David Mitchell - David Mitchell: Back Story

For VC (M)

Contents

This is one of those misery memoirs. And its one of those celebrity memoirs. Its also a very personal journey, a manual for urban ramblers and a weight-loss guide. Surely itll sell?

I realise the whole Let me tell you about my pain thing is a classic envy-avoidance technique. What its saying is: if you envy me my interesting job, my relative affluence and moderate fame, then dont. Because I struggle daily with a dark and terrible problem. With some its drugs, abuse, depression, the loss of loved ones, the terrible illness of a child well, you cant have it all, I suppose, and so Ive made do with a bad back.

What do you reckon to that then, enviers!? Eh? You want to swap!? Ow, my back! You want to swap places!? Well go ahead, if you like terrible pain and misery, hardly assuaged at all by getting to be on TV! Eek, my poor spine! You want to take my place in the horror dome!? Ow, its creaking and spasming! Well, make my day! By which I mean life!

Im assuming here that my life is enviable enough to require this mitigating strategy. Well, I admit it I think it is. Aside from being born into the free and affluent West and never having had to worry about food, shelter and warmth, I do basically think Im a jammy sod. Im not saying there arent things that worry and upset me a lot, but I reckon everyone gets that. And I make a very good living doing something I love, a state of affairs that tends to be envied by those who dont share it. Of course there will be loads of people who dont envy me at all. I probably envy them . I expect theyll have all yachts and kids and stuff.

What this book isnt is one of those novels by David Mitchell. You know, David Mitchell the novelist. Im sure he would never allow a sentence with isnt is in it like that. Everyone says hes a very good novelist but Ive never checked, partly because I resent him for sharing my name without asking and partly because I do a lot of my novel reading on the Tube and it would feel weird to be reading a book with my name on it in public. If one of the people who conflate me and the novelist saw that, theyd think I was sitting there reading my own book . He might as well spend the whole journey admiring his own reflection in a hand mirror, such a person might think.

David Miliband is such a person (although he might take a less than averagely dim view of narcissism). I was once in a London park, on a crisp winter afternoon, feeding some bread to the ducks with a girl, when David Miliband wandered up with his kids. He stood there, a couple of yards behind us, for what felt like minutes. He was playing with his children in the park at the weekend, like a perfectly normal husband and father, who is being portrayed by a power-crazed Martian.

The woman I was with urgently wanted us to say hello. She was all interested, I dont know why. I couldnt see the point in bothering him. I thought it would be embarrassing. I was right.

Oh, youre David Mitchell, said David Miliband, adding politely to my companion: I love his books.

This was nice of him. But it was a complicated moment. He cant have known that there were a comedian and a novelist both called David Mitchell and mistaken me for the other one, because he recognised my face. He must have just assumed we were the same person.

Or he knew perfectly well I was only the comedian, and had particularly enjoyed This Mitchell and Webb Book , my most recent publication at the time. In fact, my only publication at the time. But hed said books. Perhaps he was looking ahead? Yes, that must be it. He was so confident hed enjoy my future volumes, he was already able to say he loves them. Thinking about it, Id have been quite justified in putting that quote on the cover.

But Im not the novelist, Im the one whos a bit known from TV. And of course there are millions of other David Mitchells who are neither. Was it the pain of my slightly problem back that gave me the need, the will and the focus to become one of the David Mitchells that potential Prime Ministers mistake for one of the others? Was it because I was maddened yet driven by a constant sciatic throb that I was able to conceive of sketches and characters that were marginally more amusing than those of people who didnt end up on TV? Is it the desire to get up and stretch that inspires my trademark panel show rants? Would I happily exchange all the success for a less problematic spine? Or is my aching back so completely a part of me that, metaphorically bitter and literally twisted though it makes me, I wouldnt change it if I could? Do I, as Captain Kirk said in Star Trek V , need my pain?

You will find the answers to all those questions in this book. Indeed in this section. On this very page. In this paragraph. In fact, in two words time. It is No. To all of them.

I know what youre thinking. Why didnt BBC Four snap this up? It would make a cracking documentary. Good point. It would be gold dust. Me moaning about my back, pottering around stiffly, interviewing other people about their niggles, talking to specialists, shaking my head with concern as Im told about the annual man-hours lost nationally, before suddenly putting an anguished hand to a cricked neck. They could even have clips of The Simpsons , for Gods sake. That episode where Homer goes to the chiropractor.

But no, when it comes to celebrities moaning about their problems, they only want to hear about depression and madness. The liberal media have a tremendous bias in favour of disorders of the nervous systems cerebral centre rather than its provincial offshoots. Its London-centricity made anatomical and there was no shifting any TV commissioner to the Salford that is my spine.

Yet, let me tell you, back pain is a fascinating topic as long as its your own. It may not be fun to think about, largely because it happens in the context of nagging back pain its like trying to solve an engrossing country house murder while gradually being murdered yourself but its never boring.

That was my situation in 2007. It was really worrying me. I tried everything. By which I mean, I tried some things. You cant try everything. The world is full of evangelists people who are convinced the answer lies in acupuncture, chiropractic, osteopathy, physiotherapy, cod liver oil or changing the pocket you keep your wallet in. I tried some remedies, and felt guilty that I wasnt trying more, but also tired because the condition stopped me sleeping properly. Even Poirots little grey cells might have misfired if he was being occasionally bonked on the head by an invisible candlestick as he tried to address the suspects.

I took note of the things that I wanted to hear (such as you can fix it by sitting on a ball) and not the things I didnt (such as you might need a major operation) like you do when youre infatuated with someone and cant yet bring yourself to draw the dispiriting conclusion that they dont fancy you. That would mean youd have to start the incredibly unpleasant process of getting over them. In those circumstances and I feel this gives an insight into the mentality of the stalker you treasure any sign of affection or kindness and build great castles of reason around them in your mind: how could they possibly have said that, smiled then, noticed this, if they didnt on some level return your feelings? Meanwhile you ignore the overwhelming body of evidence of their indifference and the fact that theyre often really quite pleasant to a wide range of people without that meaning theyd ever be willing to have sex with them. (More of this later.)

Its a sign of how deep my despair became, and yet how stubbornly I avoided dealing with the subject via official medical channels because of my weird fear of doctors and hospitals, that I started sitting on a ball and indeed that I still sit on a ball, that Im sitting on a ball as I write this. A giant inflatable yoga ball. Apologies if thats shattered your image of me lounging in a Jacuzzi smoking a cigar while dictating these words to an impatient and topless Hungarian supermodel. But, no, Im perched alone on a preposterous piece of back-strengthening furniture in my bedroom in Kilburn surrounded by dusty piles of books and old souvenirs from the Cambridge Footlights.