Fear of a Blue Planet

W

hen I wasn't adhering to a ludicrously heavy acting schedule as a nipper, I was often splashing around in the local municipal.

However, I wasn't a great swimmer when I was young. Nowadays, I can cut through the water like a buttered dolphin, but for a time I dreaded the weekly school swimming lessons.

It was a confidence issue more than a skill-in-the-water thing. You couldn't keep me out of the sea on family holidays, particularly after I discovered the many and varied joys of snorkelling. On one particular excursion, no bigger than an adult seal (unbuttered), I drifted out towards the open sea while exploring a beautiful cove on the Devon coast. I only realised I was straying into the English Channel when I felt a tap on my shoulder and emerged from my aquatic reverie to see my terrified mother treading water, with the shore some two hundred metres behind her.

My problem was more to do with the whole package, rather than simply the water itself. There was something nerve-racking for me about swimming pools. Great big, chemical-stinking rooms filled with wet strangers, emitting echoing screams of euphoric joy or genuine terror (it was never an easy distinction to make) as I failed to avoid gulping down mouthfuls of the old municipal blue. This somewhat specific aversion can be traced back to three childhood experiences relating to swimming that affected me deeply.

Two of them happened at Gloucester Leisure Centre, where I eventually and somewhat ironically worked as a lifeguard. I don't mean I worked in an ironic fashion - I didn't permit people to splash each other, run on wet surfaces and drown - I mean that, in hindsight, it seems ironic to me that I was paid to work in the very place that, for a couple of years, you couldn't have paid me to enter.

The first incident occurred when I was around six years old. As was our custom on a Sunday morning, I had gone to the public baths with my mum and my cousin Tim who was nine or ten years older than me. I had been confined to the learner pool, a smaller proposition to the huge, scary adult's pool annexing it. Bathtub-warm and full of tiny screaming kids and probably tiny screaming kids' urine (which explains the temperature of the water), I couldn't help feeling frustrated. I wanted to be in the main pool with Tim and hang out with the big kids.

I'd been in the shallow end a few times under supervision and played ‘thumbs up underwater' with Tim. That's not some depraved game permitted in the seventies, a time when pool etiquette admittedly involved free rein to drown Rolf Harris (am I remembering that ‘learn to swim' commercial correctly?), it was actually a game Tim and I had devised to road-test our goggles. We would stand opposite each other, count to three, then submerge ourselves into a corresponding position beneath the surface. We would then give each other the thumbs up until it was necessary to re-emerge into the light and noise to get air.

Whether it is the sea, the swimming pool or the bath, underwater is a fascinating place for kids. It is mysterious and other-worldly, rendering your surroundings in cool slow motion. We are guests of something awesome when we're underwater. It is a place where we do not belong and forces beyond our control govern our tenure; our body either propels us to the surface for air or the water keeps us for itself. It's alien and dangerous; it inspires our urge to explore, that primary force in evolution that conversely brought fishes from the sea to the land in the first place. Throw in an inevitable and arguably less subconscious uterine association and it's a wonder we don't spend our lives in scuba gear.

As a geeky teenager and finally rid of my phobia, I would dive to the bottom of the deep end of our school pool, during the precious ten minutes of free swim time permitted at the end of swimming lessons, and stand for a few seconds with my hands on my hips, pretending to be Superman. I would look around, as if in search of a Lois or Jimmy, then take off for the surface as if I was flying into the sky, and for twelve whole feet, I swear I could feel my cape flowing behind me. That was the other aspect of the aquatic world that appealed to me - the absence of verbal communication meant your internal monologue could fill the solitude with nerdy fantasy, unfettered. Even at the crowded Gloucester Leisure Centre in the mid-seventies, ‘going underwater' was hugely exciting as it cut the pandemonium of the surface to a muffled silence in an instant. My frustration at languishing in the baby pool became too much to bear. I decided to escape through the verruca bath to the adjacent big pool, while my mother wasn't looking, and join Tim in the serious water, not just for ‘thumbs up underwater' but for other legendary pool games, such as ‘jumping off the cliff, ‘caught by a shark' and ‘can you tell that I'm relieving myself?'.

