If You'd Just Let Me Finish Read online

  One of my friends, who shall remain nameless, save to say that his name begins with R and ends in ichard Hammond, decided to fill his enforced leave by training his dog. And now, after just a couple of weeks, he reports that the dog in question hates him and hides whenever he comes into the room.

  Things will only get worse, because recent studies have found that people who retire early stand an increased chance of developing dementia. They also live in a constant state of anxiety and will die nearly two years sooner than they might, had they stayed at work.

  At fifty-five, then, you’re in a limbo land where time is simultaneously with you and against you. You are too young to put your feet up but too old to start anything new.

  Which is why I have made a decision. I have lost my baby but I shall create another. I don’t know who the other parent will be or what the baby will be like, but I cannot sit around any more organizing my photograph albums.

  Especially as most of the pictures I have are from a fabulous chapter that’s now been closed. The child is grown. The dream is gone. I have become uncomfortably numb.

  19 April 2015

  The only answer to the Med refugee crisis: unfold your sofa bed

  Life for people in these countries is extremely difficult. Because one day you’re on a hillside looking after your goats and the next you’re on fire on the internet. The locals could just about handle Muammar Gaddafi and Saddam Hussein, and so on. But the new lot? No. So they are giving their savings to God knows who and boarding escape boats, most of which then sink.

  Those that don’t sink reach Europe, where the wretched souls on board are greeted by Nigel Farage, who says they must go back from whence they came and be beheaded. Because our primary schools are full.

  And now we have yet more Western leaders climbing on to their soapboxes and saying the people traffickers are committing ‘genocide’. In Italy they are talking about being ‘at war’ with smugglers. And this is worrying because Italy has been at war with smugglers before, and it didn’t go well.

  It was the 1990s. Albania was in chaos. A mad tyrant had been replaced but life was still so tough that thousands of Albanians decided to flee across the Strait of Otranto into southern Italy.

  They would hand over their hard-earned cash to smugglers, who very generously offered a two-for-one deal. If they were caught and sent back to Albania, they would get the next trip for nothing. The traffickers could afford to be generous like this because the number of refugees being caught was about nought.

  As a result, refugees from all over the Middle East and Africa were soon flooding into Albania to buy a two-for-one speedboat ride over the strait, until eventually the EU decided enough was enough. ‘Enough is enough,’ it said to the Italians. ‘You have got to do something to stem the tide.’

  The Italian border patrol instantly responded by buying some new sunglasses. And then it went out and got Fabio Buzzi, a brilliant powerboat designer, to create a range of fast and stylish patrol boats.

  Its officers then hung around in various Mediterranean ports, in their new sunglasses, pulling girls. This infuriated all the other Italian police departments. The carabinieri said it wasn’t fair that the border patrol had new Ray-Bans and a flotilla of fast patrol boats when they had to make do with crummy Foster Grants and a Fiat Uno.

  So they got themselves some boats as well, which made the finance police and even the forestry police hop about and raise merry hell until they too each had a nice seventy-foot launch with a couple of thousand-horsepower turbodiesels in the back.

  When I visited the southern port of Brindisi back in 2001, the harbour looked as though it were hosting some kind of mad GQ fashion shoot set amid a futuristic boat show for oligarchs. All of which meant that Italy had the men and the equipment to take on the smugglers. And they certainly had the sunglasses. But there was a problem …

  Because let’s just say you’re out there, in the Strait of Otranto, in your fifty-knot patrol boat, when you see a refugee boat heading to Italy. You catch up and tell it to stop. It doesn’t. So you then … you then – what? Open fire? You can’t. Not on a boat filled largely with innocents.

  The issue had been highlighted tragically in 1997, when an Italian naval vessel, the Sibilia, reportedly rammed an Albanian boat full of refugees, capsizing it with the loss of eighty-three lives.

