Cooper Brown: He's Out There

'In the story of my life, I'd consider Sir Roger Moore for the Coop. Victoria insists it should be Ross Kemp'

Thank the Lord, I'm back, fighting fit and ready to resume my assault on the Yookay!! For those of you who aren't regular readers, I've been a bit under the weather for the past two weeks, I hope it didn't show too much in my column.

If there's one thing the Cooperman hates it's columnists who use their personal problems as an excuse to file lazy, self-pitying copy. If you're going to talk about yourself, then be entertaining!! I was really bad for a while but, I was given some magic pills by Dr Keasy, and I'm now absolutely fine, if not even a bit better than before. The only thing that I do want to get straight is that I've re-watched a TV show called The Wright Stuff that I praised last week. I must have been very low mentally because it is truly appalling. I take back anything nice I said about it. It's a programme made for the mentally ill, which is probably why I liked it so much. I think it's probably best not to review TV shows when you're mental, as you tend to like the weirdest things. Anyway, enough of all that, on with my wonderful life.

The first thing I did when the clouds lifted was to call Victoria and take her out for a big night on the town. I bought her a big diamond necklace from Cartier and took her to the Ivy where we sat and celebrity-spotted to our hearts' content. Not to be indiscreet but we spotted Nancy Dell'Olio (what is that about??), Rod Stewart and a tired-looking Sir Roger Moore.

I wandered over to Sir Moore's table and told him that I thought every Bond since him had been big gay assholes and that, if I had my way, he'd be straight back in the Aston Martin, banging the broads like a true hetero. He smiled at me a bit weirdly, I don't think he's all there nowadays. I gave him my card so, who knows, we might be doing some business and seeing Sir Roger back where he belongs before he kicks the bucket. I gave my card to Rod Stewart as well. I don't know why, I'm not really a fan and we're hardly going to see him up on the silver screen. He was quite rude and told me to leave him alone but I think that he was secretly quite excited that someone had actually recognised him. For the rest of evening Victoria and I just sat and eavesdropped and bitched about everybody in the place, it was heaven.

We played that game where you make a movie of your life and you start to do the casting. Victoria wanted Gwyneth Paltrow to play her but I preferred Tilda Swinton or maybe even Liz Hurley though she's way too old now and I've seen strips of pine give better performances, good publicity though. Maybe she can play Victoria's mother? For the part of me, I'd consider Sir Roger if he was a lot younger and more "with it" but Victoria was insistent that it should be Ross Kemp from the programme Ross Kemp on Gangs on Sky One. I haven't seen it but she says he's a real tough guy and could pull me off really well. I'd prefer someone like Jason Statham or Vinnie Jones if he could act, but this guy Kemp would do as well. Whatever, it was an incredible night out, like I'd never been away or mental.

We ended up at the Groucho singing round the piano with, of all people, Jean-Claude Van Damme. I've always had a soft spot for him. I always felt that he was given a raw deal by the critics. Steven Seagull overshadowed him too much. Admittedly, Seagull's movies are good action pieces but Van Damme's always had a little more depth to them. The guy is like a walking encyclopedia, quoting Verlaine and Oscar Wilde like they were going out of fashion. He's almost trying a bit too hard but he's a bright guy. Physically he's let himself go but I still had to drag Victoria away as he turned on his Belgian charm. She and I roared back in the Quattroporte that was showing her pleasure at being back on the road by handling like a thoroughbred racing car. The Coop was king of the road, and back in the driving seat, as Victoria found out, to her pleasure, the moment we got back to the Cooperdome.

I've been approached by about seven different mental health charities all asking me to write more about mental people after they read my "dark" columns. I've had to tell them to go away. The whole situation was obviously some sort of blip on the radar due to my change in situation with marriage and babies on the horizon. It's not that I don't want to help people who are mental. It's just that I'm obviously not like most of them and I would be giving false hope to people who were properly ill. Anyway, I do quite a lot of stuff for people already that I don't need to write about. Put it this way, I'm happy when I go to bed at night, I can justify my existence, can you?

I can only finish by quoting my new friend, Jean-Claude. I told him a little of what I'd been through these past weeks and he listened sympathetically. When I finished there was a long silence as he sat staring out on to Dean Street through the half-closed wooden blinds. Finally he looked up from his vodka martini and said: "You know, Cooper, some guys are meant to be winners and some are born as losers and there's nothing that you or I can do to change this fact." Then he quoted some lyric from a group called Black Flag who are quite hard-core, it was something like, "The winners steer the wheel, the losers feel the steel." I'm not that sure what it was but that's pretty close. Whatever, I'll drink to that. Cooper out.

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