On the Road with George Melly by Digby Fairweather

Author:Digby Fairweather [Fairweather, Digby]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781907532757
Publisher: Aurum Press

CHAPTER ELEVEN

The Madness of King George

‘Dig,’ Diana had asked on one of her morning telephone calls. ‘Can you remember when George was first diagnosed with dementia?’

I couldn’t. But sometime over the past year or so, at one of his now-frequent visits to hospitals and doctors, George Melly had indeed been told that he was suffering from a form of the condition called vascular dementia, a progressively debilitating disease which, like Alzheimer’s, gradually reduces the mental faculties of its sufferers. The madness of King George was now official.

Our star, however, seemed blissfully unconcerned. Indeed, it seemed to allow him the option of justifying his inability to remember small inconvenient details. He was happy to announce to friends and audiences alike, ‘Well, of course, now you know I’m actually mad!’ The thespian within our star seemed to allow him to thoroughly enjoy the admission. And only Jack Higgins felt inclined to explode.

‘How the hell,’ he roared at his client one morning, ‘do you expect me to get you work if you’re putting it around that you’re mad?’

‘It doesn’t help if you shout at me, Jack,’ observed his client of thirty years imperturbably. ‘I can’t hear you any better.’

Jack had come up the hard way, as we well knew, and hearing that one of his longest associates and top stars was voluntarily declaring himself insane was not a popular move. George’s progressive deafness was making things worse too, particularly as, with the help of an old PR colleague, Jackie Gill, Jack was busy setting up strings of radio interviews for the two of us in order to promote The Ultimate Melly, which we completed during January. Their relationship rapidly deteriorated and by the year’s end these two old colleagues and sparring partners were no longer speaking to each other.

George’s legendary sexuality was becoming a thing of the past too. ‘When I was your age,’ he had said to me previously, ‘I had to tie my cock around my waist. But now’ – a wonderful phrase, this – ‘it’s like being unleashed from a demon!’ Just occasionally though the demon would make a valiant return. One afternoon a young Australian blues singer, the daughter of an old colleague, had arrived in England and requested an audience with the master. ‘So,’ said George, ‘we had a pleasant enough chat, though a good deal of the time I had very little idea of what she was saying. And then we went upstairs to listen to some Bessie Smith in my bedroom. At that point she undressed and invited me to get into bed with her. I said, “I’m afraid you’ll be disappointed,” and indeed all I could produce was a length of old bent hose. But then I suggested she might wank herself off which she did, delightfully noisily, and finally I managed to get half-hard and produce a small reluctant jet of moisture. Which seemed to delight her.’

‘Have you tried Viagra?’ I asked. ‘I can get you some if you want.’

But the old master looked tired.

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