Free So Me by Graham Norton Page B

Smiths and discovered it was a large basement restaurant, all tastefully decorated in white and red with a huge collection of art on the walls, exactly the sort of place, I thought, that two rich old queens might start up. I asked about the job and was told to sit and wait for the manager. An obviously gay man came up to me and introduced himself as Mike Belben. He clearly liked me and the job was mine. I would start as a busboy the next day.
    While the job was real, everything else turned out to be all in my imagination. It was just a weird coincidence that the ad had appeared in the gay section. The restaurant was in fact owned by Christina Smith, an imposing woman who had made a small fortune speculating in property in the seventies and who was now trying her hand at catering. Mike Belben was one of the most heterosexual men I had ever come across and was just being friendly.
    I was soon to discover that Mike wasn’t hard to work for,he was impossible to work for, but, mysteriously, for every employee who thought he was an unreasonable fanatic there were ten who despite themselves adored him and would have defended him to the death. I was with the ten. Over the years he has been incredibly loyal and supportive towards me, and besides having become a great friend himself has, by some very fine hiring of staff, provided me with several of my best friends in the world.
    Mike staffs restaurants as if he is casting a play. When I started at Smiths, there was David Eyre, now a very successful chef and restaurateur in his own right, who told us stories of his childhood in Africa. I listened with the blinking incomprehension of a dog. All I could hear was ‘posh, posh, posh, posh, posh’. Phineas and Orlando Campbell were young eccentrics in training, and Eileen McGowan was a red-haired bolt of Scottish energy. Soon after, Helen Smith arrived, breezing in like a breath of fresh air from Salisbury, full of headscarves and tales of her recent stay in New York. All blonde hair and huge blue eyes that nearly exploded at the mention of champagne, she was my sort of replacement Elizabeth, except that this time my penis respected the boundaries, and as a result we are still very close. A girl called Nicola Reeder also worked there. Nicola hails, rains and shines from Leeds. She is without doubt the funniest person I know and has a heart the size of one of those freak vegetables that get seen at country fairs. Again, twenty years later we are as close as ever.
    However, the one who really rocked my world was a gay man called Syd. That was the way he spelt it. He was part of a group of Canadians all working in various restaurants around the city, and for some reason, especially given thatCanada’s chief export now seems to be dullness, they all seemed extraordinarily cool – in fact they were the ones who knew Jackie, the man who would be Queen.
    Syd was many things, but what he was, mostly, was beautiful. He had a smile that defied you not to fall in love with him, and eyes and a walk that made you blush, they were so sexual. All thoughts of Elizabeth – and indeed women in general – flew out of my head. I developed the most enormous crush on him and would spend most of my time analysing every word and glance he addressed to me. In my heart I knew I didn’t stand a chance, but in that desperate way of the unrequited lover, I secretly enjoyed my love-spurned role. I became consumed by my feelings for him, and I remember one late night walking drunk all the way from Covent Garden across Waterloo Bridge and on through the concrete plains of South London to Camberwell shouting nonsense into the streets full of nothing but wind. What were my feelings? Did I love Syd? Why couldn’t life be simple? For what seemed like hours I trudged southwards, wailing and flailing. Of course it was raining.
    Desperate, I went to a tarot reader around the corner from work. Perhaps the cards could tell me what I should do about my feelings for Syd. I