Rylan Clark-Neal has quickly risen to be one of the UK’s most successful and in demand presenters. Since finding fame on The X Factor, Rylan went on to win Celebrity Big Brother, present the sister show Big Brother’s Bit on the Side, become a full-time member of the This Morning team, as well as reach the final of Celebrity MasterChef.
Rylan was raised by his mum and grandmother in East London before moving to a small town in Essex. He had big dreams from an early age and followed them with unflinching determination. This is his first book.
Firstly I’d like to emphasise that I have WRITTEN THIS BOOK MYSELF, so be assured you’re getting the TOOTH, the WHOLE TOOTH and NOTHING BUT THE TOOTH! (Which was my original choice of title, but babe, we're so over that.)
This book documents my story, year by year, from my humble beginnings growing up in the East End of London, to becoming one of the nation’s most talked-about people overnight, to finally moving up the spectrum from guilty pleasure and getting nearer to national treasure. It will make you laugh, cry, and most importantly you’ll discover who I really am. If it doesn’t do any of those things you’re not legally entitled to a refund – just clearing that up ;-).
I hope you enjoy reading this book as much as I have enjoyed writing it. It’s been like therapy, and LORD was I in need. Enjoy!
This ebook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorized distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.
Epub ISBN: 9781473537262
Version 1.0
Published by Century 2016
1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2
Copyright © Rylan Clark-Neal/Ross Richard Clark, 2016
Cover Photographer: Pål Hansen
Cover Design: Emma Grey Gelder
Rylan Clark-Neal has asserted his right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as the author of this work.
First published in Great Britain in 2016 by Century
Century
The Penguin Random House Group Limited
20 Vauxhall Bridge Road, London, SW1V 2SA
www.penguin.co.uk
Century is part of the Penguin Random House group of companies whose addresses can be found at global.penguinrandomhouse.com
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
HB ISBN 9781780895741
TPB ISBN 9781780896250
This book is dedicated to my mum, Linda Clark.
She’s my biggest fucking headache, but I don’t know what I’d do without her.
I WAS BORN on Tuesday 25 October 1988 in the Royal London Hospital to my mum, Linda Clark. A good woman – friendly, caring, mouth like a gutter, every other word is ‘fuck’, but everyone loves her. My dad wasn’t at the birth (we’ll get back to him later) as he was crashed out drunk on the sofa at home, so my godfather Chrissy stepped in. This may have been a shock to some, but not to my mother.
I lived my early years on Stepney Green Road in East London with my mum, my Nanny Rose and my brother Jamie. My nan was like a second mum to me – and has always lived with us as my mum suffers from severe Crohn’s disease. She’s always been there for my mum. Especially in later years when we didn’t know how this would all turn around . . . she’s one of a kind. She grew up during the war, singing in all the pubs, probably showing a bit of ankle, the cheeky mare. I could recite every word to ‘Roll Out the Barrel’, and to this day I still love a good ol’ Cockney knees-up. She taught me well. My brother Jamie is fourteen years older than me. He’s been like a second dad to me, or – as you will learn – more like a first dad. He’s your typical bloke. Carpenter, plasters walls and ceilings, owns a drill, that type.
We weren’t rolling in money as you’ve probably gathered by this point, seeing as Mum couldn’t work due to her illness, but that’s where my brother stepped up. He always made sure I had what I wanted, as did my mum and my nan with any money they had. We didn’t have loads, but I never went without. I was so lucky to have them. We lived in a terraced council house where you knew all your neighbours. The kind of road where you could leave the front door open, knowing that if anyone dared come in it would be someone you knew. I was the bastard child, that little ginger kid that always wanted to know everything, talk to everyone and get involved in everyone’s business. I still am, to be fair . . .
Growing up we were a very close family. One of my fondest memories took place early one Friday evening. Each week, my mum, Nan, Auntie Sue and a couple of the golden girls (as they called themselves) would go down the bingo on a Friday night. Before each outing they would all come to our house for a Friday night buffet. You know, jacket potato, Batchelors Pasta ’n’ Sauce, boiled bacon and salad (because we were well healthy). It was your average Stepney Friday night. I was sat at the table, greedily eyeing up the food, when I heard my mum and Auntie Sue start to argue. Within seconds I could see the both of them pulling each other’s hair and trying to rip each other’s faces off. I was only young, around seven or so, and immediately started to cry. Our neighbour from next door was round our house and she took me outside to the adjoining park to play catch. I couldn’t stop crying as in my head I thought that my mum and my aunt were about to kill each other and I’d be left orphaned. The genuine fear of any seven-year-old.
