Burley Cross Postbox Theft (28 page)

[Straining]

I mean this thing is a f***ing
outrage
, Troy!

It’s a f***ing
outrage!

[The noisy flapping of what sounds like a piece of paper]

The sheer cheek, the
gall –
the downright
effrontery –
of the man! It’s an absolute bloody
scandal!

[FKN adopts pantomime, nasal, upper-crust accent]

‘There was obviously a certain amount of work involved in trying to depict Mr Nebraska as a
sympathetic
character. I tried, on more than one occasion, to explain to him that the average reader – even the die-hard fan – needs to find something
likable
about the book’s protagonist, something to
empathize
with. The odd – even slightly disingenuous – display of humility, modesty or self-awareness goes a very long way in this respect, and a gentle touch of humour often helps.

‘Unfortunately, Mr Nebraska didn’t appear to understand this approach (“Why mollycoddle the f***ing idiots?” was all he’d volunteer on the issue), so, for the sake of the book, I took the necessary liberty of adding these small touches myself.’

D’you hear that, Troy? Pole
added them himself!
D’you
hear
that?! The little shit ‘took the liberty’. He acted
entirely
against my wishes! He stuck his oar in and
made
me ‘sympathetic’
without
my permission, for the sake of the
book!
For the sake of the f***ing
book
, Troy!

But I told him – till I was blue in the f***ing
face
, Troy – that I didn’t
want
to be ‘sympathetic’. I don’t
want
f***ing sympathy, Troy! I’m an
artist!
All I want – all I desire – is to be true to my muse! My
muse
, Troy! My
creative imagination
, Troy! But how the hell is some grubby, slimy, inconsequential little
hack
meant to understand a concept as pure and unblemished and lofty as
that? Eh?

F***ing
sympathetic?!

What absolute, bloody
b*lls**t!

[
FKN blows his nose, forcefully]

I mean is
Bob Dylan
sympathetic, Troy? Is
Jerry Lee Lewis
sympathetic? Is
Little Richard
sympathetic? Is
Neil Young
sympathetic? Is
Janis Joplin
sympathetic? Is
Frank Zappa
sympathetic? Is
Captain Beefheart
sympathetic?

Well?!

[
Suspenseful pause]

OF COURSE THEY F***ING AREN’T!

THEY’RE F***ING ARTISTS FOR CHRIST’S SAKE!!
GENIUS DOEN’T
DEMAND
SYMPATHY, TROY! IT

DEMANDS RESPECT!
RESPECT
!!

UNDERSTAND?!

[
Interlude of quiet panting, enlivened by a small fart]

And this isn’t even the
half
of it, Troy!

I’ve barely scraped the surface, yet!

Just listen to…

[Scuffling of piece of paper, throat clearing, re-adoption of nasal whine…
]

‘Of course he would then invariably go off on one of his typical, ten-minute rants about how Bob Dylan wasn’t ‘sympathetic’ (because he was a poet and therefore didn’t need to be) and I was then obliged to have to try and explain to him – in the kindest possible way – that a couple of novelty hits in the nineties, a catchy nickname, a scandalous private life and a green straw hat do not – I repeat, do
not –
a Bob Dylan make.

‘I mean, if the producers of Britain’s most brilliant and long-running comedy sit-com hadn’t used one of Nebraska’s songs for its theme tune five years ago (and purely out of a sense of irony, to boot!), then that huge American Emo band hadn’t done the dreadful cover version of it which was then promptly snapped up by those tone-deaf film people – he’d be pretty much on his uppers right now and there wouldn’t be a musical career, or an autobiography for that matter!’

Good
GOD
, Troy! D’you
hear
that?! The unbridled
cheek
of the little c**t! ‘Green straw hat?!’ I haven’t even
worn
the hat since 1999! I ditched it for the Millennium. I burned it, live, onstage, at that pub in Bedford! The Little Wren died that night – he was
immolated
that night, Troy, and Frank K. Nebraska arose, phoenix-like, from the ashes (you were there, Troy, as I recall. You had to pay off the fire department).

