Herring - How not to grow up! : a coming of age memoir, sort of

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Published in 2010 by Ebury Press, an imprint of Ebury Publishing A Random House Group Company

Copyright Richard Herring 2010

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This book is a work of non-fiction based on the life, experiences and recollections of the author. In some cases names of people, places, dates, sequences or the detail of events have been changed to protect the privacy of others.

For Catherine,
Hope you build your pyramid.

My names Richard and I am immature.

I have been ever since I was a small child.

And thats fine when youre four the world expects puerility in children, even if it still seems wearily disappointed when it occurs. But when youre almost ten times that age youre not supposed to spend your time, as I seemed to be doing, playing video games, eating Monster Munch, giggling at farts and drawing ejaculating penises in the condensation on windows.

When youre 40, youre supposed to be responsible, capable, sensible and married with kids.

Yet here I was, about to reach the age where life supposedly begins and I was irresponsible, incapable and insensible. I was single and the only thing that depended on me was my rubber plant.

Which had died.

The last proper office job I had had was nearly eighteen years ago in 1989 when I had helped compile the west London phone book. Although I did spend most of my time there looking up people with rude names on the ex-directory list on the computer. My favourites were the entirely genuine Mr Cunto and Dr Wank. Why wouldnt they want to be in the phone book like everyone else? My greatest achievement was to successfully change the listing for my flatmate at the time from Stewart Lee to Stewart Wee. I was and still am genuinely proud of that. I cant imagine why I only lasted three weeks in the position.

So how had I survived the intervening two decades, with such a juvenile attitude and the lack of income that must surely inevitably follow?

I was a stand-up comedian.

I made a living writing cock jokes and saying them in front of drunk and braying crowds, appearing on TV sketch shows, which amounts to basically playing with the dressing-up box, and writing the occasional expletive-filled sitcom script.

And it was, on the whole, a good living. I had a house in an unfashionable part of west London, though in the five years I had lived there had been too lethargic and incompetent to decorate or improve it. Takeaway and microwave meal cartons littered the floor (I didnt know how to cook), a big damp patch on the wall of my kitchen got damper and remained untreated (I didnt have any DIY skills), the stairs up to my bedroom were in total darkness. Ironically, for a comedian fond of asking how many people it took to change a light bulb, I scarcely knew how to do so myself. Or was at least too lazy to bother. I could feel my way up in the gloom.

My job gave me the freedom and the licence, and possibly the actual necessity, to behave like a child, allowing me to travel the world, sleep in, sleep around, never settle down. I was like Tom Hanks in the film Big in every aspect except that there was no way or imperative for me to physically return to my thirteen-year-old form.

If I stopped and thought about it, my life seemed pathetic, so generally I didnt stop and think about it.

But there was an iceberg on the horizon and the pleasure cruiser that was my charmed and ludicrous life was heading right for it. I was making no attempt to change course. If I ignored it, it would surely go away.

We were about to find out what happened when an immature force meets an immovable object.

So this is the story of the year I turned 40.

It was a year of turmoil, of changes, of madness and of magic, a year in which I tried to ignore my troubles and my solipsism, like an ostrich with its head up its own arse, then to deny my problems, then run away from them and ultimately to face them. It was a year I had to decide what it meant to be grown up and then to decide if I wanted to bother. I had to think about who I was, what I was doing and whether I could and should keep on doing it.

It was a year where my life impacted on the lives of a lot of other people, many of whom would not want their part in my sordid antics to be made public, so I have changed names and some details in order to protect the innocent (and the guilty). Some of the people I met briefly and when drunk and cant actually remember what they were called, so Ive just made up names for them anyway. Theres a chance that I might accidentally have chosen their actual names. But what better alias could there be in the circumstances?

I apologise to those who might not have wanted their stories told, but feel that more likely I will need to apologise to those who played a part in the year but are not mentioned in the book. It was, as youll now see, a very busy and confusing time for me.

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, but it was ultimately the most ridiculous of times. And its that which makes it such a good story. Dickens didnt know squat.

I love kids.

Thats a sentence that an unmarried, childless, middle-aged man isnt really allowed to utter in this day and age for fear of being chased out of his home by an angry mob of idiots whove already banished the local paediatrician. But I dont care. I do love kids and I dont think theres anything wrong with that and so believe we should come up with some harmless Greek word to describe this innocent affection. Paedo means child and phile is the suffix generally used to indicate love of something and so if we put that together