Truths, Half Truths and Little White Lies

  About the author

  Nick Frost shot to fame as the gun-mad character Mike Watt

  in the award winning sitcom Spaced, since then he has

  become one of the UK’s most beloved actors. Frost has

  starred in a host of films, from the famed Cornetto Trilogy:

  Shaun of the Dead, Hot Fuzz and The World’s End

  alongside Simon Pegg to Hollywood hits Cuban Fury, Paul

  and Snow White and The Huntsman.

  Truths, Half Truths and Little White Lies is Nick’s first book.

  Truths, Half Truths & Little White Lies

  Nick Frost

  www.hodder.co.uk

  First published in Great Britain in 2015 by Hodder & Stoughton

  An Hachette UK company

  Copyright © Nick Frost 2015

  The right of Nick Frost to be identified as the Author of the Work

  has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright,

  Designs and Patents Act 1988.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced,

  stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any

  means without the prior written permission of the publisher, nor be

  otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that

  in which it is published and without a similar condition being

  imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

  This book is a work of non-fiction based on the life, experiences and

  recollections of the author. In some cases names of people, places

  and certain details have been changed to protect the privacy of others

  A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library

  ISBN 978 1 473 62085 8

  Hodder & Stoughton Ltd

  Carmelite House

  50 Victoria Embankment

  London EC4Y 0DZ

  www.hodder.co.uk

  To the many I lost who broke me.

  And the one I found who fixed me.

  For Mac . . .

  Contents

  Introduction

  Part One

  Part Two

  Part Three

  Part Four

  You have been watching . . .

  Acknowledgements

  Introduction

  How does one capture the nuance of a human life in a book? Is it even possible? (Of course it is, you helmet, have you not read Long Walk to Freedom?) Sad as it sounds, I always thought if there was a book about loss and tragedy they’d probably ask me to write the foreword.

  It has not been easy being me sometimes, but please don’t imagine for a second this’ll be all doom and gloom. How could it be? No life can really be all black, right? Even during the darkest, poorest, shitest, hardest times, what got me through that bleakness was laughter and time, lots of time. With enough of both of these things I reckon you could get over just about anything. Just about.

  It was a difficult decision to write this though. Am I willing to lay out my total being in all its ugliness for the potential of selling 1,500 hardbacks? Do I just want to produce another ‘celeb’ autobiography, written by a ghost, telling you about the time I met David Attenborough? (He was lovely.) No, I didn’t want to do that. If you’re going to tell the story of a life, my life, tell it warts and all. That, to me, is a better reflection of a person. If the tale you tell is too saccharine sweet what can the reader take away from it? What do they learn about you? About a life? Fuck all. Write everything down. The shit, the death, fun, naughtiness, addiction, laughter, laughter, laughter, tears and lots of love and happiness. Surely this is a better reflection of what a person is and if someone can read the book and take something away from it then all the better.

  These are themes that anyone can relate to. (Apart from all the foie gras, private jets and money fights obviously.) Who really cares about a story where a well-paid actor’s feet hurt after forgetting to properly break in their new handmade shoes at a massive film premiere. It’s bullshit.

  Despite the job I currently do I would hope I’m just like everyone else reading this. Just like everyone else who will never read this.

  So why now? I’m only forty-three, it’s no age at all. I had lunch with two old people yesterday, friends of my eighty-year-old ex-father-in-law (gorgeous, gentle gentleman) and they laughed when I told them I was writing a memoir. I felt slightly embarrassed.

  I think I’m writing this for my son. My boy. The best thing I ever did and the most important thing to ever happen to me. By thirty-nine I was an orphan. It’s not that young compared to some but very young compared to many. I have a seventy-two-year-old friend, an actor I’ve worked with a few times, a good man, a gent. I asked him once what he was up to for the weekend. His reply:

  ‘I’m off to Manchester to see Mum and Dad.’

  It floored me and I couldn’t help but blurt out, ‘You got a fucking mum and dad!!!’

  He laughed, fortunately.

  That, I think, encapsulates the great randomness of life. You just don’t know. Some of you may not even finish this book, you may be so engrossed one day by the narrative that stepping off the bus you . . . BANG!!! You never know.

  Having had a relationship with my parents that one might describe as tempestuous and now having no parents at all, I often think of the stories they had that will never be told. The things I’ll never know about them, about their time before each other, about their time before me, their courtship, their passions, their love. What did they like? What were they afraid of?

  I know lots of things about them of course but there are holes in their story and I think that’s why I wanted to write this book. I want my son to be able to read this at some point in the future and know what his dad was all about. The good and bad, because both are valid.

  I’d also make a plea to you lot, you glorious 1,500; ask your questions now! Once they’re gone, they’re gone and those answers you crave can be lost for ever. I’ve kept a journal or a notebook for most of my life. Usually during the times when I was down, but I found writing a great way to escape and lick my wounds. It also makes remembering things pretty easy – that and music. Music helps. Some things are gone from my memory for ever sadly. I don’t remember much about secondary school. There’s also a bit of my late twenties missing. But mostly it’s all up there, somewhere.

