It was a minor crumb of consolation to Kent. He wouldn’t touchher with a bargepole, but it still gave his ego a small boost to know he wasstill above Andy in the pecking order. He wasn’t at rock-bottom just yet.
“Why not?” asked Andy. “What’s wrong with me?”
“What’s right with you?” said Craig from behind the bar and everybodylaughed.
“You would have jumped into bed with me like a shot fifteenyears ago,” said Andy to Kay. “I could have any woman I wanted back then. Theywere falling over themselves to get a piece of me.”
“And now they’re falling over each other trying to get awayfrom you,” said Nobby, the cue for more laughter. Kent liked the way this wasgoing. The emphasis was on Andy and not him.
“You can laugh, but I bet I’ve had more women than you threeput together,” added Andy.
“So what went wrong?” said Kent, and instantly regretted it.He knew what would be coming next and so did all the others.
“That bitch Carrie got me drunk and made me fall off thestage,” began Andy, launching into a rant they had all heard dozens of timesbefore.
Andy had never got over the one huge disappointment of hislife, the time when he really could have been someone. Back in the early noughtieshe had been a talented singer who used to get gigs in local pubs. He had thevoice, he had the body and he had the looks. It was enough to get him acceptedfor an audition for a major TV talent show.
He had made it through all of the qualifying rounds and wasone step away from being chosen as one of the finalists when disaster hadstruck. And it had all been down to Andy’s own worst enemy – the dreaded demon drink.
On the day of the final audition he had been incrediblynervous and had turned to alcohol to calm his nerves. What had started as acouple of social drinks before the show had got way out of hand. By the timethe live show began he was drunk and it wasn’t long until catastrophe struck.
He was still haunted to this day by the embarrassing clip ofhim falling drunkenly off the edge of the stage. It was still shown all toooften for his liking on various TV blooper programmes.
It had taken him a while afterwards to piece together in hismind the events of what had occurred that day. Over time he became convincedthat it was down to Carrie, the singer, who had ultimately won the competitionand gone on to pop superstardom. She had pretended to be his friend and evenslept with him the night before the live show. It had been her who hadencouraged him to have a few drinks on that fateful day.
It may even have been more than just a few drinks. He wouldn’thave put it past her to have slipped him some sort of drug that had caused him toend up in the state he had. His memory loss from the day couldn’t just havebeen down to the booze.
His singing career ended there and then. His previouspromising performances were forgotten, completely overshadowed by his finalshambolic appearance.
Andy told varying versions of this tale to different peoplein the pub on a regular basis. He altered it for some of the younger people whocame in, conveniently leaving out the bit about falling off the stage. He knew thatthey were probably too young to remember it. And even if they had seen him onTV, he was unrecognisable from the man he had been fifteen years ago.
It was usually the girls that he tried to impress, but it didn’tget him anywhere. Whether they believed his exaggerated tales of his rockstarpast or not, their perceptions of him ranged from at best ‘sad old git’ to atworst ‘dirty old man’.
The ones who thought he was dirty old man were usually theones that Andy had been over-lecherous towards and they had made numerouscomplaints about him to the bar staff. These incidents were becomingincreasingly frequent but Craig always managed to smooth things over.
Despite the fact that he was an incredibly annoying drunk,Andy was never violent or abusive. The bulk of the complaints were down to eitheroutrageously sexist remarks or trying to get far too up close and personal withgirls half his age. Craig put his behaviour down to Andy “being a character,” andgave the offended party a free shot and that normally sufficed.
Andy interpreted Craig’s support as friendship but it wasn’treally. It was all about the money. The pub trade was going through a toughtime. The smoking ban, ever-increasing rents, a move towards drinking at home,and various forms of rival entertainment were all taking a savage toll on hisbusiness. The likes of Andy were a dying breed, but without them the pubs woulddie, too.
It took about two minutes of incoherent rambling for Andy toget all of this off his chest, by which time most of the others weren’t evenlistening. Kay had left her wine glass on the bar and gone to the toilet to getaway from it. The only one who was listening was Kent. It was giving him some foodfor thought.
If there was ever anyone crying out to go back and relive aday it was Andy. His whole life had hinged on that moment. He wondered whatAndy and the others would do if they had been given the same opportunity ashim. He decided to ask him, repeating word for word the first thing the angelhad said to him when they had met.
“If only you could go back, eh?” he asked.
Andy looked at him, gratefully. It was rare for anyone toshow any interest in his tale of woe, especially someone who had heard it asmany times as Kent had.
“Too right,” he said. “My whole life could have been differentif it hadn’t been for that cow. I’d be the famous one now and she’d be the onesat in some shitty little pub drowning her sorrows.”
“Oi!” said Craig, overhearing. “This is my pub, you know.
