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Authors: George Melly
Tags: General, Biography & Autobiography
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tactic is the sudden obliteration of names and, less often, of words. There is no time limit here – sometimes I find myself incapable of remembering the name of someone from the distant past, but later, usually in the small hours, it comes to me from the increasingly disorganized filing system of the mind. My favourite comedian of all time, Max Miller – a name, by the way, which has never eluded me – corroborates this. ‘Ladies and gentlemen,’ he’d confide to the audience, ‘I’m going to sing a song I’ve written. Mind you, it’s not finished. I’ve got the beginning and I’ve got the end (long pause); it’s the middle bit I’m after. It’ll come to me in the night (another pause)… the middle bit.’
Of course the audience, seduced by the wicked twinkle in his eye and knowing that his meaning was open to sexual interpretation, would begin to laugh. ‘No,’ he’d repeat, ‘in the night, the middle bit…,’
And then, as was his wont, he’d turn on them for misinterpreting him. ‘Go on,’ he’d protest in mock indignation. ‘Go on, make something of that… you filthy lot, you’re the sort that get me into trouble…’
Oh Maxie! My ‘middle bits’ are less, far less open to misinterpretation, but none the less irritating.
At parties, however small or large, I often forget the names of two people I know well who are waiting to be introduced to each other. ‘You know each other?’ I ask them desperately. ‘No,’ they tell me.
Wally Fawkes, our best classic jazz clarinettist, cartoonist and caricaturist, has a typically throwing solution. He boldly asks them their names, and sometimes, usually with irritation, they tell him. His reaction is extreme congratulatory enthusiasm. ‘You’re right!’ he cries, like a schoolmaster exhilarated by a correct answer from an otherwise dim pupil. ‘You’re right!’ I’ve tried this gambit but am greeted merely with puzzled irritation. Only Wally can pull it off!
It’s not only people who escape through the mesh of my mental net; plays, films, books, much-admired artists, famous jazz musicians may all swim through the wide unravelled holes, even when I knew the exact answer a moment before.
The most worrying manifestation, however, is when the failing mind, like a kind of windscreen-wiper, sweeps across leaving the glass entirely clean to reveal nothing more than a straight road ahead with identical semi-detached houses on either side.
Not long ago I read a newly published novel which, according to Diana, I thoroughly enjoyed. Later, when the Sunday Telegraph asked me to name my ‘book of the year’, I picked it up as though I’d never read it before – I’d seen it all right because my wife had brought it back from the book launch when I was out of London – so I read it, with mounting admiration and enthusiasm, and told Diana it was certainly, despite several other contestants, my choice. Diana said I hadn’t reacted quite so positively when I’d first readit. But I had absolutely no recollection of having done so at all – none!
This happens quite often, if not so dramatically. Some of it – ‘You never told me that!’ ‘Yes, I did’ – may be due to being increasingly Mutt and Jeff (cockney rhyming slang), but not, as in this case, a whole book!
I used to call it ‘the gaslight syndrome’. Gaslight was a play, and later on two films, which I remember clearly, about a seemingly lovable but in fact evil (late-Victorian) husband who wants for his own nefarious reasons to drive his wife mad. When he turns up the gaslights in the sealed attic, while his wife is alone, those downstairs are mysteriously dimmed. Happily, insofar as I recall, a friendly detective believes her and unmasks her ingenious tormentor.
In consequence, when confronted by Diana in the past I would suggest that, not only was she lying, but she had adopted the methods of the double-faced spouse.
I no longer doubt Diana. She just rang up from the
Of course the audience, seduced by the wicked twinkle in his eye and knowing that his meaning was open to sexual interpretation, would begin to laugh. ‘No,’ he’d repeat, ‘in the night, the middle bit…,’
And then, as was his wont, he’d turn on them for misinterpreting him. ‘Go on,’ he’d protest in mock indignation. ‘Go on, make something of that… you filthy lot, you’re the sort that get me into trouble…’
Oh Maxie! My ‘middle bits’ are less, far less open to misinterpretation, but none the less irritating.
At parties, however small or large, I often forget the names of two people I know well who are waiting to be introduced to each other. ‘You know each other?’ I ask them desperately. ‘No,’ they tell me.
Wally Fawkes, our best classic jazz clarinettist, cartoonist and caricaturist, has a typically throwing solution. He boldly asks them their names, and sometimes, usually with irritation, they tell him. His reaction is extreme congratulatory enthusiasm. ‘You’re right!’ he cries, like a schoolmaster exhilarated by a correct answer from an otherwise dim pupil. ‘You’re right!’ I’ve tried this gambit but am greeted merely with puzzled irritation. Only Wally can pull it off!
It’s not only people who escape through the mesh of my mental net; plays, films, books, much-admired artists, famous jazz musicians may all swim through the wide unravelled holes, even when I knew the exact answer a moment before.
The most worrying manifestation, however, is when the failing mind, like a kind of windscreen-wiper, sweeps across leaving the glass entirely clean to reveal nothing more than a straight road ahead with identical semi-detached houses on either side.
Not long ago I read a newly published novel which, according to Diana, I thoroughly enjoyed. Later, when the Sunday Telegraph asked me to name my ‘book of the year’, I picked it up as though I’d never read it before – I’d seen it all right because my wife had brought it back from the book launch when I was out of London – so I read it, with mounting admiration and enthusiasm, and told Diana it was certainly, despite several other contestants, my choice. Diana said I hadn’t reacted quite so positively when I’d first readit. But I had absolutely no recollection of having done so at all – none!
This happens quite often, if not so dramatically. Some of it – ‘You never told me that!’ ‘Yes, I did’ – may be due to being increasingly Mutt and Jeff (cockney rhyming slang), but not, as in this case, a whole book!
I used to call it ‘the gaslight syndrome’. Gaslight was a play, and later on two films, which I remember clearly, about a seemingly lovable but in fact evil (late-Victorian) husband who wants for his own nefarious reasons to drive his wife mad. When he turns up the gaslights in the sealed attic, while his wife is alone, those downstairs are mysteriously dimmed. Happily, insofar as I recall, a friendly detective believes her and unmasks her ingenious tormentor.
In consequence, when confronted by Diana in the past I would suggest that, not only was she lying, but she had adopted the methods of the double-faced spouse.
I no longer doubt Diana. She just rang up from the
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