About twenty minutes later I returned to my house to find that everything was absolutely fine and everyone was sat around the table tucking into their jacket potatoes and Pasta ’n’ Sauce. I didn’t really understand why it was so calm. But that is just us. Have your row, have your fight, and get the fuck over it. They went to bingo that night and my mum won on the party bingo slots. Only forty quid, but think of the treats we could have for the next buffet. FYI, they fell out over a Quality Street. I can neither confirm nor deny whether the noisette triangle was to blame, but all was now well. Serious stuff.
I went to St Mary’s and St Michael’s Primary School on Commercial Road in East London. I was a popular kid – surprising as I was the ginger, pasty one, but nevertheless I had lots of friends. I was friends with mostly girls – a few boys, but mostly girls. During playtime, the boys would be playing football, whilst the girls and me would be putting on shows next to the church. Our little dance shows would nine times out of ten revolve around the Spice Girls, and the fight for who would be Geri would arise without fail every break-time. I normally won the fight – playing the ginger card, I got my way. It was around the age of nine or ten that I realised I was different to the other boys. I did the standard . . . Had a bit of a girlfriend, bought her a necklace from Argos, gave her a couple of Happy Meal toys I had doubles of, the usual, but deep down I knew I was a bit different. It wasn’t until one evening at one of my mates’ birthday parties I really felt it. He was a bit of a cool kid, one of the boys. It was his birthday party and he had it at his house. He had friends from outside of school as he only joined ours in Year Four. Everyone was out playing football, and getting off their faces on Smarties and Asda cola. I was with them, kicking the ball around and getting on well with these boys I’d never met before. After about an hour of playing, I saw my girl mates dancing out in the road. I knew I really wanted to go and join them but it felt nice being one of the boys. As time went on I could feel myself itching to go and dance with them and after about a half-hour I did. Next thing I remember is country dancing to B*Witched’s ‘Jessie Hold On’. Proper going for it, full out under the streetlights of the council estate.
One of the boys came over and said, ‘What are you doing?’
I looked at him (still full-on country dancing) and said, ‘It’s B*Witched’s new song!’ He looked at me like I was a donkey with three heads and a handbag, laughed and walked off. I knew he thought there was something wrong with me. But I didn’t care, I genuinely didn’t care. I carried on dancing with the girls until we all had to go home and to this day I still smash that routine . . . Yee-haaaaaaa!
I was a clever child at school, always top of the class with maths, English, etc., so when it came to applying for secondary school I wanted to go where all my friends would be going, which was St Michael’s in Bermondsey, South London, but another option soon came up.
The Coopers’ Company and Coborn School in Essex was a school for really brainy kids, the sort of kids – from my point of view – you would want to slap. My teacher suggested to my mum that we should apply for the school to further my education and swore we would be in with a good chance. Each year the school would choose around six or seven kids from the East London area because the school used to be in Bow. I really didn’t want to go there. I would know no one. The only upside would be that I would have to get the train to school, and as a child I was a bit obsessed with the Underground, but is a childhood obsession enough to start all over again with no friends? A representative from Coopers’ had to visit my primary school to watch me in class and interview me. Mr Barry Wellington, a man who looked like he’d stepped straight out of Doctor Who, walked into my Year Six classroom and started to assess me. It was quite nerve-wracking, and the talk of the class, as my other friends’ potential schools didn’t do this. I was then taken out of class and into my formal interview with Mr Wellington.
‘How are you today, Ross?’ he said.
‘I’m good, thanks,’ I replied. The rest of the interview went well and he left after shaking my hand and telling me that he was very impressed. The next time I saw Mr Wellington was a few weeks later when I was invited for a second interview, but this time it was held at Coopers’. I walked along a beautiful long drive filled with trees and flower arrangements, passing the acres of fields and sports pitches into a paved area called Coopers Court. HELLO! I was more used to an ordinary-looking inner-city primary school – this was something else, it was like inheriting Downton Abbey. I was taken into a grand, lavish reception known as the Foyer, with bottle-green leather chesterfields and a lacquered wood floor that would rival those in Buckingham Palace. In the follow-up interview I was presented with a test. This was the dreaded test I had been told about by my primary school teacher. You fail this test, you don’t get into Coopers’.
