I don’t have much in common with Charlotte Church (I support the ancient state of Israel, whereas she supports Narnia; she’s still relatively young and cute, whereas this ancient mariner’s ship has sailed) but something we do share is a lifetime of extreme generosity verging on the profligate, often to people who do not deserve it. As Katie Hind’s headline in the Mail squealed recently: ‘I watched aghast as Charlotte Church’s freeloading posse fleeced her in a nightclub when she was just 18 – I’m not surprised she’s burned through her £25 million fortune!’
The money I spent always had the air of Monopoly money
I never had £25 million, but I earned masses of money for a couple of decades in the 20th century and was a cash millionaire for a few years in the 21st. Lots of it went on drugs and holidays and masses to charities and beggars – but a lot of it went on friends, particularly taking them out to restaurants. I’m a very good tipper; people who work in restaurants just tend to be so much more attractive and civilised than people who eat in restaurants (and I’m including myself here) so lavishing them with cash seems to rebalance an unjust situation. But most went on my famished and thirsty friends.
A shy dreamer as a girl, I became in my 20s a ‘convivialist’ who liked nothing better than eating and drinking to excess with my chums in public places. A male pal of mine once complained: ‘Can’t you ever meet a mate for a cup of coffee without making the whole thing into a two-day drinking spree?’ after I suggested that a quick espresso might be improved by adding alcohol, dinner and eight additional people. For many years my idea of heaven was a warm restaurant, the table shimmering with the laughter of friends and the glugging of wine, and me picking up the bill.
Because I was spending my money on a thing I loved doing, it never stung. Who cared if the bar bill came to £3,000 for a London lobby party one evening at the hotel where I was staying, or that my birthday in Brighton once meant that I paid for 30 people to feast and quaff? The money I spent always had the air of Monopoly money – falling onto me in such large sums that it seemed not quite real, and therefore nothing to get upset about. I grew up working-class – we didn’t even have a car – and at my first writing job in the 1970s I was paid so little that I had to collect deposit bottles from bins in order to get the bus to work. Then in the 1980s, everything went mad-money; I found myself earning a fortune as a tabloid hack for the Mail On Sunday, and as a writer of sex and shopping novels. Nevertheless, I was always in the red, because I made Viv ‘spend, spend, spend’ Nicholson look like early Scrooge. And then came the internet – and with it went the mad money that hacks were paid. Luckily, I sold my house for a considerable whack to a developer and finally became a millionaire in 2005. As luck would have it, I was both a Christian and a coke fiend – danger, high voltage! – and the combination ensured that I spent it all within ten years. But then in 2015, I did a bit of work for Banksy, he painted me a huge picture, I sold it and I was rolling in it all over again; you can see how Mr Micawber’s ‘something will turn up’ has been my financial mantra, given my unusual life.
I was five years into my latest round of spend-spend-spend when Covid struck. A solitary only child, I remembered how much I’d loved my own company; my husband and I, who previously had maintained large and separate groups of friends, were thrown into each others company and I was surprised how much I liked it. Then in 2022, I began to write and produce plays in the Brighton Fringe Festival – my third, Making Marilyn, has just opened – and spending money paying the wages of talented theatricals seemed far more attractive than blowing it on freeloading friends. So now I’m not strictly rich – but I feel rich, as there’s nothing I want I can’t afford. (I already have the things I need – and money can’t buy them.) I haven’t ended up in penury, as many predicted; though my swimming-pool-and-cocaine years are gone, I’ve got a tiny perfect flat on the swishest seafront avenue in Hove. I haven’t taken or craved drugs in nearly a decade and my clothes come from the charity shop where I volunteer. I’m now planning a cheap summer; my delight in finding that espresso martinis are £7 a pair at Wetherspoons filled me with childish wonder as I’m used to pay 15 quid for a cocktail at the bars I frequent. I’ll probably revert to my extravagant self at some point; about to turn 65 and with no mortgage, I have come to find the words ‘equity release’ to be exquisitely lovely.
But next time, I’ll appreciate money all the more – and I’m still not sorry I spent it. When I look at stingy people, they remind me of dung beetles crouching on their fetid heaps. The super-rich I admire are like J.K. Rowling, who went from billionaire to mere multi-millionaire because she gave so much moolah away, and Andrew Carnegie who said ‘he who dies rich, dies shamed’ – or the very rich man who gave a fortune towards cancer treatment for a child he had never met and on being told that it had been a con, is said to have exclaimed ‘Thank the Lord!’ ‘But you were conned!’ replied the astonished news-breaker. ‘Yes – but if this one isn’t real, there’s one less child with cancer!’
Because you can’t really take advantage of a generous person; in the end, the only person you rob is yourself, because paying one’s way in this world is one of the great markers of self-respect. I started this essay intending to bury my freeloader friends – but I find myself wanting to praise them instead, as they were the chorus line who assisted a girl from a humble background in feeling, for a couple of decades, like the richest broad in the world. I look back at the many-mawed monster with something like affection now; when I think of the thousands of restaurant meals I’ve hosted, it’s not the food I remember but the faces of my companions showing amusement, shock and occasionally outright revulsion as I entertained them. Those days are gone for good and I don’t miss them, but they will always recall for me the beautiful quote by F. Scott Fitzgerald from the essay Early Success: ‘When the fulfilled future and the wistful past were mingled in a single gorgeous moment – when life was literally a dream.’
Making Marilyn can be booked for Saturday 4 May here. Friday sold out!
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