My Name Is Joe

Ken Loach doesn’t switch on the camera until the punch line, but through the darkness we hear the voice of Peter Mullan – “gritty, warm, with lots of energy,” according to the screenplay, “over and above the occasional smoker’s cough, rustling of chairs and a lone irregular snorer” – improvising around the following:

VOICE-OVER

It wuz Shanks here who got me tae ma first meetin’ … Fuck’s sake … Ah came in here … a cross between Rambo and a bear wi’ a sore arse … sat there next tae the door, runners at the ready, wi’ a scowl on ma face that wid turn milk … and as luck would have it, it was one o’ they real blood-and-thunder jobs.

At the top table they had this guy who had sliced up mair bodies than Zorro … he ended up daein’ life for stabbin’ a postman … Ah sat there wi’ a trace o’ a smile, a distant sense o’ satisfaction. Inside Ah let out this ‘eetsie-weetsie’ little snort … ‘Ah, that’s whit an alcoholic is!’

Anyway, this poor fucker went through the mincer … after fifteen years’ porridge he ended up in a hostel … in a twinkle, back in the jungle, back on the booze … back in the nick, back on the streets, back in the nick, back on the streets … a choo-choo train straight tae the gutter … The mair desperate his life got, ma scowl began to fade and the little smile began to grow … Another snort, ‘Ah … that’s whit an alcoholic is!’

Shanks here had an eye on me aw’ the time, and, little did I know, he knew whit was passin’ through ma tiny brain …

Anyway, poor old Zorro ended up on the streets, toes wi’ gangrene, arse out o’ his pants, matted hair, sick on his beard, you know the score … By the end o’ this catalogue o’ utter misery and degradation, I wuz nearly dancing’ wi delight …

The meeting ended, Ah shook hands with these poor unfortunates, and Ah marched oot of ma first AA meetin; and Ah thought to masel’ …

‘THE ROOMS’. ALCOHOLICS ANONYMOUS, GLASGOW

JOE

… Ma name is Joe … and thank fuck, Ah’m not an alcoholic!

I read the screenplay first, and heard the voice - authentic, luckless, defiant - as soon as I read these first few lines. I was reading it in the Horse Shoe Bar, early 1999. I realized why the voice was so vivid. It wasn’t that a picture of Mullan, whom I had seen before, was on the cover; nor was it that Paul Laverty had captured the demotic rhythms of the Glasgow vernacular. The voice was clear because, at my elbow, ranting (all those years later, still with good cause, about Thatcher), was … Peter Mullan.

The screenplay came with a copy of the twelve steps (reprinted with the permission of the General Services Board of Alcoholics Anonymous GB Ltd.) and a list of AA contact addresses (all of which, for whatever reason, were, and still are in my copy, in London - nearest tube, depending on your choice: King’s Cross or Angel, Elephant and Castle, Westferry) as well as the address and phone number of the Salvation Army. I didn’t read the steps. Mullen might have read them, since he won the Best Actor award at Cannes for playing a man trying to live on them.

Two thoughts come to mind: one is just remembering spending a good part of a good afternoon in Glasgow drinking with Peter Mullen; the other is that this is enough irony for one day.