  There was another problem too. Italian electrics. I went out one night with the border patrol and, as we reached our station, halfway between Italy and Albania, the radar packed up. As the ship’s technician used bits of silver foil from his cigarette packet to fix the fault, we could hear but not see the Ribs – rigid inflatable boats – tearing past in the darkness.

  And even if we could have found them, all the captain could do would be to follow them to the shore, where the smugglers would drive straight up on to a beach and everyone would scarper. Yes, the boat would be a write-off but, hey, they’d simply nick another, or – using their vast profits – go out and buy a new one.

  Or if it looked as if they might not make it, they would simply throw all the refugees over the side and skedaddle back to Albania. ‘That happens a lot,’ said the captain.

  So it’s all very well politicians today hosting summits and sending warships to address the people-smuggling problem, but it will all come to nothing unless someone comes up with a realistic non-lethal plan for stopping a boat that doesn’t want to stop. Throwing nets in its path to disable the propeller? Yup, that’d work, probably, but then you have to offload the cargo, and where do you take it? Back to the hellhole from which it escaped? Or onwards to Europe, where it was going anyway?

  Or how’s this for a novel idea? We accept that the people who are fleeing Libya and other countries where ISIS is running amok are human beings and that they are not coming to Europe because of our benefits system or our health services. They are coming because they don’t want to have their heads cut off with a rusty kitchen knife. And here’s the thing: if we are human beings too, we should let them in.

  Look at it this way. If your neighbour’s house burned down, you wouldn’t tell him that your house was full. Even if you neither liked nor trusted him very much, you’d make up the sofa bed and invite him to spend the night. Or is that just me?

  26 April 2015

  So what if Tom Cruise worships lizards? Lots of us have weirder beliefs

  Whenever someone discovers that I once spent a day with Tom Cruise, they always do the same thing. They adopt a serious expression, inject some gravitas into their voice and say, ‘You know he’s a scientologist, don’t you?’

  Of course I do. There are three facts that everyone on the planet knows without knowing how they know. One: Princess Anne once had a Reliant Scimitar. Two: a swan can break a man’s arm. And three: Tom Cruise is a scientologist.

  It’s odd. Many things are interesting about Tom Cruise – his teeth, for example – and many questions need answering. Why did you think you could play Jack Reacher? Did you know when you were making Top Gun that it would do for the air force what the Village People did for the navy? And Les Grossman from Tropic Thunder – where the hell did that idea come from?

  And yet it’s this scientology business that seems to fascinate people most of all. Because being a scientologist is a bit like being a murderer: you can’t tell by looking at someone that they once killed a man but, when you find out, it changes the way you think about them.

  Scientologists are billed as being a cross between the Moonies and the mafia. We’re told they will let their wives die during childbirth and that, in their world, an abortion can only be performed with a spoon. We’ve even heard that they’ve carved symbols into a remote desert that can be used to guide lizard aliens to Earth. We’re also told that if anyone actually makes these claims in print, they get sued and followed by sinister characters in G-man suits.

  So the message is clear: behind the ready smile, Cruise and all of the others in his weird church are lunatics.

  I’m really no
t sure why. Because if you go to the scientology website, it seems to be a jolly sincere thing, helping people all over the world to get off drugs and working to improve human rights. Though, as is the way with all religions, if you dig a little deeper, the founding principles do sound a bit bonkers.

  They believe, for example, that 75 million years ago a chap called Xenu, who ruled a confederacy of seventy-six planets, froze billions of his people using alcohol and then flew them in a fleet of DC-8s to Earth. After they’d all been killed by hydrogen bombs placed in the planet’s volcanoes, he captured their souls on an electronic ribbon and made them spend thirty-six days in a 3D cinema until they were fully indoctrinated by nonsense, and they they latched on to humans, which is why humans are stupid, unless they’re scientologists, who get rid of the age-old indoctrination using money.

  This is obviously mad. But is it more mad, I wonder, than worshipping a man who could apparently walk on water? Or celebrating the life of a woman who told her gormless husband that God had made her pregnant? Or wailing at a wall? Or growing a beard underneath your face and driving around Pennsylvania in a horse and cart?

