And here we are, Chris and me, in the Theatre Royal, Bury St Edmunds - we were last here together in our early twenties to see a show. Now we are the show. And I am hoping and praying I’m not about to dent his fantastic career by being crap tonight. He looks at me with such love that I can’t even mention my fear, and being associated with me, however poor I am, will not make any difference to his career, I remind myself vigorously. To quote a production by the inestimable Scene & Heard Theatre Company, "I've got to stop thinking I'm all that,"... but I mind what he thinks.
Bartelt, being human, falls in love on the spot with the theatre. We both take endless photos, one of which is of Bartelt and is rather good, even though I do say so myself. Another one is of the auditorium, and it is now the background on my desktop, which I feel is exactly right: the theatre is a remarkable part of my background. I expect it to be one of the last things I see as my mind flashes before me when I am hit by a truck (I am far too impatient when it comes to crossing the road) or stabbed (I believe in challenging difficult behaviour when and where I see it). It'll be interesting to know whether it is the far more familiar view from the stalls or the extraordinary view from the stage, which I never really thought I would attain as a professional actor.
We do a little bit of a warm up/rehearsal, but the acoustic is great and we're well into the tour, so it's quick. Our dressing room has natural light and a shower and everything. It's so civilised. Yes, I can only see this place through rose-tinted spectacles. I love every cranny.
Chris and I discuss the second half of the show, which we have met a few weeks before to thrash out. He took me to a nice restaurant. I, of course, had bags upon bags. I think my average amount of Bags With Me At Any Given Time must be 2.3, but that day I was between dates on the tour and so I'm sure I had more than that. We were sat next to a grandmother, daughter and granddaughter. A lovely thing, you'd've thought, all to have lunch together, but nothing was quite right and they didn't seem to be having any fun. At all. We were. When they finally left, Chris pointed out a Bently which was driving away. Apparently it had been waiting there for quite a while and they had all got into it. Obviously money really can't buy happiness... but at least a chauffeur dives you and your misery around.
They were very distracting – I have a real failing for other people's misery – and we had been, desperately, to stay on the matter at hand, a task that has become so hard for us in our old age that virtually the first thing we do when we sit down together is get out a paper napkin to make notes on, so we create a crazy spider diagram of where we ought to have gone conversationally, and hope we have enough time to cover it. We always run out of time.
I am grateful that our friendship has not turned to the dust of silence over the years, but has rejuvenated itself. Luck, luck, luck, and the fact that I'm very delightful and understanding that the demands are many when you are very successful, like Chris, with a wife and children to whom you are devoted. He does not have the diagonally-sleeping freedom of moi, he is tied to sundry things he loves. Am I jealous? Yes. Do I begrudge him it all? No. Is that in part because I can tell him I'm jealous and he gets it? Yes. Ours is a close friendship of nearly 20 years which proves that a deal of honesty, like that top-quality emulstion wall paint the expense of which you simply cannot justify, goes further than you'd think.
And in our dressing room we run through the format of the second half. Entertainingly enough he is going to be interviewing me. For the record, when I asked him to do it to help ensure we had decent numbers in Bury St Edmunds he said yes immediately. We agreed very easily on the format, but still, it's... surreal and somewhat absurd.
Well, I suppose it's only absurd because of contemporary Britain's celebretitis. The obsession with celebrity is nothing new – what were the royals in the sixteenth century, putting aside their direct line to god, other than very famous, rich, powerful types. The differences today are that many celebrities aren't that rich and the amount of media which we purchase and/or consume is biiiiiiig. People who like standup, who watch The Thick Of It, panel games, Skins, they may well be familiar with Chris, but the many I know, the young man I met (He looked 14 then, looks like a rather haggered 18-year-old now) was interesting to me because he was interested in politics, the arts, he made me laugh etc etc. None of that has changed. His politics have changed to a certain extent, as I'm sure mine have, but not that change we are meant to experience as we approach 40: we're not... Tories... yet. But he is interesting to me because of his mind, and sometimes because of his long, pointy shoes, but I understand that's a fashion thing. He is interesting to me as a father, a husband, a good friend of our other good friends, he is a brother, a son, he has an eclectic taste in music and the kind of encyclopaedic memory I refer to, I fear offensively, as an autistic boy-brain (I should point out that I envy him his memory in a way I cannot even put down on paper, so that name is not meant as any kind of a denigration. In fact, the asperger's and autistic friends I have send me wild with their ability to name actors/directors/cinematographers from films, kinds of nerine, types of red wine, political events, capital cities, etc).
By this stage we have both had interesting stuff happen to us, but I don't think either of us would want to have to say who has had the more interesting life. I suspect mine has been rather more off-the-scale for death, depression and bad times than has his; in fact, who am I trying to kid? I know this is the case. He has an ability to cope which I simply do not possess and, as he has pointed out to me, I have been obsessed with loss the whole time he has known me – it might be argued that I deal with heartbreak even worse than I deal with actual concrete definitive death. Chris has worked very hard, learning to treat the imposters of success and failure just the same. He has become a father, he's had the troubles we all have. But what is curious to us is that he is more interesting to people because he is famous. He's also funny - mostly - about lighter things than I seem to manage. But it is his mere well-knownness is the thing which may tempt people to this show tonight.
And yet, the lesson Bartelt and I have learnt is that there are as many fascinating stories as there are people; it doesn't matter whether they are famous. We have been told so many extraordinary things by people we will probably never even see again, it has nothing to do with money or fame, whether you consider yourself a orator or not: you have a story; it is compelling.
I'm sorry – I seem to have digressed. You can blame that on Chris.
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