And so – she will appear. That’s what this situation requires.

‘The best nights are the ones that leave teeth-marks on your soul,’ I say, in my best dark manner.

This is the right manner: Jerry lights up.

‘Show me your teeth, tiger,’ he says. And because I’ve already started doing what he asks me to, I do. I bare my teeth.

‘Shall we get another drink?’

Twenty minutes later, when we get in a cab to Jerry’s house – his hands all over my back – I’m thinking three things.

One: I haven’t had sex for ages – almost two months – and it makes me feel kind of hungry, but in my knickers. Like my vagina is Audrey II in Little Shop of Horrors, shouting, ‘FEED ME.’

Two: even though I don’t really fancy this comedian, Krissi will love the story of me having sex with him. I am going to go and make a Sex Anecdote! I am going to do this – for Krissi!

And three: as always, I wish – wish like children wish for snow – that this man I was kissing was John Kite. But he is still not available to me. So this is one of the things I will do, while I wait for him.

FOUR

In later years, when I’m having a long lunch with some girlfriends, and we take it in turns to talk about the worst men in the world, they come up with a list of things that, if you see them in a man’s flat, tip you off that you are in the presence of A Bad Man.

As they point out, whilst drinking wine and howling, Jerry’s flat had the full set. A framed John Coltrane poster. A framed Betty Blue poster. A bookshelf filled with Hunter S. Thompson, Nietzsche, Jack Kerouac, Henry Miller, and books about the Third Reich. Several hats. A velvet frock coat. An angry-looking cat, and a litter tray full of cat shit. Some ‘ironic’ Virgin Marys. A bodhrán. The complete works of both The Fall and Frank Zappa, a pile of porn, a bottle of absinthe, and a coffee table with noticeable scratch lines – from chopping out coke.

‘Any woman, when she sees those things, runs,’ they conclude, laughing and crying, ruefully, at the same time. ‘For this is the house of a man who hates women.’

And they are correct.

However, I’m still only nineteen, and have yet to learn this, so I just think, ‘Cool! An edgy intellectual!’

‘This is the Arena of My Broken Heart,’ Jerry says, pouring me a drink, and sitting us both down on the sofa. ‘This apartment seems to have been built on some kind of Hell Mouth, that attracts every fucked-up girl in Britain. Every time I think I’ve found some brilliant, filthy, funny sorceress back here, to enchant me, BANG! This is where she reveals herself to be some broken lunatic, with daddy issues.’

His tone is conspiratorial – that he and I disdain these girls … that I am not like these girls.

‘Are you the one to restore my faith in women?’ he says, in a mocking way. ‘I’m just looking for that impossible thing – a brilliantly perverted woman who wants her brains fucked out, by an expert.’

He looks at me intently. He’s making things very clear – I just need to be a brilliantly perverted woman who wants her brains fucked out. And I can totally be that!

‘Well, that sounds like a lot of fun,’ I say.

‘Oh, it is,’ he says, starting to unbutton my dress, and kiss my neck.

‘In terms of my qualifications as a pervert, I’m pretty sure I know my way around a penis,’ I say, cheerfully. ‘I passed my Sex Driving Licence with flying colours!’

He keeps kissing my neck.

‘I can even – ah! Oh, that’s good! – reverse one around corners,’ I continue, squirming on the sofa. I am a Sassy Dame! And Jerry will love my humour! Because he is a comedian!

As it turned out, comedians don’t like humour. They like blow jobs instead. I realise this when he doesn’t laugh at my joke, but lies back on the sofa, and angles his trousers at me in a way that I realise, after a moment of nonplussed staring, means, ‘Give me a blow job!’

Still on my noble tip, I bend over and unzip his flies.

‘What have we here?’ I say, cheerfully, releasing his erection from his boxers. ‘An extra-long vehicle!’

I’m being polite – it’s perfectly average, very white, and a bit … thin. Like a witch’s finger. Stop describing a penis to yourself, Johanna! Concentrate!

I put the penis in my mouth, and look up with a sexual expression I have seen Alexis Carrington Colby use in Dynasty, so I know it must be of high sexual quality.

‘Mmmmm,’ Jerry says. ‘Keep going.’

I ‘do some more blow job’ – I believe that’s the technical term – as Jerry starts to feel around, on the coffee table, for something. His hand eventually finds the remote, and he presses a button.

‘Porn?’ I say, in the way I imagine a funny, filthy sorceress would. ‘Great! Let’s make a night of it!’ Because I am not like all those other girls.

I’m expecting the typical ‘sounds of porn’ – some ‘ahhh’, some ‘oooooh’ – to come from the TV.

Instead there’s a click, and a hiss – and then I hear something that confuses me for a minute. A jaunty song. What is this?

‘Jerry – why do you do the things you do?’ a female chorus sings. ‘Jerrrrrry/Why do you do the things you do?’

It’s – this is –

‘Is this your TV show?’ I ask him, disengaging my mouth from his penis.

He automatically pushes the penis back towards me, eyes glued to the TV.

‘Yes,’ he says, shortly. ‘And, in a minute, you need to suck harder.’

He says it so urgently that, momentarily, my mouth obediently starts heading back to the penis – before the sound of applause makes me stop. I turn around. On the screen, Jerry has just made his entrance into his sitcom flat, to audience applause. He’s watching himself while I give him a blow job.

‘Erm,’ I say.

‘Babe, now,’ he says, pushing his crotch towards me, still staring at the TV.

I take a deep breath, sit back on my heels, and then pat his leg, consolingly, like you would a horse.