I found it fairly easy, to be honest, and left feeling excited. Rather than worrying about the test, all I could think of was how beautiful the school was and how lucky I would be to go there. After patiently waiting for several weeks, a letter arrived at my home. The letter was addressed to a Master R. Clark. I could see the excitement on my mum’s face. She had failed to tell me what she already knew: if the letter is addressed to the child, it means the child has been accepted into the school, whereas if the child’s application was unsuccessful, it would be addressed to the parent. As I opened the letter and saw the acceptance I remember feeling amazing, like I’d done something really good, but at the same time the joy was tinged with upset as I realised I would be leaving my primary-school friends behind.
I don’t remember my last day of primary school. Not one thing. Which, as an adult now, I find quite strange, as it’s a big thing in someone’s life. All I do recall is feeling much more grown-up, knowing I had to get a train to Essex to go to school.
The summer holidays came and went and soon it was nearly induction day. At Coopers’ they take uniform to the next level. I was given a full school uniform, special rucksack, which was bigger than me, a cricket kit, a PE kit, a swimming bag and kit, including stitched initials on every garment, not forgetting a tennis racket. I needed a whole new wardrobe to fit it all in.
As I pulled up to the school on my first day, another boy was walking in, also a new Year Seven. We made friends and walked together into the main theatre, which was essentially a grand hall, for our induction with all the other new students. We sat down next to each other and listened to a glamorous head girl give a speech and we learned the school’s motto, ‘Love as Brethren’ and an ACTUAL SCHOOL SONG about the founders . . . I couldn’t believe I was going to such a posh school that even had its own anthem! Then the headmistress arrived. Dr Davina Lloyd. A Dr! My headmistress was a doctor! You could tell she was important by the way she walked and the way she spoke. During her speech she kept mentioning mums and dads. I couldn’t help thinking, I haven’t got a dad. I hadn’t actually seen my dad from about the age of six or seven. I don’t really remember him. He was never fully with my mum and things never worked out. He used to visit once or twice a year when I was really young, but then all of sudden it just stopped. I still don’t know why. All I remember is he wore this hat and checked blazer and he always turned up carrying a newspaper. I didn’t care for Dr Lloyd’s speech or my dad at this point though; all I was worrying about was making friends.
I was pleased to see that in my form was another guy who seemed quite chatty with the girls and a bit more on my level, if you know what I mean. His name was James. He was short and fat and I was ginger and pale. The perfect friendship, in my eyes, as if I was going to get bullied at school, I reckoned he would as well, lightening the load. Over the first year we became best friends and spent all of our together. Move over Pepsi and Shirlie, there’s two new sassy kids on the block and we ain’t taking no shit, sistah!
During Year Eight, my family decided to move from East London to Essex, to a place called Stanford-le-Hope. Before we went, I was still commuting from London to Essex with Ashleigh, another girl from my old primary school. She now went to the all-girls’ school close to my house, and one day we decided to jump off the train in Bow on the way home, to walk around the outskirts of the Big Brother house. It was just up the road from both our houses and I was TOTALLY OBSESSED with the show. It was 2001, Big Brother 2. My fave, Brian Dowling, was in the house. Back then security on the show wasn’t what it is now, and you could literally walk around the perimeter of the compound. We decided to pop into the Tesco’s that was right next to 3 Mills Studios, where Big Brother was filmed, and buy some clothes pegs . . . Why? you ask. We wrote ‘Brian to win’ on them and wanted to throw them over the Big Brother garden wall.
