We've all been there: in a "relaxed" state among friends talking complete and utter rubbish. For English entertainer/broadcaster Tony Hawks, however, there was a price to pay the next morning. Lying beside his bed was a piece of paper which read "I hereby bet Tony Hawks the sum of £100 that he cannot hitch-hike round the circumference of Ireland with a fridge within one calendar month". The previous night, evidently, a conversation about his friend's new fridge and some unrelated reminiscences about a holiday in Ireland had coalesced in the wee small hours to prompt Hawk's assertion that said objective would be easy. A sum of money was agreed and the bet was laid.
Being a gentleman of the old school, he couldn't ignore the bet which had a quasi-legal status in that it had been signed by both parties. Hawks then spent the next few months planning his "excellent adventure" by poring over maps of Ireland and making phone calls to the bemused staff of local department stores - "how small is your smallest fridge?" By one of the strange quirks of fate that seem to bedevil Hawk's life (which is just as well, because he makes a living as a comedian) the night before he was due to begin his ill-advised Celtic odyssey in May 1997, he was performing in front of Prince Charles at a royal gala night. After the show, as the prince was shaking the hands of all the performers and making small talk, he happened to ask Hawks what he was doing next: when Hawks told him, the Prince looked at him strangely and moved swiftly along.
Starting off his hitch-hiking in Cavan (for no particular reason), Hawks's journey was considerably eased by the fact that someone in a bed and breakfast he was staying in, suggested he ring RTE's Gerry Ryan Show to talk about his plight, and Hawks soon found himself embraced as a mad English eccentric by Ryan's nationwide listenership. Over the course of the trip, Hawks had an almost pathetic grip on the public's imagination as he found himself being feted in almost every town and village along his eccentric way. The fridge which was a bit of cop out in that it was on the "quite little" side became a totem in its own right. It was named and baptised by a Mother Superior, given its own bar stool and its own bed and was once taken surfing off the coast of Sligo. Hawks was transformed into "Fridgeman" for the duration of his stay and received a mock hero's reception when he arrived back in Dublin. The resultant book, a sort of alternative Michael Palin tome, is imaginatively titled Round Ireland With A Fridge and is a far better read than you would expect. This is largely because Hawks has more than a bit of a pedigree in making people laugh: his TV work includes Have I Got News For You?, Red Dwarf and They Think It's All Over, and he hosts his own game-show about the world of advertising, The Best Show In The World . . . Probably.
He writes that he only got the idea for the book when he arrived back in Dublin at the end of the trip, but surely this is more than a bit disingenuous? Why else would someone hitch-hike around Ireland with a fridge unless there was a publishing deal already signed and sealed prior to departure? "Well maybe what I wrote wasn't exactly true, but I only decided there was a book in it halfway through" says Hawks.
It's really just a modern day version of Ripping Yarns, just another Great British Eccentric travelogue? "Absolutely, I always think there are four classes in Britain - the working, middle and upper classes and then the exploring class, and I belong to the latter. It was great fun as well. Because of the radio exposure people knew I'd be coming to their town and would have a welcome laid on. Also, cars passing me would see the fridge, know I was Fridgeman and beep their horns. It was quite a community effort," he says. Did you really tire of people asking "Is that a Fridge?" all the time? Yeah, just a bit" he sighs.
Highlights and lowlights? "Surfing with the fridge off Sligo was a particular buzz and there were some really good lifts along the way, like the travellers who picked me up near the Burren and the time I got a lift in a horsebox and it was just me, the fridge and the horses. No real lowpoints at all, the only one was way back when I realised that I couldn't renege on the bet," he says.
What about the sex thing which is blurbed on the dust jacket? "People will have to read the book to find out about that and may I direct them to the chapters called Fridge Party and In The Doghouse, but I was a bit of a wayward bachelor, as they say." Far from being a book about hitching with a fridge as a companion, Hawks has managed to introduce some surreal narratives into his account of Ireland of the Welcomes. Straying very much off the beaten path, he writes at very entertaining length about a diverse range of subjects, none of which have any connection with the job in hand, but elevate the book to something of a cult status, in that you either buy into his offbeat humour or you don't.
The book is part autobiography, part travelogue, part insane Guinness-addled ramblings and Hawks evidently had more of a Father Ted than Ballykissangel experience here. Although he can be slightly patronising at times - "aren't the locals great" - he holds it all together courtesy of his constantly bemused, "whatever's going to happen to me and my fridge next?" tone. By the way, did the fridge have any functional purpose? Yeah, it was great, I used it for my dirty washing and for general overspill from my rucksack. It really took on a life of its own - one night, some people who knew my comedy background asked me to get up and do some stand-up in one of the towns and when I found myself floundering, someone went outside, got the fridge and brought it through the audience to rapturous applause. It was a kind of humbling experience," he says.
Got any good fridge jokes? "No, none."
Round Ireland With A Fridge by Tony Hawks is published by Ebury Press, price £9.99