Saturday evening. I’m in Pizza Express, Jesus Lane, Cambridge. The restaurant is huge and plush with room after room of dark wood panelling, like a temple to the pizza. One table has a tab for the guests of the Cambridge Word Fest, whose main venue is the ADC Theatre next door. Different performers and authors appearing at the festival stop here to eat and drink and move on. I’m there with Rowan Pelling and the Decadent Cabaret lot when Billy Bragg suddenly appears and takes a seat, and chats to whoever is at the table that time.
What on earth do I say to Billy Bragg?
“Hullo, you’re Billy Bragg. You’ve made some great records.”
He probably knows that. Plus he’s here in a non-musical capacity, to discuss a book he’s got out about modern English identity. To ask him about his music when he’s here about his book, which I haven’t read, might annoy him. So I don’t say much after I’m introduced to him. Instead, I look on as he holds court at the dining table. He assumes people know who he is, as everyone around the table is introduced to him but he never says “I’m Billy” in return. I can’t decide whether this is rather arrogant, or alternately, if he thinks introducing himself is enormously patronising – an act of false modesty – and thus arrogant in that sense. After all, these are all fellow performers at a small book festival, and he’s one of the biggest names there, with a famous face and voice. It’s fair to assume they will know who he is without introduction.
What’s not in dispute is that he has an amazing sense of self-belief, as if he’s unlikely to ever admit he’s wrong about anything. Like Mr Geldof he’s a self-righteous bully; but in a good way, with good intentions. Most importantly of all, he’s funny with it.
“Phew! I’ve just come straight from Manchester. I was on the radio there, discussing the history of conscientious objectors,” he says as he sits down. And I’m struck by just how thick his Essex accent is. He is more like Billy Bragg than ever before.
Rowan Pelling asks him about a TV show he made with Boris Johnson about Glastonbury, and she confesses she’s never been to the festival. Mr Bragg tells her she really must go – at whatever age. I don’t say anything, but I’ve never been to Glastonbury either. I’m not sure if it’s very ‘me’. I fear all those people, and all that mud, would just make me more lonely, really. But if I ever received an invitation and had a nice travelling companion, I wouldn’t refuse. Put it that way.
Michael Bywater is a grumpy, Falstaffian, fogeyish, white-haired Character of a man with a capital ‘C’. At the dining table, he produces his black MacBook and revises a naughty piece to read at the Decadent Cabaret, typing away while the wine arrives. The event’s MC, Alex, reads it, but suggests cuts. He passes the laptop back to Mr B, and I note he’s indicated the cuts by highlighting them in translucent blue on the screen, using the word processing program. Very Proper Editor stuff.
I tell Mr Bywater that I recently saw his face on my own iBook. I had downloaded a torrent of The South Bank Show special on his friend Douglas Adams from about 1992, and he was in it as an actor, playing Dirk Gently. Pretty good casting, as he inspired the character in the first place. I tell him the name of the excellent torrent site, where you can also get the latest Have I Got News For You.
Me: You need to know how to work torrents, though.
Bywater: Oh, I know all about that.
When I get home, I look him up and find out he’s as big on computers as the late Mr Adams was: co-writing computer games with him, currently writing columns on technology for the Telegraph and so on. So yes, yes, he does know how to do torrents.
Among other things, we discuss the underrated 80s film Clockwise, and I’m pleased he likes it as much as I do. He points out two things I hadn’t noticed before. (1) That it follows the patterns of Aristotle’s tragedies to a tee. (2) That the shot of the schoolboy caught smoking in a doorway is a reference to The Third Man.
I recite my favourite Clockwise quotes. One from John Cleese’s character:
It’s not the despair. I can deal with the despair. It’s the hope.
And, from Penelope Wilton:
This is just like being nineteen again! (tearful pause) I HATED being nineteen!
Then Ali Smith’s party of celebrated lady authors arrives, and we’re all booted out to make way. I recognise Jackie Kay, but sense she’s a bit reserved and so don’t talk to her. But Ali Smith has a more open and friendly air about her, and doesn’t seem as haughty as your average literary figure. She seems to actually like meeting people, and has a rather magical glint in her eyes. So I go over to her as our party is leaving.
Me: Ms Smith, I just want to mention a connection we share which is vaguely interesting. We have both been the muse for songs by Mr Nick Currie, aka Momus.
She inspired his mid 80s song ‘Paper Wraps Rock’ and one other from the same period that escapes me. I inspired something from his 1997 period called ‘Pale Young Men’. Though he never released it, I like to think it counts. At least, when thinking of something vaguely interesting to say to noted authors.
We discuss the Tove Jansson book she wrote an introduction to, The Winter Book. She mentions there’s a new Jansson novel coming out in the same vein called Fair Play. Well, new to most British readers: Ms Jansson still insists on remaining dead, of course. And she offers to send me a copy. So I scribble down my address and thank her profusely.
Oh, look, 952 words already and still no Diary Angels Pledges. I have so much to say, tales to tell. It’s just as well that I now know there are definitely people out there who want to read these tales; enough to put coins into the slot of my mind.
In Tomorrow’s Entry: Mr Edwards lists his Pledges To The Angels at last.
