I Wanna Live Forever (ED! #14)

Sitting, as I do, in front of a blank page, I find myself wondering about the best way to kick off this long overdue new edition of Ed!

I mean, I know what I'm aiming towards - over the last.. ooh, however many months it is, I've had all sorts of ideas for funny things to say. And like the best comedians, I have remembered them all, for later use. Well, I think I've remembered them all.

The thing is, how to get started? Professional comedians, after all, look as if they just turn up on stage in front of an open mic and start talking about whatever comes into their head. My comedy chums tell me this is called 'riffing' in the trade. A bit like playing a guitar, I guess.

And as if by accident, I find myself very close to the subject I was planning on yakking about today anyway. Not guitars, but keyboards. Well, it's all music, isn't it.

Round about the time that I used to go to school, one thing that spontaneously became very popular was portable electronic keyboards. You couldn't do a lot with them (although they did have a built in calculator, so they weren't entirely uneducational) apart from make various discordant notes and perhaps, if you knew how to use it properly, activate the built in rhythm tracks.

Ah, how the schools reverberated to the harsh electronic bossanova beats, I remember it like it were yesterday. If you remember the plinky Casio drumbeat behind early 80's hit "Da Da Da" by Trio, you'll know what I'm talking about. Damn, I really should be working for VH-1, talking like that.

Anyway, the point of all this is that amongst the multitude of kids at my school who had these keyboards (and couldn't play a note), there was ONE kid who not only had a bigger and better keyboard, but played it like a maestro. He was good, and I DO mean good. He could play almost anything - including the theme from Play School, which used to bring the house down.

I was never more impressed by anything in my early years, so much so that for quite some time, all I ever wanted to be able to do was play the keyboard. Not out of a yearning to make sweet beautiful music, or anything, but for the massive show-off potential of being able to walk into a department store, locate the keyboard which was almost always on display somewhere, and begin rocking the house. I would be admired, adored, and nearby shoppers would think "wow, I bet he'll be famous one day".

Alternatively, they might think "That show-off thinks he's Bruno from 'Fame'". Because one of the defining films of my childhood was 'Fame', the story of the New York academy of the performing arts. Or something like that, I forget.

For those who missed out on this, a guy called Bruno, who had really big hair, was the resident keyboard player. At the start of the movie he strolls into a music shop, plays a couple of notes on the ivories, and before you know it, he was joined by some other musical friends - singing, playing guitars, dancing on any convenient flat surfaces (tables, counters, etc) - all that sort of thing. Let it not be said that in the midst of all this chaos, that any part of the block was left unrocked.

As cool as this appeared, outbreaks of spontaneous musical talent like this usually met with disapproval. Bruno was usually escorted by his taxi-driving father, who usually walked around with an bemused look on his face, and a lot of money in his wallet as he apologised to the music store owner, and said that this kind of thing always seemed to happen a lot. Counting out the twenty dollar bills to pay for the damage as he did so.

Movies like 'Fame' brainwashed me into thinking that all I ever wanted to be was famous. Actually that's not entirely true but it does get me into the second thing I was thinking about writing about, that being the subject of being famous, and taxi drivers as well.

Even for myself, as a relatively modest subset of the whole media luvvie empire, in the almost invisible job of running a teletext service, it didn't take me very long to consider how this new-found fame would change my life. In one way I quite like the anonymity. I dig that a lot. In another way, part of me is still the eight-year old show-off who wanted to reproduce several key scenes from 'Fame' in my local Debenhams.

Fame can manifest itself in the most unusual places. I was always very impressed by someone on the internet who usually signed their messages as being from "Joe Schmoe, yes, that's right, THE Joe Schmoe". I suspect most people reading it scratched their heads and said "Who the hell is Joe Schmoe anyway?", but that is not the point. It looked awfully cool. And gave me stupid ideas - like the idea that one day, while paying for my groceries in Sainsbury's, that I'd hand over my bank card and the cashier would gasp "Wow, are you THE ..." - well, you get the idea.

To date it's never happened. And to be honest, I like it that way. I can do without having to sign autographs and hand out photos of myself. Although the chance to sign my name without it involving money leaving my bank account as a result is a tempting idea.

The key point I am trying to make here is, if you get a chance to be famous, don't be. This is a policy I have firmly adhered to throughout my life. Well, with the possible exception of my ill-advised TV appearance a few years back. We won't talk about that.

But keeping secrets like that is difficult. In the next portion of our discussion, which ties neatly back into my mention of 'Fame' earlier, there's the matter of taxi drivers. Now, I'm not one of these media types who goes everywhere by taxi. As seasoned readers of this column will know, I'm just as often seen on a bus, surrounded by babies attempting to eat my tie into submission.

I do, however, use taxis now and then. And for the most part, I'm one of those quiet souls who sits in the back and doesn't really speak unless spoken to. Some taxi drivers don't mind that. Others probably think I'm some kind of psycho, who will whip out a fifteen year old electronic keyboard and start dancing on the back seat unless they engage me in conversation.

Usual topics of conversation usually seem to be "where have you just come back from?", if I've just left a train station. And any reply to that usually results in standard taxi driver question number two, "what do you do for a living?".

That is a darned difficult question to answer. One my bank keeps asking me all the time. In previous years I've usually claimed to be a writer. Just recently I got surveyed about what I thought about the telephone (the upshot of this was "yes, telephones are good") and at the end I was asked what profession I was in.

That is a darned difficult question to answer.

In a moment of madness, I replied "I'm a broadcaster". A Broadcaster?! Who do I think I am? You see broadcasters on Sky News, they're important people. Or at least people with opinions which are important in some way. I'm not exactly in the same league.

So when I'm in the back of a taxi and someone is asking me what I do, I always have a hard time working out what to say. I usually say "I work with computers", which isn't exactly a lie, but does usually end up in me having to explain how to reset Windows 95 so that it doesn't put up a # sign every time you press the £ key.

(If the driver who I gave this advice to is reading, yes, that WAS me.)

Other times, I say "I'm a writer". I told my removal man that as well, when he asked. Problem with that is that the next question is usually "Oh? Which magazines?". Now I am not a cranky unpublished writer, but that's still a hard question to answer. How do I explain where people can see what I write, without letting on that I may in fact be famous, worshipped the world over.

"Oh, I write for the internet", I said. It seemed to shut him up, anyway.

But one time I wasn't thinking clearly, and when a taxi driver asked me what I did for a living, I told him, I run a teletext service, on cable. (I kept it simple, although I do wonder if I left the guy with the impression that I work for Live TV. I do hope not.)

"Teletext?" he says. "Oh, like the sports news and things like that?". He had missed the point. I don't recall sports news ever having been a big part of Ptext. Well, apart from during Euro 96 anyway.

"No, I run the teletext on the comedy channel.. jokes and stuff", I replied.

"Oh.", said the driver. He had never even heard of the channel, let alone who I was and just how fabulously glitteringly famous I'm not. He had no idea who I was or what I did.

So the rest of the journey home was quiet, with me looking out of the window, saying nothing, and nobody attempting to engage me in conversation.

Just how I like it, really.