37. wired open
What are you doing here, idiot?
Idiot who can't sing. Can't hold a single note and you're here. Five hundred people plus.
The gods of music let you get away with things so far, but they were waiting for you to appear in front of the biggest audience. Now they laugh as you crash and burn in public. Now they expose your voice through a serious PA. Why are you looking so serene, idiot?
*
Can't say I've always been the extrovert I became. The opposite sometimes as a kid. But the exhibitionist side was always in there.
I agree with two comedians.
Rob Beckett in 2021: 'Some people's first thought isn't trying to be funny. That's a different way to go about it, wandering around being pleasant and nice. What a waste of your life!'
Way before that, Mel Brooks: 'If you’re quiet, you’re not living. You’ve got to be colorful and loud and lively.'
Me, I had a devil on one shoulder and a cautious angel on the other. The devil would say that's a good line, say it out loud, it'll go down well. The angel knew better. Don't even think about it, you'll just make people miserable, including you, it's happened before. I took both on board - then usually went with the devil. I still shiver at some of the things I said.
I talk a lot generally. One girlfriend said I should resist the temptation to comment on absolutely everything. She had a point, but what are things for except to be commented on?
The inner Beckett and Brooks comes out a lot. My first instinct has always been to raise a smile or a topic. Of course, this doesn't always make you friends. Especially not at the boarding school they sent me to.
*
Most of the boys there were sophisticated - i.e. institutionalised. Some of them had been boarding since they were eight years old, imagine that, and they'd learned the secret was to shut up. Don't be the centre of attention, don't put your head above the ramparts. If you did, kids at that school had a phrase they'd shout out while they pointed at you: 'On show!'
But when people sneered at italians for running away in the war, I responded with Dunkirk and Singapore. I could've said nothing, or even joined in, like the irish had to do about irish jokes - but no-one should have to live with that.
As a result, my first three years at that place were grim (the fourth was barely bearable). Most of the bullying was mental, though I was attacked by half a dozen of my classmates once. Oh and I had acid in my face. A little shit called Greenhalgh and his minder O'Reilly, one of the school bullies, both of them older than me. You don't forget the names of people who do that to you. The chemistry teacher, a creepy introvert called Thompson, saw it happen but did nothing.
My dad arranged for me to go to that place. As a kid in Italy, he'd spent time in an orphanage, replacing his brother Guido when relatives feared for his safety. So my dad knew what these places were like. And he still sent me to one. I never forgave him - and made sure he knew it.
The place was so bad one of the boys tried to burn it down! Started a series of fires. Wherever you are, AB Lawrence, you're a hero. Another guy I met again years later was so unhappy there his mum took him out and put him in a different school.
No such luck for me - but it's one of my proudest boasts that I didn't fit in, that I was downright unpopular with those sons of the rich with their sense of entitlement, casual brutality, and lame jibes about italians in the war. Genuinely pleased with myself for never trying to be one of them.
I did share one thing with them. We were all there because our dads didn't want us around, there's never any other reason.
They'd all failed their public-school exams at thirteen. So they wouldn't have got anywhere near a grammar school. Same with most of the teachers. I did meet my oldest friend there, Robin, and he was a best man at my wedding, but the place did him no good either, the psycho!
*
One of the few bright spots at that stalag was the acting I did.
The french teacher, Ron Lyle, a nice old guy I met up with after leaving school, took me for my first indian meal. He was very keen on the theatre. Every other year, he'd put on a school play. The years in between, each house produced one.
I acted in two of each and wrote both the house plays, the first when I was fourteen. The second one I based on Shakespeare's Julius Caesar, in which Caesar was our headmaster and the conspirators who killed him were the other teachers.
Some of them made liberal use of a cane, including their megalomaniac head.
