Mr Doherty
August 21 2002 at 5:59 PM
Score 5.0 (1 person) Daniel De'Ath (Login AestheticsVersusAthletics)
from IP address 213.122.89.81
ONCE IN A TAXI in Nuneaton about 2001 I asked the driver to take me to Lutterworth Road,Whitestone. The pick up took place by the library and we were facing the wrong way in the rush hour. As most people are, I was glad to find a cab and suitably humble once I was inside. For two or three minutes the driver ignored me and I thought I was going to get a little rest on the way home; I was slighty plastered from a couple of hours in the Railway Tavern. Then the sliding window was pushed along at the next red light and he bawled above the noise: 'It's a pleasure to have you in the cab, Mr Doherty'
'It's a pleasure to be in the cab,' I replied, being patient in my gin and tonic.
'You know, Mr Doherty, my wife thinks you're the business'.
'Really?' I smiled, wondering if I'd get the chance to pass this compliment on to Mr Doherty, should we meet again.
'Oh, yes,' relished the cabbie, warming to a celebrity on board,
'my wife...whoops, bloody idiot', as some innocent soul without the toast of the Birmingham comedy circuit to share her car with came a bit to close to us, 'my wife thinks that you, get this Mr Doherty, she thinks that you are sexy'.
He glanced in his mirror to see how Mr Doherty was taking this promotion to sex symbol. 'What do you think of that, then?' he asked triumphantly, as though he was the man from Littlewoods with the Big News and Joanna Lumley on his arm. I tryed to look incredulous, but because of the gin and being slumped in the corner of the cab my shrug of amazment was probably a trifle less than convincing.
'Are you all right, Mr Doherty?' asked my interrogator.
'Oh, fine,' I bellowed, longing for us to be crushed under a passing juggernaut, anything to shut him up. Death itself would have been a relief from him.
'Well? What does it feel like to be desired by my wife, then?' he asked, looking at me with his head cocked on one side like a lecherous old panda.
'Very flattering,' I screamed, as a juggernaut with the chance to put me out my misery turned me down and roared past.
'What did you say?' shouted Torquemada. 'What did you say?'
Leaning forward, I yelled clearly and with articualation, 'I'm very flattered.'
It suddenly went quiet as we came to a jugganaut-
free zone. The cab driver roared with laughter and over his shoulder he said,
'You wouldn't be flattered if you saw my wife, she's a
right pig.' And then, turning right round as if he was
going to try and get into the back of the cab with me,
he said, 'Are you Jewish by any chance?' The loud hooting from a passing vehicle made my man change his mind about trying to get into the back of his own cab
through the passenger window and gave me the respite I needed to wonder what I should answer to the Jewish question.
'Why do you ask if I'm Jewish?' I enquired of my torturer.
'Well Mr Doherty, if you've ever had a bacon sandwich you'd know what my wife was like, and if you never had
a bacon sandwich.....'he continued. Swinging into Moscow Road, and pausing by the pub on the corner, he said 'Do you ever us that pub, Mr Doherty?'
By now I was beaten. He had mastered me. All I wanted
was to die. And for a few moments it seemed like I was to have a little convalescence. Then:
'Where those frilly shirts yours, Mr Doherty? Or borrowed from Rough Trade?' I must have looked as gobsmacked as I felt. 'You know, the fancy shirts you wore when you was being so sarcastic to all those single mums.' And then, with the most wonderful casualness he asked: 'Who was it was your partner, Mr Doherty?'
It was a chance for me to try and be myself. Quick as a
flash I said 'You mean tall, dapper, Daniel De'Ath?'
'That's the one,' agreed the driver. I waited for a
tiny glimmer of a word of praise, anything not to be Mr Doherty for a moment.
'That's the one,' exclamed my master.
'What a piss artist he was, do you know he was always
drunk, used to throw up all over the place. What
happened to him then, Mr Doherty, I never see him on the stage anymore? Despair for reassurance, maddened by
this crisis of who I was'nt, I pushed out my plea for a
small gesture of affection from a cab driver.
'Did'nt you hear? I said, perched only on my coccyx as
I leaned forward to catch a crumb of kindness.
'He died in a basement flat in Clapham, not a pot to piss in' And I added, to gurantee some humane responce:
'He's buried over that way at Saint Michael and All the Holy Angles, Elm Road.' This invention of a parish and a road I thought was a stoke of eloquence.
No answer.
And then from Charon, 'What a gaylord'
Distraught for a kind obitury from him, I added, out of God knows what wastepaper basket of my mind,
'If you go to his grave, you can actually smell fumes of Carlsberg Special.' And in despair, I gilded it with
'Sometimes, you can see some skint old alkie lying on the grave having a sniff.' I watched and hoped, like a
dog that's been kicked nineteen times hopes that the kicking is over and the kicker for a change might become St Francis of Assisi and fondle him.
But,'Well here we are Mr Doherty.'
As I got out of the cab he said, producing a little red book, 'Would you do the business for the grandchildren before you go, Mr Doherty?' And then, and this is a sign of how reduced I was, I gave him a two-pound tip and signed his autograph book,'Happy Days,from Daniel De'Ath....famous by association' I handed him his book and, without glancing at it, he slung it on the dashboard.
As I turned away, some happy piss artist weaving by us clutching his can of lager. 'Possibly the Greatest Lager in the World', intoned the driver with quite a good impression of a TV voice-over. This was a year ago, and I still tremble when I have to use a cab
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