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THE WORST REVIEW OF MY CAREER
It was after the UK tabloids published the location of my unit in Afghanistan (my military unit, that is, not my marital one, although obviously, I was attached to that too) that I decided I had to leave the army. It had been good fun, I'd enjoyed mucking in, but being decapitated live on al-Jazeera seemed too high a price for the guys to have to pay, for hanging with the H-Meister. I mean, I know some great clubs, and I always get my round in, but nobody's that good a bloke. Plus, we're a bit touchy about the whole beheading thing, us royals.
So, what to do next? Well, falling out of Boujis every night had a certain appeal, but I'd at least tried to boff most of the fillies in there already, and besides, a chap needs an occupation. And charity was out; after Mum had been taken out the game in that tunnel in Paris, I'd had a few issues with the British public. Yes, the bloke was mullered, but we've all been there, and would he, I ask you, have been driving at ninety miles an hour if the paps hadn't been after him? Generally, you stay under the radar if you've tied a few on. Anyway, I digress.
The point was that I could never have been the People's Prince. Burn the People, is pretty much what I thought, burn them in hell, and if that sounds unreasonable, seeing as they, you, are probably going to be picking up my bar tab for the rest of my life, well, somebody buys the tabloids. So how would you feel about the British public if they'd put the kibosh, effectively, on your old dear? And if you'd then, at the grand old age of eleven, had to schlep halfway across London behind her coffin, in front of the same TV audience that had basically put her in there? Those salt of the earth types, who still consider Elton John to be a valid artist. Imagine that, at your mother's funeral. I'm guessing 'pissed off' wouldn't really cover it. So to then be denied the outlet for black thoughts and violent urges that a career in the military seems to afford … just seemed a bit much. I could have shot pheasants, I suppose. Well, I did actually, quite a lot. But I didn't want to shoot pheasants. I didn't really want to shoot pheasants, at all.
So a job in Charity was a non-starter. And I couldn't have carried on like Dad, as an organic farmer and environmental spokes-bloke, because I'd never have heard the end of it down at the club. Plus, was he really my father? I'd read the tabloid speculation in my early teens. You can probably imagine what that was like. It's always struck me as odd that the same sort of press types who'd big up the Sex Pistols had a problem, at the time, with the H-Meister's Afrika Corps uniform. As far as I could see, we'd been coming from the same place, me and the Pistols. Okay, I'd had a few ales and I didn't really think about it, but, honestly, did Johnny, or Sid? They said some terrible things about QE2, after all, having never met her. Having never met her over tea, for example, in the wake of a hash bust. I shudder to think what God Save The Queen would have sounded like, if they had. She can dish out one hell of a bollocking, can Her Majesty.
Anyway, I don't want to drone on. Chin up, bluff Prince Hal, all that. The point was that after Afghanistan, it looked like the papers weren't going to be happy until they knew where I was, all the time. And I'd always had a flair for the dramatic. I knew what it was like to be on telly, after all, in a terrible hour, plus I liked dressing up, so it seemed as if career-wise, the theatre beckoned. That way, the Sun-reading public would have as much of the H-Meister as they could possibly handle, and if the press was that bothered about what I was up to, well they'd know where to find me, six nights a week. Just because of the weirdness factor, I wasn't likely to be short of work, at least not to begin with, and if I did get bad reviews, as seemed equally likely, well, dying on stage had to be better than having my head, my old chap, or something else dear to me lopped off, with prejudice, on the North West frontier. Or being car-crashed to death in a tunnel in Paris. So that was the plan.
A few years of training later then (I'm not going to list all the places that turned me down; suffice it to say that getting into drama school's a bit bloody harder than making the grade for Eton or Sandhurst) and I was on stage in Arthur Miller's 'A View From The Bridge', playing Rodolfo. If you're unfamiliar, it's a play about Eddie Carbone, a tough-talking Italian-American docker, who's fatally conflicted about his incestuous desire for his niece, Catherine, who my character shags. Catherine, in this production, was played by quite a fine filly, I don't mind saying. Which was the other reason I'd got into acting. As I said earlier, I'd approached all the totty in Boujis by then, six whole seasons of debutantes. Not always successfully, it's true, but any self-respecting swordsman, royal or otherwise, has to scatter his seed a bit further than that.
So, first night, a packed house, heavy security, even heavier press, anticipation thick in the air, and Catherine and I were about to consummate our forbidden love. When there was a gunshot from the wings.
'Steady on guys,' I remember thinking 'this isn't the bloody Sopranos …'
Lights out at this point, and the next thing I knew, I came to my senses bound and gagged, not in a good way, in what looked like a council flat in Acton, or somewhere.
