Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
'The show must go on!' I kept mumbling like some drunk pantomime dame, as Gavin and
Andy tried to persuade me that actually I wasn't in much of a fit state to do anything. The
pompiers
were called and I was rushed to hospital in Ruffeq, travelling in the ambulance with
Julia; and that was the last I saw of her as she disappeared when we entered the hospital.
Andy and Gavin, to their great credit and despite being obviously quite shaken, went ahead
with the show. I still lost money on it, though.
I had been having stomach problems for a couple of years and nobody had diagnosed it
properly enough to actually treat it - was it an ulcer, hernia, irritable bowel syndrome, reflux?
I had been opened up, had tubes shoved in every orifice and taken more drugs than an East
German shot-putter, and still the problem persisted.
'So, Doctor?' Natalie asked nervously on one occasion. 'What do you think?'
The doctor, actually a stomach specialist, looked at me again and shook his head. This
doesn't look good, I thought. He took his glasses off, rubbed his eyes, looked at Natalie and
sighed. 'You've told me what your husband does for a living, the lifestyle that goes with it and
the endless travelling. Of course he's ill.' He looked at me, 'Monsieur, go home.'
In my weakened state I took this to be the rallying cry of a Le Pen follower and told Natalie
that I was going to throw him through the window. 'Monsieur Moore!' he said, a bit rattled.
'Please don't misunderstand me.' He went on to explain, very eloquently and very reason-
ably, exactly what he meant. You cannot keep putting your body under this pressure, he said,
nearly a hundred flights a year, the trains, the driving, at least one night's sleep lost a week,
eating at odd hours, the drinking etc. etc. It is physically unsustainable, he said, so move back
to England. Or get another job.
I thought about this as I lay in that hospital in Ruffeq for three days. I was totally alone.
Natalie couldn't leave the boys and drive three hours to come and see me, Andy and Gavin
had flown home as planned and Julia had disappeared. Andy had rung Natalie to tell her what
had happened and she was in regular contact with the hospital, but I had no working phone,
no computer, nothing.
As a child I had read a biography of Peter Sellers and in it there was an incident where he
suffered a heart attack on an aeroplane. And while he lay there thinking that this was the end,
Sellers says that he had a 'visitation', somebody came to him and said that if he survived he
should 'go back to Clouseau'. Sellers had sworn never to play the role again after the first two
films, but he survived the heart attack and did indeed 'go back to Clouseau', resurrecting his
career.
I'm not comparing myself to the great Peter Sellers, but I had a similar incident. I woke
groggily from the anaesthetic, at first not knowing where I was, but there was a voice I recog-
nised and it was my good friend and comedian Mick Ferry, basically telling me that I couldn't
change my course, I am who I am, and that I should make a decision early and stick to it.
I took this as a reference to my brief, inglorious time as a comedy impresario. The thing is,
