Over The Hill Backwards

By Damian Vargas

Fame is the worst drug of all

Sid strange had been something of a punk rock icon in his day. Unfortunately, his day was twenty-five years ago. The former singer-songwriter of English new wave punk band Tactical Chunder, had always been a slave to the adulation of fans and the thrill of live audiences. But now, at the age of fifty, he has a shedload of money but no recording contract.

The only remaining clue to his once prestigious talent is a reality TV show that makes the appalling dross on other TV networks look like Oscar-winning material. Worse still, an old enemy is out for revenge, intent on ending the Englishman's career once and for all.

But then, an old film surfaces with incriminating footage that he can use to his advantage. It could change everything. The only problem is that to get the film, Sid must persuade his old band to get back together, and given that he dumped them twenty-five years ago to go solo, they hate his f***ing guts!

Top reader reviews
★★★★★ - "Over The Hill is a thoroughly entertaining, irreverent, light hearted, fast paced and earthy tale of underhand showbiz dealings and personal redemption. Have a read, you won't be disappointed."
★★★★★ - "This is the funniest book I've read in ages! The writing style reminds me of Rob Radcliffe's lad lit books, so if you are a fan of those you'll definitely love this book. Well done Damian Vargas, you had me literally in tears of laughter!"
★★★★★ - "Loved this book it has a fast pace and fabulously written characters. I think it was originally a screenplay and I would definitely pay to see that ending with its twists and turns on screen. Could be a book club favourite I just wanted to talk about it to anyone who would listen!"
★★★★★ - "This could have been a movie -- it SHOULD be a movie! This book is funny, irreverent and has a lot of heart. There are some very touching moments in the book, and let's not forget the laugh-out-loud parts too."
 

• Language: English
• Publisher: Damian Vargas Fiction
• Release date: Dec 17, 2023
• ISBN: 9798223086666

Book preview

Over The Hill Backwards

OVER THE HILL BACKWARDS

D T VARGAS

Sierra Bermeja Fiction

CONTENTS

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Quote

1. Welcome To The Jungle

2. Making Plans For Nigel

3. Life In The Fast Lane

4. Sex & Drugs & Rock & Roll

5. Ashes To Ashes

6. Tainted Love

7. Dancing With Myself

8. Money For Nothing

9. The Fun Lovin’ Criminal

10. Nightclubbing

11. Rebel Girl

12. Automatic Lover

13. Hey! Ho! Let's Go

14. Boulevard Of Broken Dreams

15. Know Your Enemy

16. Aces High

17. London Calling

18. Ghost Town

19. White Riot

20. Anarchy In The UK

21. Pretty Vacant

22. Love Will Tear Us Apart

23. I Wanna Be Your Dog

24. I Wanna Be Sedated

25. A Small Victory

26. Los Angeles

27. Teenage Kicks

28. Lust For Life

29. Girls On Film

30. New Rose

31. Ever Fallen In Love

32. Nice ’n’ Sleazy

33. Firestarter

34. Self Esteem

35. Personality Crisis

36. Hanging On The Telephone

37. Too Much Too Young

38. No More Heroes

39. Should I Stay Or Should I Go

40. All Apologies

41. God Save The Queen

42. Rise Above

43. Cherry Bomb

44. If The Kids Are United

45. I Fought The Law

46. Blitzkrieg Bop

47. California Über Alles

48. Sonic Reducer

49. Holiday In Cambodia

50. Seek And Destroy

51. Kids In America

52. Psycho Killer

53. Welcome To Paradise

54. Rebel Yell

Thank you

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About the Author

Also by Damian Vargas

Monsters

Prologue: A Man Called ‘Anders’

Chapter 1 - Arrangements

Chapter 2 - The owl

All Saints’ Day

Chapter 3 - The call

Social media

Acknowledgments

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Punk rock singer in the middle of a crowd

It doesn't matter about money; having it, not having it. Or having clothes, or not having them. You're still left alone with yourself in the end.

Billy Idol

CHAPTER 1

WELCOME TO THE JUNGLE

Los Angeles, California

Not a single one of the departing audience members bothered to look back up at the billboard above their heads as they traipsed away from the Burbank studio lot.

The gigantic poster high above them displayed the title of the live television show they had just witnessed being filmed - ‘Escape The Jungle’ - in six-foot high lettering and featured the show’s host, the former British punk rock prodigy, Sid Strange, dressed as a poor man’s Indiana Jones. It pictured him sitting astride a black steed, whip in hand, and poised to lash out at a group of Hollywood’s C-listers, one-hit wonders, Botox-ridden catwalk models and a multitude of other barely recognisable former celebrities.

