Best Day of My Life: True stories to inspire, move and entertain - Told by a cross-section of the UK's celebrities and courageous everyday people. Giles Vickers Jones
surfboards, though, those waves were still the most exhilarating and terrifying things I’d ever seen. The Beach Boys were probably playing on a radio somewhere, but I didn’t notice.
May 1975: running away from school. Standing on the A1 at Scotch Corner with my thumb in the air, waiting for (I imagined) an 18-wheel Mack truck to pick me up and carry me to (I imagined) Badassville, South Dakota, where I was going to begin living my personal road movie. I got as far as Pontefract, but for a moment back there…
Incidentally, I believe that every great day has its obverse, the bloody awful day. (If you believe in that sort of rubbish, you’ll say it is all part of some great cosmological balance.) The obverse of my running-away-from-school day followed hot on its heels, the day after in fact. It was my return to said school. Parents, never send your child to a boarding school. They are not run by nice people.
October 1976: Middlesbrough 3, West Ham United 0. I’d been to football matches before and I’ve been since. This one, an autumn fixture in a season when Boro competed for nothing in particular, stands out in my memory like a French manicure on a bricklayer. Most of the previous times I’d seen my team, they’d been prosaic at best. This time, though, it was like watching Real Madrid. OK, Real Madrid playing in clogs and lost in a miasmic smog of chemical discharge from ICI Billingham. But West Ham did have Clyde Best, who, in the fug, looked vaguely like Eusebio. It could have been a Real–Benfica European Cup tie, then. For the record, the goals came from Armstrong, Foggon and a beardy Souness.
November 1978: the Clash, Middlesbrough Town Hall. Two golden memories set in Middlesbrough? I suspect that’s two more than it has ever been awarded. This was one of many times I saw the brilliant Clash, but this show was definitely the best. They were promoting their second album, which wasn’t their finest. Maybe that meant they had to work twice as hard and play twice as loud to compensate. Who knows? Whatever their motivation, they were possessed and they blew me away. And they literally blew the glasses off my face, which were crushed beneath 500 bouncing pairs of DMs. Hooray! They were vile glasses.
31 December 1993: New Year’s Eve in balmy St Lucia. Like, duh, of course it was good. But believe me, I’m not a big one for parties, especially New Year parties. For a start, parties involve dancing. To say I have two left feet is an insult to left feet everywhere. I hate dancing. But for a full 60 minutes I achieved a nirvana state of drunkenness where I dumped my inhibitions at the foot of a palm tree and believed I could groove like MC Hammer (ridiculous pants, but, admit it, the man could dance). Miraculously – and this was what made the moment so special – Maria had reached an identical state of grace. ‘You didn’t tell me you could dance,’ she squealed delightedly. I should point out that Maria is, among other things (one of them being my wife), a dance teacher. Consequently, she has Very High Standards – which, for a glorious hour, she tossed wantonly to the wind.
October 1999: the birth of Holly. I swore to myself that I wouldn’t mention my kids in this piece. But when your daughter is born within a couple of hours of a publisher saying yes to your first novel, well, that’s a pretty amazing day and it would be dishonest to ignore it. I didn’t actually get the call telling me about the book deal in the labour room. No mobile phones allowed, you see. I had to wait till I got home. There I was, staring at my gorgeous baby, my agent in my ear telling me that, given a fair wind and a decent royalty rate, I might actually be able to afford to keep this vision in Disney Princess outfits.
Tomorrow: I just know it’s going to be an amazing day.
TV Presenter
My name is Dave Berry and I’m a 23-year-old TV presenter from South London. Well, actually I’m 29. But everyone in my industry lies about their age. In fact, the only reason I’ve come clean is because once you’ve read my story you won’t have to be Columbo to work out the truth.
It was 14 September 1988 and I was celebrating my ninth birthday (see, I told you it wouldn’t take long). The whole shebang started with the arrival of my friends at my house. They were all there: Paul Heyes, Jack Kennedy, Aiden McConville, Andrew Clark and the black kid in the A Team jumper whose name I could never remember.
My mum and dad, God bless them, had even bunged my little sister a glo-worm sleeping bag to keep her quiet when I opened my presents. So, in a nutshell, I was ready to rumble. Now, in 1988 in Charlton, Southeast London, there were three things that made you a cool kid: 1) being able to do an ‘olly’ on a skateboard; 2) having the ability to complete Chase HQ on the Sinclair Spectrum 48K computer; and 3) owning a twin-cassette black ghetto blaster with graphic equalisers. I’ve never been the sporty type so the skateboard was out and the thought of waiting until I was 17 for the Spectrum to load its bloody game from the tape was never an option. So when I opened my first present and it was option 3 – a big, black ghetto blaster – I was over the moon!!! We immediately stuck Don’t Be Cruel by Bobby Brown in tape deck A (it had twin cassettes of course) and the party kicked off … ghetto blaster … cakes … sweets … fizzy drinks … hit sister … sweets … pass the parcel … more sweets … Rocky IVonvideo … another fight with my sister … more cake …
We only stopped twice – once to catch our breath and once to open my VHS-shaped presents from Uncle Michael and Auntie Francis. They were: Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom (8/10), Teenwolf (7.5/10) and The Boy Who Could Fly (2/10). Pure heaven and on it went … ghetto blaster … cakes … sweets … fizzy drinks … hit sister … sweets … pass the parcel … more sweets … Rocky IV … another fight with my sis … more cake …
Then, after what seemed like only 20 minutes, it was time for my friends to go home, party bags in tow. After bidding farewell to Aiden, Paul, Jack, Andrew and the black kid in the A Team jumper whose name I can never remember, I was shattered, which is surprising seeing as I had just consumed 109 times my own body weight in such wonderful sugary snacks as French Fancies, Cola Bottles and Dib Dabs. However, as I sat quietly in the front room watching Harrison Ford bundle a small Chinese boy into the back of a silver Rolls-Royce Silver Shadow, I was feeling full and content. Just as the blonde one was about to eat a monkey’s brain my mum dragged me away and into the back room.
As I walked through the door, I saw it. It was black and shiny in places, red and padded in others. It was sleek, sexy and sophisticated. My mum and dad had only gone and bought me … A FUCKING BMX!!!!!!!!
And I’ll tell you this, dear reader, forgetting the time I fell off that bike and broke my nose because I was riding as fast as I could while listening to ‘Like A Virgin’ by Madonna on my Sony Walkman (yes, the one with orange foam on the headphones), I always said that if ever I was to write about the best day of my life it would be the day I saw that BMX for the first time. It was … So, thanks, Mum, Dad, Kate and the black kid in the A Team jumper whose name I can never remember. You’re the best.
TV Presenter
Presenting Football Focus alongside a certain Mr Blair … or Sven … or what about the two months I spent in Australia and the West Indies covering the cricket … or even the day I got married? They were all contenders. But I’m sure anyone would agree the following day was pretty special.
It was during the 2006 World Cup in Germany. The BBC put us up in a pretty lavish hotel in the centre of Berlin. It really was every football fan’s dream. I was practically living with the likes of Peter Schmeichel, Alan Shearer, Gary Lineker, Alan Hansen and Martin O’Neill for a whole month!
A couple of days into our stay, there were rumours of a living legend staying at our hotel. I refused to believe them until I saw him for myself. I didn’t have to wait too long. Early that afternoon, I was leaving my room to go to the gym as the gentleman in the room directly opposite was leaving his.