We walked slyly around the compound, thinking we were total James Bonds, looking around to check there were no security guards. The time had come to throw the pegs. 3, 2, 1, THROW . . . ! If that peg managed to get three feet from where I was standing I would have felt like Fatima Whitbread – but sadly it was the shittest throw of all time. In my defence the pegs were really light in weight. Fuck it, we thought, so I just screamed at the top of my voice: ‘BRIIIIIAAAAAN!’ and legged it. As we were running away, we saw Dermot O’Leary filming Big Brother’s Little Brother and he shouted to us, ‘You’re on the telly now!’ Dermot was speaking directly to us, and it was the most exciting feeling, but we carried on running. Little did I know that eleven years later he would be standing by my side on one of the most amazing journeys of my life and, not only that, that I would be doing his exact job twelve years later. Crazy . . .
Anyway, where was I? Yes, we were moving from London to Essex. It was hard leaving my childhood home, but it worked better with my travel to school and in the long run worked out to be one of the best decisions we made. My brother’s partner Jayne gave birth to my nephew Harvey not long before, making my brother a dad and me an uncle.
At first I found it really hard to deal with. Don’t get me wrong, I was completely over the moon to be an uncle and Harvey was absolutely beautiful, but Jamie had always been my father figure and I couldn’t help but wonder if that was about to change. I tried not to make it a massive deal and show my family how I was feeling, but it did bubble away in my head for a few weeks, until I realised that the only thing that had changed was that we had a beautiful new baby in our family and I knew in later life I could repay my brother by being someone Harvey could look up to. A few years later my niece Olivia came along, making the four of them a proper family.
Back at school I was still relatively new and as a result was bullied a little, especially in those first few years. Me and James would get called ‘gay’ and ‘poof’, which looking back on it now, we took quite casually. We would just shrug it off as I guess deep down we both knew we were but didn’t really want to fight with anyone because of it. We had a close group of friends including a girl called Katy Thomas, who was quite a shy girl in the beginning, even though she had double-Ds at the age of thirteen – go on, girl! Her mum didn’t really like her hanging about with us, as me and James were known as troublemakers. We never meant harm to anyone, but we did like to play pranks and have the last laugh on people.
I wasn’t the only one who was obsessed with Big Brother. We all were. So much so that during a Year Nine trip to the Isle of Wight (standard school-trip destination) I printed the Big Brother eye out from the computer and stuck it on my suitcase. I even laminated it . . . Classy. On my way into school that day a man on the train saw my case and asked if I was going into Big Brother. Clearly he was as deluded as I was because he believed me when I said the following, ‘Yes, I am. They’re doing a special teenage version and I’m going in.’ Lying ginger bastard, wasn’t I? He congratulated me and got off the train. AND HOLD UP, MYSTIC MEG! Lo and behold, three months later, Channel Four announced a special Teen Big Brother series. I should have claimed copyright. To be fair, the bloke on the train might well have been one of my bosses now. Thieving arsehole.
Anyway, as the years went on at Coopers’, I started to realise I didn’t really enjoy being academic. I loved drama and dance, but the likes of maths and English started to take a back seat in my priorities. By Year Nine, aged fourteen, I knew I was gay. I didn’t like girls in a sexual way. Rather than look at girls and think, I want to be with you, I would look at the girls and think, I want to be you. It just happened that my best friend, James, was also gay, so it was a lot easier for me to handle, as a problem shared is a problem halved. James’s dad, Tony, was brilliant. He was the most understanding father anyone could have and was always on hand to give me advice and help me through whatever problems I had.
That summer, in between Years Nine and Ten, me, James and Katy started going out. We used to get the train into London and go down Soho. For the first few times we would just hang about outside bars and clubs, walking up and down Old Compton Street thinking we were all hard. In reality we looked like silly little kids carrying bottles of Pink Ice and WKD with smug looks on our faces because we’d managed to get served in the local off-licence. One such night, down London, Katy and me decided to try and get into G-A-Y bar. Now G-A-Y was a notorious bar and club on Old Compton Street that looked like the place to be: it always had a queue of cool-looking people that would stretch all the way into Charing Cross Road. There was no way we could get in but I had a little plan. We put on our best blazers and planned a routine we would do whilst walking up to the bouncers. I would make out I was talking into my phone, and Katy would smoke a cigarette. Somehow we thought this would make us appear older, like we were just finishing work and looking to wind down for the evening. By some fluke of life, it actually worked and we were in. We couldn’t believe our luck. The adrenalin pulsed through our bodies and the excitement was just too much to handle. We walked into what looked like heaven on earth. A dark club with pink lights, full of good-looking people, and Girls Aloud pumping through the speakers as the accompanying video played on every TV screen. It was amazing. We drank and danced until the lights came on at 3 a.m. and still, hours later, we were still psyched about getting into the first place, first try and all. We jumped on the night bus home and stayed at James’s, as we knew his dad wouldn’t have a go at us like our own parents would.
