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MAN ABOUT LONDON |
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 Chandrika Kumaratunga, president of Sri Lanka, smiles as an aide informs her the once famous Englishman Rob Taylor has returned. "He's over with," she reportedly advised her staff. |
Famous there in the past,
he's now yesterday's news
By ROBERT TAYLOR, EX-LEGEND
but still a star at TheColumnists.com
I was a celebrity once. In Sri Lanka.
I produced a TV program called "Follow Me" that was
widely seen there. I also was the actor/model in a series of
TV commercials for a brand of razor called Permasharp. Admittedly
I was pretty ‘C’ grade as far as celebrities go, but
people recognised me on the streets and in restaurants and would
call out my name.
It was fun. The concept of autographs doesn’t exist in Sri Lanka, so that wasn’t a bother, and nobody gave me any hassle. They just liked to say hello and get me to smile at them.
I left Sri Lanka in 1992 after two glorious years, and didn’t go back until a few weeks ago. I was vain enough to hope I’d still be remembered on my return. After all, the television program that I produced and appeared on was watched by a third of the country’s population, and the razor commercial I was in was shown nightly for several months on prime time TV. I was interviewed on a radio program about the ozone layer (don’t ask why), and I was featured in quite a few press articles. I think it’s safe to say that when I left most young people, at least, knew who I was.
But how fickle fame can be. During my recent three-week journey through the country, not a single person recognised me. I was forced to go around in a big cloak of anonymity, within which the expectant bubble of my ego sagged and withered. Any attempt to recreate the days of celebrity and stardom failed with quite devastating wholeness. Time had swept away my moment in the sun, leaving me with not so much as an historical footnote.
Now I’m just like any old humdrum tourist, ripe for a bit of hassle and the odd outrageous ripoff. In the old days, when given any grief by touts and street sellers, I’d bite them back with the one Sinhala expression I knew, which means “I am not a tourist!” Then it had the benefit of being true, and people realised it. This time, my attempts to use it were greeted with mirthful and disbelieving giggles. “Sure you’re not a tourist! Now how about giving me a thousand rupees for this plastic elephant?”
Of course I shouldn’t have been so arrogant as to think that I might still be remembered after all these years. But such is the distorting influence of the delicious taste of fame. Actually it’s all made me more sympathetic to what I previously considered to be the inexcusable vanity of real celebrities. I’ve heard them talk about it on chat shows and the like--about how dispiriting it is to lose fame, and how the only thing worse than being hassled by the public is being ignored. But now I see what they mean. It punches you in the stomach, and you can’t even admit it to anyone without sounding dreadfully self-obsessed. Which it is, of course, but still…
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as visualized by his friend and fellow columnist, Michael Johnson |
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I console myself that it’s better to be a has-been than a never-was. Okay Sri Lanka is a small country, and okay I wasn’t exactly a movie star, but I had my place. Actually there were a couple of embarrassing incidents, too. In my radio interview about the ozone layer I intended to say with as much authority as I could muster, “the earth is a living organism.” But the pressure of the moment got to me, and I blurted out “the earth is a living orgasm.” That’s the trouble about being a celeb. You’re expected to comment on things you know nothing about, and, invariably, you get confused.
Then there was the time I was invited to act the part of a British colonial governor at the Independence Day celebrations in the national stadium. I hadn’t been briefed properly, and realised too late, and with the TV cameras pointing straight at me, that I was expected to partake in some sort of exotic dance. Fortunately I had enough sense to realise that winging it would lead to disaster, so while various Sri Lankan lovelies performed graceful movements around me, I stood there looking like a prize cabbage with a silly hat on. But in Sri Lanka you can get away with that sort of thing.
Further embarrassment came
at the annual reception held at the very stately residence of
the British high commissioner. Invited along with a couple of
my expat friends, we arrived early and started tucking into the
copious amount of booze on offer. By the time the other guests
turned up we were virtually bloto. This wouldn’t have mattered
had not the high commissioner decided to introduce me to former
President Jayawardene.
As I shook his hand, one of my drunken friends tried to give
me a knowing little nudge-kick, but misjudged the distance he
had to stretch and promptly fell flat on his back. He was, in
every sense, “legless.” Later in the evening, I compounded
our misery and humiliation when being introduced to former President
Bandaranaike. Not only was she Sri Lanka’s first female
president, but she was the first female president anywhere in
the world. By any standards this was a great honour. Unfortunately
the old lady was sitting down when I was speaking to her, and
in trying to kneel beside her I instead landed with a thud on
my arse.
I think we were asked to leave shortly afterwards.
Such were the excesses
of youthful exuberance that were inflicted on that delightful,
vigorous and crazy country. What makes this worse is that there
were, and still are, some really dreadful things going on in
Sri Lanka.
A civil war has been raging since 1983, with the Tamil Tigers
demanding an independent state in the north of the country. It’s
a similar problem to that which exists in Northern Ireland, only
it’s several hundred times more violent. The Tigers make
the IRA look like schoolboys with water pistols and stink bombs.
If these guys plant a bomb, it takes out a hundred people, and
they’ve recently started using suicide bombers to devastating
effect.
The war rarely turns up in western news bulletins because it’s
got few ramifications outside the borders of Sri Lanka. But for
blood and gore, it’s world class.
The plus side of Sri Lanka
is that there’s nothing remotely grey or drab about it--variety,
colour and pure screwiness abound. Indeed it’s this very
screwiness that allowed an untried kid from England to start
running TV programmes.
But that’s nothing compared to the politics of the country,
which make the last U.S. presidential elections look like a smooth
and efficient process. One of the national newspapers recently
carried an interview with the director of The Commission to Investigate
Bribery and Corruption, whose mission is to “nab” (his
word, not mine) hundreds of senior government officials. The
poor guy explained that the commission has stopped functioning
because nobody had been appointed to it by the government. I
wonder why… Incidentally, the same publication had a front
page article headlined: “850 goats sacrificed for God of
Vigil.”
What happens next for Sri Lanka is anybody’s guess. I’d love to be part of its future, but any hopes of a glorious return are clearly self-delusory. Yes, I was famous once, and the world (well Sri Lanka at least) was my oyster. When I look back at pictures of myself at that time, in my early 20s, I’m struck by the cruelty of the aging process. I’ve since grown hair where I don’t want it, and lost it where I do. One or two annoying lines are appearing and the girth is becoming independently-minded.
At least I have some great, if fading memories to look back on, and a few videotapes to prove to skeptical friends that it really did all happen. But as time goes by, and as my recent visit illustrates, it all seems rather distant and unreal. Sri Lanka has moved on.
Since I got back to London
my wounded ego has given way to a rather self-pitying resignation.
Even the videotapes are fading a little and the old photos are
looking crumpled. If you once, albeit briefly, find a moment
in the spotlight, reality can seem rather empty. Such is the
price of fame.
©2003 by Robert Taylor. The photo is from the official website
for Sri Lanka. The drawing is ©2003 by Michael Johnson.
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