Emerging into the cavernous interior of the main pool, I spied cousin Tim some way towards the mid-shallows. What the heck? I thought to myself, I'm six, I'm wearing a rubber ring, I can handle the mid-centre with the teens, you just see if I can't! I had no idea about the level of panic involved in drowning. The hopeless desperation that floods your body, way before the water fully invades your lungs. I'm not sure what I expected my rubber ring to do as I rashly leapt in. Probably that it would do its job in preventing me from sinking beneath the water before I had a chance to hold my breath. It certainly fulfilled its primary purpose in remaining topside. In that respect, I let the rubber ring down by not remaining topside with it, as was admittedly my responsibility.

As I hit the water, the ring stayed where it was and I slipped through into the wash, kicking with sudden ineffectuality towards the surface, immediately aware that I was literally out of my depth. I can't remember who pulled me out. I don't think it was a lifeguard, I think it was a civilian man, with a beard; maybe it was Rolf Harris. Needless to say, the experience left me shaken and rendered me strictly baby-pool material for a while afterwards. A shadow of my former water-baby self, my confidence gone, I tried to rope a few toddlers into playing ‘thumbs up underwater' but only got as far as asking a little girl's father before I was banned from the leisure centre for a year by a cabal of angry parents.

That's not true but it seemed like a good way to end the story, which, let's face it, petered out. I'm likely to do that from time to time. It comes from being a stand-up comedian. If a joke or story doesn't work, you keep adding to it until it gets the requisite response and then you move on. I promise to let you know when I do it, as I want this to be a truthful account as well as an entertaining read. The truth is always preferable in the context of a memoir because the enjoyment lives and dies by the reader's belief in the events being described. So, unless I tell you otherwise, I am conveying to you the absolute truth and not in a double-bluff, Whitley Strieber's Communion-type way. So now, with that short digression out of the way, let us plunge back into the suspiciously warm waters of my aquatic past and get to the bottom of this, as far as I know, nameless childhood phobia.

The second event (of the fabled three) occurred not in the voluminous blue of the Gloucester Leisure Centre main pool but in the changing rooms. The whole incident came about as the result of me accidentally kicking the person behind me in the eye as I exited the pool. Rather than apologise when I turned and saw him rubbing his face, I made a face as if to say ‘Don't be such a baby. He and his friend then acted out vengeance on me and my friend in an extremely cruel and scary way. They kept us in the changing rooms for at least ten minutes, holding Sean Jeffries and me hostage, and repeatedly calling us bummers before threatening to make us perform bum-based acts on each other, until I was a mess of terrified tears. I always remember being impressed by Sean, who remained stoic, even in the face of their chilling threats, while I whined and begged them to let us go.

In the end, I think they felt a bit sorry for me because I was such a baby and they did indeed let us go unmolested. I wouldn't go swimming for a few months after that. Years later, as a lifeguard at the same pool, I caught a couple of kids terrorising a younger swimmer in the very same changing space and exacted cathartic revenge upon them, as if they were the very same bullies who had terrorised me ten years earlier. The two perps were probably in their mid-teens, both were already dressed as they circled in on a wet boy, no older than ten . . .

‘What the hell's going on here?' asked Pegg, settling into a stance that projected strength and authority, a demeanour only augmented by his red, white and blue lifeguard uniform, which clung to his muscular form as though it could not bear to be separated from his sweet-smelling skin; a combination of natural musk and Brut 33.

‘What's it to you, grandad?' said the more dominant of the two absolute shitheads.

‘I'm not your grandad,' Pegg replied with a knowing smile. ‘I'm not even old enough to be your father. Someone's clearly failing math,' Pegg quipped, firing a reassuring wink at the victim, whose face had become a glowing beacon of gratitude and admiration.

‘What are you talking about?' spat the lowlife pool bully, his eyes disappearing into a hateful squint.

Pegg sighed. ‘I'm saying, I'm not old enough to have fathered a child that could have given birth to you let alone fathered you myself, unless I impregnated your mother when I was five which would have been sick and impossible, not least because your mum is a right pig.'

The bullies looked at each other, simultaneously confused and enraged by Pegg's intellectual prowess. The young future hero was already winning and hadn't even had to deploy any of his limbs.

‘I could be your uncle,' he pursued, further confusing the rat-like attackers as they fought to keep pace with his brilliance.

‘Look, just fuck off, all right?' said the alpha. ‘This is none of your business.'

‘Oh, I beg to differ,' Pegg intoned like an ancient wise man, despite being just nineteen years old. ‘Anything that takes place in this changing room is my business. Not just this changing room but the general pool area, incorporating the boards and flumes, and roller-skating in the sports hall on Saturday.'

‘Look -' the vocal bully spat.

