ME AND MY GOLDFISH WERE GOING TO THE PUB - Rik Mayall - Bobbins or Not?

Written by Rik Mayall

Me and my Goldfish, were going to the pub and when we go to the pub, WE GO TO THE PUB!! The world stands back and says “Whoa! Look out everybody! This is the Mother of Oh-Crikey situations! Cover your undies and head for the bunkers! Cos here comes Doctor Half-a-lager-shandy-with-a-twist-of-lime and his Goldfish and they’re gonna be raisin’ hell with their mates tonight! (If they turn up).” Yeah!! The good times were back! It was time to get your fashionable trousers out!! Sorry, on. I mean, off. No, both! Aaaalright!!!

I was happy and excited for a change – we were going to meet my oldest friend Bob in the pub. We hadn’t seen him for years. So I went back into my bedroom to fetch that old black coat I used to wear back in the good old days and THAT’S WHEN IT HAPPENED! Everything was different! A lot different actually. My bedroom was fine and tidy when I’d left it just a couple of minutes ago but now it was all chaotic and upside down! Some of it was actually upside down. My wardrobe was standing on its head! I live on my own, well except for Goldfish, it was impossible for something like this to happen. I was in this room five minutes ago! Wasn’t I? Yes I was. I know I was. I was right here in this room just now and it wasn’t like this! My bedroom had gone weird…

Then that nasty cold fear that we all get came over me. All up my back. There must be someone else in my flat! Burglars? Axe-murderers? Who? What?

“Hello.” A voice came from nowhere. What? This was getting really scary now – there was no one else in the room!

“Yes there is – I’m up here.” Good grief! There was someone sitting on top of my upside down wardrobe! And someone very sexy as well – Charlie Kitson! The new girl from my office who’d only started working three days ago was right now sitting in my disgusting bedroom slap bang on top of my upside down wardrobe. Charlie Kitson was inside my very bedroom! Unbelievable!

Oh, Charlie was so drop dead gorgeous and just so out of my class that I had barely had the guts to exchange more than two or three words with her so far and had been far too shy and cowardly to even look at her when I was doing it. And no wonder – just look at her – beautiful short black hair, huge wicked eyes that know everything, a tiny slim smooth curved body, extremely dangerous mouth, skin that could send you to jail, and we haven’t even started on the clothes she wears yet.

“Come on, you. We’re late,” said Charlie, slipping herself off the wardrobe like a cat. “Let’s do it.” She took me by my left hand and turned me around.

You won’t believe this. The whole of my bedroom floor had opened itself up!

Like in that movie with that bloke who was so awful. Only better. Believe this – there was now a huge stairwell right by my old sofa! A huge, ancient, stone stairway heading downwards into what looked like nowhere. There was nothing, it was extraordinary. Just broad, unsupported, stone steps hanging in some sort of immeasurable vastness.

Charlie smiled at me and down we went. Amazing. Exciting. Unreal. “Other”. Surely this “Charlie” person must have been sent by some sort of superior “Being” to show me something of profound significance. This was certainly not what I had been expecting from my fantasies of being alone with Charlie and of course Goldfish.

But wait for this. As we descended, sections of the staircase started to float away – leaving us surfing magisterially on vast plinths in the void! That was when absolutely everything transmogrified into a huge, strange, tropical, paradise. And it was blue! Completely! Blue trees, blue clouds, blue sand, blue everything! Apart from a white grand piano that floated past us grandly into the trees. Crash! Shame. Nice piano.

It was so beautiful and warm – we were now walking alone (plus Goldfish) along a vast light blue beach with Charlie wearing the tiniest pinkest bikini imaginable. Get this – she then turned to me, smiling, took my face in her hands and leant up to kiss me! Oh My God! I closed my eyes for the moment to arrive…

…and it didn’t! So I opened my eyes, and I was standing in the foyer of The National Theatre in London! What?!? Had I actually gone insane? I mean actually? These things can’t happen – but they just did! No, no, wait. Never mind that, this was good! I was holding in my hand a ticket for their production of “Hamlet”. I love going to the theatre! OK, if you want to know the truth – in actual fact I am an out of work actor. That’s the real reason I hate my office job with such venom. I haven’t worked for three years. I couldn’t afford a ticket like this, but look at me now! I was taking my Goldfish to see “Hamlet”!