‘I’m so sorry,’ I say, ‘but my Sex Licence doesn’t cover this.’

I gently put his penis back in his boxer shorts, and stand up.

‘This is a specialist job. You … are a specialist job. I think I should get a cab,’ I say, looking for the telephone. ‘I need to leave.’

‘You’re not serious?’ Jerry says, staring first at me, and then his retrousered crotch, in disbelief. ‘You’re not seriously leaving?’

‘Afraid so,’ I say, delighted at how adult I’m being.

Last year I turned down Tony Rich’s threesome, and this year I’m turning down Jerry Sharp’s TV dinner blow job. Maybe my whole ‘thing’ will be sexually disappointing renowned men!

‘Jesus. Tough crowd,’ Jerry says, hoiking his deflating penis back into his trousers, and zipping them up. ‘I take it you’re not a comedy fan, then?’

‘I just prefer Newman and Baddiel,’ I say, trying to keep the tone humorous.

‘Have you fucked them, then?’ Jerry asks, unpleasantly.

I’ve found the phone. I dial for a cab.

‘Not yet!’ I say cheerfully. ‘What’s the address here?’

The ten minutes I have to wait for the cab are ten of the most awkward moments of my life.

For the first half, Jerry sits on the sofa, presses ‘Play’ on the video, and solidly ignores me whilst he watches himself, with the sound turned down, and drinks whisky. I sit on a chair by the door, dedicatedly smoking cigarettes.

‘This was a good bit!’ he says, at one point, gesturing to the TV. I laugh politely.

After six minutes, he seems to remember himself. Some notion of pride kicks in. He goes over to the bookshelf, and pulls out a notebook.

‘So, I also write poetry,’ he says.

In the future, when I tell this to girlfriends, they scream laughing, and say, ‘Of course he does! Of course he writes poetry!’

He then reads me a poem. I’ll be honest; I’m not really focussing on it. I’m desperately listening out for the sound of a minicab outside – but the street is, sadly, silent.

The poem seems to be a furious meditation on unrequited love, dedicated to a mysterious and unkind woman who has used Jerry’s heart ‘like Raleigh’s cloak/Beneath her feet’.

Presumably fuelled by his anger over his half-fellated penis, Jerry appears to be aiming the reading of this poem at me, taking particular delight in delivering the line, ‘In bed she lies/And lies’ with side-eyed venom.

Having someone read bad poetry to you, angrily, is oddly sinister. I’m surprised people don’t get more baddies to do it in horror films – it’s quite chilling. Not so much from the power of the imagery. More because you really want to laugh – but know that, if you do, they will become even angrier, and maybe read you another one. In an even more furious way. And that would be the worst thing of all.

‘That’s intense,’ I say, every so often, to placate him. Or: ‘Oh, yeah – those are the right words.’

I nod a lot. That seems to be the best thing to do, to survive the poetry.

When I hear the minicab honk outside, I’ve never been more glad of a honking sound. It is the honk of freedom.

‘Take care, Jerry,’ I say, lightly, saluting at him, and running down the stairs.

The last thing I hear, as I let myself out of the front door, is his voice, floating down the hallway: ‘But that poem isn’t about you, of course,’ he shouts. ‘I’m not in love with you.’

FIVE

Waking, the next day – sleep-deprived, and with my boots still on – I was momentarily confused about what had happened the night before. This is one of the hazards of encountering famous people – when you’re used to seeing them on the TV, or in magazines, your memories of actually meeting them in real life seem vaguely surreal: did you really see the penis of the guy who was on the cover of Time Out last month?

I looked in the mirror, and saw the love bite Jerry had left there.

‘Yes, Johanna,’ I told myself, as I swung my legs out of bed. ‘You did see that penis. And it saw you. But only briefly.’

You must not despair, I consoled myself as I got dressed – you still have all the fun of telling Krissi about this insane encounter. He’s going to be both really impressed when you tell him you pulled that comedian that he fancies; and then amused when you tell him how bizarrely it ended. This is going to be fun!

I bounce upstairs, and find Dadda in the kitchen.

‘All right, you dirty stop-out,’ he says. He’s already very stoned, and it’s only 10 a.m. Dadda’s trip down Memory Lane is turning into quite the Long March.

Krissi is sitting at the table, looking very hungover, and eating a huge fried breakfast. My father appears to have used every single utensil in the house to cook it – the sink is full of dirty dishes.

‘Tea?’ Krissi says, pushing a cup over.

I take the cup, sit down, and prepare my best ‘I have news’ face.

‘So, you’ll never guess what! I did it! I pulled Jerry Sharp! Ask me any question you like!’

Krissi stares at me. There is a long, confused pause.

‘Who’s Jerry Sharp?’

‘Jerry Sharp! That comedian you fancy! I did it for you! I pulled him! Ask me anything you want!’

‘Jerry Sharp?’ Krissi says, again. ‘I don’t know who Jerry Sharp is.’

‘That comedian – at the gig last night! The one you were freaking out over!’

‘Oh,’ Krissi says. ‘Oh dear. That was Jerry Sharp? Oh, I don’t fancy Jerry Sharp.’ He looks at me, clearly puzzled. ‘I saw him on Have I Got News For You once … I thought he was a bit of a prick, to be honest.’ Krissi shrugs. ‘I thought that guy last night was Denis Leary. Now him, I fancy. Oh God, I really was drunk.’

‘Johanna, you want a sausage?’ Dadda says, pushing a plate over.

I stare down at it.

All of last night suddenly seems like a very bad idea.

As it turns out, I have no idea how just how bad.

you,