7948/20889
I met Moon Unit Zappa twenty-seven years ago at the Montreal Comedy Festival when Stewart and I were hosting a show from there called Festival of Fun.
It was a very intense week. I was attempting to do rewrites for my play for the Edinburgh Fringe that year "Excavating Rita", (this was about two weeks before the Fringe started) but didn't get much time as we were filming the TV show for twelve hours a day, then heading off to various comedy clubs to do shows, then heading back to the hotel bar to get drunk before getting up at 7am to do the whole thing again.
I also somehow managed to fit in a fling with an American comedian. At this point, it's worth noting that I looked about as bad as I ever looked. I had grown an unruly horrible beard for the play and was not looking after myself very well and drinking every night. But I'd been sat in the bar with Stew and the comedian in question walked past my table and dropped a note in front of me that read, "You are the most beautiful man I've ever seen." There's someone for everyone.
This kind of thing has not happened to me very often. I would say once. But even as a 30 year old man I was very bad at picking up on when someone fancied me and usually relied on women making the first move, so this was a dynamite approach. I went to talk to the woman and one thing led to another and I am not comfortable in discussing what happened next on a family website.
Admittedly on a family website where yesterday I was gratuitously calling my cat a cunt.
I am just amazed that I somehow managed to add this distraction to my schedule.
I can not state too strongly how unusual I was looking at this time - 1997 was my only Edinburgh Fringe as a single man where I entirely failed to pull, though that might have had more to do with the fact that I was appearing completely nude on stage every day in the play. Do not give away the goods before you're sealed the deal. And don't put them on display if they are of very poor quality. No one wants the last chicken in the shop.
Anyway, I was not expecting anyone to fancy me in Montreal.
Stew and me interviewed quite a few comedians together. We decided that he'd ask vaguely sensible questions and that I'd then ask stupid or weird ones or about projects that weren't the person's most famous work (it was in some ways a forerunner of RHLSTP, but you don't need the other guy asking the sensible questions - he always held me back). I can't remember much about it, though I asked Lea Thompson from Back To The Future if she thought the film Space Camp could ever happen in real life (she found this funny and then told us that it had come out just before the Space Shuttle disaster, which given it was set on a Space Shuttle was pretty bad timing). Generally speaking the comedians and actors, some big name ones like Lea, enjoyed this approach, rather than getting the questions they'd had a thousand times before. It felt like I was on to something, but it took me another decade of so to put it into practice again.
Moon was one of the guests and I remember her being a lot of fun. Stew is a big fan of Frank Zappa, her dad, so was excited to meet her, but I didn't really know anything about Frank Zappa and so didn't talk to Moon with the usual reverence that men of a certain age would have done.
When she told us that her dad had dragged her out of bed in the middle of the night to perform her bits for the hit single Valley Girl, I said, "Your dad sounds like a monster." Moon really laughed. It's the kind of gambit that can go one way or the other, but in this case we all had really good fun.
"Did you know that Frank Zappa was dead?" asked Stew after the interview.
"Yes, of course," I lied.
A few days later I was sitting in the bar, waiting for the cab to take us to the airport and working furiously on my neglected script. Moon came up to me and said "Write this down..."
She then gave me her phone number and said if I was ever in LA I should look her up. I thought that was very nice. What a friendly thing to do. But I was unlikely to ever be in LA and I just thought she was being polite.
Which is why, ladies, if you want to get with me, you basically have to hand me a note saying "Please can we have sexual intercourse."
I had (and have) low self-esteem and I looked like a hillbilly and she was a famous actor with a hit record and a famous dad and it just didn't even cross my mind that she might be into me.
About six years later a friend who was staying at my house started watching the VHS tapes I had of the Paramount series (they might still be around somewhere, but I couldn't find them as much of my stuff is in boxes at the new house) and when she got to the Moon Zappa interview she said, "She's really flirting with you. I think she likes you."