Pegg cut him off with further affirmation of his inarguable status. ‘I also oversee old people's water aerobics on the first Sunday of every month, so don't tell me it's none of my damn business.'

The bullies fell into a stunned silence. Pegg had them exactly where he wanted them.

‘Now, if you don't mind, I'd like to get back to reading The Dark Knight Returns in the staff canteen,' crowed Pegg. ‘So, let's bring this little encounter to a close, shall we?'

The bullies looked at each other, then, with a silent terrified agreement, produced a fine pair of lock knives, as if to say, back off or we will stab you to death with this pair of fine lock knives. Pegg shook his head slowly, a wry smile creeping across his taut young face.

‘Oh, you've done it now,' he chuckled. ‘I was going to let you off with a warning but I'm afraid that time has passed. If you want to play it this way, then this is the way it will be played and play it we will.' Pegg knew full well his poetry would confuse them. It was all the time he needed. The bigger one fell first. He glanced at his friend for a split second as if Pegg's linguistic dexterity had short-circuited his brain.

By the time his beady eyes had flitted back to where the statuesque lifeguard had been standing, Pegg was upon him. Steel fingers clamped around the goon's bony wrist, twisting his warty little claws into open helplessness. The shiv hit the floor but not before a bright, sickening crack bounced off the tiled dividing walls of the recently refurbished changing area. A voice in Pegg's head suggested he stop with the wrist but he didn't listen to it. He ducked underneath the bully's willowy arm, pulling it straight, just as the first screech of agony left his thin lips.

Extending his own arms to their full impressive length, Pegg gave himself room to lift his muscular leg between them. With balletic poise, he curled the piston into his chest, pleasantly noting how his shorts revealed his bare thighs and the rolling muscle beneath the skin, which bunched into a terrifying coil of explosive power. Are you taking this too far? He didn't pause to answer the internal question. His foot sprang from his hip like a missile in a mid-price training shoe, the sole of which met the back of the scumbag's elbow with a formidable impact, snapping the arm in two, propelling the jagged ends of his ulna and radius through the soft flesh in the crook of his elbow, spattering blood across his cohort's horrified face. The defeated bully fell to the floor in a splutter of retching shock. Tears flooded his friend's eyes as thick blood glugged out around the snapped ends of his forearm, and a knife clattered across the changing-room floor as it fell from the terrified sidekick's fingers.

‘I'm glad you see things my way,' Pegg whispered. ‘You're both banned for a month.' The boys looked dis appointed, even the one who would probably never do breaststroke again.

‘Oh, and that's effective immediately,' Pegg asserted. ‘Check in with Canterbury on the way out, he'll take your pictures for the wall of shame.'

‘W-w-who's Canterbury?' stuttered the weaker of the two twats.

‘You'll know when you see him.' Pegg smiled, thinking of his uptight robotic friend, whom he had only just finished constructing and who was in no way a derivative combination of various other famous robots.

The bullies left. The smaller herbert supporting his broken friend. The boy smiled at Pegg, his face a mixture of awe and admiration.

‘Thank you,' he gushed. ‘Thank you for helping me.'

‘I wasn't just helping you, kid,' Pegg said in a way that was reminiscent of Harrison Ford talking affectionately to a small Chinese boy. ‘I was helping every kid that has ever been intimidated in a swimming pool changing room and that includes me.'

‘Y-you?!' the young boy stammered, as if he couldn't compute the notion of Pegg being a weedy little crybaby, terrified of being threatened and called a bummer.

Another lifeguard entered, a beautiful French girl whose name was Murielle. She seemed worried, approaching Pegg at speed.

‘Simone, Simone,' she cooed lovingly, despite the note of concern in her sing-song voice. ‘Someone did a bellyflop off the top board and his tummy has exploded!'

‘Excuse me,' Pegg apologised to the grateful young boy. ‘I'm needed elsewhere.'

He was gone before either of them realised (because he was so quick like the Flash or Mr Muscle), leaving an air of confused wonder between the Gallic goddess and the small boy, a boy whose long-term sanity Pegg had just rescued from a future of regret and obsessive, cathartic reimagining.

Pegg opened his eyes.

‘Remember Murielle back then, Canterbury?' asked Pegg, drifting out of his reminiscences back to the reality of his luxurious quarters aboard the hi- tech private stealth jet.

‘Indeed I do, sir,' Canterbury's voice sounded over the intercom, startling Pegg slightly, despite the fact he had asked the question. ‘A true beauty then as she is now.'