  At least scientologists don’t come round to your house when Pointless is on to ask if they may have a bit of your time. But this, say the detractors, is because they are not interested in your time; only your cash.

  Worse, because scientology is officially classified in many countries around the world as a religion rather than a glorified Star Trek convention, it is tax exempt, so it keeps all the vast sums it receives from ‘gullible fools’ such as Mr Cruise and John Travolta.

  Hmm. Is that so different from the plate that is passed up and down the pews by Hector the Rector at evensong? I’m not saying the Church of England uses menaces to raise its cash. That would be stupid. But it certainly did in the olden days. ‘Give us your money, you potato-faced old crone, or you will go to hell when you die.’

  And then you have the Catholic Church, which insisted that the world’s best artists created masterpieces that it then kept for itself.

  Islam isn’t self-funding either. All those mosques have to be paid for by someone, and it isn’t the prophet himself who’s writing the cheques.

  As you may have gathered, I’m not a religious man. I believe that there’s no one in the heavens; just a lot of hydrogen. But I have absolutely no problem with anyone who believes there is.

  Only last week I sat with a straight face as someone explained that God is almost certainly a horse. This does seem unlikely, as any supreme being choosing to take on the form of a living thing would, in my mind, go for something with opposable thumbs, rather than something with hooves.

  Because, let’s be honest: if you’re going to go to all the bother of coming to Earth to spread your message of peace and goodwill, why would you choose something that communicates by whinnying? And that is frightened by a paper bag?

  She listened to these reasoned arguments and said, ‘OK, then. Maybe He isn’t a horse. Perhaps He’s a tree.’

  There’s nothing wrong with this theory. It’s harmless. She believes that the creator of all things is rooted to the spot in a Peruvian jungle, unable to prevent earthquakes in Nepal or a Miliband victory in Britain, and that’s OK. If she wants to give all her money to the Westonbirt Arboretum, that’s her lookout, and it affects the rest of us not one jot.

  It’s the same story with scientologists. If they want to give their cash to a group that believes the rest of humankind has been brainwashed by an outer-space dark lord called Xenu, fine. It’s no worse than a little old lady giving the vicar 10p from her pension to help repair the church roof. Which was damaged by a lightning bolt that God couldn’t prevent because He’s quite literally rooted to the spot in Peru.

  So, the next time someone says, ‘You do know Tom Cruise is a scientologist, don’t you?’, I shall be forced to explain that it could be worse. He could be a supporter of Ed Miliband.

  3 May 2015

  Call me Jezza Slobovic – I’m fat, I have a tennis bat and I will win Wimbledon

  My friend Jodie Kidd, who doesn’t want a job on Top Gear and hasn’t been asked, dropped round last week to say she had recently spat in a jar and then sent the sample away for DNA testing. ‘It’s great’, she said, ‘because they’ve worked out that I’m genetically averse to exercise.’

  Of course, I don’t need to go to such lengths because one glance at the greeny-brown docker’s oysters that I produce every morning is enough to tell even the most untrained observer that I too should not think about going for a run or joining a gym. Any form of exertion is plainly going to be beyond the capability of a lung that is gummed up with what looks like a Doctor Who special effect.

  And yet I am fifty-five years old and well aware that unless I take steps soon I shall become like one of those ashen-faced Americans you see at airports, weeping tears of regret as they glide past a McDonald’s on a motorized scooter, surrounded by oxygen tanks, with tubes going up their noses.

  I’m on the way already. I get out of breath pulling on my socks. My knees ache after scaling a doorstep. I get dizzy if I have to carry a six-pack of wine back from the corner shop. And my gut is now so enormous it looks like I have accidentally swallowed a space hopper.