The spotlights illuminating the billboard were extinguished just as a young couple paused on the sidewalk after exiting the studio to light up cigarettes. The first, a young woman, her hair bright blue, shook her head, took a drag, and shot her male companion a disgruntled look. ‘That’s three hours of my life that I’m never getting back. Thanks for that Bobby.’

‘Sorry,’ said the young man, as he scratched at his ear. ‘You were right. We’ll go to the James Cordon show next time.’

The young couple walked away, diverting onto the tarmac to avoid a workman in a high-visibility jacket who was descending from a pair of tall step ladders. He was holding a rectangular sign printed on white corrugated plastic, which was as tall as he was. Once down to the pavement level, he leaned the sign against the studio wall at a forty-five degree angle, scanned the lettering for a moment - Golden Hits Entertainment presents Escape The Jungle season six finale - before aiming one of his sizeable black boots at the plastic, snapping it into two pieces. He reached down, collected the pieces of the shattered sign, and tossed it into a nearby dumpster.

Sid Strange stood glaring out from the window of his changing room, wearing nothing but a pair of tight black and red leather trousers and a discontented frown, and sucking upon the last centimetre of a blackened joint. He grimaced at the sight of the sign being discarded into the black rubbish container, then dropped the depleted roach into a nearby mug. He watched as it sizzled for a few seconds in the dregs of the discarded beverage, then downed the rest of his vodka.

The Englishman was tall with wide shoulders, but with the physique of a malnourished whippet. He had grey bags under his eyes and a sporadic grey-blond stubble. His hair was spiky and bleached white, his skin a peculiar pasty grey-pink sheen; the colour of an oven-ready turkey.

‘Dolores,’ he yelled, his voice low and gravelled, his accent a curious cocktail of affected British landed gentry and west coast Californian. ‘Where’s that bloody report?’

He turned away from the window, and slouched down upon a leopard skin-patterned chaise lounge as his latest assistant, a young Hispanic woman, hurried towards him. She placed her laptop down on the glass coffee table in front of the Englishman and began tapping at the keyboard.

‘Hurry, woman. This is Hollywood. You’re not in Mexico now.’

‘I’m from Venezuela,’ she said in a confused voice, then mumbled something under her breath in Spanish, while attempting to bring up the results of a social media report she had been compiling.

‘What was that?’ said Strange in an accusatory tone.

‘I just said the software is loading, Mr Strange.’

‘Well, make it hurry. I can’t ponce about here all night, darling. I got places to be.’

Strange was desperate for some good news that evening. Barry, his long-serving manager, always tried to shield him from anything that might upset him, but social media metrics were now one of Sid’s most destructive addictions. His grasp of technology was limited, but he knew that when a graph went upwards, it was a good thing, and when it dropped, it was not. Sid’s numbers had been plummeting of late and he could not understand it. Especially since noticing a Swedish streamer on YouTube, called Zak Strömberg, who seemed to post nothing but videos of appalling pranks on Hollywood celebrities but who seemed to be magically gaining thousands of new followers every day.

The woman recoiled after peering at the data on her screen.

‘What is it?’ said Strange.

‘Erm, well, there are almost four hundred hits on the highlights video on your Facebook page…’

‘Four flippin’ hundred?’ said Strange, aghast. ‘That’s shit.’

‘… about a thousand views on your YouTube channel…’

‘That’s shit as well.’

‘… sixty retweets…’

‘Shit.’

‘And just under a hundred likes on Instagram.’

‘More shit. What about Tickety Tock, or whatever it’s called?’ Dolores peered at him for a moment, unsure whether to answer. ‘Well?’ said Sid.

‘TikTok banned you. Several weeks ago, remember? After that incident with the bunny rabbit and the Rottweiler.’

‘For crap’s sake,’ said Strange as he grabbed for the laptop, peering at the screen before realising he had zero idea what he was looking at. He handed it back to the nervous woman as if it was someone else’s soiled undergarments. ‘And overall? How’s that compare to series five?’

Dolores broke eye contact, shrugged. ‘I’d have to put the data into a spreadsheet and…’

‘Make an informed bloody guess.’

The woman squirmed for a moment, peered at the Englishman. ‘It is down… about eighty percent.’

Strange’s eyes bulged in their sockets. He grabbed at his hair. ‘Well, that’s just bloody brilliant, isn’t it?’

