Transcript:
Lytham St. Annes Gold Radio - 102.6fm, 96.3am and local digital networks.
Time: 01:03am
Hello, good evening and welcome to Music Through The Niiiight!
We just heard new kid on the block Moby there, asking ‘Why Does My Heart Feel So Sad?’ I don’t know, Moby. But fear not - in a moment, we’ll be taking a trip through some lovely fields of gold with that sleeveless Celt-hobbit of the Tyne, Sting. But, before we get to that, let me just say a quick word about why I’m here. Why am I here? Ach, don’t ask me! The only person who has any idea of what’s going on, who knows how I ended up here, who knows more than he lets on as well as, I suspect, having a hand - perhaps even more than that - in the whole bunch of events which have guided me here, is that wee brass pillbox-fella, that chubby little life-bollard, that stumpy man-caddy who always has a plan handy. I’m talking, of course, about Mr Chips.
But, wait. Maybe I’m getting ahead of myself here. Perhaps you don’t who Mr Chips is. You might not have heard of me even but, unless you’ve somehow managed to successfully avoid the headlines of various tabloids and reports on ITV news, I think that’s less likely. Anyway, my name, as I’m fairly sure you’re aware, is Roy Walker. You may remember me from the popular and - I like to think - nationally-treasured gameshow Catchphrase. That’s riiiiight! And, as I’m sure none of you will find it too difficult to recall the fact that I was the host, the frontman, the star if you will, and not Mr Chips who, in truth, was merely my sidekick: on a good day he was a mildly amusing sideshow, on a bad day (and there was a Birth Of A Nation of bad days) he was a comedic dog-lump, a dead weight, forged in a dour-smithery from leaden anti-entertainment, which I was then forced to drag through a twenty-five minute struggle with primetime banality.
For those few uninitiated among you, the show was based around certain phrases, sayings and proverbs which were then literally animated on a large screen for the contestants to try to decipher. For example, the phrase ‘rock-star’ would be represented by a brief cartoon in which a star shape is established to be made from rock. The phrase ‘at death’s door’ would become a man knocking at a door which was then opened by a crude approximation of the Grim Reaper. The phrase ‘letting the cat out of the bag’ would feature a bag from which a bag-imprisoned cat is somehow ‘let out’. The phrase ‘dancing cheek to cheek’ would be - well, yeah, you get the idea. And it was Mr Chips who was the star of these proverbial dumbshows that were displayed on a giant television at the side of my hosting-podium. If you don’t know what he looks like, the best description I can think of is that of a post-box (the American kind, a ‘mail-box’) which has been inexplicably painted gold-yellow, had a set of metal-tube arms and legs fastened to it, and, for reasons I never could quite fathom, has a large red handkerchief tied cub-scout-fashion round where his neck would be if he had one. From above this handkerchief there peeked out an enormous pair of cartoon-character eyes and the chubby cheeks of an equally cartoon-character-ish smile. He could walk, he could wave, he could do a few other things. But, believe me, that’s as far as his talents stretched.
Ach, don’t think I’m bitter. On the contrary, I’d be the first to concede that, behind the scenes, so to speak, the balance of our personal relationship was tilted firmly in his favour. He was ‘the boss’. And I didn’t mind that. Not really. That was dandy with me. Just so long as you keep in mind that, in a sense - a very real sense, mind - I was responsible for him. By ‘responsible’ I don’t mean I let him sleep in my house, eat my food and spend the pocket-money I gave him (all of which I did let him do, by the way). What I mean is that, much like the way in which the monster was fatefully dependent on his despised creator Dr Frankenstein, Mr Chips’ very existence relied on mine. Some deep stuff, eh?