Soon this became a regular outing for us, same routine, same set-up. As the weeks went on, we realised that the bouncers didn’t start work until around 7 p.m., which meant if we were in the bar before, we were in for the whole night! Slowly but surely the bouncers started to recognise us as regulars, which meant from then on we could stroll up at whatever time and be let straight in. Weekends sorted.
Through Years Ten and Eleven I was having a great time at school. James and me didn’t really care too much. He wanted to be a dancer and I wanted to be a pop star. What could Pythagoras’s theorem and Shakespeare teach me about that? We were excluded a few times – once for bullying, which was disgraceful as it wasn’t true, but the girl got away with it. She was jealous of our friendship group. I won’t go into details as I don’t even want to type her name. A few times were for answering back. Every other week, in fact, and all because by this point I had started to highlight my hair. Genuinely. It seemed that girls were encouraged to look like supermodels and boys were encouraged to look like . . . Harry Potter. I never understood the rule. But then there was this other time for having – wait for it . . . my first fight. A real fight. Go on, Rocky! A boy in my class said something to me; I can’t even remember now, something along the lines of ‘gay boy’, and made a limp hand gesture towards me. Normally I would link away and just let it be, because it happened all too often, but something this time felt different. I felt the anger bubble away in the bottom of my stomach – as if my body finally grew a set of bollocks – and work its way up and through my veins, down my arm, making its way closer and closer to my clenched fist, and without even stopping to think I punched him straight in the face. We brawled for a bit but after a few seconds we heard the teacher scream, ‘GET OUT FOR YOUR OWN SAFETY’ to the rest of our class members. You would have thought there was a bomb. So the whole class left and the teacher locked us in. Great skills, babe. Literally the whole class had emptied and was crammed into the skinny maths block corridor peering through the 20-cm-by-20-cm square safety glass that was embedded in the door. We both looked at each other and, instead of fighting, we started laughing at what had just happened.
That day I was suspended from school and my mum had to come and pick me up; she was so proud that I had finally hit back that she took me to the sandwich shop in Hornchurch to celebrate. As we were walking along the high street, chicken-mayo baguette in hand, a random man walked towards us and said, ‘All right, Lin?’ I couldn’t fully see him at first, but standing there in front of us, I realised, was my dad. He had on the same hat he always wore and the same checked blazer. He gave me a hug and I remember him repeating over and over again, ‘Oh, look at my boy, look at my boy.’ We spoke for about a minute and then he went. That was the last time I ever saw him to this day. It was strange knowing that was my dad, but you don’t miss something you never really had, do you?
Back at school, some of the teachers were so regimented they would have been too harsh for the army. One of the form tutors, Mr B. I’ll call him, was so far jumped up his own arse his face was coming back out of his mouth. He would shout, make girls cry, and once even hit my hand away from my face whilst I was scratching my nose. I highly suspected that he didn’t like the fact that James and me were gay. In my view he was ultimately another jumped-up homophobic prick. One time he got to me so much that my brother had to come to the school to have a row. We’re not a fighting family by any means (except with each other), but if you take the piss, be careful. People like him should never be in that job.
One teacher I could rely on was Mr Wellington. Old Barry. He was a genuinely good man and I could always go to him if I had a problem. He would always tell me that what I wanted to achieve in life I would. He not only got me into the school, he carried me through it as well. If more teachers were like him, kids would leave school a lot better off. He shares the same birthday as my mum so I often think about him. I learned that he has recently retired. Definitely a loss for Coopers’. During my final year, James and myself were called into our head-of-year’s office. Mr Bamber. By now I was used to him telling us off, so was ready for it. As soon as we walked in, the atmosphere in there felt different, I didn’t feel like we were about to get a bollocking. It was the most relaxed I had ever felt in his office. He started by saying that we’d had some great years at the school and had made some amazing friends and memories, but that the school would like to part ways on amicable terms with the both of us and not invite us back to sixth form. James and me started laughing with a sigh of relief as neither of us had intended on coming back. Mr Bamber laughed and made a joke of it as well, and in that moment all hatred that I held for being spoken to like a three-year-old and being told how to look and dress dissolved. James and me knew that for our final term at Coopers’ we could be who we wanted to be and do what we wanted to do.
