Maybe Shazia will teach my saintly husband how unattractive relentless virtue can be
Young people today are a worry. My non-smoking, teetotal, 30-year-old boyfriend’s idea of a wild night out is to drink fizzy water instead of still. If he’s not in bed by 10.30pm with a liberal sprinkling of talcum powder in every crevice, he’s liable to have a panic attack. He’s so squeaky clean it’s like going out with Tim Henman, but without the stamina.
Our relationship works, I guess, because I'm an addled 48-year-old who has spent 30 years snorting, drinking and smoking. My septum, liver and lungs now enjoy an early night, too. The difference is they've earned it. And I have a fun-filled, decadent youth to look back on.
"What are you going to reminisce about when you're my age?" I asked him. "How you once listened to Girls Aloud really loud on your iPod and shared a Silk Cut with nine university chums?"
I know the media tell us young people are all self-harming crack addicts who will come at you with a Stanley knife if you disrespect them by wearing the wrong sort of trainers, but my boyfriend and his white middle-class pals aren't like that. They're programmed to work and sleep. Nothing more. They're hard pushed to remember doing anything wilder than eating a packet of honey-roast peanuts or watching two whole episodes of Friends on a school night. If they have a couple of spritzers and a wine gum over the weekend they think they're ready for rehab.
God knows what these folk will be like when they hit middle age. There won't be enough bungalows in suburbia to accommodate them. Honour killings will be rife if their immaculately conceived offspring so much as step on the cracks in the pavement.
Government health warnings should be issued, telling them that too much sensible behaviour may lead to terminally boring lives. But maybe that suits our guardians very nicely. However fascist the legislation, there will be no more anarchy in the UK. This beige generation has faded to grey long before bedtime.
Then, of course, there is the other end of the spectrum.
I had a successful wander about Camden Town market and bought a big box of my favourite Nag Champa incense. I was in the chemist's restocking on toothpaste and hydrocortisone cream (for those intimate itches, scourge of the middle-aged) when a man came in and stood beside me to receive his methadone. He put his bag on the counter beside mine, and lo and behold he'd just bought exactly the same box of incense.
"Snap!" I said. We compared prices and we'd both paid £10 for a box of 12 packets.
"Want to buy one of mine for £2?" he asked, hopefully.
"Not really," I said. "I've just bought my own for less than that." It took him about a minute, but he persuaded me. "These are different," he said, mysteriously. "They're more expensive, see?" That was clever I thought, as I walked down the road £2 lighter. If it hadn't been for the dilated pupils he'd make a fun boyfriend.
It was bound to happen, of course. Last Saturday I did a gig at the Hackney Empire, and who should be on the bill but Shazia Mirza, with whom I share this very page on alternate weeks. Another youngster. We’d never met before but I’m happy to report that she’s clean, presentable and mighty funny. Very like my boyfriend, in fact. She has nice skin, doesn’t bother with booze, swear or take drugs but, thank Allah, she has one redeeming vice. She claims to shoplift! I gave her my boyfriend’s number in the hope that she’ll teach him how unattractive relentless virtue can be and take him shopping.
If that doesn't work I shall dump my saintly husband and marry Shazia. We'll have fey, dusky children who won't cost much as they'll distract the shopkeepers with buggery jokes while their siblings steal the disposable nappies. Happiness at last.
Julian Clary
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