As for our relationship on the show? Well, yeah, perhaps it is true: I’m a tad resentful about how Mr Chips claimed to remember things. But I remember things the way they really happened. And obviously I owe where I am today to Catchphrase. I wouldn’t be who I am without it. I wouldn’t be here, talking to you now, y‘know! But regarding the later era of the show, the last few episodes of what turned out to be the last series hosted by me, the period when the dark motives of Mr Chips, who I’d taken to be a stronger man, were finally revealed, causing all the things I’d taken to be fixed, true and certain to come unstuck - these are the episodes I’d prefer to forget.
Ach, I say I thought he was a stronger man than he turned out to be but maybe that’s a touch unfair. When I first met him - or, I should say, when I first realised he was a real person - it seemed clear to me that he was a strong, resilient figure. This was a couple of months before I left Catchphrase. I remember I was in my dressing room at the time and, for some reason, I had the telephone receiver in my hand despite there being no-one on the other end. I also remember - and there’s no reason why I should remember this of all things - that I had sketched in the margin of my script-notes a doodle of a group of broken twigs, all broken, twisted and snapped backwards, yet none fully severed from the branch. And it was at this moment, whilst I was thinking about these twigs and the phone in my hand, that there was this slow knock at the door. By this time I’d taken to ignoring people when they knocked - it was always ‘we’re still waiting for you on stage blah’ or ‘so-and-so said she could smell alcohol on your blah.’ But no, when I looked up this time, there was Mr Chips. Ach, that sounds daft! But at the time it didn’t seem daft, or confusing, or frightening. Seeing the big tinny face of a fictional cartoon character fixed into a cheery smile, the bulbous body hovering like a miniature blimp by the closed door, his stick-thin limbs in a constant puppet-like drift-motion, it all seemed logical. It was even funny. Hysterically so, in fact. He was bigger than he looked on the Catchphrase screen, about my height. He manoeuvred the series of pipes that made up one of his arms into a slow wave, the hinges creaking and the stiff metallic mit he used as a hand squeaking back and forth, all a couple of feet in front of me. I just started laughing. I couldn’t see any way in which he could alter the manically delighted expression on his face. It was fixed, cast - he smiled and peered wisely out from behind his smile and I doubled over. Eventually, I fell to the floor, unable to move, my eyes weeping like a pair of tickled lady-slots. It was then, through that blurred, shuddering vision, that I thought how strong he looked, and wise too, appearing gigantic from my floor-low point of view.
When I’d regained myself he drifted away from the door and dropped into my dressing room chair, the heavy barrel of his body causing the cushioning to bounce with the impact. I stifled a relapse titter. A small puff of light glowed beneath his face, lighting up the large lidless eyes and the stubby nose knuckled in the centre of his face, and throwing shadows into the large apple-cheeks that stretched an overbiting slit of a smile over the top of his red neckerchief. With one mit he lowered the front of the cloth and with the other inserted a pipe. He lit it with a long safety match. I heard him take a deep sigh as he shook out the match and let it fall to the floor. When he spoke he didn’t move his mouth or indeed any other part of his face, except for those dark ink-blot pupils in the centre of his bright paper-white eyes which scanned the dressing-room, eventually resting on me.
‘Ach, you’ve had problem or two, Roy,’ the disembodied voice was a loud - a white-noise sound filling the room. ‘I’ve come to give you a hand, fella.’
