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Back The Funny Thing About Norman Foreman Save as PDF
Contents ( 68)
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  3. Norman
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  66. Norman
  67. Notes for next year’s Fringe
  68. Acknowledgments

When I heard the tap running in the bathroom sink and the hollow sound of Norman’s methodical toothbrushing, I sank back onto his bed and rolled into the shallow imprint he’d left behind. I lay there in his musty, boy-smelling dent and tried to imagine what it felt like to be a kid who’d lost his best and only friend in the world. Bad. It felt bad. I had to stop after just a few seconds when my chest threatened to cave in on itself.

From the bed, I could see the poster Norman and Jax had made a couple of years before hanging above his bookshelf. I knew everything on it by heart, and after seeing it up on the wall for so long I barely had to look at it to know what it said.

JAX AND NORMAN’S FIVE-YEAR PLAN

Edinburgh Fringe 2024: For One Night Only. Norman and Jax—Teenage Comedy Geniuses!!!

Steps:

1. Get to the Edinburgh Fringe, baby!

2. Get famous

3. Get rich

The yellow cardboard was way oversize for the sparse lettering of their five-year intentions, but the lack of literary substance was made up for by the abundance of carefully stuck-on photos. Jax and Norman had worked on that poster for a whole weekend, debating the position of every picture, the color of the writing, the best adjectives to describe themselves. “Teenage Super Fucking Comedy Geniuses” had been one of Jax’s suggestions. It had been grudgingly vetoed, due to the risk of alienating an older audience and a younger audience not actually being allowed to come. A fairly astute decision, in my opinion.

Photos of Jax and Norman in various poses were interspersed with cut-out pictures of Eric Morecambe, Ernie Wise, Dean Martin, Jerry Lewis, the Two Ronnies, Dave Allen, Frankie Boyle and Norman Wisdom, all radiating around a handsome, smiling man in a dapper mulberry suit. A faded Polaroid that could still make my heart creak, no matter how many times I saw it. Ah, Sadie, love, it’s nice to be nice! Robert Foreman. Norman’s grandfather. My father. Would-be comedy superstar. Actual alcoholic, gambler, benefit fraudster and, if we’re being honest, comedy absolutely bloody nobody. Although if you were a kid at a Butlin’s in the late 1980s you might have a faint memory of him trying to chat up your mother after his show.

As my eyes adjusted to a low-light focus I realized something looked different about the poster. There seemed to be a lot of crossing out, some words had been outlined more thickly than others and there was some new writing on it that was a lot fainter than the original. I tried squinting to get a better look, but in the end I had to drag myself out of Norman’s warm hollow and go over to the wall to make it out properly.

When the extent of the changes to Jax and Norman’s Five-Year Plan became clear, my heart was just too smart for its own good and attempted a double reverse spin before crashing to the floor.