Life and Laughing: My Story (26 page)

The waiter said, ‘Would you like it on the rocks?’

‘No,’ I replied, ‘I think we’ll have it here at the table.’ After the meal started, the waiter gave us each a sorbet. How was I to know it was to clear our palate? My palate had survived for twenty years without being cleansed between courses. I didn’t even know what a sorbet was. ‘I’m sorry, we haven’t had our main course yet, this is dessert,’ I said quite firmly, ‘and anyway we didn’t order ice cream!’

When I wasn’t being naïve, we hit it off. She was wild and fun. I was relaxed with her. We talked easily to each other, we laughed and flirted. We didn’t mention the script, the script was history. She didn’t know what she wanted to do with her life; she had fallen into acting because of her family. She wasn’t really an actress, and I wasn’t really a writer. I had tried to write another film and couldn’t. My writing started me on the road in comedy and led me to her.

After dinner, we got into her Mini and I kissed her. I think the size of the car helped. I was practically sitting on her lap as it was. I think if she’d had another car, like an American-style station wagon, I might not have been so bold. We shared our first kiss on Regent’s Park Road outside Odette’s restaurant. She dropped me home, and I watched her chug off as only the old Minis can.

It was the perfect night. I was smitten.

She liked me. We had had a wonderful night sealed with a kiss. If I played the right moves now, she would be mine. I needed to be cool, mysterious, maybe not call for a few days. But I didn’t know anything about playing it cool. I didn’t even know ‘playing it cool’ was an option, it never crossed my mind. I didn’t want to waste any time whatsoever. In my opinion, we had found each other – let’s go, let’s start making a life together. So over the following days, I phoned her so many times that my behaviour could only be described as ‘creepy’.

I didn’t know it, but I was undoing all the good work of our night together. After days of harassing her for another dinner, Kitty suggested we meet for coffee. I was being downgraded. I was expecting an upgrade to the bedroom of my studio flat (which also happened to be the living room and kitchen), but only coffee was on offer. So we met for coffee, which served to add hyperactivity to my stalker-like behaviour. She seemed so different. I didn’t understand it. I continued to smother her, making things worse for myself. She didn’t even finish her coffee before making an excuse to leave. I tried to kiss her again and rather than turning her cheek she actually pulled away.

I went home devastated. My sister explained to me how I had played it all wrong and that I absolutely had to leave her alone for a while otherwise risk losing her for good. I felt sick. She left her hairclip on the table of the café in her haste to get away from me and I sat in my bedroom/living room/kitchen holding it, pining for her.

I followed my sister’s advice and waited, for nearly an hour, before calling Kitty. I had already installed her number as Memory Preset 1 on my new BT phone. It rang and rang but went to the machine. After several times of calling, I started to withhold my number. I was now officially a stalker. How did this happen? A week ago we were relaxed, giggling and flirting in Odette’s, and now I had ruined it. I tried her number intermittently over the next few days before she finally picked up.

‘Hello,’ she said.

‘Hi, it’s Michael,’ I said, still clutching her hairclip.

‘I know it is,’ she said, coldly.

‘You seemed a bit weird the other day, is everything OK?’ I asked, wishing I could turn back time.

‘Listen, Michael, I don’t know if I gave you the wrong impression or anything, but I’m kind of busy at the moment and, you know, I am sort of seeing someone.’

Whoever she was seeing, it can’t have been that serious because last week she was with me, kissing me. I had had my chance and I had monumentally blown it.

‘Oh, OK, really, who?’ I asked, defeated.

‘It’s complicated. I’ve got to go, OK?’ she said, winding up the conversation and ending my life.

‘But I thought,’ I pleaded, ‘I thought we had something, I thought, I just thought …’

‘Well, you thought wrong,’ she declared and hung up.

For all the heartache of unrequited love in my life, this was the lowest my heart had ever sunk.

H
₄
E
₁
N
₁
D
₂

‘“Hend”, dat’s only eight, I hev terrible letterrrs,’ my grandmother said, trailing me for once in one of our Scrabble games that were now supporting me financially. I was her friend. She had favoured me since I was a little boy, she cared for me, looked out for me and loved me. But she was cruel, cold and judgemental to just about everybody else. Jim had died while I was at university. Her living alone had accentuated her eccentric behaviour. She had stopped talking to Lucy for literally no reason; she was never that keen on her and seized any excuse to ‘cut her off’. She couldn’t stand Steve, wasn’t all that keen on learning the names of my little brothers, and when it came to my mother, her daughter, she was constantly disappointed. Her treatment of my mum was very damaging and unnecessary. She continued to wield her purse like a light sabre and change her will on a weekly basis. I was torn. I could see that my grandmother was unkind, unpredictable and destructive, but she was old and my visits seemed to make her genuinely happy. So I stuck it out. But what I wasn’t going to accept was the word ‘hend’.