‘It’s just a suggestion, Mr Strange, but perhaps you should consider toning down the cussing a bit. And the nudity. And the references to drugs… and illegal sex acts. I analysed the user comments on several social media platforms and it does not seem to play well with the studio’s target demographic and…’

‘You’re fired.’

‘I… I’m what?’

Strange leapt up from the couch, empty glass in hand, and strode across the room toward the kitchenette, his bare feet slapping upon the tile-effect linoleum flooring, to where a bottle of vodka sat on top of the faux granite work surface. He yanked open the refrigerator, thrust his hand into the icebox, and deposited a handful of ice cubes into his glass before reaching for the bottle. ‘I said you’re fired. I’m not paying you no more.’

The young woman, who had scuttled across the room behind him while clutching her laptop, peered at the Englishman, her face screwed up in confusion. ‘But I’m an intern. You don’t pay me anything.’

Strange regarded her for a moment, as the transparent liquid splashed into his glass. ‘Huh. Well, that explains the poor performance. Clearly, this is all your fault. You’re obviously no good. Go on. Shoo. Skedaddle. Be gone.’ He angled a boney index finger towards the door.

She snapped the laptop shut, her lips quivering, tears in her eyes. ‘Even Piers frikkin Morgan was better than this crap.’ She spun on her heels and stormed towards the door, slamming it behind her, the force shaking a framed photograph loose from the wall. It dropped onto the floor, the glass shattering into a hundred shards.

Strange stared at the black-and-white image on the ground. It pictured him sat straddled between John Lydon and Feargal Sharkey at some long-since demolished punk rock venue in north London - his arms draped across their shoulders, Lydon fixing the cameraman with his best Johnny Rotten glare. Sharkey was holding a pint glass in one hand, the other offering a single extended digit. Neither man had spoken to Sid in over twenty years.

He collected his drink and pushed himself up onto the stool at the breakfast bar, reached for a copy of Variety, and flicked through the pages before his hands froze in place over a particular article. A full-page image depicted a short, rotund man in a dark, tailored suit, sitting behind a huge executive desk. The man was grinning at the camera, a grin Sid Strange had seen before. It did not express joy or warmth, nor happiness. It wasn’t even one of those contrived ‘show biz’ affairs that you engineered to endear yourself to the recipient. No, this kind of grin acted as a portent of some perverse pleasure that the beholder was expecting to have at your expense. The grin that a Gestapo interrogator might offer, just before he gave the order to have your fingernails removed with a pair of rusty pliers, or to have corroded electrodes attached to your testicles.

An icy shiver erupted the length of Strange’s spine. His pale skin erupted in goosebumps. It was only an image in a magazine with a broad, global circulation, but Strange knew exactly who that malignant smirk was aimed at.

Him.

He lifted his gaze to scan the headline before squeezing his eyes shut in a fruitless effort to blot out what they had just read.

Nigel Eton-Hogg returns to LA, completes acquisition of Golden Hit Entertainment. Promises to clear out dead wood.

‘Muvver fecker,’ said Strange as he ripped out the pages, crumpled them up into a ball, and hurled them across the room knowing, with complete certainty, that his fucked-up life was about to get a whole lot more fucked-up.

CHAPTER 2

MAKING PLANS FOR NIGEL

‘So, tell me,’ said the woman, a young but rapidly up-and-coming journalist in the entertainment arena. ‘What was it about Golden Hit Entertainment that made you want to pay one hundred million dollars to buy it?’

Nigel Eton-Hogg sat reclined with his legs crossed on a grey leather couch in his freshly redecorated penthouse office, the floor to ceiling windows behind him providing a view west down Hollywood Boulevard. The office sat on the top floor of the building, taking up about half the square footage. It looked more like a showroom for expensive lounge furniture than a workplace, with a raised area on one side upon which sat his mammoth walnut desk. If the materials used to decorate the office had been hewn stone and wrought iron, rather than polished granite and brushed aluminium, it would have resembled the inner sanctum of a medieval ruler. Which would have suited its occupant down to the ground.

Eton-Hogg had purchased a new suit - a ten-thousand dollar bespoke affair from his favourite Italian tailor down on Wilshire Boulevard - specifically for this round of media interviews. His decision to spend one hundred million dollars on a rapidly declining, almost bankrupt television production house was being openly questioned in the trade press, and Eton-Hogg needed to project confidence. He needed to goddamn positively exude it, for confidence was the fuel on which this industry ran. You were screwed if the acting talent, producers, writers, the networks or, heaven forbid, the creditors, lost their faith in you. Royally screwed.

