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Suzi and I got it together after a night of drunken passion, there’s no use trying to sugar-coat it and pretend otherwise. There was no romance, there was no plan, we simply started the evening in a comedy club in Greenwich and ended up back at her place later that night. The next morning we found ourselves food shopping in Suzi’s local Waitrose like a couple who had been together for years.
Suzi was, and still very much is, tall, blonde and vivacious with marvellously long legs, even for a girl of five foot ten. She is also slim, maybe a little too slim, but willowy enough to get away with it, and even though she has a classically pretty face, she has not the first idea how beautiful she really is.
As well as all these wonderful physical attributes, the package gets better the deeper you dig. She is blessed with almost inexhaustible energy and is as positive as I believe it is possible to be about everyone and everything. She can be frank when she needs to be, honest and diplomatic when it’s called for, and ditzy and dithering when she gets in a bit of a tiz – but of course this only adds to her charm. She also has the ability to listen and laugh in all the right places and lend a friend a kind shoulder when they need someone to lean on. Oh, and she’s ever such a little bit posh – which I love…
She is, I suppose, perfect – and if you’re thinking to yourself why did I ever let her go, please let’s not go there, at least not yet.
I first encountered this wonder-woman when I was working on The Big Breakfast. Suzi was the guest booker – one of the toughest jobs in the business, always fighting against other shows for first dibs on the latest people in town, then having to deal with all the egos and politics that follow such characters around.
Suzi was renowned as one of the best at her job, a fact confirmed by the constant headhunting she faced to go and work on other shows. She had formed excellent social and working relationships with all the necessary music, film and PR companies and, as a result, was able to deliver A-list guests where others only failed.
When I needed a guest booker for my new show Don’t Forget Your Toothbrush I didn’t have to look very far. Suzi was top of my list and as my new production company shared an office with Planet 24, the producers of The Big Breakfast, she was also only a few desks away.
Charlie and Waheed, my former bosses, were reluctant to let her go, but as my new show’s need was greater than theirs plus they had a vested interest as they were my partners, they kindly if reluctantly allowed me to nab her.
Suzi had always been easy on the eye and had enjoyed the attentions of many a male admirer but I have to say thus far I had not included myself in that group and, although we were great mates, never in a million years did I think we would end up as an item.
Perhaps a deeper connection between us began to grow as a result of us working more closely together, and then subconsciously came to a head the night we hooked up.
‘In wine the truth’, as the saying goes, a phrase Suzi used a lot and there was certainly plenty of wine involved on that Friday night back in Greenwich. Having said that, it could easily have ended up as a quick fling until, that is, I opened the Sun newspaper a couple of days later.
Suzi had been in a cafe, on the Sunday after our serendipitous sneaky session back at hers and had been discussing the post-mattress aftermath of what had happened between her and her boss with a close friend. I think one could refer to what was taking place as a bona fide girly chat.
This would have been all well and good had not one Piers Morgan been sitting directly behind them. Piers, another recurring name in my story, who was still working as a gossip columnist at the time, was no more than three feet away, enabling him to hear every single word they were saying. He later told me he couldn’t believe his luck.
What Piers did next is … exactly what Piers was paid to do. He printed the highlights of Suzi and her pal’s conversation almost word for word for the nation to read over their cornflakes in a two-page spread.
When I read his article I was almost speechless, not because I was angry or shocked – far from it – the press were part of my everyday existence, but because of all the lovely, complimentary things Suzi had allegedly been saying about me.
I called her straight away.
‘Oh my God, I’m s-s-s-so sorry, and I’m so embarrassed,’ she stuttered before I could squeeze in a hello.
‘Please d-d-d-don’t think I’m like that, I’m not one of those girls that does this. I don’t know where they got the story from. It’s almost as if he was there. I have to say, I did s-s-s-say those things but only to my friend. I don’t know how they found out – I know for a fact Sam wouldn’t have told them. I trust her with my life. I completely understand if you want me to leave and go and find another job somewhere else.’
She may well have talked for a full five minutes before coming up for air and letting me get a word in.
As she paused for breath I seized my moment and explained to Suzi that Piers had revealed in the piece that it was he himself who was behind her in the cafe, and that far from being annoyed or embarrassed about what he’d written, I was chuffed to bits by what she’d had to say about me.