‘There’s no such word as “hend”, Grandma,’ I said.

‘Don’t be zo ztupid, put it down, eight points, “hend”, “hend”!’ she said while waving her hands around.

‘That’s “hand”, Grandma. I should know – I’m a writer,’ I corrected.

‘OK, I vill do another one, but you’re not a bluddy writer. I don’t understand vot you are doing. You say you are a writer, but nobody is interrrested in your vork. You are a vaster and ven are you goin to get a girlfriend? Vot is wrong with you? …’

Just as she was mid-rant, her new Polish cleaner, Marta, entered, dusting and polishing. My grandmother had a remarkably high turnover of staff. This one had been on the scene my last few Scrabble visits. She had the body of a gymnast and seemed to be wearing some kind of white catsuit. She reminded me of Princess Aura, from
Flash Gordon
, who was responsible for my earliest sexual stirrings. I couldn’t help but enjoy the view as she contorted herself while cleaning. As my grandma continued to rant, Marta caught my eye and licked her lips suggestively and blew me a kiss. I had been waiting years for a girl to do such a thing, but the setting wasn’t ideal.

My mouth must have dropped open because my grandmother stopped her criticisms in mid-flow. ‘Vy are you staring at Marta?’ Then she turned to her Polish cleaner. ‘Marta, daaarling, go and do the kitchen now, vill you, please?’

My grandmother then turned to me and uttered a sentence I will never forget. She said, ‘Do you vant to fuck Marta?’

Now I’m sure as you’re reading this, you might be thinking of your own grandmothers. Sweet little old ladies with black-and-white photos, who make tea and have biscuit tins and make their own jam. My grandmother was part-pimp.

‘No, what are you talking about?’ I said, horrified.

‘She’s alvays talking about you, ven are you coming round, Michael dis, Michael dat. She’s after ze money, don’t flatter yourself, but you can fuck her, because I know you are desperate. You never hev a girlfriend – are you virgin?’ She was unstoppable.

‘Grandma, please can we change the subject? If you must know, I have met a girl.’ My grandmother’s reaction to this was unexpected. I thought she would be pleased. This after all was what she said she wanted for me. But her face dropped.

‘Really? You hev a girlfiend?’ she asked, sceptically.

‘No. But I have met someone, and she’s the one. I can’t stop thinking about her,’ I admitted.

‘She’s not right for you,’ my grandma concluded, based on no evidence whatsoever.

The thing with my grandma, and I suppose I was realizing it then, was that she wanted to be the most important person in my life. It was the same for my mother. My grandma never liked my dad or Steve, because she felt, in her warped way, that they were stealing her daughter from her, and now I was going to be on the receiving end. She wouldn’t accept anyone as my girlfriend.

‘Well, she’s not interested in me. I blew it, but I’m going to get her. I’m in love with her,’ I confessed.

‘Don’t vaste you time,’ my grandma replied, nastily, ‘she’s only after ze money.’

I wanted to say, ‘What money? My Scrabble winnings?’ but it would have been no use. I felt sorry for my grandma; all she wanted was to play Scrabble with me every day. But that wasn’t quite the future I wanted. When I got home, I took off my oversized cashmere coat that she had given me. It was a weight on my shoulders. It was symbolic. I wasn’t really my own man. I was surviving on £50 notes from my grandma, I was wearing all these odd clothes she was buying for me. I had dropped out of university, I didn’t have a job, nobody had committed to my script, I couldn’t write another one, and I actually really wanted to have sex with Marta.

I was twenty-one years old. What was I going to do? Who was I? But I already knew; I always knew what I wanted to do. I was already doing it unofficially. My whole life revolved around making people laugh. Every time I went out, I would come home and judge my performance. A good night for me was when I was funny. The only positive reactions to my script were to do with the jokes. I would hear people laughing when they read it, laughing out loud. Comedy was what I did. I’m a comedian. I’m going to be a stand-up comedian.