The final few weeks went just the way we wanted. We had fun, and also took our GCSEs. I passed fourteen of my fifteen GCSEs, failing English literature, as I didn’t realise when the exam was and decided to go shopping over Lakeside. My last memory of Coopers’ was walking out of the school gates with a big old boom-box on my shoulders blaring out Gwen Stefani’s ‘Hollaback Girl’ at full volume and waving goodbye to my childhood. I’ve got really fond memories of school. I can say that if I were to see 99 per cent of students I studied with out and about, we would say hi to each other. I was incredibly lucky to go to Coopers’. My classmates ultimately were very accepting of me, I made friends for life, and we really all did learn to love as brethren.
2005, 16 AND PREGNANT . . . Sorry, not pregnant, independent. I’m officially part of the big bad world and doing a bit of modelling in my spare time, nothing special. So what, I hear you ask, is the first thing I do after leaving school? That’s right, I go and get a job in River Island. LIVING ON THE EDGE, EH? No, but seriously, I did. The only downside was that the only ‘full-time’ shift available was 7 a.m. to 11 a.m. working in the stockroom, a two-hour lunch break, then back at 1 p.m. to 5 p.m. on menswear. I didn’t care though, I wanted to work. I was quite excited about the idea of working on a till. On my first day working in the Lakeside Shopping Centre River Island store, I made a mate. Sam, nice bloke, worked on menswear, which was where I was assigned (only half the day, mind), quite stylish, and – by the amount of mascara and bronzer he was wearing and the folded-arm attitude towards 99 per cent of the customers – he definitely liked the boys. First friend sorted. The bonus with having Sam as a friend was that he only lived a few minutes from my house and would drive me home at the end of our shifts. He was the sort of mate you knew you would have around for ever.
One day I had a call from the modelling agency I was working for, doing a shoot here and there. They said they wanted to change my name, as Ross wasn’t memorable enough. They chose Keelan. A couple of days later I had a modelling job in London. It was for a concierge company and I had to be the person in the picture delivering some flowers. MADE IT! It was quite a shit job actually, though it paid about £100, which wasn’t too bad. But there was a problem. They paid me by cheque, which was made out to a Mr K. Clark. Holding the cheque in my hand I walked over to the woman who had been calling me Keelan to try and explain the mistake. I couldn’t possibly cash a cheque to a Mr K. Clark, it wouldn’t clear. As I looked her in the face to tell her my real name, I instantly became embarrassed. I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t face telling the woman I’d been working with for the past ten hours that I had a fake name. I left the job knowing I wouldn’t get paid.
Back at River Island on my lunch break, I popped over to WHSmith’s and looked at the baby-name books. I figured to avoid going through ‘Chequegate’ again, I needed to find a name beginning with R. Ryan, Ryder, Rhydian, Rylan . . . RYLAN? I thought, That sounds a bit like Keelan. And that was it. Nothing glamorous, no elaborate story. That is where Rylan came from. As simple as that, it was settled.
I went back to work and carried on working at River Island, but a few months in I fell quite ill for no apparent reason. I was on the brink of collapse, tired, nauseous, and my vision kept getting impaired. There was no other place for me to go so Linda and me went straight to hospital. We waited until we were seen by the doctor who – very casually, may I just add – looked at me and my mum and said, ‘We think you may have meningitis.’ You what? Menin-fucking-gitis? Are you taking the piss? I couldn’t believe what was coming out of his mouth. I looked at my mum who was clearly worried about what he’d just said. He then said that I needed a lumbar puncture. What’s a lumbar puncture? I hear you ask. A lumbar puncture is a procedure where a fuck-off needle is injected into your spine to take synovial fluid from in between your vertebrae. ‘OK,’ I said. I just needed to know whether I was basically going to die or not. It’s the first thing I thought. The following day, in walks Dr Whateverthefuckhisnamewas. ‘Morning, Mr Clark. This is Julia,’ whilst pointing to some bird who looked younger than I was. ‘All right, Ju,’ I said, worrying slightly about the role she would be taking in the coming events. The doctor informed me that Julia herself would be carrying out my lumbar puncture procedure. ‘OK,’ I said. How could she? The bird looked twelve years old! Is this bloke for real? But who was I to argue with Dr Whateverthefuckhisnamewas? I was instructed to sit on the bed with my legs flat out in front of me. I was then asked to lean forward as much as I could, which was so painful. It was like Bikram yoga for pain-fetish lovers. Just as I was getting uncomfortable on the table over walked Julia with a needle longer than my Spice Girl CD collection. She put the needle in my back right at the bottom. The pain was so awful I thought the bastard needle had paralysed me. Actually, scrap that, I sort of wish I did have a bit of temporary paralysis because what she said next nearly did me in. ‘Nope, there’s none there.’ No what, babe? Meningitis? Infection? DVD box set of Sex and the City? WHAT, BABE?