Now, most actors hate going to see plays, they think it’s rather like a bricklayer spending his day off on a building site. But I’ve always felt it’s like a crafty husband hiding in a wardrobe watching his wife commit adultery. The reviews for this one had been horrific as well, so I was terribly excited and thought I’d better pop to the Gents before curtain up – I didn’t want to upstage the cast by having a nasty accident in the stalls while laughing at them. You’ve got to be kind. So I hurried into the lavs and THAT’S WHERE IT HAPPENED. I met William Shakespeare! In the toilet! William Shakespeare!! Baggy shorts, stupid tights, pointy beard, old-fashioned ballpoint – the lot!

“Shakey Bill! Good grief! I thought you were dead!”

Shakey looked up from the urinal with mournful eyes and said: “Mortality is but the February of man’s misconceptions.”

“Oh really? My mortality is my Goldfish,” I retorted.

Shakey Bill raised an eyebrow: “S’blood, a fish made of Gold?!”

I smiled, “No, a gold coloured fish.”

He raised another eyebrow, “Your mortality is a gold coloured fish?”

“No, my mortality is a Goldfish.”

“I’faith, thy mortality in truth is a Goldfish?”

“No, Shakey Bill, that’s just its name…”

William Shakespeare shook dry, put his arm around my shoulder and escorted me effortlessly through the mirrored wall to a balcony overlooking the Thames.

“You have a way with words, my friend,” he said.

“Which way is that?” I quipped.

“This way!” said Shakey and he shoved me off the balcony!

Forget about the floating, I was hurtling now.

THWAPP!!! With two p’s, that’s how serious it was.

Now, I’ve been in head accidents before but nothing like this one. Immediate blackness. Nothing. Just banging. Bang! Bang! Bang! I need a hospital. Now! I open my eyes and I’m back in my bedroom!!! No wait, this is where I came from. It’s all tidy again - like it used to be! But that insistent bang bang banging was still banging in my head like a steam-hammer. No it wasn’t in my head. It was my front door! So I quickly opened it and there was my old best friend Bob!!! How lovely!

“Hello Bob old mate!”

THUNK!

Before I knew anything my head was looking in the opposite direction! Bob had punched me in the face!

He was terrifyingly angry! He just sort of exploded into my flat belting me and yelling at me. “Four hours!” THUNK! “Four hours!” THUNK! “Four hours!” THUNK! I was in shock. He just kept on hitting me. “Four hours I’ve been waiting for you in that disgusting pub! Seven o’clock you said! Well, it’s eleven o’clock now! I hope this is hurting you, you nasty selfish lying little scab!! This is the end of our friendship! I think I’ve broken my index finger now!” And he was gone. Well. I didn’t expect that. A good time with my best mate Bob was supposed to be the happy ending to my foul week. I just hoped my head was OK. Oh well, I was thinking, at least things can’t get any worse now.

“Hello.”

Someone suddenly said that from behind me in a strangely familiar voice. Try and understand this if you can, I was on my knees by my front door and I turned around and I saw me! Another me was relaxing on my old sofa! He had his feet on the shelf like I always do! He smiled at me. Just like me. I saw my missing tooth!

“Are you…me?” I asked tentatively.

“That’s right,” he said, “I am you.”

This was astonishingly frightening. I was now all alone, well except for Goldfish, in an extremely peculiar universe and I had to defend myself.

“Er…would you like a cup of tea?” I chanced.

“Yes, I’d love a cup of tea.”

“No you wouldn’t, I don’t like tea.”

“Yes I do.”

He did that little thing with his mouth that I always do when I’m lying.

So I knew he wasn’t telling the truth.

“You’re lying,” I said.

“No I’m not, Death doesn’t tell lies.”

“So…you’re Death then?”

“Yes. I am also you at the moment.”

“You are me, are you? So what’s my name then?”

There was a pause. And he looked a bit worried.

“You don’t know my name, do you?”

“Er…”

“You’re not a very good copy of me then, are you, Death? You don’t know my name and you like tea.”

Death got up, looking a bit worried and came over to me shiftily.

“Look mate, I’m sorry about this. I’ve got a bit of a problem. I’ve been very busy lately and I haven’t had time to organise your death properly. Can…er… can we just pretend this never happened?”

“Sure Death, I can live with that. No problem.”

He looked round over his shoulder. “Good man. And make sure no one finds out about this. OK?”

A pat on my back and he was gone!

So listen, reader. This is important. You didn’t read this, alright? Schtumm. Sorted. Later.