Once Suzi had calmed down there was only one way to look at it, as far as I was concerned. Piers had done us both a huge favour as I now knew how she felt about me – along with the rest of the country for that matter – and his revealing column inches had vicariously awakened me to how I felt about her. The more I thought about her, the more I realised what a catch she was and what an amazing girlfriend she’d make. I concluded that I needed to do something about this, and fast; I would ask Suzi to move in with me.
This may seem a little drastic, but as you may have deduced by now, I’m an all-or-nothing guy. Admittedly this is not a trait that always led to the smoothest of rides, but that’s just the way I am, I can’t help it. Besides, neither Suzi nor I had time for a relaxed and measured courtship; we were both workaholics and unless we went home to the same bed every night, there was a good chance we might not see each other for weeks.
After a lot of fun and a couple of false starts in my flat in north London, my former guest booker and I made the transition to an official grown-up couple, moving into a rather grand town house in Notting Hill in the process. Suzi and I were now an item and the various boys and girls we had both been dating of late were duly told to back off for the foreseeable future.
The more I came to know my new girlfriend the more I liked her.
Suzi loved food – although you would never know from the size of her. She also loved to smoke, not prolifically but poetically, drawing the maximum available pleasure from every individual drag. Most of all, though, she loved her red wine.
Her penchant for red wine came not so much from its alcoholic content and its effect but rather from its smell, colour and – of course – its taste. She sipped wine from her glass like no one I’ve ever seen before or since, her eyes closed, waiting for what was to come, her lips curling upwards at either end almost in a wry smile at the thought of the ecstasy of a full-on sensory assault.
Her passion for wine, food and fags often took us to France, where they seem to do these three things quite a lot and without worrying about them too much.
Holidays – nice ones – and especially in France, were new to me. Up until this point holidays had been an unwelcome cross I had to bear. I did go away from time to time but I had never really enjoyed myself and I could never wait to get back. I loved working and I hated airports, plus I burn at even the slightest mention of the word ‘sun’, so what was there to like?
Suzi was clever, though. She was having none of that. If I wanted to be with her, not only was I going to have to go on holiday, I was going to have to enjoy it.
She would not be patronised by the presence of a token companion, she wanted to see and feel me having as good a time as she was or there was no deal. How she managed to successfully extract this out of me where everyone else had failed I have no idea, but extract it she did and we always ended up having a blast.
All of our vacation destinations were pretty top notch, to be honest, but it was the Côte d’Azur that we loved to go to most of all. There is no place on earth like the South of France with its picture-perfect coastline all the way from Monaco to the Cap d’Antibes; glorious mountains crashing into the blindingly beautiful Mediterranean Sea below.
Whether you are having lunch at a waterside restaurant in the pretty village of Beaulieu-sur-Mer or looking down over a thousand feet from one of the exclusive restaurants perched on the side of Eze mountain, there is nothing not to like – except perhaps the bill. As well as topping the league in the beauty stakes, the Côte d’Azur is also the most expensive place I have ever been to.
That said, budget and availability permitting, Suzi and I would always try to stay at La Voile d’Or (the Golden Sail), a small but perfectly formed bijou hotel situated right on the rocks just above the sea in Saint-Jean-Cap-Ferrat, probably my favourite place on the planet.
Like several of the hotels in the region, La Voile d’Or didn’t take credit cards until very recently. When Suzi and I were going there it was always cash only.
I think such hotels have been forced to change policy as with a single fried egg now costing as much as £10, the size of the bags full of money required to settle residents’ accounts were becoming noticeably impractical.
I understand this was particularly evident at the most famous hotel in the region, where a basket of bread at your breakfast table will set you back £36 and that’s before you even think about daring to order any tea, coffee or croque-monsieur. I have stayed at this place three times, most recently in 2009, and the sight of l’addition arriving never fails to bring me out in a cold sweat.
Not to worry though, eh? What’s money for, if not to spend on the things you like with someone you love? What Suzi and I could afford we would enjoy, and what we could not we wouldn’t worry about.
We always talked about what it must be like to have a house in Saint-Jean, the dream to end all dreams, but there is a knack to owning houses abroad. The secret is that unless you have infinite wealth, it’s imperative that you are a founder-member of a future trend as opposed to someone who ends up paying through the nose, having turned up late to the party.
