Chapter Seven Celebrity Squared

Apex Publishing Ltd
PO Box 7086, Clacton on Sea, Essex, CO15 5WN, United Kingdom
Tel: 01255 428500 E-mail: [email protected] Website: www.apexpublishing.co.uk
_______________________________________________________________________________________
BOOK EXTRACT
Title:
Bushell On The Rampage: The Autobiography of Garry Bushell
Author:
Garry Bushell
Foreword by:
Billy Murray
Publication Date:
11 September 2010
Page Extent:
260
ISBN:
1-906358-80-X
ISBN 13:
978-1-906358-80-8
Book Type:
Hardback
Classification:
Autobiography
Price:
£15.99
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Chapter Seven
Celebrity Squared
I’m probably not the first person that Barbara Windsor has snogged in front of a green room full of horrified BBC
executives, but I bet no one enjoyed it as much as I did. And okay, she was 56 at the time, but it was Barbara
Windsor, for God’s sake, and I’d been a fan since I was thirteen.
I’d just come off camera from a live TV show, and, high on adrenalin, I found myself chatting to Bar. Booze was
flowing, the conversation was flirty and funny, and suddenly, to the shock of her fellow EastEnders and other
celebs, we kissed long and hard. What a carry on! After a while a BBC runner sidled up and told Bar that her car
was waiting and our tonsil tennis came to an end before we’d got to the stage when the star famous for telling
punters to “get aht of my pub” was telling me to get aht of my pants. If we’d drunk any more I would have
probably proposed, which would have come in handy. Bar is so short I’d have to go down on one knee just to look
her in the eye.
I’ve always believed that celebrity should be a by-product of talent, so how it came to me escapes me. In the name
of celebrity I have been flung out of a plane at 12,000 feet on prime-time TV, had knives thrown at me by Freddie
Starr, and been flown first-class to Los Angeles just so Noel Edmonds could mentally scar me by dragging himself
up as Teri Hatcher (more about that later).
My parties are covered by OK! magazine, I’ve had to sign breasts, thighs and buttocks and I’ve notched up more
TV and radio appearances than I can count, ranging from the worthy (Newsnight, The South Bank Show) to the
shameful (Pets Win Prizes, The Mint). I’ve been gunged fifteen times and ‘Gotcha-ed’, stranded in a ‘haunted’ castle
and hypnotised by Paul McKenna, who made me chat up a broomstick live on TV on Children in Need. He told
me it was Claudia Schiffer, but it definitely looked more like Victoria Beckham. The next day potty Paul Devine
left a brush outside my front door with a note saying it was my love child.
Once you start doing a lot of telly people begin to recognise you. Most people are friendly, but I did get insulted
once. A bus driver pulled over by Sidcup Station, got out and shook my hand. “I’ve always wanted to meet
Matthew Kelly,” he said. Bastard. I did sign an autograph for him though: f.u.c. …
I was in a working men’s club in Pitsea the other year with Garry Johnson and this woman kept staring at me.
After about fifteen minutes she came over and said, “You think you look like him but you ain’t.” Sorry? “You think
you look like Garry Bushell but you ain’t. I seen you signing on last week in Romford wearing motorcycle
leathers.” So not only was it not me, I was signing on and riding a motorbike! In the end I just agreed with her.
The worst one ever was in Tesco, when a woman came up and said, “You don’t half look like Garry Bushell, no
offence.” I had someone start filming me shopping in Costco. “Why are you here?” she said. “Why are you buying
sausages?” As Spike Milligan said, everybody’s got to be somewhere.
Most people are amiable, however. I’ve had pints bought for me in pubs by strangers, and free cab rides from
taxi drivers who agree with my views. But some are too friendly. I had a stalker once while I was working in
Wapping. She’d seen me on the game show You Bet! and, bizarre as it sounds, she became obsessed with me,
sending steamy letters, waiting at the gates for me and leaving suggestive notes under my windscreen outside
Booty’s bar in Narrow Street.
Filming in Blackpool in 1996, we brought a whole main road to a standstill, with wobbly Northern folk shouting,
“Look, it’s Garry fookin’ Bushell!” (that appears to be my name up there). I went for a Chinese in Manchester with
Bob Monkhouse, and a homeless guy pushed past the master comic to shake my hand. And in LA, while queuing
up to board a plane, I had to sign autographs for people who had walked straight past Bill Wyman to get to me.
It was mental. More recently, a People reader emailed me, saying that his wife wanted me to shag her and asked
if I was up for it. I was horrified. What did he take me for? I mean, he didn’t even send me her picture.