Julius Caesar, self-styled god
He rules by the whip and spares not the rod
Subversive stuff. And pretty funny by schoolboy standards. I don't just say so myself: 'The best House play to be shown here in many years'. And the reviewer was a guy who wasn't keen on me (mutual feeling and join the club). When I took a curtain call at the end, clad in a toga, the sight of all those rich boys who didn't like me, applauding with big smiles on their faces...
*
A stage held no terrors for me even at primary school..
The teachers were mostly nuns. In my last year but one, that meant Sister Dominic. She changed to Sister Christine when they were allowed shorter skirts, but Dominic suited her more, because she seemed a bit male and uptight, humourless to a nine-year-old. But she got us through our times tables and so on, and she was superb at the creative stuff. My essay writing took off under her, my storytelling, and we made puppets out of papier mâché and ran a theatrical production based on Wind in the Willows, which was a riot.
It was meant to be fairly faithful to the book, but we soon threw away the script and turned it into an anarchic comedy show. The badger and mole were wise-cracking bad boys - the puppeteers, irish and polish, had their heads under the improvised stage - while I ended up as the human face in the middle, failing to keep order ('Uncle Freddi').
It was full of smart ideas considering how very young we were. The weasels were stick puppets, so if you turned them round you saw the stick. To avoid that, they kept having to exit backwards - while making a fourth-wall joke about it. Our audience, the rest of the class, were in hysterics.
Sister Dom was so dry you didn't feel this at the time, but you blossomed under her.
I should've chatted with her in later years - because I saw her from time to time. The school and convent were right across the road from our house, and I did drop in for tea with one of the other nuns, the teacher in my final year.
I saw Sister Dominic Christine on those visits, and I wish I'd been grown-up enough to thank her for everything, even if only to see her smile for once! Regrets are too easy. She became head teacher in the '70s.
*
Of course, you can over-do it.
In that penultimate year, maybe drunk with success from the Uncle Freddi stint, I rather took over the class dance at the end of the summer term.
The school hall had quite a big stage, the width of the back wall. I pulled the curtains round me, stuck my head through, and led a singsong (me!). I can still remember The animals went in two by two.
The following year, just before our last party at the school, one of the guys asked me nicely to tone it down this time. Ouch. I did, though it didn't change my behaviour much over the years. Once a clown...
Like that scorpion, you have to be true to your nature.
*
Sometimes your smart arse turns round and bites you.
Even though I hated the boarding school, I quite enjoyed my term in the rugby team and went back with my best mate for a couple of old boys matches. And a few of the teachers were OK. One of them was old enough for me to try a line I'd seen in a similar situation in a TV comedy drama.
Hello, sir. I thought you were dead.
Looking at you, Freddi, I wish I was.
Tee hee. I walked into that.
*
Meanwhile I liked a stage. Even when I wasn't on it.
In my first year at Oxford, I had a room in a house on Walton Street, across the road from the college. Nothing but good memories from it.
The room above mine housed Doug Lucie, who was in the football second XI like me. Blond Steve went to a club meeting where the captain said now the league season was almost over, he could give a game to the odd player on the fringes, like Cris Freddi. Yeh, says Lucie. Very odd.
!!
That may have come from the day he had to let me into my own room. Twice.
There was a bathroom along the landing. One day I locked myself out of my room, so I had to go upstairs with a towel round me and ask Doug if he'd mind getting a spare key from the porter's lodge. Sure, he says. He collects the key, then takes it back.
Five minutes later, he had to make another trip across the street. I'd locked the door a second time!
Doug Lucie went on to become a playwright. I saw something of his plays on TV soon after we left university.
Before that, he acted in another one at the Playhouse just up the road. Me and the Two Steves were right at the back, the very last row, with me in the last seat in the right-hand corner. We knew there was going to be a nude scene, and when Doug Lucie took his clothes off, I let out a stage whisper: 'Shocking!' Yet again, couldn't stop myself. People tittered while the Steves put their heads in their hands. They were there for the ultimate fart that year.
*
Doing things like that. Being 'on show'. What's that about? The need to have people look at you? Desperately seeking approval?
