The Varnished Untruth Read online

  THE VARNISHED UNTRUTH

  What would happen if one woman told the truth about her life? The world would split open.

  Muriel Rukeyser, American poet

  First published in Great Britain by Simon & Schuster UK Ltd, 2012

  A CBS COMPANY

  Copyright © Healthy Mind, Inc. 2012

  This book is copyright under the Berne Convention.

  No reproduction without permission.

  ® and © 1997 Simon & Schuster Inc. All rights reserved.

  The right of Pamela Stephenson to be identified as author of this work has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988.

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  Simon & Schuster Australia, Sydney

  Simon & Schuster India, New Delhi

  A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

  HB ISBN: 978-1-84983-921-1

  TPB ISBN: 978-1-84983-922-8

  eBook ISBN: 978-1-84983-924-2

  Typeset by Hewer Text UK Ltd, Edinburgh

  Printed and bound in Great Britain by CPI Group (UK) Ltd, Croydon, CR0 4YY

  For Sharon

  CONTENTS

  INTRODUCTION

  CHAPTER 1: VICODIN, VALIUM AND VEUVE CLICQUOT

  CHAPTER 2: THE SHRINK SHRUNK

  CHAPTER 3: SINK, SWIM, SLUNG OUT

  CHAPTER 4: THE DEVIL, DRAG QUEENS AND DANGER

  CHAPTER 5: SURVIVAL

  CHAPTER 6: ADVENTURE

  CHAPTER 7: FOB

  CHAPTER 8: THE KING OF COMEDY KINDA LINGERS

  CHAPTER 9: BLUE HOLE TO BABIES

  CHAPTER 10: LA LA LAND

  CHAPTER 11: SHAKE, SHAKE, RATTLE AND SHAKE / FEAR AND LOATHING IN LOS ANGELES

  CHAPTER 12: IT’S NEVER TOO LATE TO HAVE A HAPPY CHILDHOOD

  CHAPTER 13: FROWN LINES, FARTING AND FRECKLES

  CHAPTER 14: STRICTLY LOBOTOMIZED

  CHAPTER 15: DOES DANCING LEAD TO SEX?

  FORGIVENESS

  GRATITUDE

  MY STAIRS

  THANK YOUS

  LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

  INTRODUCTION

  I don’t really know how anyone can have the gall to write a memoir. To do so implies an assumption that people will be interested to read it and, right from the start, doesn’t that single fact make you a prize ass? Isn’t there always a dirty little secret lurking at the back of the writer’s mind, an agenda along the lines of: ‘When you’re finished this, you’re gonna love me. You’re gonna laugh with me, cry with me, get to know me, and then you’re going to buy one for everyone in your family for Christmas and you’ll write inside “Hope she inspires you too! XXX”’? Now, I know being this honest doesn’t make me loveable, and that being loveable sells memoirs, but I really can’t lie about where I am on the endearment scale: I’m not simply ‘a lovely person’, ‘purely a delight to know’ or any of that B.S. I definitely have an edgy side, and I can’t even fake it for fifteen minutes; sooner rather than later I’m going to say something a bit raw, mention the unmentionable, or be betrayed by my wicked laugh.

  And, anyway, I’m always suspicious whenever I hear someone being described as ‘a lovely person’ – especially when they’re in show business. I always think, ‘How clever, to have been able to present “graciousness” so consistently . . . What a sneaky, undesirable talent!’ Yes, I don’t like a person’s apparent ‘loveliness’, and I certainly don’t trust it. I much prefer the dark side. When a chink appears and out flies a second or two of sheer brutality, meanness, envy, savagery or fury, that’s when I smile inwardly and think, ‘Now I can like you; I know a bit about who you really are.’

  We’re all multi-faceted. I like to think I can truly accept whatever a person despises in himself. It’s usually the thing that makes us close – the core of intimacy. My acceptance of someone’s ‘dark side’ is also something that helps me in my work as a psychologist; I try hard to avoid being judgmental of anyone for anything they might have done. We’re all just frail human animals and, given the right circumstances, we might all make similar choices. Being capable of a ‘warts and all’ relationship has meant that I have had some pretty interesting encounters with all sorts of extraordinary people. Some of those encounters have imbued me with inspiration, some have made me gasp with envy. Others have left me feeling uplifted, thrilled, protective, sad, mortified, furious, conspiratorial, confused, and even downright terrified – and that’s just outside my therapy office.

