Mo Fanning

Weight loss – simply the BEST

February 25, 2020 by Mo Fanning Leave a Comment

Have you ever stumbled upon a magazine called ‘Best’? You’ll find it in every low-grade supermarket next to the crossword puzzle books. They’re designed to sharpen the mind. ‘Best’ sets out to ruin it.

Reading ‘Best’ is like having your nasty aunty Pat round for tea. It’s sixty pages of fat-shaming, miracle diets and Meghan Markle bitchery, interspersed with motivational stories of women who lost weight by eating tar. Two dry heaves and a dizzy turn later, they’d lost a pound. There’s a problem page. Written by Vanessa Feltz. Who in their right mind takes advice from Vanessa Feltz?

‘Best’ is addictive. I have two settings. Worried for the world and craving cheese, and yet ‘Best’ has me convinced I’ll lose ten pounds in ten days by committing to their good sleep diet. You swig half a pint of Night Nurse before each meal. By the time desert arrives, you’re face-down in a plate of spaghetti.

Most mornings, the man in my mirror looks like something the dog slept on. My body isn’t a temple. It’s a phone … on emergency battery.

Lose weight … change everything

I know I should change my diet. Healthy eating involves more than an ability to refuse doughnuts. We’re talking serious lifestyle changes. Much as I’d like to fit 32-inch jeans, I’m not getting up two hours early each morning to turn a head of cauliflower into couscous for an exciting weekday supper.

I refuse to follow any diet plan where breakfast is two almonds and you get to lick an apple for lunch. You skip dinner to cry at photos of yourself aged 17 in Speedos.

I’ve tried a Fitbit. It was like having the bitchiest of gay best friends on my wrist. Most days, I spend my time counting down the hours until I’m allowed to eat again.

Meditation appealed. I loved being able to call lying down a lifestyle choice. I downloaded a class and put it on, before promptly falling asleep. At three in the morning, I woke starving and ate a whole bag of oven chips. Still frozen.

I’ve become an organ donor. It’s one way to make sure I get to wear slim-fit coffin jeans.

Whatever ‘Best’ wants me or its target market readers to believe, dealing with grief is hard when I can’t even drown my feelings in food.

I’m sorry you’ve lost your mother: they make it sound like I’ve left her in another room

February 15, 2020 by Mo Fanning Leave a Comment

My mother has passed away. At 1.30 this morning, I woke. My husband, too. He trailed downstairs to her temporary bedroom, and I listened for the rattle of laboured breathing. Seconds later, he appeared and asked me to stay calm.

Storm Dennis is due in her part of the country any time now, already raindrops ricochet off the industrial-strength window shutters I always judged OTT. My mother lived for the seven-day weather forecast. To know her death coincided with headline-making winds would bring tickled pink pleasure.

First the 2am district nurses, and then a funeral director who carried out low-key choreographed manoeuvres under cover of night offered sympathy. ‘I’m so sorry you’ve lost your mother,’ they each said and made it sound like I’d left her in another room.

Loss doesn’t cover what I feel, even though this death came after two months of decline. Nursing her through the last four weeks of her illness was so intense, it’s overwhelming to suddenly find her gone.

What have I lost?

Until today, whenever something monumental happened in my life, I told her. For once, she was aware of the shifting sands before I was. Who do I tell stuff now?

Having lived with the soundtrack of her favourite radio phone-in shows, I’d expected to find relief in silence. The tumbling away of the ground was unexpected.

Without pain

Together with my wonderful, patient and caring husband, I brought my mother home, and obeyed a series of often irrational demands. A bigger television even though she was blind, new garden furniture and a 42-point master service of the car she hasn’t driven in a year.

She died without pain or anxiety (thanks to class A drugs) and with dignity (thanks to Damart thermal nightwear).

She was too fond of jam, French fancies, Lucozade and supermarket whisky. A bag of sugar with a bus pass. My mother had reached that glorious age where social norms no longer mattered. She’d cheerfully point out someone fat in a voice too loud, slam her front door in the face of anyone with a clipboard, and openly bought the Daily Mail.

I’ve been with the same man for 22 years. She still thought it a phase; like selfies, fidget-spinners and casual racism. It took until last year for her to accept that when answering the phone, it was no longer the law to recite her number.

