Brydon - Small Man in a Book

MICHAEL JOSEPH
an imprint of
PENGUIN BOOKS

MICHAEL JOSEPH

Published by the Penguin Group

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First published 2011

Copyright Rob Brydon, 2011

The moral right of the author has been asserted

Welsh Landscape and For Instance by R. S. Thomas Phoenix, an imprint of The Orion Publishing Group. Extracts from Marion and Geoff and Human Remains scripts BBC.

All images courtesy of the author except: Rob Brydon meeting Bruce Springsteen Chris Lopez/Photoshoot; Rob Brydon with Tom Jones and Ruth Jones Trevor Leighton; press cuttings of Rob Lands a job with Sky, An Oscar for Sweet Charity? and Join the Carousel Glamorgan Gazette.

Every effort has been made to trace copyright holders. The publishers will be glad to rectify in future editions any errors or omissions brought to their attention.

Photography by Colin Bell

All rights reserved

Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book

ISBN: 978-0-14-197036-3

For
Katie, Harry, Amy, Tom and George

Here is the story of some of my life. I start on the day I was born and stop thirty-five years later at the end of the year 2000, the point at which I finally had the first sniff of the success I had been so doggedly searching for. Within this timescale I occasionally jump forward into the new millennium when I feel the stories will add to the readers enjoyment, and also because Ive always been fascinated by our inability to know what lies ahead.

By the time this success arrived, I had married and had three beautiful children. As I sit here at my desk and write these words in the summer of 2011, I find I am the proud father of five children, and married to my second wife, Claire.

This book makes no mention of my divorce and its accompanying sadness. My children are of an age where reading about the intimate details of their parents lives holds little appeal and great potential for social embarrassment. Coupled with this, their mother my first wife, Martina shares none of my desire for attention, nor my willingness to parade around for the amusement of strangers. It is for this reason, and this reason alone, that she features less in these pages than her major role in my life surely warrants.

In not meeting me until 2002 Claire has ensured that she features even less, making a grand total of zero appearances in the autobiography of her husband something that feels very wrong but, having structured the book in the way that I have, is, Im afraid, inevitable. We have been together now for nearly ten years and, were it not for her, I doubt very much that I would have reached a position where I was asked to write an autobiography.

If that is indeed the case, then should you find the book is not to your taste, its really her fault, not mine.

I was born on Monday the 3rd of May 1965 at a maternity home in Swansea, South Wales, which was called, rather prophetically, The Bryn. I have often wondered how differently my life might have turned out if my parents had instead chosen the nearby James Bond Home For Expectant Mothers. Bryn, as you may know, means hill in Welsh, and the home sat on top of one such hill in Killay, the Uplands area of Swansea. Mum and Dad Joy and Howard were just twenty and twenty-one years old at the time and had arrived there the previous evening after the contractions began while they were at home watching the television. These were the dark days before Sky+ and so on Mums insistence, and despite the lengthening and by now rather painful contractions, they waited until The Fugitive had finished before making a move.

Just like Dr Richard Kimble, I was keen to escape and by the time the programme was over I could wait no longer. Mum waddled out of the house, and squeezed into the car, which Dad then steered over to Swansea. On arrival at The Bryn, Mums waters had still not broken; they did so as the midwife was examining her. My mother was the midwifes first delivery after a lengthy period of maternity leave, and the time away from the job had softened the poor woman sufficiently that when the moment arrived and the levee finally broke, on witnessing the deluge, she promptly passed out. Thats right, a midwife passing out at the sight of someones waters breaking. Not wishing to appear rude my father followed suit. Bang, down he went, leaving my mother staring at the two of them in a heap on the floor. The delivery doctor an older and, in my mothers recollection, quite stern gentleman had to administer to both the fainters before he could turn his attention to the job at hand. He guided Dad out to another room, where he might regain his composure, and then two hours later, shortly after twenty past five in the morning, returned with the words, Its a boy, and it works This last part of his news a reference to the fact that I had urinated on him in a most enthusiastic fashion as soon as I was out and into the world. On leaving the room he turned back to my dad and, in a glorious example of the politically incorrect 1960s, gave the following advice with regard to my mother, Keep them pregnant and barefoot; they wont go very far.

After coming in to meet his son and check on the well-being of his wife, Dad returned home to Baglan to spread the news, full of pride at having passed out only once. Mum stayed at the home for a whole week, in her own little room, surrounded by flowers and cards, her only disturbance being the sound of one baby in particular who could be heard screaming at the top of its lungs night and day from the nursery where all the newborns were herded together to give their novice parents a break. From the comfort of her bed she couldnt help feeling sorry for the mother of this noisy little child who was surely in for a rough ride once she got home. On her departure Mum received the splendid news that the child in question was my good self, her little cherub, her firstborn. It was decided that I was suffering from colic, and as mother and child left the home we did so with the advice that I would benefit, even at this young age, from mashed-up Farleys Rusks to settle my poor little stomach.