  Along with my own personal story, I’m going to write down a few things about people who have touched me one way or another – things that may amuse you (or even take you down some other emotional path) – and I’ll let you in on a few so-far-unrevealed aspects of my life. I’ll try to leave out the boring bits. And I’m going to name-drop a lot because you want me to. Oh, don’t start . . . you DO SO!

  But don’t be thinking this is easy for me. I’m darn good at getting under other people’s skin, but opening up about my own life is quite a different matter. And since I truly hate to be misunderstood, how am I going to communicate the gestalt of who I am? People who have come to public attention are portrayed in fragments, and I would be quite afraid to discover which particular aspect of me you had already gleaned. Was it ‘the woman in the American Express sketch’? Or ‘Billy Connolly’s missus’? Or simply ‘wacky, zany Pam’? Being reduced to a three-word phrase turns one into a one-dimensional being and the impression that’s created is very hard to shift. So how shall I portray myself? There are choices, you know. Wife, mother, psychologist, writer, comedian, actor, dancer, diver, gypsy, dreamer, rich girl, poor girl, beggar girl, thief . . . I am all of those and more. Tell you what, YOU decide. You decide exactly what I am.

  American poet Muriel Rukeyser once mused, ‘What would happen if one woman told the truth about her life? The world would split apart.’ No one’s personal story is ever the whole truth. One’s history is reflected through the filter of years of self-forgiveness – and necessarily so. It’s just too painful to carry the rawness of all one’s faults and mistakes from decade to decade. But self-forgiveness can be elusive; I still wince when I think of stupid, unkind or embarrassing things I’ve done many years ago, last year, and even yesterday. The most terrifying thing is, I’m still capable of being a complete idiot. Some people think psychologists are wise beings who never put a foot wrong themselves but, in reality, even the best of us can be wonderfully helpful to others yet, occasionally, utterly imprudent in our own lives. Or maybe that’s just me . . .

  It may be partly due to my sense of shame about certain things that I’ve chosen to write this book in a similar manner to the way I get to know someone. When I meet you, I might say something rather bold to get your attention and make you think I’m that confident, articulate, slightly outrageous person from the telly, but if you hang around for a bit you’ll see me pulling back and getting quieter and more reserved. I’ll put the focus on you instead, draw you out. Eventually it might dawn on you that I’m really rather shy, fairly quiet and extremely private about my life. If I trust you enough to meet you again I might be chattier, but I’ll choose subjects you probably already know a bit about – my husband, Strictly Come Dancing, Not The Nine O’Clock News, books I’ve written. As we get to know each other more, I might begin to reveal more in stages, natter about my family, perhaps, but always being quite wary – and I’ll watch carefully for any small sign that you can’t be trusted (and if I see one, I’ll snap shut like a spring-box). But if you can tolerate my prickliness, you may
eventually get to know who I really am, and then – if I feel you accept me, warts and all – you’ll be my friend for life.

  I suppose I’m a bit of an anomaly. Human beings go through different stages and at my current age I should probably be taking it easy and reflecting on the past. To a certain extent I can manage the latter, but there’s no way I’m ever going to settle gently and gracefully into my final decades. You’re about to learn just how vigorously I’m railing against natural physical decline but, actually, I’m ambivalent about the challenge of facing the years ahead. In many ways, growing old gives us licence to be who we really are and, in the past, I suppose I have often felt I needed to hide parts of myself for fear of not being accepted, or in order to try to impress. But there’s just no point in pretending any more. And there have been many instances when I’ve been presented to the world by others, in whatever way they saw me – even times when I had to live meekly with blatant untruths – and that has left me with a magnitude of shame that I would like to assuage. I have also lived through other people from time to time and, although this often goes with the territory of being a wife and mother, it’s not necessarily something I intend doing forever. Yes, I wrote my husband’s biography and a follow-up book about him, which took the best part of two years of my life, but it’s high time I told my own story. Discovering who I really am now – and being unafraid to let it be known – is a daunting but delicious task.

