I went to a small experimental theatre show in Los Angeles many years ago where young students were putting on their ‘work’. There comes a point in everyone’s life where they sit in a studio, theatre or gallery and stare at something that the middle class cognoscenti deem art and you recognise it as mental illness.

 

I recall watching an anorexic French girl with a geometrical blunt haircut throw broken plates at an empty box as she recited the bible. She was a mix between my mammy in an alcoholic induced rant and Joan of Arc in her ‘black period’. People cheered when she fled the room threatening to kill herself in broken English. I was seriously worried about her well being, I never mistook her emotional breakdown for art. Other people did. I saw her in the car park cutting herself with her broken pottery and I didn’t know if I should intervene or give the display an appraisal. I wrestled her to the ground to get the sharp object out of her hand. Turns out that was part of the show and people who had also followed her out shouted at me to stop ruining the finale.

 

The second act that day was watching what I can only describe as a homeless man eat sticky buns as he stood silently in his dirty coat that occasionally flashed open to reveal a very impressive erection. He was cheered on endlessly; people were very amazed at his avant garde display. I managed a smile and I was quite taken by his show, who can eat that many buns and maintain sexual tension? That turned out to be an actual homeless man who simply walked in and ate the buffet. I was then angry, because I enjoyed the show and I was duped and now there were no buns at the break.

 

Last week at a private comedy event I watched a young, very posh middle class guy attempt stand up comedy. His friends at the side of the room had assured him he was very funny and he should get up at this event and do the show. It was a horrible slow car crash of a comedy death, my kidneys hurt for him, and I watched all his young mates applaud him as he spoke clunky clumsy words that baffled everyone. No one in the main audience laughed; in fact they stared in silence as he carried on talking about Badgers and jam at length. “Is it just me or does everyone imagine that badgers are addicted to cheese?”

 

“Yes, it is JUST YOU” I wanted to scream. No one thinks that and by the way mate, that isn’t even funny.

 

He carried on ranting and came off to the sound of his own feet.

 

It was all very bizarre and smacked of too many nights watching The Mighty Boosh (a successful surreal comedy duo). When he reached the side of the stage, I rushed to offer him reassurance and kind words, but he ran like a king to his friends who all hand slapped and high-fived him. The audience were stunned and took some cajoling back into a decent funny vibe. He was crap at comedy, but in his mind he was amazing. The lack of laughter did nothing to convince him otherwise. He would go off later to the local bar with his wee middle class mates and regale them with stories about his successful comedy debut.

 

What I am saying is that I am not sure if I can now tell the difference between art and complete baloney….and is there one?

 

Comedy is defined by being funny. It is something that makes people laugh. I know this because I am a comedian.

 

I will never understand conceptual art, experimental theatre or even Picasso in his strange plate painting period. Squinty faces splattered on red odd shaped plates made me think of special people who get to do ceramic painting with their mouth as their limbs were missing.

 

I may be a total philistine but at least I know shit when I see it.

I saw a programme today about a young woman who pulls out her hair bit by bit; it is a form of self harm and she has permanently damaged her scalp. It made me shudder to watch because I was a hair puller as a child. I used to lie in bed, pick out a section of my hair, tie in a knot at the end and tug it till it came straight out of my scalp. The flesh on my head would bleed and I would then throw the clumps of hair under the bed. One day my mammy found loads of the hair and on closer inspection noticed that I had a bald patch on the side of my skull. She couldn’t figure out why I would do such a thing. I never explained it to her properly.

 

I was sexually abused as a child and somehow discovered hair pulling as a way to divert the pain by ripping out my hair. I did eventually explain to my mum about the abuse, though somehow she chose to ignore my words and therefore allowed her brother to continue to sexually abuse me. My hair pulling got worse. I don’t know when I stopped doing it.

 

To this day I still tug at my hair, I twist it and sometimes chew the ends and on occasion I do pull wee bits out. The strange pain it evokes makes me feel odd and I know that it is wrong and damaging to my scalp, but somewhere deep inside it reminds me of my childhood pain, yet I continue.