  The solution is obvious but impossible for someone with the determination and drive of a teenage cannabis enthusiast. I’ve tried the gym and it doesn’t work. It hurts me. And I’ve tried running but so far I haven’t made it out of the drive before collapsing. I just have no willpower. And my pain barrier is so low only single-cell entities could get underneath it. If I were to be tortured, I would reveal the attack plans and the location of our base if the baddie even so much as mentioned the word ‘pliers’.

  I looked recently at all those people doing the London marathon in open-mouthed awe because to me running twenty-six yards is out of the question. I would sooner gouge my own eyes out with a spoon than run twenty-six miles.

  To me the notion of doing exercise for the sake of getting fit is completely alien. Running when you’ve nowhere to go and you’re not late is impossible. And so is spending an hour in a room full of mirrors and priapic businessmen picking things up and putting them down again. It’s not that I don’t want to do that. I just can’t.

  Sport, though, is different. If you join a local football team, you have some fun with your mates while trying to win a game. You get out of breath, up your heart rate and there’s a point to it, most notably in the pub afterwards.

  But I can’t do football because I’m useless at it. Once I tried to take a penalty and – I’m not making this up – the nearest the ball got to the goalmouth was when it was on the spot. From the moment my foot connected with it, it was somehow moving away.

  It’s the same story with snooker. People look at me for a while, and you can hear them muttering to their mates, ‘Oh dear. There’s something wrong with him.’ There is. To me, snooker proves there is such a word as ‘can’t’. And anyway, I’m told it’s not really a proper sport.

  Tennis, though, is different. I’m good at tennis. Really good. Apart from the small fact that I cannot for the life of me do a forehand. When it comes to serving, I’m a tower of power with a hint of slice. Backhands? I’m your man. I can whack the bloody thing right into an opponent’s testes. I can chop or add topspin. I’m a backhand wizard.

  But forehand? No. It either hits the net, or it loops in a crazy arc off the racket and into the neighbour’s vegetable garden. And not being able to do a forehand in tennis is like not being able to sing if you’re the singer in a band. It’s an issue.

  So in an attempt to get fit while doing something I enjoy, and which I can mostly do, I have joined a local tennis club. It’s a fabulous place, set in a few acres of 1952. There are some grass courts and a bar where one can enjoy a refreshing glass of lemonade. There is also a coach whose beauty is so extraordinary many of her clients have been known to faint. And ‘portable’ telephones are banned.

  For my first session
, I dressed in what I thought was a suitable uniform. I had a white T-shirt, a pair of what I understand are called ‘tracksuit bottoms’ and some shoes I bought for no reason at Dubai Airport in 1987.

  I then needed a bat. But that’s fine because I have one. It’s been in the boot of my car for eight years in a snazzy and very modern-looking bat wrap. However, unfortunately, when I removed it for my inauguration session, it turned out to be a Dunlop Maxply that looked like an LP that had been left on a radiator, in the sunshine, for about a century. ‘Warped’ doesn’t quite cover it. Rolf Harris is warped. This was something else altogether.

  After much thought I decided not to turn up at my new tennis club with a bent racket, especially as I was wearing a pair of shoes that were the same colour as my teeth. So I borrowed what was necessary when I got there and soon I’d used my forehand to send all of the balls on to Holland Park Avenue. This was a good thing because after twelve minutes I was completely exhausted.

  However, I had enjoyed it very much and tomorrow morning I have my first lesson with the very beautiful Eastern European coach. In my mind, by teatime, I will look like the bastard love child of Willem Dafoe and Jon Bon Jovi and I’ll have won Wimbledon by mid-July.

  I won’t bother reporting back on my progress. You’ll know.

  10 May 2015

  Money’s no object and men don’t count when a woman has a horse

  Socialists will tell you the country has gone mad because it has just voted for more cuts, more austerity and a smaller, more efficient NHS. UKIP supporters, meanwhile, will tell you the country is insane because their party received almost 4 million votes but won just one seat. And Liberal Democrats will tell you the nation is bonkers because that nice Mr Cable did a Kevin Phillips Bong.fn1