Incredibly, appearing on TV makes you a magnet for nutters, numpties and nubile women – even if you look
like Matthew Wright. I have been propositioned by three famous soap actresses, two pop singers, two Page 3 girls,
a glamour model, a couple of PRs and several talent show contenders, including a contortionist who wanted me
to look up her antecedents. If I’d been halfway handsome I’d have been beating them off with a stick.
Often I just had to stop and pinch myself. I’d gone from seeing Ozzy Osbourne’s sphincter winking at me during
some drunken Halfin 2 a.m. photo session in the corridor of a posh hotel, to having a household name Page 3
girl showing me her breasts (good) and Joe Pasquale showing me his Jacobs backstage at the Circus Tavern (not
so good).
Doing pantomime puts you right there in easy access of the public. Back in 1994 I was approached to appear
in the Southend production of Dick Whittington, because the wife of the manager of Cliffs Pavilion was a fan of my
column. My agent at the time was Stan Dallas, formerly of the Dallas Boys. Stan also managed Shane Richie, who
called him The Colonel. It made sense. In my opinion Stan would have been far better working with fried chicken
than he ever was handling turns.
The Colonel did the deal, the money was good, and the next thing I knew I was in the cast as ‘The Ship’s
Captain’ with funnyman Davro, EastEnders heart-throb Ross Kemp, Falcon from Gladiators, Rod Hull and that
poxy Emu. Nobody gave me any direction. On the opening night, The Colonel came in the dressing room five
minutes before I went on and said, “Remember, Garry, project!” I had no idea what he meant. Project? What was
I doing, showing a film? That was the extent of my coaching.
For the first week or so I had the charisma of a cold chip, but I got better. I had to. I hate doing anything badly,
but there wasn’t much I could do about my dancing, which is diabolical. I danced like John Travolta in that movie
… the bit where he was machine-gunned in Pulp Fiction. The backstage crew used to watch me every night for a
laugh. When I finally managed to perform the dance properly I came off to a standing ovation.
On the opening night I was having a drink with Garry Johnson when a rather large woman came up to us in
the bar and said to me, “You know Grant, don’t cha?” I told her I knew Ross who played Grant, but she just went
into one. She was crying because Sharon Mitchell in EastEnders was betraying Ross’s screen character. “That bitch,”
she said. “That cow …” I was looking around for Jeremy Beadle, but she was for real.
Ross was a bit stand-offish at first, and a little bit ‘actory’. One night he was method-acting King Rat and got so
into character that he spat at the kids in the front row. He later denied it when the press followed up on parents’
complaints. We got on well by the end, though. Ross was at the height of his soap fame and was fighting women
off all day long. The following year he invited me down to Joey Banana’s, a nightclub in Croydon, where he was
doing a PA. It was full to the brim with birds trying to tear his clothes off. Inevitably, he pulled – he left me talking
to the girl’s flatmate while they made out for about fifty minutes. Although I don’t know how much of that time
was taken up with her just begging him to give her the old Grant Mitchell stare (which was very much like Nookie
Bear’s). A pair of girls came up to him once and one said, “I’m black, she’s white, let’s spend the night.” How could
he resist?
Rod Hull was the real nightmare during our run. I ended up having a fight with him on stage, too - a proper
one. Rod used that bird to touch up the girls in the cast. One night the leading lady, Tracy Wilson, came to me in
tears and I snapped. I got my own Emu-style puppet and hid it in the wings. Every night Rod had to knock me
down twice, and he always did it as hard as he could. This particular show, just before he was due to poleaxe me
for the second time, I went into the wings and came back with my puppet. Well, he hit me and I hit him. We were
really going for it. We went offstage and he said, “Do you want some more?” I said, “Yeah,” and we came back on
like Itchy and Scratchy. The kids loved it. They thought it was part of the show. I’ll tell you what: he never annoyed
me again.
The headline act, Davro, was his usual funny, depressed, mixed-up self, storming it onstage and fretting about
his career offstage. The impressionist was at a low ebb when I came out with one of my best ever adlibs. “Bobby,”
I said, “don’t just sit there, do somebody.”
Bob had a dog called Oscar, which he’d trained to lick itself on command. One night, during Tracy’s big romantic
ballad, Oscar trotted onstage, sat down and proceeded to lick his balls. The audience roared. We roared from the
wings. Everyone thought it was hysterical - except the leading lady.