Eton-Hogg had contributed only twenty percent of the funds himself, but those twenty million dollars represented almost the entirety of his personal liquid assets. He had borrowed the remainder of the funds from a handful of individuals he knew from his previous business dealings in the adult entertainment world. People who preferred to remain in the shadows, where the IRS couldn’t find them. Or Homeland Security. Eighty million bucks was a weighty sum that, if things did not go according to plan, would undoubtedly cause him ‘personal distress’, as one investor had phrased it. But things would go according to plan. Eton-Hogg was determined about that. It had been his singular objective, ever since the events of ten years earlier, when that English cocksucker, Sid Strange, had almost destroyed him. But Eton-Hogg was a fighter. A brawler. He was devious, and he was determined. And since that moment, he had done whatever it had taken, grasped every opportunity that had presented itself, and worked his way back. And now, here he was, the new CEO of Golden Hit Entertainment, finally in the position to get his revenge on his nemesis.

He eyed the young woman reporter while pushing multiple perverse sexual thoughts to the back of his mind and smiled the way he had been rehearsing in the bathroom mirror these last few days. ‘We smile with our eyes,’ he had heard a self-proclaimed character growth guru say on the internet. ‘You must go to your happy place, when you smile,’ the impossibly handsome Austrian man had declared on the video. ‘If you do that, you will take the other person there with you.’

The place, or rather, the situation that Eton-Hogg was thinking about sure made him feel happy, but there was absolutely no happiness in it for the person who he pictured being there with him; the man who had almost ruined his life; Sid Strange.

‘It was a no-brainer, Natalie,’ he responded. ‘Golden Hit has a wealth of expertise, and a talented and committed workforce. The company has been around for nearly thirty years and has a history of producing out commercially successful TV programmes that have made money not just here in the US, but all over the world. Its problem of late, I have to tell you, has been with the previous management team and the disastrous decisions they have taken regarding several failing shows that are well past their sell by date. They got sentimental and soft. That changes now.’

‘Can we take it you are referring to shows such as Escape The Jungle?’ said the reporter, leaning forward a little more, a hint of a tease on her lips.

Eton-Hogg fought the temptation to let his gaze drop to her cleavage, maintained his fix on her eyes, and gave her an earnest nod. ‘I can’t be specific about which shows we will terminate, Natalie. That’s yet to be decided. I have instigated a thorough assessment of the current roster of shows and expect to review the conclusions shortly. But yes, some hard decisions need to be made for the good of the business and everyone it employs.' His mind was firmly in his happy place right now, picturing Sid Strange’s final descent into career and personal oblivion. Perhaps, he wondered, when the time finally came, the snivelling little brat would grovel or beg. God, he hoped so.

That would be the icing on the cake.

‘Okay, you can’t reveal your specific plans. That’s understandable, of course. Perhaps, however, we could address the concerns that have been raised in some quarters about how you have funded this deal?’

Eton-Hogg glanced at his PR manager, who stood a few metres away behind the camera crew, and who had suddenly adopted the appearance of an injured giraffe in the middle of a busy freeway. The man, a tall, balding fellow in a black polo-neck sweater and grey jacket, shot him a curt shake of the head. Eton-Hogg looked back to meet the reporter’s inquisitive stare, attempted to reinforce his smile - happy place, happy place, he told himself - then responded. ‘It’s not important and frankly, not very interesting how we funded this deal. What I think is important, Natalie, is that I and my backers are willing to invest significant funds here, in this fantastic city of ours, and in this great television production company.’ He kept his eyes on hers, but in his peripheral vision, he could see the PR man nodding enthusiastically.

‘You go about your business, some say,’ the reporter continued, ‘in an almost evangelical manner. Indeed, it’s been said that you often quote passages from the bible and encourage your employees to go to church.’

‘That is true, yes. I have always devoted myself to the teachings of our Lord Jesus Christ and strive to bring his teachings and those values to everyone that I work with. We are in the business of providing family entertainment. I believe that we have a duty to promote family values at all times. It will be one of our guiding principles when assessing our current portfolio.’ He glanced at the PR man again. Where the fuck is she going with this? he wanted to shout.

‘Have you always been a committed Christian?’ she asked. The reporter’s smile morphed from friendliness to something more akin to the look that someone displays at a poker table just before they lay down a hand that destroys yours and everyone else’s at the table.

‘Since the day I was born, yes.’ His face was hurting from the effort to maintain the smile.

‘Uh, huh? And tell me, Mr Eton-Hogg, how do you reconcile your religious beliefs with previous business interests in the pornography industry?’

Fuck.

