Drink can affect people in striking fashion and none more so than my old friend Young Dave. He was called Young Dave because of an older Dave - an influential figure in the criminal milieu of the Uxbridge Road area, so I am told - to whom he was distantly related. Young Dave basically had an artist's sensibility, and indeed could paint, write and draw cartoons to a precocious degree, as well as being able to nick books from the Uxbridge Road library with phenomenal deftness, but because of the culture he'd been born into he was regarded by his immediate and wider family as being 'weird' and embarrassingly, aspirationally 'posh'.
His worst tormentors were his two sisters, Fiona and Kasha, two right criminal types who were said to have patented a whole new approach to thieving bicycles in those parts - namely, that you didn't have to unpick the locks, you just dug up the street sign they were attached to.
They also once notoriously lured a local hard man - improbably called Clive - with the promise of a threesome and, while they were kissing him and he had his eyes closed, wrote 'I am a c**t' on his forehead with a marker pen.
As soon as I met Young Dave, about eight years ago, I knew he should be my protégé. My career has never exactly bowled along but even in those circumstances I would still recommend having protégés. Thinking about someone else's career mitigates your own agony and also if they make it big they might cut you in.
Young Dave was not an easy protégé and he never, ever, bought me a drink in all the years I knew him and all the frayed Irish pubs I sat in with him, but that was all right because, as his protector, that was my job.
He had a play performed by some Arts in the Community scheme. It was called Like an Angel who Pawned his Harp - a reference to the brand of lager - that was so beautiful and correct that I would have led the applause had I not been in hospital on some doctor's scare-mongering pretext at the time.
His sisters certainly weren't there, because they'd moved on to cars.
But there came a point where one further drink would send him over the edge. Rather like Frank Bruno, who when caught by a punch would not go down but stand bolt upright, as if plugged in to the mains, Young Dave would give the appearance of being still 'in it', when in fact being completely out of it.
Whenever he was out of it his mind would turn melancholically to a girl from Bilbao - a foreign language student and dancer with whom he'd briefly gone out two years before and now lived in Lewisham - who he always referred to as 'the Spanish bird'.
It wasn't one-way traffic, though. Once I needed a bolt hole and Young Dave put me up without hesitation. He lived with his mum - a kindly Irish matriarch with a classic line in appearing at your bedside at 8am with a cup of tea. I was offered beans on toast as well but, although Young Dave had them, I demurred.
But the day always comes when the drink defines you, and in Young Dave's case it came when the 'businessman' he occasionally did delivery jobs for held a celebration at a riverside pub. Young Dave asked me along because he said such occasions always ended up in 'practical jokes', often executed by the businessman's minder, Kung-Fu Tony. I'm always on for a bit of daytime drinking so I told Young Dave I'd see him there.
When I got there the scene was bad, underpinning the idea that there is nothing more predictable about stupid people than their sheer predictability. The businessman, a great fat oaf, was completely plastered and for his entertainment Kung Fu Tony was chucking members of his staff into the Thames. They were all emerging from the shallow water as if the experience had been great fun.
I happened to know Kung Fu Tony from another arena so I knew he wouldn't chuck me in, but when I went up to Young Dave he was practically shaking and said, 'I know he's going to do me next, geezer. I know it'.
Before I could reply Young Dave legged it up a side street and as I was standing there the businessman sidled up to me saying, 'I don't know what someone like you is doing hanging around with someone like him'.
I went up the side street and found Young Dave lying there, as was his wont after his maximum five pints, with his face a shade just less than cherry. I took him back to my place and put him to bed.
All I did then was go down to Mr Singh's shop to buy some fags, but when I got back Young Dave had gone and I suspected it was to do with the Spanish bird.
He rang me at about 11pm from Lewisham. I was amazed he'd got that far since he was brassick.
'How did you get there?' I asked him.
'I just leapt the barriers, geezer,' Young Dave said. 'I'm in love.'
There were terrible scenes that night, with Young Dave kicking down the Spanish bird's front door, though 'never touching her', and the rozzers ringing me to attest to Young Dave's character, which I did.
The next day Young Dave gave up the booze and shortly became a leading member of Alcoholics Anonymous in the Uxbridge Road area. I don't see him much any more because, basically, I don't know what the hell he's talking about. I'm glad he's all right, though.
But I did run into him recently and he said, 'I'm just glad I don't have to drink whiskey at eight in the morning'.
'Young Dave,' I told him. 'It's me you're talking to. The only thing you ever had at eight in the morning was the tea your mum brought you. And the beans.' Looking at him I realised his days as my protégé were over. He had emerged from the chrysalis. He was his own man now.
As his former protector I did put in one last word of advice. 'Don't ring the Spanish bird when you get depressed,' I told him.
'I won't, Jon, I won't,' Young Dave averred, implying the slight Americanised cadences he had recently adopted. 'The Spanish bird is totally behind me right now.' I glanced over Young Dave's bony shoulder and the haze of smoke from the Bensons I had bought him, and was relieved to see she wasn't actually there.
