“Stick to fiddling the till,” I told him. “A bottle of Bud for me and a hot pastrami on rye.”

The barman served me with a bottle of Bud. “The hot pastrami is off,” he said. “Irani terrorists broke into the fridge and liberated the last jar we had.”

“I hate it when that happens,” I said. “I once had a pot of fish paste liberated from my kitchen cupboard by members of Black September.”

“Horrid,” said the barman. “My mum was shopping in Asda and had her pension book nicked out of her handbag by Islamic Jihad.”

“Bad luck,” I said. “Weathermen ate my hamster.”

“Isn’t it always the way?” said the barman. “But you’ll have to pardon me, sir, because much as I’d love to go on talking toot with you regarding the crimes committed upon you and yours and me and mine by extreme fundamentalist groups and terrorist organizations and the distress that these crimes have wrought upon you and yours and me and mine, frankly, I can’t be arsed. And as I see Mr Jeff Beck up at the end of the bar calling out to get served, I think I’ll go and do the business. If you know what I mean, and I’m sure that you do.”

“Fair enough,” I said to him. “I hope you die of cancer.”

“Thank you, sir. And if I might be so bold as to mention it, your girlfriend’s left hand is weeping into the stuffed olives. Kindly tell her to remove it, or I’ll be forced to call the sissy boy bouncer, who will politely eject you from the premises.”

“I hope it really hurts when you’re dying,” I said.

“Thank you, sir. Coming, Mr Beck.”

I lifted Sandra’s hand from the olive bowl and folded its fingers around her Horse’s Neck. “Enjoy,” I told her.

“Thank you, Masser Gary,” said Sandra.

“Just call me ‘master’,” I said. “Master Gary makes me sound like a schoolboy.”

“Cheers, masser,” said Sandra, pouring her drink into the vicinity of her mouth.

“I think we should mingle,” I said to her. “There’s lots of famous people here and as I mean to be very rich very soon I want to get used to mingling with rich and famous people. I can get in a bit of practice tonight.”

“Masser,” said Sandra.

“Sandra?” said I.

“Masser, everyone wear mask tonight, yes?”

“Yes,” I told her. “Everyone wear mask, yes.”

“So how come barman recognize Mr Jeff Beck and Harry recognize Sultan of Brunei?”

“Ah,” I said.

“And how come you know lots of rich and famous people be here, if all wear masks?”

“I’ll confiscate your head again if you try to get too smarty-pantsed,” I said to Sandra. “Rich and famous people are still recognizable no matter whether they’re wearing masks or not. It’s only in stupid films like Superman where Clark Kent can put on a pair of glasses and comb his hair differently and not be recognized.”

“Clark Kent is Superman?” said Sandra.

“Shut up and drink your drink,” I said to Sandra.

“Drink all finished. Most of it go down cleavage.”

“Go and speak to Olivia Newton John,” I said, pointing towards the instantly recognizable pint-sized diva. “I’ll mingle on my own.”

And so I mingled. I mingled with the rich and famous. They’d all turned out for the occasion. Because that’s what they do, turn out for occasions. First nights, film premieres, fashion shows, “audience with” evenings. All those events are peopled with the rich and famous. Nonentities need not apply. Because, let’s face it, the rich and famous have to have somewhere to go. Something to do. If they didn’t, then they’d just have to stay at home watching the TV like the rest of us. So the rich and famous go to “do’s” where they’re on the guest list. It’s a very small world and the same rich and famous meet the other same rich and famous again and again. In fact, that’s all they ever meet. Which is why they have affairs and intermarry and divorce and do it all again. In the same little circle. And it’s a tiny little circle. There are two hundred and twenty-three of them. You can look them up and count them if you don’t believe me. There will always be, at any one time in history, exactly two hundred and twenty-three rich and famous people alive and all going to the same places at the same time in the world. Why? I just don’t know, but there it is.

Most of them turned up for Barry’s book launch that night. And I mingled with as many as I possibly could.

But I didn’t have any idea at the time where this mingling was going to lead me and I certainly wasn’t expecting the evening to end in the way that it did.

Which was not a pleasing way.

Although it was certainly different.

19

I really like the rich and famous. In my opinion, the rich and famous prove Darwin’s theory of evolution. It took millions of years for man to evolve into man. The state of manness that we are today. And no one has ever found the missing link, or the many missing links, that join the chain of human evolution together. But if you want to see the entire process played at fast forward as if on a video machine, then view the life of a self-made rich and famous personality. They start out as nothing – just another part of the great homogeneous mass of mankind, that great seething organism. But they evolve, they take on an identity of their own, an individuality; they rise from the collective primordial mire, they raise their heads, they become. It’s a complete evolutionary cycle. They demonstrate the potential of mankind. They are an example to us all of what is possible.

Not that most of them deserve their fame and fortune. Do me a favour!

Most of them are talentless cretins who just happened to be in the right place at the right time and made it.

Do I sound bitter about this? Do I?

Well, I’m not. I know that it’s true. But I do like them. And what I really like most about them is their excess. The way they waste away millions. I was brought up in a poor household and I was conditioned to be careful with my money. I spend a bit on clothes, but not a lot, and I never waste money. I was taught to understand the value of money. My daddy was really hot on the value of money, which was probably why he never gave me any. “Money must be earned and then looked after,” he used to say, which was another reason that I hated him. It’s hard to break away from that kind of early programming. The rich and famous are able to do that. They can squander, big time. They have it, so they spend it and they enjoy spending it. They don’t turn off lights after them, they don’t have to sniff the milk from the fridge to see if it’s fresh (it always is if you’re rich). They can buy the fluffy toilet rolls that cost that bit too much. They don’t give a damn for a “two for one” offer. They don’t say, “A watch is a watch. I’ll have this cheap one.” They say, “That’s a really nice watch. I don’t give a damn how much it costs, I’ll have it. And the car too, and the house – no, make that two houses. And a yacht.”

I sort of yearned to be like that. But it was different for me. I was programmed. I’d been conditioned. I had been taught to be frugal. So I didn’t know whether I had in me that special something that would allow me to squander money if I ever got to be rich and famous.

I thought I’d go and have a word with Jeff Beck. I’d heard that he’d bought himself some really expensive guitars. Had them handmade to his own specifications. Paid a fortune for them. I thought I’d like to shake the hand that played those exclusive guitars.

But although I hung around on the periphery of Jeff s group of chatting chums, I didn’t get the opportunity to say hello and tell him about how I’d seen him back in the days when he was paying his dues at the Blue Triangle Club. So I thought, stuff it, and went off to mingle elsewhere.

And while I was trying to find someone to mingle with, I found myself in the vicinity of the food table. And what a lot of food was on it, and all expensive too. It was quite a trouble getting into the near vicinity of the food table, there were so many rich and famous crowded around and filling their porcelain plates.[20] They do like to trencher down free grub, the rich and famous, which is another thing I admire them for.