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We travelled across town on the tube to have lunch with my Oscar-nominated ex-flatmate (that’s not what they nominated him for) Peter Baynham. It’s been a long time since I have seen him. In fact the last time might well be December 23rd 2005, when I chanced upon the “Too Gorgeous” funnyman at Moto services near Reading. He’s been off in Hollywood since then, continuing to work with the world’s top comedians, as he has done all his career (especially in the mid-90s when he was on Fist of Fun, am I right? Yes I am right, as Stewart Lee was also in that). He remains the same down-to-earth ex-supertanker driver that he ever was. There may be a faint LA burr to his Welsh accent, but I might have just superimposed that in order to make him more showbiz. He is genuinely one of the funniest men on the planet and definitely one of the good guys. You can’t begrudge him his huge success. In fact I actually begrudge the fact that he isn’t even more successful.
Mind you he had bought my daughter a monkey made out of corduroy, which was named Cordy Roy and it took him the whole of lunch to get the joke. That’s why he was only Oscar nominated.
Had a fine time catching up. He found out the “celebrity” houses that I had visited in my quest for a home, he told me about the film star’s house that he had viewed. I told him about my new internet series that I am filming myself, he told me what it’s like to work for big Hollywood production companies. The jury is very much out on who has the most successful career.
We tried to get a cab home, thinking that would save us some time. We were wrong. Loads of dicks were cycling around London (why can’t they run long distances like normal people) and seemingly every bridge over the Thames was shut. Which made it tough as we were south of the Thames, but I love north of the Thames. It might have been quicker to go all the way round the world and come back from the top. But our taxi driver, seemingly oblivious to the news about this cycle race (and also incapable of reading the many signs that told us which bridges were shut) did his best. Which wasn’t very good. In the end he crossed over Wandsworth Bridge, failing to read that it was only open to local traffic. But at least he got us near to a tube station. Admittedly one that was almost as hard to get home from as it would have been if we’d just got on the tube at Waterloo. It’s all the trickier with a pram to carry, but as tired as we were, we got on with it.
We got on the tube at Parson’s Green at the same time as a couple of attractive young women, one with a ridiculous tiny dog that even I had to admit was a little bit cute (it had it’s head fur in a little sticky up pony tail), the other with a skateboard. They sat opposite a man who was sitting next to me, with a too neat beard, travelling alone. He immediately tried to strike up a conversation. I have always found this kind of thing a bit weird, but he was American so there’s a chance he was just being friendly. There is more of a chance that he wanted to hit on a couple of strangers who foolishly had come armed with props that made an embarrassing chat up all the more likely. “Look at that dog,” he said, “You can’t tell me that you don’t sometimes go out with the same hairstyle.” I don’t know if that is smooth, comparing a woman’s hair to her dog’s, but I don’t think she heard properly. He persisted. In a way that I imagine he imagined thought made him seem witty and cute, but to my mind at least seemed a little intimidating and boundary-crossing. Not that he was being inappropriate, just that these were two people going about their day and they probably had the right to do so without being chatted to/up by a stranger. He asked their names and told them his and asked them if they were good friends. Yeah, probably mate. They’re spending Sunday together. “It’s just you’re so different. You with your fluffy little dog and you with your skateboard.” Yeah, pal, friends don’t have to like the same thing. The fact they got on together and are sitting next to each other is the clue. But he was showing that he was observant. The ladies were polite enough and talked a little to him, though with the reluctance that comes from a lifetime of experience, knowing that a “friendly” man chatting to them might have ulterior motives or suddenly turn from being a nice guy when rebuffed, shouting, “You fucking talked to me. Why did you talk to me if you’re not interested? I’m a good fucking guy. You bitches don’t see that. You’re so fucking shallow, you whores."
There was a bit of a silence. “Are you heading to the park?” asked Rapey McRapeface, unable to see that that was quite an intimidating question. The kind of question that anyone sensitive to the complexities of talking to strangers wouldn’t ask. Because it looks like you’re trying to gather information to facilitate your next McRape. “You know, you’ve got the dog, you’ve got the skateboard, so I wondered if you were going to hang out in the park,” with an unspoken, “I am free to come and hang out with you if you like, I promise I am not a rapist.” Even if it was just friendliness it was so artless. I have spotted two things about you two and will keep hammering them into the ground. The skateboard lady said that skateboarding required a hard surface so parks were not ideal.
Hey look, I’ve been a lonely man in my life and I wish that I had had the balls to talk to more people and yes, he might just have wanted to pass five minutes in conversation. But you have to read the signs and being alone does not give you the right to intrude. Like vampires, the lonely need to be invited inside. It’s sad for them both.
Just before he left he spotted the dog lying with its legs akimbo and genital area pressing into the floor, “You couldn’t do the splits as well as that,” he said to the dog owner, who as far as I heard had expressed no interest in gymnastics. She didn’t hear him or pretended she hadn’t. So he pressed the point and indicated the dog and observed how it was doing the splits. There wasn’t much to say to that one. He’d shown his hand, I think. The women got on with their conversation and he got off at the next stop. The women hadn’t been upset or worried by him or at least dealt with him well, but he came with a strange atmosphere that departed with him. I think the ladies were actually more than good friends myself and it’s my acute powers of perception that mean I don’t try such clumsy chat up lines. That and realism. And the fact I was sitting with my wife. But to be fair if she hadn’t been there and I hadn’t been married, the realisation that there was no reason why these strangers would be at all interested in me would have kept me silent. Correctly.
My wife asked if I thought he’d been trying to pick up the women. I said I thought it was likely and that I admired his optimism. But I didn’t. I thought he was a dick.
It takes one to know one.