A
legendary
moment in my career, Troy! A
critical
moment in my career! A turning point! The cuddly and lovable Little Wren – Great Britain’s favourite tabloid cheeky-chappie – commits public
seppuku
so that the Nietzschean Superman, the sleek, intellectual monolith that is Frank K. Nebraska, can finally come bursting into life!

Yet how many pages does this astonishing turn of events warrant in the book, Troy? How many?!
Three!
Three piddling pages! Pole gives
at least
as many pages to that insignificant episode at The Royal Variety Performance where I was arrested and sectioned for trying to hand the Queen a secret message about f***ing radishes! It was a message about
radishes
, Troy! Utterly insignificant! Ludicrously over-mediated at the time! Has no bearing at
all
on my creative output! In fact I actively
avoided
mentioning the stupid interlude in our discussions because I didn’t want it featuring too prominently in the book.

And for the record – the hat wasn’t f***ing straw, it was felt! It was f***ing
felt!
A
felt
hat! My infamous green
felt
hat, for f**k’s sake! And the arrogant slime-ball calls himself a ‘professional’?!

Huh?!

[Yet more nasal whine]
‘I also told him that there needed to be a sense that the subject of the book had been on a “journey” of some kind (a cliché, I know, but the arc of the narrative usually demands it), and that his “experiences” had taught him something valuable – about both himself and the world he inhabits. Unfortunately, in the case of Mr Nebraska, they hadn’t, so once again I was obliged to…’

A
journey
, Troy! The little pri*k wants a
journey?
I’ll give him
a f***ing
journey
all right! I’ll give him a swift kick up the arse all the way down to his local Accident and Emergency!
That’s
what I’ll give him! I’ll give his winking anus a journey it’ll never forget into deepest recesses of his strangulated throat!

[
FKN readopts nasal voice]

‘One of the major problems with our sessions was that Mr Nebraska cancelled most of them, and refused to reschedule, preferring to tape his “recollections” on that infernal malfunctioning Dictaphone of his, which seems to record his voice at
twice
the normal speed and makes any benighted soul lumbered with the task of deciphering it feel like they’re listening to the hyperactive rantings of a foul-mouthed, deeply demonic Pinky or Perky…’

[This is absolutely true, Sergeant Everill – H.G.]

What
guff
, Troy! What arrant, f***ing
bull***t!
Is the fool on
acid
or something?! Is he hallucinating?! Something
wrong
with my Dictaphone?

Boll**ks!

He was just
smarting
, because by deftly employing my handy Dictaphone I cunningly redirected the course of the narrative! I
excluded
him from the creative process! His fragile ego simply couldn’t handle it!

[FKN commences reading again]

‘A major downside of Mr Nebraska’s refusal to see me in person – and answer my many questions about his life – was the fact that it allowed him to avoid interrogating his past (his “history”) with anything amounting to a critical – or dispassionate – eye. This rendered him wholly incapable of seeing any of the situations in his car crash of a personal life from any other perspective apart from his own. To “bulk out” the details of these segments of his life (the “missing years” between 1989 and 1996 being a case in point) I was often obliged to mine other sources.

‘Mr Nebraska has that rare and wonderful ability to be completely self-involved and yet not remotely self-aware (quite
incredible, really, when you consider how many idle hours he’s frittered away in rehab over the years) …’

[Long pause]

So
that’s
how he came up with the section about my mother’s early vaudeville career, Troy!
And
the whole chapter about the cottage in Aylesbury I shared with Luella! I
wondered
how he managed to get all that detail about the blue Dalton crockery she kept arranged on her old dresser… I thought he’d just made it up and struck lucky!

God!
The little sneak actually
spoke
to Luella?

Well,
no wonder
I’m so nice about the thieving cow in the book!

Now it all makes sense!

How many other of my exes did he buddy-up to?

[Shocked pause]

Holy f**k!
He contacted Mel! He visited the asylum!
That’s
how he knew it was a
teapot
I threw at her when she told me she was up the f***ing duff again in ’89, and not a slice of parkin!