  The one thing I know about myself for sure is that I am ridiculous. My husband and children know it, and you will, too. I think I am also passionate and brave (judge for yourself), although apparent fearlessness usually hides deep-seated, abject terror. I’m also a compulsive caretaker, and I’m not proud of that because it’s unhealthy (I’ve been working on it for twenty years but it’s still well entrenched). I am hopelessly optimistic, yet, paradoxically, way too serious about certain things, and I have a very low threshold of boredom. So adrenaline is my drug of choice – which leads me to seek adventure wherever I can find it, whether that’s diving with tiger sharks, sailing round the world, or hanging out with people who dance with crocodiles (yes, really). No, I’m not your usual bearer of a bus pass – you may even think I’ve lost a few marbles here and there. If so, I thank you for the compliment. I’ve been flirting with crazy my whole life; one day I might just achieve it.

  Chapter One

  VICODIN, VALIUM AND VEUVE CLICQUOT

  Just before last Christmas, I broke a tit. It’s not the same as breaking a fingernail (if only it were that simple). Far from a quick trip to the manicurist, reparation involves surgery, cash and some hard-core narcotics. The tragedy occurred in a jive club near Madison Square Garden in New York. I love swing – one of my favourite dance styles (I’ve continued to enjoy social dancing since doing Strictly Come Dancing). Anyway, my wonderfully optimistic partner led me into a crazy lift – the ‘Death Drop’. This involved me being swung in between his legs, suddenly plummeting towards the floor face down with my arms crossed, then being revolved 180 degrees to face upwards, before leaping back on to my feet. I slightly miscalculated the first part of the action (my fault entirely) and my right breast hit the deck at speed. I felt no pain and was unaware of the deflation until the next morning when I looked in the mirror and realized I had one melon and one fried egg.

  Terrible timing, really, because if you’re going to turn up at holiday parties wearing low-cut dresses, a minimum of two proud mounds is required. I love showing off my breasts (oh, shut up! They are mine – I bought them!). Could I make it through the holiday season in such a state? Probably not. Now, mine had been waterfilled so, thankfully, I didn’t have to worry about silicone leakage but, even so, this was an aesthetic emergency. Since this is a memoir, i.e. about memories, and getting a flat tyre is currently one of my most striking, recent memories, I’ll tell you what I did about it.

  See, this chapter is really still part of my introduction. I’m being deliberately provocative as a distraction – for myself, as well as for you – because I’m really nervous about telling you certain more serious things about me. There are things in my past that still produce strong feelings in the wee small hours, and I’ll get to them soon but, for now, I’m just going to be a bit of a loose cannon and talk about my breasts. Believe me, body modification is the easy stuff. You’ll find out some seriously dodgy things about me but I do think you ought to know right away that one of the ugliest things about me is my refusal to age gracefully. I’m as vain as vain can be and would totally sell my soul to the devil to be a babe forever. Thank God for Botox, lipo and the surgeon’s knife. However, I must point out that this is not just all about pleasing myself or getting wolf whistles. Since I inflict my image on others via TV and other media, I’m actually being thoughtful. Be grateful, people; I tweak myself cosmetically as a public service.

  So now I’ve opened my big mouth about having had surgery (as if you hadn’t already noticed!), I might as well tell you about the latest: I needed re-inflation, but finding the right nip’n’tuck merchant wasn’t easy. The surgeon who worked on me in the past has now retired, so Dr Bev Hills was my knight in shining armour – and also my harshest critic. ‘Well, I can perk up that right puppy but, in any case, you’re about due for a bit more tweaking, aren’t you? And you lost weight too quickly on that dance programme – your skin’s sagging. Shall we take care of everything at once?’ Now, to put this in perspective, I was fairly fresh from the Strictly tour, during which I was expected to share a dressing room with the unbelievably gorgeous pro dancers. Ola Jordan, for example, the adorable siren married to my temporary dance paramour, James. And Kristina, the Russian diva, and that lanky Aussie bombshell whose name I’ve forgotten . . . oh, that’s right, Natalie. Sensational! Of course, they’re all half my age, but in my mind that doesn’t count. Why can’t I just give myself a free pass to accept that a teensy bit of gravity-induced sagging is hardly a crime? Anyway, those goddesses thrust their perfect, naked bodies into my line of vision for hours on end, and it was excruciatingly humiliating to have to sneak into a corner to try to change without displaying my own fleshly inferiority. Thankfully, salvation was at hand in the form of Dr Bev. He would give me back my bodily pride, my pertness, my youth. To hell with the risks. ‘Do you take American Express?’ I panted.

