F. Scott Fitzgerald famously said that the rich are different to you and me, but he may as well have been talking about the famous when he carried on with ‘even when they enter deep into our world, or sink below us, they still think they are better than we are‘. And mostly, that is true, but there are, as always exceptions. You intersect people at different trajectories in your lives and meet people with a great charm, almost like a magical glamour that transfixes you. Carrying a stoned Iggy Pop to his first class seat in your arms, a snog from Jenny Agutter, Patrick Moore peppering a talk about cosmology on the way to a gate with dirty jokes and making you laugh so hard you thought you would wet your pants. Then there are The Grand; so far up their own arses, the distance makes it impossible for them to focus on you. The Paul McCartney‘s, the Morrisseys, the Gwyneth Paltrows. And then there are the others; the Sean Connerys, the Ronnie Corbetts and Cilla Blacks. Utter, utter fucking shits.
The first time I met Oliver Reed left me so stunned and awed by the sheer presence of the man it was almost like a religious revelation. The nearest I can liken it to would be the feeling an ancient Greek would have had on encountering a Heracles, a larger-than-life figure whose mere presence is a transformational event, precipitating change.
I’d been working at the airport for two whole days, having thrown over the safe, middle-class job in the Civil Service that my mother had pushed me into, but that’s another story.
Day one after a brief training was familiarisation and passes and now I was helping board flights with a highly strung old exquisite whose nerves appeared to have been virtually shot to pieces.
Now, it is impossible to convey to the EasyJet generation what life was like 30 years ago, let alone life working at an airport. Paper tickets, rudimentary computers, hierarchy and rules, radios instead of mobile phones, faxes, carbon paper and paper lists and airlines who, like Dan Air and Air Europe, Eastern and TWA whom the god of aviation had yet to call home to the celestial airport in the sky. Grim, low ceiling lounges and a lot of bussing to aircraft; the 21st-century explosion in terminal building being over a decade away.
But here at a coaching gate for a flight to Guernsey in the South Terminal the only future was the clock ticking down to departure time and no matter how many times he counted the ticket coupons, my colleague kept coming up two short, the awful spectre of The Dispatcher and delay codes looming over our heads, because whatever they told you in training you *were* responsible if passengers failed to join there was always something you ‘should have done‘.
The penultimate bus had gone leaving six blankly smiling nuns waiting to be told what to do next and the ex-civil servant and one increasingly agitated old exquisite.
'What are we going to do? What are we going to do? I can’t contact the dispatcher. Are you sure we’re missing two?‘
I replied 'Yes, I’ve doublechecked the coupons and I’ve looked in the system‘.
'I’ll have to do a call. What are the names?‘.
The passage of time hasn’t dealt kindly with the other passenger whose name I can’t recollect, but looking up from the screen, proud of my ability to pull up the required information I said: read. 'Reed. A Mr O. Reed‘.
Silence descended on the lounge apart from the popping noise from my colleague's eyes as they bulged out and the sudden whistling noise of wind as dust and tumbleweed blew through the lounge. (The last coach driver had arrived and had opened the lounge doors allowing the detritus of the ramp to blow in).
'No. No. It can’t be him. They would’ve told me if he was on this flight. After the last time…. Check again!‘
'It’s Mr O. Reed‘.
At this point I became aware of two noises; one was a high-pitched keening coming from my colleague as his hands flew to his rouged face. The other was more odd. I didn’t mention that the gate was at the bottom of a flight of stairs, from the top of which came the sounds of swearing and a struggle. I moved around the desk to investigate and looked up to see a figure in a wheelchair shout in a voice that carried to the suddenly startled nuns. 'FUCKING BOLLOCKS!‘ as it stood on the two foot rests causing it to overbalance and him to fall down the stairs executing a swan dive before rolling down the steps before completing a perfect paratroopers landing, and jumping to his feet as acrobatically as Burt Lancaster in The Crimson Pirate, threw open his arms and roared: 'HAH-HAAAH!‘
My colleague whimpered and collapsed into a seat, the nuns went white and the unscathed Oliver Reed glided toward me like a giant cat, showed me his ticket and purred, 'So young man, what happens now?‘
I was actually mesmerised. This sheer physical presence, that magical glamour I mentioned, the eyes; have you ever noticed how some people are more 'real‘ than others? I’d never experienced anything like it before. I pointed at the nuns and, as his travelling companion/minder appeared, as drunk as he was and said 'You’re going with them’. His head lazily swivelled, looked at the nuns, who with a convulsive shudder, were clucking like a brood of hens, and turned back to me, looked at me with eyes as liquid as a lion’s and raising an eyebrow said: 'For me? You’re too kind boy‘.
The last I saw of him as I collapsed, stunned on a chair was as the bus pulled away, three nuns quivering under each arm as he serenaded them with a rousing rendition of ‘Four-and-Twenty Virgins Came Down From Inverness’ and laughed like a drain.
January 2016
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