Christ!

And all the pointless filler he put in there about my sister’s kleptomania, and how her relentless shoplifting as a kid got us all put into care… And Anthony’s breech birth in the back of my Reliant Robin… And how I originally got the ‘Wren’ moniker from a barman in Llandudno…

He f***ing
researched
all this rubbish behind my back?! Without even
telling
me?! The sneaky, conniving, two-faced, little c**t! I
knew
it! I
knew
he couldn’t be trusted, Troy! My instincts were right all along! My instincts were spot-on!

I mean I
told
you how I didn’t want some jumped-up little nobody, some
hack
, putting his mark all over my life…
[More straining]

Well, there’s absolutely no question about it, Troy, the whole teapot section will have to go. And anything favourable I say about Luella. We’ve got to delete it. And we’ll need to reinsert all my ideas about astrology and political philosophy. And the stuff he didn’t include about how that thieving
b**tard Robbie Williams ripped off my entire act.

I need to wrest this book back from his filthy clutches, Troy. I need to wrest my f***ing
life
back – because what remains is all me, it’s
mine
, by
right
. It’s the stuff I recited, verbatim, into the Dictaphone. It’s 100 per cent Frank K.
110 per cent
Frank K…

Point of fact: I don’t know why we even
hired
the little turd, Troy. I mean I effectively wrote the damn thing myself, didn’t I? I
am
The Little Wren, after all, and The Little Wren
is
a storyteller… ergo… well, that’s what he
does
, Troy. That is his gift. That’s what he’s celebrated for, what he’s
loved
for: he tells stories. He
weaves
stories…

[
More straining]

And the bottom line is…

[More straining – followed by a small plop – followed by a grunt]…
that I effectively wrote this alone, Troy. The magic is all mine, eh? The content is all mine. The
life
is mine. Robert Pole just conducted a couple of crummy interviews, sent me a list of fatuous questions to answer and then typed my answers up in some semblance of order.
I
did all the donkey work on this thing, Troy.

Me…

[
Straining]

Now I’ve finally seen it all written down, I realize how much of the overall content is just pure, undiluted Nebraska – it’s Frank K., through and through…

[More straining – followed by two further small plops]

Writer’s f***ing credit, my arse!

I mean who the f**k does this little worm think he is? Huh? He expects a
credit
now? For what?! For taking a little dictation and moving a few sentences around? For sorting out the odd place name and date? For confirming the odd bit of sequential detail? For meeting my mother a few times and finding out the colour of the kitchen lino, or how slow I was to be potty-trained? Is seven
really
that late, Troy?
Seriously?!
I mean do we honestly need to make such a f***ing
issue
out of that? [
More straining, another plop]

I mean the f***ing
gall
of the little twit!

Who the
hell
does he think he is, Troy?!
Huh?

To call
me
‘High Maintenance’!

There it is…
[Rustle of paper]…
in black and white!

To call Frank K. Nebraska ‘High Maintenance’!

It’s downright bloody
vindictive
, Troy. It’s creepy! And to sneak around interviewing people behind my back? He’s like a stalker! I think he’s probably deranged! I think he’s fixated! He’s jealous, Troy! That’s it! He’s literally
eaten up
with jealousy –
consumed
by it! It’s pitiable, Troy,
pitiable!
If I didn’t hate him so much I’d almost feel
sorry
for him…

But lucky for you I
do
hate him, Troy, so that means you can fire him, with total impunity. We need to get rid of him, Troy. And let’s do this properly. Let’s take out a restraining order on him, and use a couple of contacts to blacken his name in the press. Say he was unstable. Say he was incompetent. And withhold the last payment, obviously. I don’t want the little pr**k getting
paid
for this drivel! He doesn’t need a f***ing
reward
for what he’s done here – he needs to be chastised, Troy! He needs to be brought up short. He needs to learn a harsh lesson, here, Troy – the harshest lesson…

No mercy, Troy.
None
. Because it’s probably
kinder
to treat him this way in the long run. I mean, who knows, in the end he might even end up
thanking
me for it.