  Please try not to judge me – although, at some level I do judge myself for such madness. And I certainly admire and envy the many self-confident women who’ve never bothered with any anti-ageing procedure beyond elegantly draping their bingo wings. Fortunately, in my younger days I avoided saying, ‘I’ll never resort to plastic surgery.’ Youthful women sometimes make that mistake and, when those first saggy bits appear, they panic and have to backtrack. But, in my view, if a person really wants to stop the clock, she should give it her best shot. Mother Nature is a two-faced bitch, isn’t she? So provided people fully understand why they’re doing it – and what the risks are – I think they should redesign themselves in whatever way makes them happy. Well, unless that involves altering their bodies to resemble any kind of domestic pet.

  Oh, I know I’m extremely lucky to have the means even to contemplate a major make over. And, if you catch yourself being a bit harsh about all this, please bear in mind that it’s all very well to criticize a person for attempting to improve on nature, but taking radical steps in the beauty department is not without risks, pain and frustration.

  On my first visit to Dr Bev’s rooms I was granted only limited access. ‘I had rather hoped I’d meet Dr Bev in person,’ I complained to his office manager. Hayley pouted snootily at me from behind her cluttered desk, but I stood my ground. ‘I mean, it would be normal to have a face-to-face discussion . . .’ She cut me off. ‘Dr Bev is very, very busy,’ she said, ‘and I’m not sure we could schedule you at all. But what are you interested in having done?’ ‘Generally improved gorgeousness,’ I replied. I was promptly marched to a photography room where I suffered the humiliation of standing naked against a white glar
ing background while some nurses took pictures of every tiny ‘imperfection’ on my body and face. OK, I know, like beauty, ‘imperfection’ lies purely in the eyes of the beholder, but unfortunately my eyes can’t stand some of the saggy, flabby aspects of ageing. ‘Look,’ I rationalized to myself, ‘right now I’m really healthy and fit and, thanks to Strictly, my weight is low – good time to undergo a surgical procedure. Am I goting to wait another ten years? What’s the point of looking good when you’re drooling and incoherent?’ ‘But your husband, and anyone else close to your age, has become short-sighted anyway,’ argued my Voice of Reason, ‘so, surely, they’ll overlook your wrinkles?’ ‘It’s not them I’m worried about,’ I replied. ‘Have you SEEN yourself on HD? Mamma mia! And you regularly dance tango, lambada and salsa in close embrace with twenty-year-olds – those boys have twenty/twenty vision. They can spot a chin hair at twenty paces!’ ‘OK,’ my Voice of Reason conceded. ‘You win.’

  When I finally met with Dr Bev – after a whole month of attempted scheduling – I was rather underwhelmed. ‘Oh, no!’ I said to myself. ‘Is that a toupee?’ Then I had to chastise myself for being judgmental about his attempts at self-beautification considering I was planning a far more permanent and comprehensive make over myself. He was very direct. ‘When I look at you, what I notice most is your jowls and saggy neck. What I’d rather be drawn to is your eyes.’ Excellent selling point. I showed him my tummy. ‘Three large babies and rapid weight loss – wouldn’t mind being able to dance in one of those dresses with the midriff missing, like Flavia Cacace . . .’

  Dr Bev had clearly never heard of the tango goddess. ‘OK,’ he said curtly, ‘but a tummy tuck is not an easy procedure. Look, sit down.’ His large, hairy hands grabbed a couple of handfuls of saggy tummy skin and hung on firmly. ‘Now try and stand up!’ he ordered. I felt the searing pain as my skin was stretched like hide across a native drum. ‘What you’d have to do for a good result with minimal scarring,’ he explained, ‘is stay hunched over for a full ten days after the operation. No standing upright or lying flat – you’ll have to use a walker.’ ‘That’s OK,’ I nodded, thinking that at least I could sit and work on my computer – probably get a lot of writing done. Of course, I hadn’t factored in the fact that I’d be shit-faced on Vicodin and nothing I’d write would make any sense, or that since I opted to have my double chin and under-eye bags removed at the same time, I’d also have to keep my head up towards the ceiling while seated. Kind of a racing driver position, which meant I could do nothing post-operatively but crouch beneath a wall-mounted TV, watching Keeping Up with the Kardashians. After that fortnight I was brain-dead. I was calling friends saying, ‘I’m really worried about how Kourtney’s treating Rob . . . doesn’t she understand the fragility of the male ego?’