Obviously, I had no idea what he was talking about. It made no sense. But at least it stifled my lingering giggles. To be perfectly honest with you, I think it was Mr Chips who was having some problems of his own. He sighed theatrically again and turned so I could see his profile, with the curve of a pipe protruding, set against the mirror. He told me he thought it would be helpful for us to be friends for a while and I, seeing not a whole lot wrong with that, offered no protest…
Ach, sorry folks. Here’s me jabbering on like some daft aphid. You didn’t tune in to hear my life story. Patricia, my producer, is making some slightly drastic hand-signals in my general direction… what? What is that, Patricia? Bird? A bee? There’s a bee in the studio…? There’s a bee doing a… oh, sting! Sting. Of course, yes. So here’s wealthy romp-athon champion Sting with his ‘Fields of Gold’
[Song - 'Fields Of Gold' by Sting]
Lovely stuff. ‘Fields of Gold’ there by Sting. And we’ll be continuing with the ‘gold’ theme with Katrina and the Waves in just a second. But just to pick up from where I left off - sorry, I know I have a habit of yakking on - but just to pick up… where was I? Oh, that’s right. We developed this routine, me and Mr Chips. Every morning he would appear in my apartment at the foot of my bed, the pale morning light forming this bizarre aureole around the tub of his silhouetted figure. I’d hear his voice say something like: ‘Come on, Roy. It’s time to get up.’ Then I’d writhe slowly among the sheets, begging for a few minutes more, only to receive the exact same instruction in the exact same tone of voice: ‘Come on, Roy. It’s time to get up.’ Then there’d be this faint flash of light against the penumbra of his body which meant he was lighting his pipe which in turn meant it really was time to get up - no messing about now. I’d dress and wash, and then we’d head off to film Catchphrase.
In the dressing room, both in the mornings before the day’s filming commenced, and in the evenings after it had all wrapped up, Mr Chips would sit in his usual chair by the mirror and read the paper, explaining scraps of news here and there. Later, when everything was done and dusted we’d go back to my place, have some tea and then after a night of sharing a bottle of two of Lame Farmhand whiskey (the majority of which would disappear in Mr Chips’s robust frame) and watching Topless Darts or Midget Weather Forecaston Live TV, I’d go to bed, leaving Mr Chips smiling on the sofa, ready to appear at the foot of my bed and wake me again the next morning. I often wondered what he did at nights. How he slept, for instance, if he did at all. Did he dream? All I know is that he spent the nights, asleep or awake, in the front room with the telly on full volume and the lights up bright. I kept my bedroom door open and, from my bed, I could just see, over the top of the sofa-back, the smooth tip his head. But, whether he slept or not, I couldn’t tell you.
One night, I remember, I had an awful nightmare. The exact details are hazy, all I remember is that it ended with myself sinking in stream of black, sludgy catarrh which slowly carried me into this confused viscera of dark tunnels. I moved beneath vast, green gardens on which I could hear what I thought to be children playing. Then things got really weird - it all got a bit like that trippy bit in Easy Rider. At one point a giant rabbit was pinning my shoulders to the ground with his knees and thwacking me in the face with his colossal erection. I woke up almost screaming and, instantly, Mr Chips was there, his body filling the doorframe. He told me he was going to buy one of the big bottles of Distraught Aunt Meg Gin and a pouch of Sailor’s Crotchpit tobacco (his favourites) from the all-night garage and did I want anything? I said no and he turned to leave, craning back his whole, jointless body to say: ‘It’s alright, Roy. Go back to sleep.’ Then he left. I heard the clatter of his footsteps along the pavement outside and I fell back to sleep.
Anyway, it around this time that we were given this completely unscheduled break from the show at some point early in the winter. That was when things began to go all wrong for us. Especially Mr Chips - not being able to work obviously frustrated him. He was, after all, a consummate artist. When we found out that there was going to be a fortnight off filming we went back to my apartment as usual and I spent the evening watching Mr Chips become increasingly drunk until he was on the point of violent incomprehensibility. The dark holes in the centre of his enormous eyes swivelled around inside his head in synch with a long, incoherent murmur that issued from the slot of his mouth. A boozy, fulvous trickle congealed down his face and along the rim of his neckerchief. I think he said something about the Wetherspoon’s bar-staff and the panda population being in collusion against him. To be frank with you, I was concerned. I’d never seen Mr Chips like this. Sure, he drank, and enjoyed getting tanked. But this was off the Richter scale. He lay across the sofa, still gurgling and moving his arms and legs like a wee turtle trying to claw its way out from under the weight of the alcohol.