'Bloody hell,' I thought 'I haven't been kidnapped by Al Qaeda, have I?'
But of course, I had.
God knows how they got me out of there. I mean, nice job guys, in a way, what with all the security. Tear gas, I think, was involved, plus a motorbike ride with an unconscious H-Meister strapped to the back, but I don't know. When I did see the papers, much later on, I was really just looking for reviews of my Rodolfo. Which, necessarily, were inconclusive. In the meantime, anyway, there was the not the question of not so much whether, as when these guys were going to kill me. The guys being Abdul, who was a dentist, Karim, who was a law student, and some other bloke who looked like a guard from the Bluewater shopping centre, though we never bonded. He just used to hit me in the face, when the others weren't looking.
I'll spare you the details of my early incarceration, but basically, I didn't know what to make of them. They could have offed me on stage at the Royal Court, but hadn't, so what were they waiting for? The most opportune moment to do me in on the internet? Or were they perhaps in a bit of a funk? Well, I was no psychologist.
Still, after my gag came off, around day two, and the constant diet of prayer and daytime telly began, I think, to get on everyone's nerves (for a while back there, I really did feel like a resting actor) we got onto the subject of religion.
'But don't you think, guys,' I said, once the issue seemed safe to bring up, 'that this is going to end badly?'
'The Western world will end badly,' replied Abdul, waving his gun at the bomb in the corner, which, in spite of my military training, I had, thus far, failed to notice, 'but Allah will prevail.'
'Okay.' I said. And then, under my breath 'Don't be a knob.'
'What is “knob”?' wondered Abdul, the dentist, approaching the H-Meister with a balled fist that meant no good for his handsome looks - had he said too much?
'The pure-hearted warrior of Islam,' said Karim, later 'will go directly to paradise.'
'Well,' I coughed 'I've read the Koran … I had to do it for General Studies A level. You get totty on tap and a river of wine for the rest of eternity if you die in action, right? But guys, that just sounds like a night out in Boujis. I mean, I do it all the time, and it gets a bit much after a couple of years …'
I took a hard punch, actually a series of punches for that, but for whatever reason, it seemed to register. At least, they stopped hitting me, after a while.
'That is the situation in paradise, though, chaps?' I said, eventually.
'You misunderstand the writings of the prophet,' said Abdul.
'Well, I did get an F. But since you're going to heaven anyway, if … sorry, when you set the bomb off, what say I make a phone call? I could give you some pointers on what to expect?'
'What?' said Karim.
'But who would you call?' said Abdul
'A friend of mine … Look, if it sounds a bit off, you can always shoot me.'
'Yes. But why would you do this thing?'
'Well,' I said, as the Bluewater bloke loomed over me again, cracking his knuckles, 'you don't seem like bad guys ... I just worry Al-Qaeda might have seen you coming.'
I woke up. They must have discussed this a bit while I was out of the game, but when I came to, I rang my pal Rafe on Abdul's mobile. I said;
'Hi mate … yeah, I'm in a situation … In Acton, I think ... Mm … Anyway, usual finder's fee, so what I need is an ounce of the Bonnie Prince ... yeah, and some herb, a crate of Bolly, and Debbi, Candy and Bambi from Babes of Mayfair … well, it is fairly urgent… Good man.'
'My friend,' I explained 'doesn't follow the news.'
'That is good,' said Abdul, with an ominous click of his revolver.
I don't mind saying I nearly wet myself a few times, in the hours that followed. I had to get the guys to hide their weapons, and then to produce them, so to speak, all the while hoping Rafe and the ladies wouldn't blow the scene. As it turned out, Debbi, Candy and Bambi were quite used to handling bonkers Arab blokes, but it was a bit nerve-wracking. So it was with a sense of … real victory, then, that I sat there next morning, in Acton's shitting dawn, watchng my erstwhile captors asleep in the arms of the most fanciable, and expensive, escorts in town, dreaming, I supposed, of mountains of coke, and rivers of finest, vintage champagne. They must have felt like they were in paradise; they were innocents, in their way, so I almost didn't have the heart to phone up Special Branch, and have the guys extraordinarily renditioned, half to death. Being outwitted by a member of the British royal family can't be easy, after all.
On the other hand though, they had started shooting during my Rodolfo. You expect the odd bad crit, but being tear-gassed, smacked round the head and then kidnapped was exactly the kind of thing I'd got into acting to try and avoid. So I made the call.
It was ten minutes later, as the Acton heat came haring round the corner, and through the front door, when it struck me that coke, pills and call girls weren't especially interests Al Qaeda members were known to pursue. And yet the place was littered … How the hell was even I, the H-Meister, going to explain?
My worst reviews seemed ahead of me, suddenly.
Damn it, I thought. |
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