Eton-Hogg froze, his happy place dissipating in a millisecond, a volcanic rage broiling in his stomach. There were so many things he wanted to say - to shout - at the smug little bitch sitting opposite him, but he knew none of those words would serve his goals, so he said nothing.

His PR manager, who had initially been as taken aback by the accusation as his boss had been, regained his composure and leapt forward, yanked the power chord from the lights, and moved between Eton-Hogg and the female reporter. ‘I’m ending this interview. Mr Eton-Hogg denies any knowledge of these scandalous accusations which he totally rejects and refutes and denies and… go… just go. Get the fuck out of here.’

Two stocky security men appeared as if from out of nowhere and forcibly escorted the cameraman and lighting technician towards the door.

The journalist rose to her feet, adjusted her skirt and blouse, peered at Eton-Hogg, and winked, before following her colleagues out of the office.

Eton-Hogg waited until the door closed behind her, then glared at his PR Manager. ‘How the fuck does she know about the investors?’

‘Someone must have let it slip. Probably back in the valley. It’s a small industry, but don’t worry. We’ll issue a denial. I know the owners of her magazine. We go way back. I will control this.’

‘You’d better fucking do,’ Eton-Hogg snarled while poking his finger into the thin man’s sternum. ‘Ain’t nothing gonna jeopardise this takeover. Nothing. You understand me?’

‘Yes, sir. I understand.’ With that, the PR Manager turned, then scuttled away.

Eton-Hogg strode to his desk and slumped down into his expansive leather chair and stubbed a finger at his computer mouse to kill the screensaver. A web browser window greeted him, displaying the latest show business news. He scrolled down the page, still seething from the aborted interview and barely reading the headlines, until suddenly, one story caught his eye.

Esteemed Indie film maker, Lennie Lawrence dies, aged 51.

Eton-Hogg’s face lit up. He slammed the desk with the palms of his hands. ‘Finally,’ he shouted. ‘Some good fucking news!’

CHAPTER 3

LIFE IN THE FAST LANE

Sid Strange glanced repeatedly at the speedometer as he piloted his old Jaguar XJS convertible along Cahuenga Boulevard toward his house in Hollywood Heights. He knew that the traffic cops liked to hide in the bushes along this section of road with their radar guns. They had caught him there several times over the years. Sid did not so much care about the speeding fine, more about the fact that they might opt to make him undergo a blood alcohol analysis. That, given that he consumed several ‘anger vodkas’ back in the studio, might create a significant inconvenience.

The Englishman had owned his purple Jaguar since the summer of 1996. It had been his gift to himself after signing a five-album deal with one of the world’s largest music publishers; the moment that cemented the start of his solo career and which vindicated, in his mind, his earlier decision to jettison his former band members. He’d had much fun in that car, not all of it driving-related, or legal, but the Jaguar, like its driver, now had its best years behind it. He was now spending a small fortune every year to keep it on the road. Not that money was a problem for the Englishman. Sid didn’t know what his net worth was. He remembered his accountant telling him it was somewhere north of thirty million a few years back. Or had he said forty million? He couldn’t remember, but there was no doubting that he could afford to replace the ageing motor with a newer vehicle. Indeed, he had owned a multitude of other cars in the past two decades - a pink, custom-wrapped Ferrari, three Porsches, and a yellow Bentley among them. He had even bought an old Model Y Ford, an impulse purchase from the estate of an elderly neighbour who had passed away. Now that he came to think about it, Sid could not remember what he’d done with that pretty little blue car. He decided it was likely still at the back of his garage, hidden under a mountain of junk. He made a mental note to ask Barry, his long-serving manager, to have a look for it at some point.

The other vehicles had come and gone, but he had never parted with the purple Jag, no matter how many times it broke down. He couldn’t. No matter how many times he found himself stranded at the side of the freeway surrounded by angry commuters and a small lake of oil. Every time he got into that car it reminded him of what he had achieved - that scrawny, obnoxious little upstart from Bagington, just outside Coventry in the British Midlands. The pale-skinned, mouthy-little shit who hated everything at school except music and art. The kid whose teachers had failed to see his potential, and who had told him and his parents that he would never amount to anything. That Jag signified the moment that the commercial music industry recognised his talents as a singer songwriter. As a star. It represented the birth of Sid Strange, the solo artist - the day he had broken free from his upbringing and from the limitations of being in a respected, but terribly niche, British punk band. The Jag was an ongoing validation of his decision to walk away from his fellow band members in England to seek a solo career in America. And he held a deep-rooted fear that the day the car finally