 

Everyone thinks I am terribly strong and brave because I survived the abuse, because I do comedy about my past and because I wrote a book about my difficult life, but underneath it all I am still a child who tugs her hair out sometimes.

 

I know I will never reach the point where I actually rip chunks out, but I do still fiddle with my hair too much. I need to address this and stop it.

 

My daughter Ashley took a photo of me from the side on, in that picture I was chewing my hair; I looked at it and felt terrible shame and horror at what I do.

 

So today I am resolved to stopping it all, maybe by admitting it I am addressing it will help me do this.

The year was 1981. It was a sunny bright day and Lady Diana Spencer was marrying Prince Charles. My wee dirty old pub was pretty empty, there were not that many Royalists in the Calton in Glasgow so I had the telly switched on and watched the news coverage of the Royal Wedding.

 

I am a sucker for a fairytale.

 

Whereas my smatterings of wee drunk smelly men were invariably unimpressed “Turn that shite off” Archie the old safe blower shouted. He had one of those old wrinkled faces that seemed to be permanently chewing something. His skin was the colour of a tea stained chamois leather cloth, the malleable softness of his saggy face morphed into a host of shapes as his gums rotated constantly.

 

Yet his startlingly blue eyes sparkled with fun when he chatted to you. Every story started out a dull pedestrian anecdote about one night when he had just finished work on the boats and somehow ended up with him having hard core sex- the man was deeply odd, filthy and funny. According to him, he had shagged more people than Frank Sinatra; he reckoned it was the blue eyes that did it. I avoided him at all costs.

 

I stood at the other end of the bar where Tony the dancing alcoholic was throwing himself about, Gene Kelly style, he was about 80 years old and I often worried he would drop down dead.

 

The day wore on the customers came and went.

 

The wedding on the telly was reaching its big crescendo – Lady Diana was at St. Pauls Cathedral. I squinted through the streaming sunlight that shafted through the open door and tried to see the much talked about wedding dress.

 

At that moment Bella came in.

 

She was wearing a bright red Spanish off-the-shoulder dress; it was layered with black taffeta and swung like a wonky lampshade as she moved. She donned a pair of white plastic sling-back shoes and a really inappropriately placed fake rose stuck between her low slung floppy breasts. I stifled a sigh.

 

“Hello boys, Bella is here, who wants a dance?” she clattered and skittered over the dirty lino towards Tony.

 

Her hair was dyed the same shade of jet black that people usually reserve for painting taxi cabs and it was piled randomly on top of her head. A silver shell-like hair comb was stabbed into the crown of the loose bun.

 

Bella was about 70 years old.

 

“Janey, I will have a wee or big-wee glass of beer, but just charge me for the wee bit of it” Bella purred. This was her usual request.

 

The first time I had met her I was totally confused between the ‘Big-Wee’ glass sizes, but I soon worked it out. You gave her a half pint of beer as that’s all she could afford.

 

I loved Bella; she made me smile and her bizarre collection of outfits really brightened the place up. I recalled how she dressed up as a Hawaiian dancer, straw skirt and garland of flowers over a pink stretchy bikini top, scary and funny especially as it was December and the snow was knee-deep that day.

 

I slipped her a shot of whisky “To celebrate the Royal Wedding, its free” I smiled.

 

Bella downed the whisky, slammed the glass down, and then whispered “Fuck the Queen, but thanks for the drink” Her scarlet lips parted and she stuck out her tongue through tainted misshapen teeth that were the colour of fresh butter.

 

I laughed out loud. Bella click-clacked on her cheap heels and dropped a coin into the jukebox. Minutes later Dean Martin started crooning out through the speakers. Prince Charles was staring solemnly at his bride and Lady Diana was being coy through a bridal veil. Dean belted out ‘That’s Amore!’

 

Tony the dancer clutched Bella by the waist and they were off. His shaking veined hands gripped her tightly.

