This Is Your Life Read Free

and famous comedian, actor and entertainer, so I have taken the trouble to plan it all in advance.
    It’s like everyone else in my class gets their homework and starts writing an essay straight away without doing a plan first, and surprise, surprise, they get a C+. But I do a plan beforehand on a separate piece of paper like Mr Stock says and I always get an A or A- (except one D- which doesn’t count because I wasn’t there when we did ‘Lord of the Flies’). And then everyone leaves school and they don’t do a plan of what they are going to do any more than they ever planned their essays and so it’s no wonder they have lives that are only C+. So I am now going to write a plan of everything I am going to do on a separate piece of paper, and that is why in my life I think I am going to get an A or A- unless something really terrible that’s not my fault happens, like I get bitten by a dog in France and catch rabies.
    I should say that I only want to be really successful so that I can help those who through no fault of their own are less fortunate than myself. It’s not for my sake that I want to be a celebrity or anything. I only want to be really famous for doing good for others, not for shooting John Lennon or something like that. And if I was really rich I’d be able to give some of my money away to charities and stop people pouring lots of oil into the sea near where there are lots of gannets. Instead they should be made to give that oil away to people in the third world who probably don’t have any oil of their own.
    The important thing, Jimmy, James (people call you James now like you always wanted them to), is how you use your good fortune, although it won’t just be good fortune, you will have worked very hard for it as well. I mean, OK, so you’re fabulously rich and everything but at least you earned every single penny through your own efforts. Just because you are really important now does not mean you have to be all pompous and stuffy. On the contrary, it means you can be the kind of adult who still wears jeans, for example. And when a group of sixth-formers come to hear you give a lecture about all your work for animal charities, you could turn the chair the wrong way round and sit on it back to front when you are talking to them.
    But I’ve been going on too long again (just like my homework!!) and so I will stop now and write again in a few days’ time. When I’ve finished all these letters I’ll put them in a shoebox in the attic, so if you’ve forgotten where you put this letter twenty years ago and you can’t find it, that’s where it will be.
    Mine sincerely,
Jimmy
    A year before I was to make my showbiz debut at the London Palladium, I was indeed performing for a living, albeit to a different sort of crowd. Many entertainers boast of playing difficult audiences. I’d never played the Glasgow Empire on a wet Tuesday in February, I’d never done an open spot at the Tunnel Club in Woolwich, but no performer could have had a tougher grounding than standing up and talking for a hour in front of the beginners’ class of brain-dead teenagers at the Sussex Language Centre. To say they were slow to respond would suggest any response whatsoever. Teaching English as a foreign language to this particular group was like explaining quantum physics to a bowl full of goldfish, except at least goldfishes close their mouths occasionally.
    The beginners’ class at the Sussex Language Centre was where they sent people if they were unsure whether or not they’d come out of a coma. The students would sit at their desks, slumped forward and staring blankly at me, as I cheerily spouted an endless stream of meaningless syllables at them. ‘Blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah? Blah! Blah blah, blah blah blah, blah blah blah! Blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah.’ I did actually say that to them once just to see