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By Root 588 0

taste of chicken and chips enormously, and am only slightly put off by Nando’s bewildering ordering system in which customers must pay for food at the counter, set the table themselves and then wait for the waiter to bring the meal over. Interestingly,96 Glen and I have developed an unspoken but quietly effective NES – Nando’s Efficiency System – in which we ensure that not a second is wasted. We secure a table and then, with coats draped over the backs of our chairs, we separate. My role is to grab a menu and secure a place in the queue. From there, I loudly read out the food options so that Glen can hear. He, meanwhile, is scurrying to the far side of the restaurant to grab cutlery, napkins and condiments, but all the while he is listening to me and shouting back his order. I place it and pay. We usually end up back at the table at roughly the same time and then enjoy our chicken dinners, while chuckling at the many people who are still waiting for theirs despite having arrived way before us.)

Of course things take on a different hue if you dine solo. Last time I went to Nando’s I was Glen-less. I placed my order but forgot about the cutlery. My food arrived and I had neither knife, fork or spoon. Admittedly, in a chicken-and-chips scenario the spoon is less important, but I could sure have done with a knife and fork – the former to cut with, the latter to maintain carcass stability.

Cursing the absence of my partner-in-chicken I went over to get the required eating tools, walking as fast as I could without breaking into a run. Just my luck – they were awaiting a refill on both the knives and the forks! Spoons, on the other hand? Dozens of them. I had no choice. With a lateral shake of the head and a vertical raise of the eyebrow, I return to my table. I’ve made the effort to find cutlery, I’m darn well going to use it. And I have to say it worked out okay. I shovelled the chips into my mouth as if I was eating pudding, and as for the chicken – it was just a question of trying to drag the meat off the bone by using the spoon as a paw.

And what of me and Ponder? Well I don’t talk much about our rekindled friendship. My assistant still harbours an openly bigoted dislike of Glen and his husband (whose name I don’t know). But I enjoy it, and I’m proud to be friends with the greatest bossa-nova maestro this country has ever produced.

87 Press play on Track 22.

88 Current name: Vajazzle.

89 Not literally.

90 Not literally.

91 Current name: Popsox. (I’m writing this footnote on a different day to footnote 88.)

92 I was the exec producer.

93 I just did another click. A loud one.

94 And I apologise to Glen for my ‘kid in a sweet shop’ comments around this time.

95 The one that used to be Café Symphony. I mentioned it earlier?

96 It is.

Chapter 13

Lift Off, Show-Wise

‘GOOD MORNING, PEARTREE!’ I bellow as I enter the offices of my prod co (production company).

‘Good morning, Alan!’ reply my staff.

‘How are we today?’ I continue, genuinely wanting to know.

‘Great/not bad/back’s still playing up/very well/fine/bit tired as my neighbour decided to do the fucking hoovering at two o’clock in the fucking morning,’ reply my staff.

By now Peartree Productions was a well-oiled machine. We had some great people, working at optimum level.

Jason had been promoted to an assistant producer and had a newfound confidence since his psoriasis had cleared up. I had taken on George Dwyer as creative director. He had worked as PR man for the Russian Circus97 and had some daring, out-there ideas, few of which made it through compliance. He’s been living in the Wormwood area of west London for ten years.

Jill on reception was good to have around the place, clinging on to the last of her good looks and happy to buy choc treats for us all every Friday. Rupert Summers, who had experience of live TV from manning the telephones on ITV Telethon ’88, would produce the show.

But it was Lewis Hurst, a theatrical agent who had invested some money in the company, who really pulled the strings. A bearlike homosexual, he was well-connected