 

Archie ignored them and chewed his face off in silence. He dismissed the dancers with a wave of one hand over his shoulder and stared into the distance.

 

Within minutes Bella managed to get away from Tony, he was good for about a minute of dancing then it usually and quickly descended into a groping sexual assault. Bella knew the routine, prised herself out of Tony’s hands and threw herself into the bar seat. All flushed, her hair falling down out of the multitude of hair grips that failed to keep it in place.

 

Tony carried on dancing without her; he shuffled about and sang loudly. The men in my bar may have been really old, but they were constantly on the heat!

 

Bella went into her usual routine of asking me probing questions and quickly providing the answers herself. “Are you happy Janey?” then before I could speak she said “Course your not fucking happy, you are still here in this shit hole of a bar. Do you regret getting married so young? Yes, I bet you do of course you do, men are all fucked and use you up till you don’t know your arse from your elbow” Then she leaned over and gripped my hand “Run away Janey, while you are young- go darling just fucking run away and don’t look back, did I tell you my man was an evil bastard and ran away when I was pregnant?”

 

“Your man was a violent bastard, you were well rid of him Bella, he broke your two legs with a cricket bat” Archie hissed between chews, then he added “Who plays cricket in Glasgow? He must have been a poof as well”

 

“I loved him” Bella screamed, she pointed a blood red fingernail at her crepe skinned chest “he was MY LIFE” she ran towards Archie and spat her words at his face “He never hurt me in his life, he was a gentleman”

 

Archie raised his wiry eyebrows at me, mouthed and mimed with a shaky fist “he punched the baby out of her”

 

Bella screamed again and pulled at Archie’s old shirt. He let her inflict the pain on him. Archie had been through this drama before with Bella.

 

Then she burst into tears. This was what always happened with Bella. Dancing, laughing and then the floods of tears over the bastard husband, I felt so sad for her.

 

Meanwhile back in St. Pauls Cathedral Prince Charles never cracked a smile.

 

He spoke his vows with pure conviction as Bella, Archie, Tony and I sat in silence. We watched as the blonde Diana whispered her vows, she looked flustered.

Then suddenly the peace was broken as Bella screamed “Fuck men, all of them” and threw a half pint glass at the wee television that was hung from the ceiling in the corner of the bar.

 

I screamed in fright. I didn’t expect Bella to throw the glass, the noise was deafening as it smashed to pieces on the tiled floor beneath the telly. The TV flickered but continued to screen the Royal couple though the volume was now gone.

 

Archie shouted “Fucksake Bella, calm down hen” then went back to chewing his gums.

 

Tony carried on dancing to a long gone tune that was playing in his head.

 

I rushed round the bar with a brush and pan and tried to clear up the mess.

 

Bella continued to scream and cry. She was pulling out all her hair grips, she was ripping at her dress, and she was going absolutely mental.

 

“Janey, can I get a pint of lager hen?” Archie shouted over the din.

 

I ignored Archie and tried to console Bella. “Come on Bella, don’t get yourself so upset” I hugged her and stroked her warm shoulder. She sniffed on a tissue I gave her; she looked at me with dark heavily made-up eyes and spoke in a hushed voice “Can I have a wee-big beer?” I nodded and went round the bar to pour her beer.

 

Bella eventually settled down, climbed on a stool and supped on her drink, Archie lit a roll up cigarette and Tony finally fell asleep on the couch near the door.

 

We all watched the Royal Wedding on the telly which was now without sound, the rich and famous mouthing words, heaving crowds waving Union flags, and opera singer Kiri Te Kiwana belting out a silent song during the wedding service. I laughed as Bella opening her scarlet lips to imitate the singer’s mouth but uttering no noise, Archie chewed and Tony snored.

 

My husband came in and stared at the scene, pointed at the television “Why are you watching it with the volume down?”

 

“It’s not down, it’s broke. I smashed a glass at the telly coz all men are bastards and I hate weddings and I think I have fucked the volume” Bella said loudly to my young husband, she shrugged and went straight back to her beer.