Take Noël Coward and Ian Fleming, for example, and their respective retreats in Jamaica when it was the last place on earth a European might think to live. They picked up their slices of paradise for virtually nothing. The same can be said of John Lennon and his various forays into Malta, and let’s not forget Richard Branson and the legendary bargain that was Necker Island. The story goes that he paid ten per cent of the asking price – just £300,000. Not bad for your own island; he now charges double that if you want to rent it for just one week.
And so it was with Saint-Jean, we just didn’t realise it at the time.
David Niven had lived there once upon a time and his house was for sale during one of our early trips. Set just off the main drag towards the shore on the path to Eze, it was a magnificent movie-star mansion, almost Gatsbyesque in its grandeur, and with its own private jetty and walled tropical garden thrown in.
I recall the price tag being £4.7 million.
‘What?’ I remember thinking back then. I couldn’t believe anywhere in the world could be worth that much. I was of course entirely wrong about David Niven’s house, which has since changed hands for ten times that amount. A good house is only expensive once, they say. After that you will never be able to afford it.
Suzi and I were destined to miss the French property boat big time, but this was not the case for Bono and his musical colleague the Edge. They had bagged themselves a relative bargain on the beach nearby just a few years before.
No sooner had the Dublin rockers made their first few quid banging out their irresistible brand of rock and roll than they heard of a beach-front villa up for grabs for a couple of hundred thousand pounds. A fortune to them then, but they knew something Suzi and I didn’t and, without pausing for breath, they snapped it right up. They bought it between the two of them and proceeded to share the house straight down the middle whenever they could get away. Each of their families had half the villa, with both families coming together in a communal living room and kitchen.
It’s testament to the two men’s friendship that this arrangement worked for over ten years before they succeeded in getting planning permission for a second property on their not unsubstantial plot. They now enjoy a villa each, as well as a combined net value of tens of millions of pounds.
I know the above is fact because I’ve been there. Bono, who had appeared on TFI Friday several times, heard Suzi and I were in his ‘Manoir dans Le Midi’ and tracked us down to our hotel, where he extended, via a rather creative fax, a generous invite for us to come over and enjoy a slab of pizza and a glass or two of wine with him and his clan. The fax requested an RSVP and informed us that he would pop by and pick us up if we were interested.
Interested? What do you think?
When the night in question arrived, Suzi and I sat outside on the terrace eagerly awaiting our ‘lift’ whilst desperately trying to act cool and not drink too much, by playing Scrabble of all things. However, by the time our man arrived, we were both a bottle of champagne to the good and as giddy as kites. So much for our strategy.
All the other guests in the bar, meanwhile, did a doubletake the moment Bono walked in. You see, in real life he sort of does and yet at the same time doesn’t quite look like Bono. It can sometimes be difficult to be sure.
I would be lying if I denied the swelling sense of pride I felt as he spotted Suzi and me beaming back at him across the lawn. He strode over purposefully, shades on, arms wide open, the perfect rock-star welcome.
As we hastily and somewhat nervously gathered up our things, the normally surly French waiters began throwing smiles in our direction. Smiles we thus far had been unaware they were capable of producing. Strange, that.
The drive back to Bono’s house was right up there in my top ten celebrity journeys. There in front of the main door was parked his gleaming black BMW convertible, roof down, all set and good to go. A turn of the key, a growl of the exhaust and the screech of rubber and we were off into the balmy Mediterranean air with the lead singer of one of the greatest rock bands in the world as our chauffeur.
Did it get any better than this? Well yes, actually it did.
As we exited the village of Saint-Jean, Bono turned up the car stereo and started singing along at the top of his voice to The Carpenters’ Greatest Hits. This was another one of those moments – of which there have been many because I have been very lucky. The surreal ones are the best and they don’t get much more surreal than our night with Bono.
Once we arrived at the bargain villa on the beach, the food and wine began to flow along with the stories. Lots and lots of stories. Bono loves to tell a tale or two, most of them wonderfully outrageous. Like the time he and his mate Gav ran out of brandy one night so decided to take a small dinghy out to sea in search of the US Navy and more booze.
Beaulieu, next door to Eze and Saint-Jean, is a deep-sea port and as such can accommodate the biggest ships in the world including, on this occasion, a humongous US aircraft carrier.
‘They love U2, the Americans,’ Bono said to Gav as they made for open water, ‘they’re bound to have some brandy on board, sure they’ll be up for giving us a bottle.’