All of this I have lost, but I will never lose the woman who somehow scraped together money to make up a shortfall in the deposit on our first house, who accepted my husband like another son and who spent her last days repeating how sorry she was not to found not at her best.

Nothing good comes from the death of someone adored, but the scale and bottomless pain I feel surely signals shared love. This I haven’t lost. This I never will.

Rest in peace, Pauline. I love you.

Writing: it’s my job to point things out

February 10, 2020 by Mo Fanning Leave a Comment

A frequently quoted ‘rule’ for writing is to write something every day. No matter if it’s good. No matter if it’s bad. Set yourself a window – anything from ten minutes to every waking moment – and sit in front of a screen or an empty piece of paper and write. The idea being if you do this each day, a habit forms and something good will come. As advice goes, it sits up there with ‘sometimes, even a blind squirrel finds a nut’.

Writing isn’t a natural thing for us as a species. For most of evolution, nobody wrote anything – fair enough there’s the odd cave drawing that historians insist are early attempts at storytelling. On that basis, bus-seat sharpie-penned pledges of Kazza luvs Jez carry equal value.

Writing for many years was the preserve of the elite. Even now, it remains a strange way to communicate.

When I stand on a stage and tell jokes, I see faces. The feedback is instant and I sense when an audience needs me to clarify or drop planned patter and jump to another topic. When I write a story, my words vanish into a void. Short of the occasional Amazon review, I don’t know who reads my books or how much they understand of the worlds I create.

Writing short set-ups

I try to find something interesting and point it out. I’ll ask you to look at someone or something and understand the flaws and persuade you that what I see is of interest. When learning the language of stand-up comedy, I picked up on how the shortest set-up works best. If a comic needs to explain the premise, chances are it’s unfamiliar.

It’s not the job of a writer or comedian to ram information into the brains of an audience.

The worst writing (and comedy) happens when those in charge abandon ‘joint attention‘ in favour of trying to sell their audience into an idea or world. It’s incredibly hard to do surreal comedy or writing and do it well.

Some of the worst writing advice is to create words for yourself and never consider the audience. For me, the audience comes first. I am part of the audience, but I’m also aware when what I find funny might be too personal. I’m not here to impress with clever plot twists or elaborate language and don’t care what you think about me. I’m not in the book. When I’m on stage telling jokes, you see a version of me.

What I aim to do is point out what’s there … if you look in the right places.

This is how we function as humans. Side-by-side we scan those around us, our landscape, the absurdity and improbability.

It’s my job to point things out.

Death: Don’t try this at home

February 8, 2020 by Mo Fanning 3 Comments

My mother has been dying for 47 days and yet everyone who visits insists she looks better. They hover by her bedside and make impossible promises about things they’ll do together when she’s back on her feet.

Sometimes she manages a smile. Sometimes I do too. We both know we’re lying.

In the early years of the 20th century, 85% of people died in their home, surrounded by their family. Today, most find death in a hospital, care home or hospice. When I learned my mother wouldn’t get better, the hope for dying well became important. I made a deal with myself. She’ll end her days with dignity and in as much comfort as her catalogue of illness allows.

Most people get money in Christmas cards. Ten years ago, my mother slipped a copy of her living will into mine. This is what she wants.

Change

She’s always hated change. The Jif to Cif transition years were hell. Despite being confined to a hired hospital bed, she keeps control of the heating. I’m living in a sauna with scatter cushions.

On days when a nurse comes to change her dressings, my mother moans in pain. Afterwards, her mind melts, and sends her to wander through a mumbling, muttering maze as it mends.

Living out of a suitcase in a box room has taken its toll. Most mornings, the person staring back from the mirror looks like something the dog slept on. On the plus side, she’s now blind, and no longer knows for sure when I put on weight. It doesn’t stop the jibes.

My mother won’t get better. These are her final days and weeks. Each day, someone else dressed in blue arrives to remind us of this and hand over death-themed permission slips. When the time comes, a trained medical professional gets to dip into a stash of powerful drugs with a street value twice that of our car. Another signed document lets the same person pronounce her dead, freeing us of the need to ring around for a rare-as-hens-teeth out-of-hours doctor.