  I’ve written chronologically but there are jumps in time and flights of angular fancy. Some of this is as it comes to me, randomness of thought, brain tics. Those of you who know me well, please forgive me if I’ve got it wrong or my timing’s off. Bear with me, be gentle and please save your questions to the end. Let’s do this.

  Part One

  I was born in a hospital in Hornchurch, near the sleepy village of Romford in Essex. The first house I remember was 111 Lindsey Road, Becontree Heath, Dagenham. There was a flat before this in a place called Harold Hill but I was too young to remember it. My parents, John and Tricia, told a story that when I was two and a half I climbed up on the railings of the balcony of the flat, some thirty feet above the concrete below, and stood there gurgling until my mum found me. She had to lie on the floor and crawl towards me, fearing that if I saw her I’d get excited and fall. I turned round at one point and laughed, she sprang up and grabbed me as I fell backwards. This book would’ve been a lot simpler to write if I’d have fallen then. Definitely shorter.

  No, Dagenham is where my first memories begin to bubble up. There were always lots of people in that little terraced house on Lindsey Road. It was the mid-to-late seventies, which meant floor-to-ceiling brown and orange. I lived just with my mum and
dad, with the occasional stay from one of my half-siblings. Dagenham felt like a community to me; we were always in and out of each other’s houses. Kids playing outside, wandering off, knock down ginger, even the old bag of burning dogshit trick on one old bastard’s doorstep once. Naughty.

  When it was hot the whole street would gather outside to play cricket. I got run over once by a man on a bike as I reached to take a beautiful catch on the boundary. When I say boundary I mean the patch of dirt outside 105. It hurt like hell, as he seemed to run right over the middle of my body. That’s the kind of place Dagenham was. You’d be playing cricket in the street and a big man on a child’s bike could run you over.

  Our neighbours on that street were lovely. Auntie Joan was on our left (not a real auntie). She had a very fat chocolate Labrador, and her house – always dark and mega hot – smelt like boiling tripe (it was the East End in the seventies after all). On the other side were Auntie Elsie and Uncle Harry (again, no relation). Elsie was old and looked like the actress Yootha Joyce. Harry was small and meek and always wore a tank top. After we moved away they stayed in our lives a long time. They were good to Mum and Dad.

  During a rainstorm in 1974, Mum and Dad were dashing back to our house from Elsie and Harry’s when Dad (who was holding me over his shoulder) lost a slipper, slipped, and flew into the sky. He landed on top of me on my face from a height of about five feet. Dad, of course, was distraught. They said my head swelled to the size of a pumpkin. What kind of pumpkin I guess I’ll never know – this is why you should ask these questions now.

  Dagenham was also the place where I hospitalised my dad for the first time while doing DIY. I was five and Dad had stupidly given me a large claw hammer to drive a nail into a piece of timber. His last words to me were, ‘When I nod my head hit it.’ He nods his head and I bludgeon him across his pumpkin with the hammer. When Dad regains consciousness he is in an ambulance on his way to King George Hospital. That was the last time we ever did any DIY together. I think this episode severely dented my own DIY career.

  Shortly after this a second terrible tragedy strikes my family. While cleaning out his cage my budgie, Bobbi, escapes, flying out of the window and away into the filthy air over Dagenham. Two weeks later while whacking a bush with an unstrung badminton racket I find Bobbie’s headless corpse. It is my first brush with death and one I struggle to get over my whole life.

  Dagenham was also the place I had my first cigarette. It was Christmas Day, 1980. I was nine. After pestering Mum and Dad for ages, they finally crack. They falsely believe that by giving me a cigarette (a Piccadilly filter) it will turn me off smoking for ever; they were so wrong. I smoke it in silence, they watch me smoke it in silence, and I put it out in a style I’d seen them do, a kind of tamp down, fold-over thing. A beat, a moment, I turn and ask for another. Dubious parenting. If they were alive today my parents would be horrified I’m telling you this.

  There’s no doubt I’m Tricia Frost’s son though, defiant and stubborn as a bloody mule. My mum was so beautiful, even at the end when she was nearly sixty but looked eighty she still had something. She was always well turned out. Lots of gold jewellery and a ton of Elnett hairspray. She used the same hair dye for years and years (Clairol light ash blonde) with perfect white smile (dentures) and perfectly manicured nails. She had a wheezy but infectious laugh and she was small (five foot two) like her sisters. Hobbits all.

  As I got older, I started to become more like my dad, more of his traits, thank god. He was gentle. If the Bee Gees were in one telepod, and eighties Noel Edmonds in the other (the Noel Edmonds when he looked nice and not like a wrestling promoter), Dad would pop out of the third telepod. Back then he was a happy man, always quick to laugh or tell some corny joke. Dad was a pun man. He’d do that thing where he’d stop proceedings by saying something like ‘Hey, guys . . .’ and then drop some awful gag. Groans all round. He’d laugh and his eyes would crease up making him look like one of the Mr Men.

  I still have Mum’s temper, that fiery red fog that descends; she left me with that and after reading this book you’d be forgiven for thinking she’d also left me her penchant for excess. This, for me, is a work in progress, a chance to not make the same mistakes.

