Come, readers, and venture back in time with Lost in Showbiz: peel away the years and journey to London past. There, we can cast our eyes over an image that sums up a lost era, more outrageous and decadent than our own. Picture the scene: perhaps in the secret back room of a nightclub, reserved for VIPs, or perhaps in a humble lavatory cubicle, we find three legendary libertine pleasure-seekers, eyes wild, in the midst of a night of crazed, hang-the-consequences gratification, lines of cocaine chopped out before them. One is the late Freddie Mercury, frontman of Queen and notorious bon vivant. The second is his close friend and drug-buddy Kenny Everett, the broadcasting genius who concealed his ravenous appetites for hedonism from the public behind his “Cuddly Ken” persona. And the third? Need you ask? The third is, of course, Jim Davidson.
Such was the deeply unlikely scenario presented to readers of the Sun this week, in a piece headlined “I Took So Much Coke I Wanted Extra Nostrils Says Jim Davidson”, the comedian sharing his “cocaine hell” in order to “blast the campaign to legalise drugs”: I know, I know, thank God someone’s stepped in to put a stop to the imminent legalisation of cocaine. Let it be clear: LiS is not for a moment mocking the illness of addiction, nor Davidson’s doubtless sterling charity work in that area. It’s merely the details of his story that give it thoughtful pause. “When I sniffed a line, it gave me a huge buzz … but as soon as that started wearing off, I wanted more. I would be back in the toilets with Freddie and Kenny, taking line after line. Drugs were everywhere in showbiz in the Nineties. We would all congregate in nightclubs like Stringfellows … and just get on it.” Later he expands on the lunacy that would seize him while in the grip of the old pop’n’chop: “I’d get to midnight and I’d say, ‘Fuck it, let’s go to Guernsey’, then wake up and wonder why the hell I was there.”
Let us not concern ourselves with the doubting voices that find the idea of Davidson doing coke at Stringfellows with Freddie Mercury in the 90s implausible, especially given that Mercury died in 1991. Let us ignore those who say it’s more likely that Davidson had taken so many drugs he merely thought Freddie Mercury was racking them out and it was probably just some bloke with a moustache, much like the confusing half-hour in the chill-out area at World Dance 92, when LiS became convinced it was enjoying a conversation with Stone Roses frontman Ian Brown, who later turned out to be - as indeed he had insisted throughout the conversation - a scaffolder from Folkestone.
No, LiS wants it to be true – Rock’s Greatest Showman and TV’s Mr Nick-Nick, nostrils twitching, frantically formulating plans to head at once to Guernsey – and lives in hope of similar revelations from showbiz’s past, eg: Jimmy Cricket shooting speed with Lou Reed.