I announced the news to everybody. Here is a selection of their responses:

Lucy: ‘Brilliant, Mike, that’s brilliant. You’re so funny, I’m so pleased for you.’

My mum: ‘Oh my God, Michael, I’m so worried about you. That’s a very difficult thing to do. Your father said it was the hardest job in the world.’

Sam: ‘I’m funnier than you.’

Grandma: ‘Don’t be so bluddy stupid, vot kind of a job is dat? You vill starve if you do dat. Now, whose turn is it?’

Kitty: ‘I can’t talk right now, but please leave your message after the tone and I’ll get back to you.’

At this point, I had never seen any live stand-up comedy. So Lucy and I headed to the Comedy Store in Piccadilly Circus and also booked tickets to see Jerry Seinfeld at the London Palladium in his only London performance. It was so wonderful to witness live comedy. I loved how instant the reaction was. I was used to packaging up scripts, sending them off and a month later being rejected. In stand-up, you spoke and if it was funny, people laughed. Bang, no argument. The comedians had their own points of view, their own styles and their own outlooks on life. The audience either enjoyed it or didn’t. I had my own point of view, my own style and outlook on life, and I knew it was funny; I made people laugh every day.

I had been nervous going to see live stand-up. I was nervous because I thought that maybe I was kidding myself and that although I was funny in the pub, professional comedy might be another league of funny. However, I left the Comedy Store and the Palladium having laughed my head off, but confident that I could do it. When my sister and I went to an open-mike night at a club called the Comedy Café off Old Street, the new acts were awful, cringe-worthy apart from one, the host. He was a few years younger than me, had a beard, thick glasses and a stutter. He was called Daniel Kitson and he did worry me. Jerry Seinfeld hadn’t, but this teenage misfit did. Seinfeld delivered wonderful word-perfect routines, but Kitson was just so natural and creative. He wasn’t just funny, he had a stage presence that belied his awkward looks. I realized then that there was more to this business than just saying funny things. You need to have gravitas, the audience has to believe in you, you have to be a performer. I knew I could be funny, write funny, but would I connect with an audience? Well, there was only one way to find out.

The booker for the club, Hannah Chambers, went to Westminster School, and we had friends in common. So despite there being a long wait for a slot, she booked me in the following week for my first gig.

That week I was so terrified, I could barely eat or sleep. I wrote joke after joke of mixed quality, some bad, some worse. I was trying to write jokes in the style of Woody Allen or one-liners like Steven Wright. I didn’t have a style, I had never done this before. I compiled my five minutes and rehearsed it endlessly in front of the mirror, holding my pen as a microphone (I’ve never owned a hairbrush, perhaps you’ve noticed). The jokes were forgettable, which is why I can’t remember most of them. Here are the ones I can remember:

‘I remember when I was born because it was the last time that I was inside a woman who looked genuinely pleased when I got out.’

‘I have a car, it’s a good runner. It gets me from A to B, except I live in Kew.’

‘There are a lot of gay politicians. It gets confusing when they’re in the closet, then they’re in the cabinet, then they’re in the closet and in the cabinet, then they’re out of the closet but still in the cabinet, then they’re out of the closet and the cabinet … and on to the back bench.’

I was mid-rehearsal when the phone rang. I flicked my eyes at my state-of-the-art caller ID. These were the digits I had been longing to see displayed for weeks.

‘Hello?’ I said.

‘Hi, it’s Kitty,’ came the reply I thought I might never hear again, ‘I heard from Joe that you were trying stand-up and I just wanted to wish you luck.’

We chatted for over an hour, like old friends even though we’d met only three times. I was elated after she had phoned. I suddenly felt that my life was now full of ambition. I had goals to be a stand-up and to make Kitty fall in love with me. I knew they might be long roads, but I was on them. I was at the beginning of the roads, the two long roads (I’m struggling with this analogy); it was a dual carriageway.

Wednesday night was my big night. My five minutes of jokes were spinning round and round in my head. I went with my sister and her boyfriend. Lucy had helped me so much that week that she knew my act word for word. On the Tube, I asked her if she could perform it for me. When we arrived at the club, I thought I might vomit. The Wednesday new-act night has free entry, so the audience was packed with people who don’t like to pay for entertainment. I made this remark to my sister and she laughed. I should have mentioned that onstage, that’s the kind of comedy I should do, that I do best, just say things that made me laugh.