It was one of those regular moments in my life where I realised how dumb I'd been (nearly always about someone being interested in me and me assuming they never would be) "Oh," I thought, "Maybe that's why she gave me her phone number." No shit, shitty Sherlock Holmes.
I did actually go to LA in 1999 when I had a weird and slightly sad holiday round America on my own. I didn't ring Moon.
All I can say is that American women are clearly perverts if they found the 1997 me attractive, but I clearly was like Kris Marshall in Love Actually and was irresistible over there.
In hindsight I wish that I had realised what was going on. Not only is Moon a great and interesting person, but if I had gone on a date with Frank Zappa's daughter it would have annoyed the fuck out of Stewart Lee.
Obviously that's not a good reason to go on a date. But it's a nice cherry on top if you're going anyway!
You can insert your own moon on a stick joke here. I am too classy.
Ultimately I think my genuine lack of interest in her dad was what made me the least bit interesting to her.
Indeed having read her brilliant book "Earth To Moon" and seen the truth of what was going on in her life, I can see that she was just as lacking in self-esteem as me, but for far better reason. It's a really terrific read about family, parenthood, growing up in a famous family and the negative sides of being a nepo-baby, but also about establishing your boundaries and learning to love yourself. Part of the reason I've been writing so much about my kids recently is because this book really made me think about the relationship between family and work and how so many people strive for affirmation from everyone outside of their family, but neglect their kids. Frank Zappa was a workaholic who I am sure loved his kids, in his way, but whose selfishness and desire to create art and have sexual freedom, led to extreme dysfunction in the family and this book very eloquently and beautifully describes the effects on Moon. I have seen many people in showbiz put their career above their family (I did it to the extent that I didn't have a family until my 40s), but surely your kids are your real legacy. All other achievements are meaningless if you fuck the most important thing up.
Anyway, I am sure Moon remembers none of this. I was waiting for the chapter about our meeting in the book, but she leaps from 1995 to the early noughties without even a mention. But it was fun to catch up with her and apologise for not ringing (or understanding what was going on) and consider the Fish Pie Mix-Up that would have resulted if I'd flown out to see her. I don't think she missed much and she said I'd probably have just ended up with a nice home-cooked dinner. But I could have done with that in 1999, so I still regret it.
I sometimes wonder if I might have done better in America than in the UK - not just with women into strange looking men - but in Edinburgh and Montreal it's usually been Americans that have been bedazzled by me: a big producer wanted to bring Christ on a Bike to off-Broadway (but that got put on hold after 9/11, making me the biggest victim of that attack), some acting agents in Montreal wanted to try to put me up for auditions in the US and US comics who've seen my solo shows (and are not aware of the character from my double act) have treated me with a little reverence.
I didn't really fancy America - Stew was being courted a bit more seriously in the 90s and went for more meetings (he actually got a sitcom pitch commissioned, but it was an idea that we'd had together, so I ended up writing it together. It didn't get made) - I like it in the UK and I felt I should really crack things at home before moving on to an other territories (which is why I am still here).
Moon asked me if I was happy being me and the truth is that I really (mostly) am. I wouldn't want to live a life where I didn't end up with the family I have and for my kids never to exist - even though an almost infinite amount of other kids ended up not existing due to the choices I made (and I would have loved those non-existent people just as much).
When Frank Zappa had cancer down below he wouldn't take conventional medical treatment because it might mean he would no longer be able to get erections and he couldn't miss out on that. He put his sex life above his life, his personal pleasure above his family. When I had cancer down there, whilst not being delighted about the possible effects it might have on my sex life, my only thought was that I had to live as long as possible, partly for my own sake, but mainly for my kids.
I haven't always done the right thing or made the right choices or been a perfect human being (and nor has anyone - why do people seem upset when people behave like people?), but I have occasionally got it right.
Look anyway, the book is really worth reading or listening to. Hilarious, heartbreaking, horrifying and hopeful. Moon is open, honest and a terrific writer and does as good a job as it is possible to write about familial conflict whilst still loving and representing the people she is in conflict with.
The podcast will be out on 20th October.