‘There’s no synovial fluid there, Doctor.’
‘Try again, Julia,’ he said in his monotone voice. She tried again. I was in agony, and lo and behold this time, nothing again. Now, wait for it . . . REPEAT SEVEN FUCKING TIMES. That child stabbed her way through my spine seven times to get a drip’s worth of this magical fluid. ‘All done,’ she said gleefully. And done is exactly what I was.
My back was black with bruises and I could hardly move. I didn’t sleep that night waiting for the results, I was so nervous, and I’m sure the night porter kept staring at me through the curtain, but I can neither confirm nor deny that rumour. Day three of hospital traumatisation. Results day. In walked Dr Whateverthefuckhisnamewas with little Julia shuffling in behind him. ‘We’re just going to take a quick blood test,’ she said with her sadistic smirk on her face. I swear she was like a devil child. In went another needle into my arm and off they trotted without a single word. Day four now! Day four! Four days of this experience and surely now I was finally going to get some answers. In they walked in again, the both of them and now I’m not even naming. He said, ‘Well, the good news is you don’t have meningitis.’ Praise him. He then said, ‘But looking at your blood test, you are running low on Vitamin D. Do you get much sunlight?’ Much sunlight? It’s late November and we’re in Basildon, mate, not the Bahamas. What the fuck do you think?
‘Not really,’ I quietly replied. All I could see was Julia nodding with her smug look.
It turned out I was going to work at 7 a.m. and it was dark, I was leaving at 5 p.m. and it was dark. During my lunch I’d be in artificial light in the shopping centre and I wasn’t getting any natural light for, like, ever. So it was all down to that. I asked them what did the synovial fluid come up with then? Now what you are about to read are this bloke’s exact words, and I quote: ‘Oh, we didn’t end up getting a lot from that in the end. It was extremely beneficial to us though, as Julia is one of our newest trainees and after doing your procedure she feels a lot more comfortable with her exams coming up over the next few weeks.’ I paused. Old Linda paused. After what seemed to me like eighty-seven minutes I said, ‘Her what?’ He looked at me as his proud smirk slowly slipped away. I WAS FUMING! This child had literally stabbed me in the back seven times to get a smiley-face sticker on her coursework. I felt violated. I can’t really remember what happened next and I’m not going to sit here and make it up. I’d like to say I slapped Dr Whateverthefuckhisnamewas and that Julia failed every exam, but I do remember going home and sitting in the garden under an overcast sky in the hope of feeling better. The trauma still haunts me to this day, and whenever I watch Julia Roberts in a film, I think of the child. Chilling.
One afternoon, soon after the ordeal, I was visiting one of my friends at her house. It was a normal day just like any other. I called my mum to come and pick me up late afternoon, which she did. Everything was normal. She arrived and I got into the car and headed home. Everything was normal . . . Actually, no it wasn’t. The second I got in the car I just got this feeling in my stomach. It wasn’t pain, or indigestion, but this sort of nervous pain. Instantly I knew what was coming. OUT OF NOWHERE I realised I was about to tell my mum that I was gay. Where the fuck it came from I do not know, but I knew it was coming. The journey home to my house was around twenty-five minutes. The whole time I didn’t speak a word. I was sweating and felt sick. Why now? Why is this happening now? Just forget about it, I thought. But I couldn’t.