 

Husband replied “Ok, I am going upstairs, I will see you later”

 

Bella, Archie and I looked back at the telly and tried to guess what was happening without the commentary as the camera panned the cathedral and its royal guests.

 

Bella was found dead in a hostel a week later. Apparently she dressed up as sailor-girl, and was found clutching a photo of her bastard husband after taking a fatal dose of pain killers.

 

Archie and I cried when we spoke about her. Tony danced.

Sometimes when I lay in bed at night my mind flickers back to old memories and I replay them like worn out over-edited home movies. In my brain I think there is a big Rolodex that I click through and occasionally stop and stare at an image, depending on my mood, I may look further, or just click on.

 

Last night my memory home movie of choice was Ashley as a baby. I could see her wee chubby fists trying hard to pull herself up onto a chair in the bar. She could barely get her legs up; I ran over and lifted her up quickly before she fell over. My cousin Sammy was looking after her at the time “Janey, leave her she needs to learn to climb up things” I knew he had a close eye on her but I recall that deep tugging feeling in my soul each time she looked dangerously close to falling. I had to run to catch her.

 

Then my brain switched images and I saw Old George my barman carrying cases up from the cellar. He was a retired bar manager, but came out of his retirement to work for us. I giggled as every time George came up from the door trap as he always managed to scrape his baldy head on the underside of the cellar ceiling. He had a permanent red angry mark on his head for years.

 

In my minds eye view-finder I looked around and could see all my regular customers, I can hear the noise of glasses clinking, the jukebox banging out U2, the cigarette smoke is making wispy garish shapes against the day light that flooded through the big front bar window. People laughing, talking, singing…the constant background noise of my life for many years, whispered threats, dirty sex talk, angry words about the government, religious quotes, drunken slurred slander and some old woman singing sad country and western songs to crumpled photo she kept pulling out of her purse. I can still see the sad fat tears dripping down her heavy mascara-ed eyes. I often wondered who she was crying over but never bothered to ask.

 

My brain flickers over earlier memories, husband and I trying to heat up mince and peas out of can and onto a cracked plate in the big smelly microwave oven that sat behind the bar. I had never seen a microwave oven before and was fascinated by the sputtering and crackling of the fat in the food in the strange space-age machine. I recall the over processed taste of the rubbery food and husband and tried to force it down our hungry throats.

We gave up; I walked through the driving horizontal slashing rain and got some greasy fish and chips for the Italian chippy near the Bingo at Bridgeton Cross. We ate it in companionable silence. Licking fingers and gulping on hot fleshy fish, savouring every mouthful whilst keeping a sharp eye on the drunken old man who wobbles scarily near the juke box.

 

Hall and Oates constantly being threatened of having a deep scratch on it’s black vinyl, then finally acquiring a strange hicky stutter like all the other records that garnered speech impediments due to the clattering drunks in our bar. Why did the pissed old men always fall on the juke box and never the pool table?

 

So many memories, all on a loop, playing constantly in my head, some great and some sad, yet all tucked safely away in my head for future showing.

 

I wonder what I will watch tonight.

I am home and safe. Ashley is slightly burnt, my poor wee girl! She managed on the first day of the holiday to fall over, tits over hair and skint her two knees, then she got her shoulders burnt despite wearing factor 50, and then she had a migraine. It was fun though. We spent hours sitting on that amazing balcony watching the sun go down over the beautiful pools, laughing listening to music and chatting. Wonderful stuff.

 

We had such a good time, we have great photo’s to upload and will do so soon.

 

Its great being back home, I did miss husband. Lanzarote was so lovely and nothing what I expected at all. Playa Blanca was really peaceful and nice. The weather was really hot though and being Scottish, I melted a wee bit.

 

Meanwhile I need to remind all you good people in Norwich that I am doing my one woman comedy show at the Norwich Playhouse Theatre on July 25^th, do come along and see me!

 

Speak soon.