  When I was nine or ten I was getting bullied, not at school but on the bus. The journey there was usually cool; coming home was a different matter. Two brothers who lived round the corner, right little meatheads, they were. They’d wait at the bus stop for me, I can see them now, smiling, nudging each other as they see me. They’d kick me in the back of the legs and pull my bag. I hated it and it went on for months. I became a recluse, not wanting to go to school or to walk home.

  Mum probed and prodded as to what was wrong but the stupid code of silence kids must live by forbade it. Snitches get stitches. I wish they didn’t get stitches. I wish they got Snickers. Snitches get Snickers – there’d be a lot less bullying, more diabetes sure, but a lot less bullying. Looking back now and having a son myself, I’d have to say no matter what the fallout, tell someone! Do not suffer in silence. Tell someone.

  The brothers always seemed to be there and because they lived round the corner they usually ended up following me home. One day they grabbed me just as I reached my front gate. Big mistake: Mum was looking out of the window. They aimed a knee for my young balls but instead thudded me in the thighs, then grabbed my jacket, pulled at my ears, laughed at me.

  The front door opens and my small yet fearsome, big-armed mother comes thundering out. Before the meatbags know what’s happening they’re grabbed by her merciless hands and slapped dizzy. They squeal and beep as she kicks them down the road. What a woman. She grabs me and shoves me towards the house.

  Sitting in the front room she looks cross and sad. She cuddles me to make me feel better. Watching those boys get theirs was a wonderful feeling. Mum goes into the kitchen to make tea. Looking through the window I see a big woman careening towards the front door. She knocks on it so hard it rattles in its frame. This will not be good. Mum tells me to get it. I stand and traipse over. I open the door.

  ‘Is your fucking mother in?’

  ‘Hang on. I’ll get her.’ I close the door gently and walk to the kitchen.

  ‘Mum, it’s for you.’

  ‘Who is it?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  Mum walks through the sitting room wiping her hands with a tea-towel and opens the front door. She is immediately set upon by the big lumpy woman who is the mother of the two bullies. She punches Mum in the mouth as soon as the door opens.

  After you’ve endured years of physical abuse at the hands of a very big man I suspect the weak right hook from a flabby Dagenham Madre feels little more than being hit in the mouth by an egg-heavy she-moth. (More on Mum’s life before she met Dad later.) Mum shakes off the initial shock of the sneak attack and sets about systematically dismantling the woman bit by bit, ruining her hair, then her face, and finally her coat. It was a hell of a thing to watch. It ended after Mum kicked her opponent deep in the vagina. She lay in a heap on the front lawn, her dinner ladies wobbling. Mum pants, knackered but victorious.

  The woman gets up, angry still but not because of the justice my mum meted out to her disappointing bully-kids but because her coat has been ripped to shreds. During the scrap all the buttons have pinged off her coat and the pockets flap low and loose like elephants’ ears.

  ‘You ruined my farkin’ coat, you cunt!’ the lady screams at her.

  Mum sets off towards her. Fearing another hefty boot to the baby-machine the lady stumbles backwards.

  ‘Give me the coat! Give me the coat!’ Mum gestures to the tattered garment. Big Arms is suspicious at first, Mum pulls at the sleeve, and the woman cautiously lets it slip off. Together they search the front garden and pick up the coat buttons.

  ‘Give me two days and I’ll have the coat mended.’ Mum’s words confused me. What was all that about? Some kind of secret fighting credo between working-class women?

  �
�Fuck me up but don’t touch my coat, it’s my good one I wear to the towel market on Sunday.’ Two days later that coat was good as new.

  After Mum shut the front door I got it in the ear. She was cross I hadn’t pre-warned her about the impending fury. I understand her anger now. After the fighting chemicals ebb away, Mum’s upset. She cries and we have a cuddle, it cheers us both up a bit.

  ***

  As well as Dagenham and Essex where lovely Uncle Brian and Auntie Francis live with my cousin Paul, my life extends to the south as far as Kent, home of cousins Caroline and Simon and their folks Uncle John and lovely Auntie Rosemary. My scope also extends west two hundred miles to where my mother was born. To Wales. To Pembrokeshire and the town of Haverfordwest to be more precise. This, even now, I consider my second home.

  My gran and grandpa, Eileen and Arthur, live in a solid stone house called Millbrook. It’s at the end of a long lane set in a dense forest. As far as idyllic locations for a child to be brought up, this was it. It was perfect. Every Saturday my mum and her sisters, Marion, Sandra, Betty, Melanie and Linda, would congregate at my gran’s house. On top of the sisters and my mum’s brother Emmy, all my cousins were in attendance too, me, Mathy, Simeon, Ceri, Naomi, Siobhan, Anoushka and Marcello. And then there were the friends, boyfriends and husbands too. The weekends at Gran’s were fantastic.

  I have the nicest memories of Millbrook. Everything seemed perfect. Apart from the bees. My gran’s house had the biggest bees’ nest in the roof space. Every summer me and the cousins could probably expect to be stung upwards of thirty times each. The bees would hang around waiting for us in a little bottleneck round the back near the kitchen. Striking our faces and soft necks.