A lot of comics came down to see me at Southend to offer moral support, including Mickey Pugh, Dave Lee and
Jimmy Jones. Good old Des O’Connor came along, too, although the only one who dicked a dumb-dumb was my
mate Mark.
The People were trying to poach me from The Sun at the time, too. Kelvin MacKenzie was the mastermind behind
the scenes, very kindly working a scam that got me a whopping rise. I was staying at Garry Johnson’s house in
Wickford when Kelvin called. Garry and I sound so alike on the phone that Kelvin refused to believe that he
wasn’t talking to me. He got agitated, and if Gal hadn’t turned on the charm it could have blown the whole deal.
As it was, on 2 February 1995 (the day Uncle Sam died), as a result of Kelvin’s plot, my salary was more than
doubled to £130K a year.
The problem with staying with Garry was that he had a young baby, and I was getting woken up in the early
hours for the night feeds. So I moved in with Willie Thompson, the notorious cockney stag comedian in Benfleet
instead. Looking for my bag, I looked in the wrong wardrobe one day and came across an array of uniforms –
Nazi gear, nurses’ outfits, a pilot’s uniform. I’d stumbled on the Thompsons’ love of dressing up for adult
recreation. I made damn sure I wasn’t there for Nazi night, so I can’t tell you whether or not he actually invaded
the hinterland.
The next panto I did was at Wimbledon in 1998 with Bradley Walsh, Britt Ekland and Kriss Akabusi. That was
Cinderella and this time I had a more stellar support group in the audience. Ross Kemp, Billy Murray and Barbara
Windsor all came along, either to cheer or to enjoy watching me screw up. I was never sure which. One day J.J.
French, my old friend from Twisted Sister, turned up – I hadn’t seen him for about fifteen years. I don’t think
panto rocked his world, but the dames must have made him feel at home. Reba McIntyre, the country singer, came
down for a few drinks, too. She was fascinated by the whole panto tradition, because they have nothing like it in
the States. Who else? Oh yeah, Elton John’s gobby mate Gary Farrow came one night and started heckling. The
silly git thought he was at a comedy club. And Dale Winton came twice. Tania, then my girlfriend and now my
wife, was pregnant with Jenna, our first baby, and Dale begged us to let him be her godfather.
What’s that? You say. ‘Homophobe’ Garry Bushell, friends with one of the gayest men in light entertainment?
Absolutely. I first met Dale on an edition of ITV’s Celebrity Squares, the day after I’d branded his show Supermarket
Sweep Number One in my list of the worst daytime TV shows. We had a bit of banter about it and got on really
well. He’s not the same as his TV persona. Dale’s bright, funny and very up on all kinds of music. We were firm
friends for many years, meeting up frequently on holiday in St Petersburg, Florida, and we stayed in touch until
I left The People in 2007, when the phone calls dried up. I couldn’t tell you whether it was because I’d now fallen
off his networking radar, because I’d slaughtered his appalling cheapo Sweep remake or because I wrote that his
face is lifted “like his shirt”.
Actually, it may have been because I’d never ever been tempted by his sexual texts. Sorry, mate, sharing roll-
mops with the still beautiful Britt Ekland in her dressing room was always going to be more of a turn-on than you
offering to undo my jeans with your teeth.
It was Dale who’d conned me into going along to An Audience With Freddie Starr. “The producer’s a friend,” he
said. “Nothing will happen to you.” Yeah, right.
I’ll never forget that night. I can’t. I was traumatised by it. Freddie is nuts – and I mean that in a good way, and
in a bad way. He’s as predictable as a Third World dictator and just as dangerous. First he chucked maggots at us
all, and then he dragged me up from the audience, strapped me to a wall, blindfolded me and seemed to be
hurling knives at me. Janet Street-Porter was yelling, “Kill ’im!” One knife appeared to miss my head, and a
balloon between my legs popped. It was terrifying. (Freddie also attempted to take my trousers off, but I kicked
him away). And at the end of the show he left me up there while the celeb audience filed past. Thanks, Fred. It
was ITV’s highest rated Audience With … and is still shown today. The highlight for me was meeting Elvis Presley’s
backing singers, The Jordanaires, or, as I prefer to call them, Three Syrups & A Comb-over. ITV booked me for
a revenge appearance on Another Audience With Freddie – I was meant to wheel him on in a straitjacket at the start
of part two, but Fred was in a weird mood that night. To producer Nigel Lythgoe’s helpless fury, he went off script
and just did his club act. Freddie then booked me to do the straitjacket routine in a comedy video rushed release
for the following Christmas.