Page 52 of Private Lives

‘Yep,’ said Sam, sipping his tea. ‘And look where that got me.’

‘So do you want to talk about it?’

Sam laughed.

‘Jesus, Mike, I know you’re casual about things, but I didn’t think you’d wait a full two days to bring it up.’

‘Well, apparently the whole world’s talking about it. I wasn’t sure you’d want anyone else chucking their ha’penny’s worth in.’

‘The difference is you’re my friend.’

‘Okay, seeing as you ask, I think you’ve been a right knob. Shall we move on?’

Sam chuckled.

‘That’s what I love about you, you always find me hilarious.’

‘Me and about a million other people.’

‘Ah, you’re talking about the past there.’

‘Come on, Mike. You miss it.’

His friend was quiet for a moment and all they could hear was the bleating of a lamb on the hillside behind them.

‘I miss making people laugh,’ he said finally. ‘Mentally I’m better, strong enough to do it again, but I’m wary of stepping back out there. I mean, look what’s happened to you. You wanted to act. You’ve become a circus show.’

‘Cheers.’

Mike gave a low, thoughtful laugh.

‘They were good, the old days, though, weren’t they?’

‘I knew you were tempted, you sneaky sod. Why else have you been writing about priests in Hollywood when you could be chatting up the local milkmaid. I tell you, Mike, you could be the next Will Ferrell if you wanted to be. You’re certainly tall enough.’

‘Give me the Edinburgh Fringe over Tinseltown any day.’

Mike’s eyes glazed over as if he was lost in the nostalgia of their twenties. ‘Remember that first show we did straight out of uni? You were bloody funny, by the way.’

Sam shrugged to accept the compliment. He knew the sharp comic timing that had won him some of Hollywood’s best romantic comedy roles had been honed in rehearsals for that very show.

‘We should do it again.’ Mike’s voice was quiet and nervy.

‘Do what again?’

‘Edinburgh Fringe. Me and you.’

‘Come on, Mike. You know I can’t.’

‘Why not? Too famous?’ he chided. ‘Your fragile movie-star ego not able to handle a few gentle hecklers?’

‘Don’t be daft,’ blustered Sam. ‘It’s just not what I do any more. It never really was.’

‘Don’t look at it as stand-up. See it as entertainment. And no one does that better than you, Sammy boy. Look, it will be too late to get in the official Edinburgh programme, but you know there’s not a promoter in town who wouldn’t bite our hands off if we said we wanted to do a two-man show.’

Mike’s mercurial temperament had undergone one of its mood swings, his reluctance to step back into the limelight, so obvious just a couple of minutes earlier, replaced by a euphoric desperation to make it happen. Sam hated to disappoint his old friend, but the thought of cranking out jokes to a roomful of pissed students seemed as alien to him as joining the astronauts on the next space mission.

‘I can’t. But you do it,’ he said with encouragement. ‘The comedy world needs a new hero.’