Sam was relaxing in inimitable fashion in front of the box one evening last week when he was suddenly forced bolt upright by the sight of a hideous message from Sky News scrolling across the bottom of the screen.
And no, it wasn’t the usual poll result to the effect that 93 per cent of viewers want all immigrants flayed alive.
Moving right to left, the brutal announcement read in part, “Legendary Rolling Stones guitarist Keith Richards has been rushed to hospital”
They say that at moments of intense trauma – such as, for example, when you first heard Ronan and Moya’s version of ‘Fairytale Of New York’ – the shock forces your brain into slow motion.
Alcoholic Poisoning
In Sam’s case, however, shock works like a needle full of adrenaline shot straight into the central nervous system. The second half of the breaking news flash had still to materialise on screen but in that split-second window of creative opportunity, my diamond-sharp brain had already computed a host of possibilities, one more terrible than the next.
My old mucker had been rushed to hospital after suffering a vicious blue-skin OD. Or he’d been rushed to hospital with acute alcoholic poisoning. Or he’d been rushed to hospital after an outbreak of the Big C brought on by a one hundred year Marlboro Red habit. Or he’d been rushed to hospital after being electrocuted while playing a John Lee Hooker slow blues in his kidney-shaped swimming pool. Or even – perish the thought – he’d been rushed to hospital only to be pronounced DOA. Jeez, no, let’s not even go there. Whatever, the news couldn’t possibly be good for the greatest human-like creature ever to walk the earth.
Then, in the blink of another eye, reality reasserted itself as the rest of the message scrolled its leisurely way across the screen. And now it read in full: “Legendary Rolling Stones guitarist Keith Richards has been rushed to hospital after falling out of a palm tree in Fiji.”
Well, look it, the whole house nearly came down with the thermonuclear force of the hysteria that was unleashed. Raul, my normally Zen-like Filipino houseboy, was literally honking with laughter. My faithful retainer, former Foghat roadie, Manmountain Dense, passed an entire ham sandwich through his nose. And I almost orgasmed only 40 minutes into my daily Tantric sex hump with my willowy assistant Astrid, an aerobic exercise routine which normally takes two and half hours from hard-as-Japanese-algebra, full mast porksword to vast, rippling cosmic ejaculation. (Sting’s personal best, for the record, is just under two hours).
But I digress. In short, this news about the world’s most elegantly wasted man was just about the funniest thing any of us had ever heard since that memorable day when Dense brought home a copy of – giggle – “Irish rock classic” ‘Endless Art’ by A House. (“All dead, yet still alive” – Christ on a jetski, but it gets me every time).
And then things only got better, with the follow-up news that old Keef had been up the palm tree, quote scavenging for coconuts unquote. Beautiful. The gags came thick and fast. Not the first time my old mucker was discovered out of his tree – a bit obvious, sure, but pretty irresistible. Better still was some comic’s observation that Keef had been obliged to spend a couple of days in the hospital – a half an hour for medical tests and the rest of the stay for filling out his answer to the question: “Are you on any other medication?”
Terrifying Likeness
All in Snort Towers went to be bed happy that night, only to wake up the following morning – well, okay, afternoon or maybe it was early evening – to some genuinely worrying news. One of the red-tops had a story that the fall had been much more serious than first thought. Now we were being informed that Keef had undergone two emergency brain operations, the second to prevent one hemisphere of his cranial plate from caving in the other. Keef might be paralysed down one side for life, the report warned. Or, worse yet, he might suffer irreparable brain damage.
The heartless bastards even stuck in a crude, makey-up graphic purporting to show Keef’s skull cracking under the pressure with, beneath the brow, the heavy-lidded eyes of the great man combining to create the doubtless deliberate overall effect of – you couldn’t escape the terrifying likeness – Frankenstein’s monster.
Words can’t describe this kind of vile, insensitive, defamatory, damning-by-association gutter journalism – and, frankly, if I was Frankenstein’s monster, I’d sue.
Anway, we should have known better – the good news was that this duly turned out be just another slice of typical tabloid bollocksology. Yes, Keef had undergone one fairly routine operation, to relieve pressure on the brain – hey, I mean, haven’t we all? – but the hospital dissed the scare stories and reported that he continued to improve as expected.
The headline on this fine piece of responsible journalism was reassuring: ‘Richards Does Not Have Brain Damage.’ Although this did prompt Dense to ask, in all sincerity, “But how can they possibly tell, Boss?”
Cue another great typhoon of belly laughs.
Latest word is that the Glimmer Twin has left hospital on his own two feet, but not before bidding his ministering angels goodbye with the touching words: “I hope I wasn’t too much of a pain in the arse. After all it was my head they fixed.”
Well, okay, it’s a bit weak and not as great as calling the crucifix the “logo of the Catholic church” or worrying aloud that Jo Wood’s health kick was in danger of becoming “an addiction” – but still, not bad, if you’re a 62 year old Keith fucking Richards and have just fallen out of a palm tree and landed on your head.
Respect.
Your ever lovin’ Samuel J. Snort Esq