‘It still amazes me,' Pegg mused. ‘What she became.'

‘Perhaps it was fate, sir,' offered the droid thoughtfully.

‘Perhaps it was,' agreed Pegg with a rueful smile. ‘How long until Marrakesh?'

‘Thirty minutes, sir,' returned Canterbury.

‘Good. That gives me enough time to watch the escape montage from The Shawshank Redemption,’ fizzed Pegg excitedly.

‘How many times do you think we've watched that film?' added Pegg.

‘I've lost count,'confessed Canterbury.

‘Really?!' worried Pegg.

‘No,' admitted Canterbury. ‘It's 137.'

Return of the King

T

he whole experience of lifeguarding the big pool at Gloucester Leisure Centre had a pleasing sense of completion for me. As if I had finally conquered an old fear by returning to hold partial dominion over it, or at least uphold its ancient laws. I would sit in the high chair at the edge of the deep end (roughly where I had almost drowned fifteen years prior), swinging my whistle, a languid prince meting out justice to those who transgressed the list of very clear rules. Rules that are well known to any of us who have frequented the local baths; rules which, in the main, make complete sense. With a few variations between principalities, they are as follows:

1. No running.

2. No pushing.

3. No acrobatics.

4. No bombing.

5. No swimming in the diving area.

6. No diving in the shallow end.

7. No unaccompanied minors.

8. No heavy petting.

These commandments were usually emblazoned upon a pool-side billboard, each diktat accompanied by a cartoon illustration, in case swimmers were too busy bombing, running and petting to address the written word. They were all very clear in their depiction of the prohibited act: a naughty-looking person running; a suave-looking, hairy-chested brute balancing a bikini-clad young woman on his shoulders; a hapless swimmer oblivious to an imminent collision from above. The only cartoon that failed to convey its intent or reasoning was the coy representation of heavy petting: a man and a woman in a tentative embrace, looking amorously at each other as tiny love hearts popped in the air between them.

As a child, this was particularly confusing to me. I had no idea what light petting was, let alone the heavier variety. I still recall the sense of bewilderment as I regarded the poster, not understanding why this particular pastime was banned in the water and where one might indulge in it legally. Even now, I'm not entirely sure what they meant by heavy petting. Was it simply a case of saving the embarrassment of others, or were these strictures put in place to prevent more sinister hazards? A watery collision with a freshly released skein of bodily fluid for instance could really spoil a Sunday-morning swim and, as a lifeguard, you never truly know what goes on beneath the ever-moving surface.

The other poolside warning sign that sticks in my memory is the one that whimsically reminded bathers that the baths were not a toilet. ‘Welcome to our “OOL”. Notice there's no “P” in it? Let's keep it that way.' I always felt the designers of this poster missed a trick by not going one step further and proclaiming ‘Welcome to our “L” . . .'

I actually used that gag in my very early stand-up routines, which I would perform wearing my lifeguard's uniform. It was a fun joke to tell because it required the audience to apply the final piece of the comedic jigsaw themselves. In the same way that Meredith Catsanus's mother had got the giggles in the Lady chapel of Gloucester Cathedral having mentally contributed the word ‘crapped' to the end of ‘the cat crept into the crypt' tongue twister, the audience for my lifeguard character comedy would do a little linguistic arithmetic and come up with the word ‘poo', no doubt followed by a visual representation all their own. Terribly juvenile, I know, but there is often comic value in juvenility and the process by which this gloriously childish punchline is reached is gratifying by its collaboration, which, in contrast to giggling at a floater, is quite grown-up.

The rest of the act consisted of me demonstrating how I administered discipline with a whistle while wearing ill-fitting shorts. I also performed comedy poems, having witnessed the brilliant comic and poet John Hegley on BBC2's festival highlights show, Edinburgh Nights. The poems mainly dealt with my hopeless infatuation with a girl whose heart I eventually won but who five years later spectacularly broke mine, filling me with enough impotent rage to smash a window with my fist and wind up in the casualty department of the Hendon Garden Hospital. However, it all seems formative and necessary in hindsight, since it gave me the emotional reference to create the wounded comic-book artist Tim Bisley and the opportunity to escape a lifestyle that through domestic routine had rendered me somewhat inert. She'll crop up a few times here and there since she was something of a muse at one point and instrumental in my making the move to London where things really started to happen for me. Out of respect for her, and in the spirit of the Meredith Catsanus approach to dignity-preserving pseudonyms, she will henceforth be known as Eggy Helen. I'm sure she won't mind. She's been referred to indirectly before in Spaced, although in that instance she was called Sarah.