The unspoken rules of death

As this grim circus plays out , we ignore the elephant that’s not such in the room, as juggling balls and doing tricks for money.

An unspoken rule insists the living avoid saying the wrong thing to the dying. Like her visiting friends with their cards and flowers, those closet to my mother speak in positive terms, and never dare show frustration or exhaustion.

I sit next to her bed and drink tea, listening for any change in her breathing and trying to make sense of the words she cries as she drifts in and out of sleep. Late into the night, I watch TV and marvel at the self-confidence of the young and chiselled gods who populate reality shows.

Death forces you to reflect on what matters. I think it might be sex with 25-year-olds.

My mother how she should be remembered in death — Riding a camel in the 1980s, as you do

Testicular cancer: Few dinner parties pass without me tossing my scrotum into the conversation

February 6, 2020 by Mo Fanning 1 Comment

Last year, around 2,300 British men were told they had testicular cancer. That’s more than six every day. The number of cases diagnosed has doubled since the mid-1970s with 70 men dying each year from the disease. 1 in 250 men will get testicular cancer. With those numbers, it’s only a matter of time before Moonpig does a card.

Despite being one of the most treatable cancers, there remain many misconceptions around testicular cancer.

As a notorious homosexual and a big fan of manscaping, I was no stranger to self-examination and judged myself low risk. Testicular cancer mainly affects men aged between 15 and 49, with those aged under 35 the most vulnerable. I was 52: a time for allotments and escorted cruises down the Rhine.

Instead, I sat through a scrotal ultrasound (as much fun as it sounds), trying to read the expression on my consultant’s face. She sent me to sit in a different part of the hospital where another doctor came to tell me I had cancer. He explained the operation (in and out within the day, literally) and what might happen afterwards. I may be anxious, suffer mood swings and feel tired. I joked about how this suggested I must have had cancer since the age of fifteen. He didn’t laugh.

Have a feel

A study by cancer charity, Orchid discovered that 67% of British men don’t know how to check their balls. Once a month, have a feel. Ideally after a bath or shower. The most typical symptom is a painless swelling or small pea-sized lump in one ball. If one of your balls seems firmer, or looks different to the other, if there’s a dull ache or sharp pain or a sense of heaviness–even if not constant–you need to get yourself checked out. Most lumps or swellings are not a sign of cancer, but they should never be ignored.

And if it is cancer, trust me, the fear of becoming a uniballer is more daunting than the reality. Few dinner parties pass without me tossing my scrotum into the conversation. 80% of cases are cured completely, that rises to 98% if caught early.

Fast forward, and I’m about to mark two cancer-free years. Unless Mooonpig gets its act into gear, I won’t celebrate, but it’s a milestone I’m relieved to reach. Losing one ball is no big deal. I’ve been with the same bloke for over twenty years, so it was largely decorative. Most men of my age don’t so much have a scrotum as a windsock, so the nip and tuck of surgery has given me that much-sought-after youthful look.

Under surveillance

Men who’ve had testicular cancer once are 12 times more likely to get it again. The NHS has me covered. For ten years, I’ll be ‘under surveillance’ and not just by Cambridge Analytica. For the first few years, every three months, there’s a blood test, every six a scan. It sounds intrusive, but I see this as insurance. The rest of you bounce from one credit card bill to the next, not knowing what’s going on inside your bodies. I get a regular MoT.

My life changed after cancer. In a good way. As soon as I knew I wasn’t going to die right away, I returned to writing – after years of putting it off ‘until tomorrow’. I went from knowing next to nothing about the subject, to talking about testicular cancer to everyone. Online and in the office … anyone willing to listen. I summoned up the nerve to try stand-up comedy – turns out that’s even scarier than losing a ball.

Most people suffer poor mental health post-trauma and I can’t deny there are days when anxiety wins. I no longer drink and that leaves me with little in the way of release when the world grows big and scary. I’ve reached the age when the people from Saga Insurance stalk me with junk mail and Facebook suggests male incontinence pants. But last year, I got married to a man I met 22 years earlier. I told jokes on stage in front of 200 people and finished work on my next book.

Cancer doesn’t need to be an end. In almost every case, it’s the beginning.