Now, two things here. Firstly, it was the middle of the night and the sea can be a dangerous place at the best of times, and secondly, how on earth were the US Navy supposed to know this was Bono and his mate Gav requesting benevolence and not some murderous terrorists surreptitiously attempting to stick a limpet mine to the side of their warship?
The story goes that once safely located next to the carrier in their minute dinghy, our two thirsty adventurers looked up to register a vessel the size of a small city bearing down upon them.
‘What did you do next?’ asked Suzi, barely able to speak for laughing.
‘I took out an oar from the boat,’ replied Bono, ‘and I started to hit the metal hull as hard as I could – clang, clang, clang.’
‘No way!’ we both exclaimed like a pair of school kids. We were gripped.
‘Way,’ came the reply. ‘And then.’ he continued, ‘after about a minute, Gav now having joined in, we hear the whirring of chains being lowered and see what looked like some kind of mini destroyer descending down towards the water a few hundred feet away.’
‘Shit,’ shouts Gav, ‘that boat’s got a gun attached to it. Start the motor, Bono, they think we’re attacking them. Fuck, they’re going to blow us up!’
Suzi and I at this point were on the floor killing ourselves laughing and Bono, not immune to a fit of the giggles himself, was finding it increasingly difficult to carry on spinning his merry yarn.
When he finally did manage to finish, we all had tears streaming down our cheeks. It transpired that the night watch on board the US naval craft had indeed identified a security breach in the form of Bono and Gav in their dinghy, and launched a gunboat patrol to check what on earth was going on.
Suffice to say they caught up with our two barking-mad buccaneers within seconds, both of whom were on the brink of having a heart attack. Bono said it was still the most frightened he’s ever been and Gav likewise. But did they ever get their brandy?
Well, he said no but I suspect otherwise.
But Bono wasn’t the only well-known surprise Cap Ferrat had in store for us that week. When you go to extraordinary places, extraordinary things tend to happen and we weren’t done yet.
TOP 10 THINGS THAT COME IN A BOTTLE (#ulink_6835e789-556f-59a8-b344-0e279b000d66)
10 HP Sauce
9 Worcestershire sauce
8 Dandelion and burdock
7 Extra virgin olive oil
6 Vinegar
5 An ice cold beer
4 A pint of fresh, full fat milk
3 Heinz tomato ketchup
2 White wine
1 Red wine
THE FOLLOWING THURSDAY AFTERNOON, the sun was high in the sky, the sensible people were having a siesta whilst the sun worshippers were beachside busy baking themselves. As Suzi was happy to sizzle with the best of them and I was neither tired nor mad enough to expose my milk-white body and already sunburnt face to yet more heat, I decided to mosey on down to the town to enjoy a quiet read and a cold drink in the local patisserie.
After doing exactly that and whilst ambling back up the gentle hill towards the hotel, I noticed in the distance an equally pink-faced gentleman walking towards me. I smiled to myself, more out of a sense of camaraderie than anything else, but as he drew closer I couldn’t help feeling he looked familiar.
‘Blow me,’ I thought to myself as we continued to converge, ‘he looks for all the world like David Frost.’
Several more steps towards each other and…
‘Blow me again, it is David Frost.’ And sure enough it was.
At almost exactly the same time I recognised him, he recognised me. We’d never met before, yet here we were now, red face to red face in an almost deserted French village. Les deux rostbifs rouges, très extraordinaire!
‘My dear boy,’ he announced, ‘you’re always much taller.’
What the heck did that mean? And before ‘Hello’, or ‘How are you?’ Hilarious.
‘David, what a perfectly pink pleasure this is for both of us,’ I replied.
‘Indeed, indeed – hey, I’m staying at Andrew’s, you must come round for a drink one night.’
I had no idea what on earth he was talking about.
‘Oh, yes, er, right, of course, we must. I’m with my girlfriend you see.’
‘Excellent, then you must bring her along as well. I’ll get one of the girls on to it. Where are you?’
‘We’re at the Voile d’Or’.
‘Righty-ho, we’ll get you there, then.’ And with that he was off.
I still had no idea what he was talking about. Who was this Andrew to whom David was referring, and who were these girls?
I half expected to hear no more about it, but I have since learnt to take members of the old school at their word. Later that evening there was a call to our room.
‘Hello,’ Suzi said.
‘Ah, hello, this is Maddie Lloyd Webber here.’ Ah, it was that Andrew and those girls to whom David had been referring.