Gradually, his limbs and his burbling all drooped into stillness and his eyes fixed ahead of him as though he’d died. I wondered if he perhaps had died, perhaps from some sort of sudden shock of alcohol into whatever circuits and gears operated him. But it was late. I decided he was sleeping and that I should go to bed too. However as soon as I clasped my hands onto my knees to lift myself, he began to speak. He told me had a wife. She’d left him for another man, that’s why he’d come into my dressing room all those weeks ago. It was him, and not me, that need a friend, or - as he stoically phrased it - a place to stay.
I’d never thought of Mr Chips as the marrying kind. Although, admittedly, I hadn’t really thought of him as having any kind of life beyond the boundaries of the day-to-day existence we shared. Indeed, I don’t see, from a physio-technical point of view, how he’d managed to have any kind of intimate relationship with a woman. Nonetheless, he told me, since leaving his wife he’d made his way through a string of meaningless one night stands, conducted in the toilets of various local pubs, the backs of petrol stations and even - and I wouldn’t take what he said as gospel - a graveyard which was in the process of industrial renovation. In a sense, I wanted him to go into greater detail about these meaningless affairs. They’re the sort of thing I’ve always found fascinating and, if I’m being honest, they’re the sort of thing I’ve always found admirable in a chap, if the chap’s got the courage to go through with the whole thing.
But it was his wife he wanted to talk about. And talk about her he certainly did. Unsurprisingly, her name was Mrs Chips. I couldn’t tell you whether Mrs Chips was a ‘real’ woman, in the sense as you’d probably understand it, or whether she’s simply a female version of Mr Chips, like the pathetic drag-act he was occasionally called upon to perform on Catchphrase which involved nothing more imaginative than an addition of long eyelashes, a thick exaggeration of bright lipstick and a large red bow taped to the top of his forehead. However, from the way in which he drunkenly extemporized on the subject of her delicate poise, the exquisite subtleties of her figure, the overwhelming grace of her demeanour, the aching artistry which had clearly gone into the construction of her face - in short, the perfection of beauty - I think it’s safe to say he was detailing more than a physical summary of an identical dustbin-lady.
Anyway, it appeared she’d left Mr Chips. Workaholic artisan that he was, he’d grown too wedded to his job and a younger man - Jamie, an editing-room minion on Junior Stars In Their Eyes who rode to work on a skateboard - had stepped in, found his advances reciprocated and invited her to move into his flat above his parents’ garage. He went surfing in his spare time apparently, this Jamie, and had taken Mrs Chips to the beach. That was all she wanted - she’d always wanted to see the beach and the sea, and he, Mr Chips, had never taken her. Simple as that. He imagined them both together, having passionate, perfume-ad sex on the wet sand, waves exploding pyrotechnically against the rocks in the distance as they both climaxed simultaneously. He reclined heavily into the seat, his wide eyes looking blearily up at the un-shaded light-fixture, the smile stamped into his face looking heavier than ever. He began a long and confused elegy on their relationship: how they’d met at some sort of college - she’d been an art student and, if I understood him correctly, he’d been some kind of amateur stand-up with a promising future in professional sports. From what I could decipher from his gin-riddled blatherings their time together had been quiet and, to be perfectly honest, a bit dull sounding: evenings watching television together, ready-cooked oven meals, visits to their neighbour’s for the weekly 'Whist and Gammon’ night. Quietly, he blamed himself for this depressing, muted quality which flavoured their marriage, his head slipping backwards and his speech simmering into a more soft and velarsome gurgling till it finally reduced to a quiet, babyish snore. I didn’t know…
Ah, Jesus! Don’t know if you can hear that, listeners, but there’s a wee window between myself and Patricia, my producer, and she’s banging like Billyo on it at the moment. Scared the living bejesus out of me, it did. Women! Guess I’d better play you another song the, folks. So, as promised, here’s Katrina and her wonderful Waves with ‘Walking On Sunshine’.
[Song - 'Walking On Sunhine' by Katrina And The Waves]
