When I was a teen, I Blu Tacked pictures of my icons to my bedroom wall, setting places for a dinner party I was 10 years too young to have and two decades late for. I thought carefully about where to place Mel Brooks and Carl Reiner, Billy Crystal, Peter Cook and the early 1960s comedy duo of Mike Nichols and Elaine May (photographed before they split and each became acclaimed directors). I loved Britpop, and placed Blur beside Steve Martin, so it looked as though he had gone prematurely grey from the stress of working as their security detail.
Sometimes my dad, grumbling about the stains revealed on my walls whenever the posters were rearranged, would walk in and bellow “Blu Tack must die”, then walk out again. I had started to watch Mike Nichols’ movies with my mum: the The Graduate, Working Girl and Postcards from the Edge were moments of true pleasure. I knew I wanted to be a writer, but I couldn’t yet put the words in the right order to get what was in myhead on to the page. So I just kept moving the pictures around: Jarvis Cocker beside Peter Cook seemed reasonable, Lauren Bacall to De La Soul stimulating.
