Close Encounters of the Waterstones Kind

The Manchester branch of Waterstones (the proper one opposite Kendall’s not the rebranded Dillon’s in St Anne’s Square) has a reputation for arranging events. These mutually beneficial shindigs allow us – the reading several – to meet them – the writing several – in an atmosphere of room temperature orange juice and the purchasing of their latest release. Some of the ones we (by which I mean self and parents) went to were non-descript. I can sit here at the age of 27 and say I genuinely can’t remember if I’ve met Michael Palin, Bill Bryson or Robbie Coltrane. I’ve been in the same room as them (think Waterstones but with lots of uncomfortable wooden chairs) and heard them read post-it noted extracts from their books but if I have been up close and personal then it didn’t seem worth remembering.

My chronology is a bit out so I can’t be absolutely sure what order some of the following events took place in but I’ve had a guess based on what my mind connects with the scene. So first up is the Dancehouse Theatre in Manchester. This was where Waterstones held events that had sold so many tickets that they couldn’t fit everyone in the shop. It is also the place where, years later, I saw Mel and Sue live on stage. I was still at school and, lacking any kind of opinions of my own, just sort of shuffled along with what my Daily Mail reading parents thought. That’s how I came to be on stage with Mrs Thatcher. Or Lady Thatcher as she then was. I don’t mean in a pantomimic sense. She didn’t have local brats up for a semi-improvised bit of audience participation. They had erected a table (and boy am I nauseous at using the word “erected” in a paragraph about Mrs T) and there she sat – surrounded by security – as the plebs walked past and got their copies of the Downing Street Years written in.

“No personal dedications” barked one of the security people every time the line had moved a few feet. You gave the book to burly chap Alpha, he presumably was able to check it for bombs or touch sensitive poisons just by holding it, he passed it on to Mrs Thatcher who wrote her name in a slow and deliberate script, burly chap Beta picked it up and by this point you were expected to be in a suitably advanced position to accept with a grateful hand the book you had paid for some moments earlier. Don’t ask me why but I broke the rules. I asked her if I could shake her hand. She looked up – imagine the fragility of Joan Hickson combined with the insanity of David Icke – and offered a skeletal hand. I don’t need to mention how cold it was.

Before I leave that chapter I must make mention of the three people who stood outside the theatre all night (well, they were there when we went in and had returned when we came out) selling copies of the Socialist Worker. I have no statistical evidence to back this up you understand but I doubt they sold many copies to people who had paid twenty pounds plus the cost of the book to see Maggie. It may be the most pointless thing I have ever witnessed in person. Well, mirrors excluded obviously.

My street cred gets a tiny boost when we move on to Ian Hislop – a man I’ve seen twice but only nearly killed the once. The second time was at the Dancehouse but the first was in store. This must be post-university as I remember nearly seeing him at the Student’s Union but his secretary had assumed Warwick University was in Warwick and he’d been put on the wrong train. I was with a chap called Nisar who spent the whole evening calling him Tony Hislop for some reason. So I’m in the queue to get my Eye annual signed and Ian is swigging wine from a glass which was constantly being refilled by someone from Waterstones. I hand over my book, he signs it, I say something which I remember as utterly vacant, I foolishly try to take the book and walk off at the same time and collide with a standing lamp which was lighting him. Don’t ask me why Ian Hislop needed lighting when all he was doing was writing his name and drinking but he evidently did. The lamp swayed one way and then the other. It fell towards the noted satirist like an Amazonian tree that happens to stand in the way of an unnamed burger chain’s quest for cheap beef. Luckily the man pouring the wine had other skills and he caught it before it could reduce the regular HIGNFY cast to two. It would take cocaine and women of easy virtue to do that.

And I once believed Stephen Fry was psychic. I did. It was another piece of typical moronity on my part. Like just now when I believed moronity was a word. He was signing Moab is My Washpot – the last of his books I had signed. I’d already met the man twice (boast boast boast) and nothing but a good time was had by all. I asked him for a Wodehouse quote each time since his portrayal of the ultimate Gentleman’s Gentleman had got me hooked on PGW’s books. The first time he wrote easily, the second time he ummed and ahhed as his planet sized brain tried to find something suitable. The third time he was really struggling. He asked what he’d written before, I told him and he ummed and ahhed some more. If it had been a tactic to spend more time with the man I would be proud except it wasn’t. Nor – for these were simpler times – was it a ruse to make the book unique and therefore it would fetch a higher price on eBay. It was then than he became a mentalist. In the Derren Brown rather than Mrs Thatcher sense of the word. “Have you been to Santa Barbara?” he asked in that chocolaty voice of his. “Um… yes” I stammer. That the existence of extra sensory perception should be proven in such unscientific circumstances and from the lips of a man who hasn’t shied away from his very sceptical beliefs on the subject. He wrote something in my book, wished me a good evening and I wandered away with goggle eyes. It was only later when I came to zip up my jacket as we hit the cold outsides of Manchester that I noticed my jumper had “Santa Barbara” on it in big letters.

D’oh.

28th February 2004