The second most frequent subject of my comedic ditties were the inner, often political thoughts of my goldfish, which would always accompany me onstage. I'll talk about that in more detail later. For now, while we're poolside, here's an old poem about some of the more power-hungry guardians of the gurgle I used to share the staffroom with at the Gloucester Leisure Centre.

Get out of my swimming pool, Jack!

Wild and whistle-happy, cries a megalomaniac,

With his Hi-Tecs on the tiles and his hands behind his back,

He's making up for problems that he's having in the sack.

Because every angry spasm,

Is a failed orgasm,

That is waiting in the chasm of his deep end,

Round the bend,

Will these problems never end?

His poolish pride he can defend But in bed . . .

He's only running round the side.

My own authoritarian poolside persona, ready to admonish bad behaviour or dive in at a second's notice to save a stricken bather (in two years of lifeguarding I never had to resuscitate anybody, or indeed even get my uniform wet), wasn't quite the little Hitler of the poem, although I learned quickly that a little power was a dangerous thing. I often caught myself looking a bit serious, while chewing my whistle like a cigar, or shaking my head with grim prohibitive insistence at a young splasher, as if he were about to steal a priceless magic diamond.

When I joined the lifeguarding core, the pool had just been refurbished with two large water slides, which snaked their way around the outside of the building back inside to a splash pool in a newly constructed annexe. What made these brightly coloured flumes even more fun was the addition of the ‘flash flood' feature. The sliders would sit themselves in position at the top of the slide, while a huge twenty-gallon tank would fill with water. When it reached the required level, the lifeguard on duty would operate a pedal, which released the built-up water in an explosive torrent, catapulting the screaming rider into the tube and down the slide.

As a lifeguard it was the best of the stations on the rota (shallow end, deep end, flash flood, splash pool), because it was the most fun. The kids absolutely loved it, which was infectious. The adults were almost as easy to wind up; either by withholding the flood blast for an inordinate amount of time, or by unleashing it suddenly at the start without any warning at all.

However, one of the most gratifying tricks one could play at the flash-flood station was one we always reserved for the most obnoxious and annoying children. They would appear at the top of the slide, often resembling the vicious little thugs that held Sean Jeffries and myself hostage, and I would instruct them to lie on their fronts with their heads facing the top of the slide and, on the count of three, scream as loudly as they could. As they opened their mouths, I would kick the release pedal and blast them in the face with twenty gallons of water.

Even as I type this, I'm thinking what an absolute arsehole I was. Sure those kids were annoying but they were only kids. Perhaps the poem was a subconscious admonishment of the man I feared I was becoming. A power-hungry maniac, frustrated by the impotence of the tiny authority he was permitted to wield. I wasn't referring to myself with the literal impotence stuff - I was nineteen and doing very well in that department, thank you very much. Never in the pool though, that was illegal.

Whatever I was, it was a long way from the nervous young boy whose Saturday-morning swimming practice was often marred by nervous headaches and nausea. Particularly on one occasion, where I vomited boiling orange sick into the toilet bowl in the boys' changing room and had my tummy rubbed by my swimming instructor. I dimly recall feeling vaguely uncomfortable as this man in his forties vigorously massaged my abdomen. Nothing untoward transpired - this isn't some heartfelt confession about being taken advantage of - I'm certain he was trying to help me, but I do remember being embarrassed by his touch. Despite his doubtless honourable intent, the idea of administering this kind of tactile therapy to a seven-year-old nowadays would doubtless set great hooting sirens off across the country and rightly so; although perhaps it's a slight shame for the majority who act with solely good intentions. I remember breaking down in front of my form tutor, Mr Calway, once. I was having a few emotional problems, teenage stuff but nevertheless real and raw. He was being extra hard on me as a means of keeping me focused but it backfired. I asked to speak to him privately and attempted to explain how I was feeling, only to unleash a torrent of tears. He leaned over and patted me on the shoulder when what I really wanted was a hug, which procedural etiquette prevented him from administering.

Not sure where I was going with that, but you'll be delighted to know all this has been leading up to an account of the third and final swimming-related incident which I regard as a formative moment in my journey towards becoming an actor and a comic.

Date: 2015-12-17; view: 748