Dialogue: For Pete's sake keep me safe from this maker of mayhem

By JOE BENNETT

As part of his degree in theatre studies Pete had to write a play. I wrote it for him. He also had to write a thesis of 20,000 words. Another friend wrote that. And then he had to draw a folio of set designs. The 10-year-old son of a further friend did that, and got a first.

The only part of Pete's degree that was truly his was the performance. And that is apt, for that was what Pete did.

For years we worked at summer schools together. After the kids had gone to bed we would play ping-pong late into the night. Pete would cheat and win.

He'd make me laugh on crucial points, or wind me up until I flew into a rage. My game would crumble. And in the morning when I plodded heavy-lidded down to breakfast, Pete would be already there, standing on a table and announcing to the kids that he was still the ping-pong king. They loved him for it and so did I.

In medieval times the civic powers of London, far wiser then than now, would appoint a King of Misrule. For a week or two a year this character had licence to cause mayhem.

He would take his followers to church and make such noise that none could hear the service. He would organise festivities in which authorities were mocked and the eternal pyramid of power was inverted. The King of Misrule followed in a line of straight descent from that Roman rule of anarchy, the yearly Bacchanalia.

Pete was my King of Misrule. He filled a need in me for peril. I yearn for peril and inversion of the normal way of things, to see the dull and flat conventions of a tame and timid society overturned, but I am handicapped by being tame and timid.

I fear the consequences of revolt. Pete didn't. He led me places where I did not dare to go alone. He thrilled and frightened me and made me laugh.

Pete's only place of comfort was the edge. He loved to peer over the cliff to giggle at danger. Morally he was indefensible. He stole and lied and cheated and he loved seducing women. They tumbled readily between his sheets, yet it seemed that he was only really happy when ushering a girlfriend quietly out the back while yet another rat-tat-tatted at the front.

Pete once asked me to collect his car from a garage. When I arrived and told them why I'd come, they locked me in. Pete owed them several thousand pounds. When finally they let me go I rang up Pete and swore at him. He laughed.

"You look trustworthy," he said. "I thought they might give you the car. It was worth a try."

If Pete ever worried about money, he never showed it. He was supremely generous when he had the stuff and cadged it when he didn't. I somehow never minded when he cadged from me.

At the end of summer school each year we'd take the kiddies to Heathrow to pack them off. An airport is among the world's most sterile places but Pete would turn it into theatre. Our games were infantile.

Pete would climb on to a table in a restaurant that overlooked the vast concourse of the terminal and he'd pretend to fish. He mimed the casting of a line into the space below where I would get our kids to stand and point. A crowd of bored travellers would stop to watch.

Then suddenly I would run from out of the crowd, a finger crooked inside my lip to simulate a hook. I'd fiercely battle Pete's imaginary rod, sprinting back and forth across the terminal but being hauled inevitably ever closer, up the stairs and through the crowded restaurant. Pete reeled me in until I stood on tiptoe by the table.

Then Pete would take a rolled-up newspaper and hit me on the head. I fell down dead, the crowd would laugh and clap and then we'd run away, because the air police were always after us, intent on hauling us to chokey for being funny in a public place.

It doesn't seem like much. It meant a lot to me.

I've barely seen the bloke in 15 years. He's stayed alive, as people tend to do regardless of the way in which they do it. The risk-takers survive as well, or better, than the cautious.

The up strokes and the down strokes on the graph are simply steeper for a man like Pete. The bottom axis indicating time remains the same for all. So now both Pete and I are middle-aged. Tomorrow afternoon he's coming here. He plans to stay a month.

I think it could be good. I'm terrified.