Nah, neither of those. For a start, who needs approval from a lot of people? That's not just sad, it makes no sense at all. I lived on my own for twenty-five years and never had any of the neighbours round my flat. Didn't visit theirs. Just the way it is in London. I didn't need people to take notice of me.
But funny things come into my head. Funny or interesting. And I just think: better out than in. Bernie's the same sometimes. I say it doesn't always make you friends - but it makes you more than enough. Several of mine go back fifty years, others are many years younger than me. I've been best man at three weddings and turned down another one. I've got two god-daughters and said no to a godson.
The openness I was born with, it's the reason I did some acting on stage and appeared in a rock band. Reciting lines and singing your favourite songs, taking parts in sports day with a crowd looking on: they're just fun things to do.
But at the same time you're inviting people to look at you, with the implication that they'll think you're good at what you're doing. There again, if they didn't, I didn't care, I still performed. It's complicated.
Don't know that I'm explaining this well, but it's not about wanting attention. I just don't hide from it when I've got something to say or things I enjoy. I used to dance a lot at parties. Badly (I've seen videos), but it didn't feel that way at the time.
Most people aren't like that. The vast majority are audiences, not actors. They won't get up on stage, or sing in front of people, or dance much - for fear of mockery. They don't say what they really feel, afraid of leaving themselves exposed. Leads to a lot of misunderstanding, which causes resentment.
You're entitled to your privacy. I guess. But it seems a shame to me. I can't help wondering why people need it so much. Information is power? Someone knows your way of thinking, so they've got something over you? Just grow up.
Most people live like they're still at school, especially boarding schools, or open prisons (same thing), where raising your profile can lead to ridicule or worse. But why go to your grave like that? As they say in AA meetings, and GA, secrets will kill you. So come out come out, wherever you are.
All this hush-hush, a whole world in hiding - I started jettisoning people because of it. Example: someone I met through birding. Knocked about together for twenty years. Went on trips, lot of overnight stays at his house, watching his kids grow up, guest at my wedding. And we were on the same wavelength over many things. But I never really got to know him, because he stayed behind a protective screen. Fine if that's what he wanted, but life's too short. So I let him go, with my good wishes. When I had novel published, about birding, our shared interest, took him three years to start reading it! The time wasn't right, he said. ??? He was a career diplomat, which gives you an idea.
At the other end of the secrecy scale, I was in a pub once, for someone's birthday do. And I met a guy for the first time. We share a drink, and almost immediately he mentions his dad fucking up his teenage years. I say mine did too, and we're off. For forty minutes, we talked about only major things - and agreed how much fun we'd had. Things that matter are the most enjoyable, not what job do you do and how do you know our host.
We didn't swap names and never saw each other again, but I wish every conversation was like that. I make sure some of them are.
On birding trips, I'd be the one asking directions or just rabbiting with new birders. My mates wouldn't so much. When my son was eight years old, he was there when I chatted with an elderly neighbour who was startled by my kid screeching the brakes on his bike, or when I had a word with the postman or road sweeper.
Dad, do you have to talk to everyone?
Well, yes I do. That neighbour now knows your bike noise isn't threatening. He gave you a birthday present. Talking makes us a community. That and laughter. Brooks and Beckett and me: it's the right way to be.
Being wide open all your life, you suffer occasionally, but it's alright to be marmite (most people are), and disapproval is nothing to be scared of. If you're telling the truth and your heart's in the right place, who are people to judge? If they like you: fine. If not: they won't see you again, so how can their opinions matter?
Even five hundred in one room. I don't know any of them, so I don't care what they think. My voice isn't good enough? Then imagine the brass neck required to bring it on stage. All of you who sing better than me: one of us is throwing himself open while the rest watch in the dark. Story of my life, and I wouldn't have it any other way.
Anyway, even if I'm crap, I might still make you smile.
You never heard nuthin' like...
Dinkey Donkey Doo