Therapy

that bothers me, either, and it’s not just the torso, come to that. My chest is covered with what looks like a doormat-sized Brillo pad that grows right up to my Adam’s apple: if I wear an open-necked shirt, wiry tendrils sprout from the top like some kind of fast-growing fungus from outer space in an old Nigel Kneale serial. And by a cruel twist of genetic fate I have practically no hair above the Adam’s apple. My pate is as bald as an electric light bulb, like my father’s, apart from a little fringe around the ears, and at the nape, which I wear very long, hanging down over my collar. It looks a bit tramp-like, but I can hardly bear to have it cut, each strand is so precious. I hate to see it falling on to the barber-shop floor — I feel they should put it in a paper bag for me to take home. I tried to grow a moustache once, but it turned out rather funny-looking, grey on one side and a sort of gingery-brown on the other, so I shaved it off quick. I considered growing a beard, but I was afraid it would look like a continuation of my chest. So there’s nothing to disguise the ordinariness of my face: a pink, puffy oval, creased and wrinkled like a slowly deflating balloon, with pouchy cheeks, a fleshy, slightly bulbous nose and two rather sad-looking watery-blue eyes. My teeth are nothing to write home about, either, but they are my own, the ones you can see anyway (I have a bridge on the lower right-hand side where a few molars are missing). My neck is as thick as a tree-trunk, but my arms are rather short, making it difficult to buy shirts that fit. For most of my life I put up with shirts with cuffs that fell down over my hands as far as the knuckle unless restrained by a long-sleeved sweater or elastic bands round the elbows. Then I went to America where they have discovered that some men have arms shorter than average (in Britain for some reason you are only allowed to have arms that are longer than average) and bought a dozen shirts at Brooks Brothers with 32" sleeves. I top up my wardrobe from an American mail-order firm that started trading in England a few years ago. Of course, I could afford to have my shirts made to measure nowadays, but the snobby-looking shops around Picadilly where they do it put me off and the striped poplins in the windows are too prim for my taste. In any case, I can’t stand shopping. I’m an impatient bloke. At least, I am now. I used not to be. Queuing, for instance. When I was young, queuing was a way of life, I thought nothing of it. Queuing for buses, queuing for the pictures, queuing in shops. Nowadays I hardly ever ride on a bus, I watch most movies at home on video, and if I go into a shop and there are more than two people waiting to be served, more likely than not I’ll turn round and walk straight out. I’d rather do without whatever I came for. I especially hate banks and post offices where they have those cordoned-off lanes like Airport Immigration where you have to shuffle slowly forward in line and when you get to the head of the queue you have to keep swivelling your head to see which counter is the first to be free, and more likely than not you don’t spot it and some clever dick behind you nudges you in the kidneys and says, “Your turn, mate.” I do as much of my banking as possible by a computerized phoneline system nowadays, and I send most of my letters by fax, or have Datapost call at the house if I have a script to mail, but occasionally I need some stamps and have to go and stand in one of those long Post Office queues with a lot of old biddies and single parents with snuffling infants in pushchairs waiting to collect their pensions and income support, and I can hardly restrain myself from shouting, “Isn’t it about time we had a counter for people who just want to buy stamps? Who want to post things? After all, this is a Post Office, isn’t it?” That’s just a figure of speech, of course, I can restrain myself very easily, I wouldn’t dream of shouting anything at all in a public place, but that’s the way I feel. I never show my feelings much. Most people who know me would be surprised if I told them I was impatient. I have a reputation in the TV world for being rather placid, unflappable, for keeping my cool when all around are losing theirs. They’d be surprised to learn that I was unhappy with my physique, too. They think I like being called Tubby. I tried dropping a hint once or twice that I wouldn’t mind being called Laz