Life and Laughing: My Story (31 page)

Jongleurs was open on Thursday, Friday and Saturday. So each week I would be in a different city and pulling in around £500 a week. Each bill consisted of three comedians and a compere. The first act would be the most inexperienced, followed by a stronger act and then an interval before the headline act. I was on first. This was to be expected as I was new and inexperienced. I had to work my way up the bill. Being first actually suited me as I liked to drive home whenever possible, even though it meant covering hundreds of miles a day. I would drive home to be with Kitty.

Since Kitty had told me she loved me in Villa Bianca, we had not spent a night apart. When we first got together, she said to me, ‘This is it, you know, I’ll be with you for ever, you’re the one.’ As happy as I was, I couldn’t really believe her. But she was true to her word; she loved me like I loved her and after a couple of years of living together, I withdrew the last of my savings and found myself browsing rings in Tiffany. I knew she wanted to get married. You know what girls are like – she would drop occasional hints, like whenever I bought her flowers, she would throw them over her head.

My proposal formed the basis of my first big comedy routine. So before I tell you the story, here’s me opening the show at Jongleurs Leeds, Cardiff, Bristol, Oxford, Portsmouth, Southampton, Glasgow, Nottingham, Birmingham or Manchester, week in, week out:

I’m engaged, ladies and gentlemen. I bought her a beautiful diamond ring that cost me a fortune. But you’ll like this, I had it engraved … with the price.

I got her a Tiffany ring, and I think she was more excited about that than us spending the rest of our lives together. She was like, ‘I can’t believe it! It’s Tiffany! Is it really? Is it really a Tiffany ring?’

‘Of course it is,’ I said. ‘Look, it’s a Tiffany box, it’s a Tiffany ring,’ I replied.

‘Yes, but you could have just got a Tiffany box and put a shit ring in it’ and I was like … ‘Why didn’t I think of that?’

Girls get hypnotized by diamonds – it’s like they turn into Gollum from
The Lord of the Rings
: ‘Precious. Master, give me precious. Precious is mine.’ You look outside any jeweller’s and you’ll see single girls staring in the window saying, ‘Soon, precious will be mine.’

I took her to a lovely Italian restaurant to propose. I was so nervous; this is a major moment. I got the ring out and said, as if in slow motion, ‘Will … you … marry … me?’

And she was like, ‘Michael, start again.’

‘What do you mean, start again?’ I said.

‘Start again and do it right, you have to get down on one knee,’ she said.

‘Hang on a minute, you’re not directing this scene, I’m proposing, this is how I’m doing it.’

‘Michael, stop, I have been waiting my whole life for this moment, it’s romantic, it’s traditional, you have to get down on one knee.’

‘Now listen,’ I said, ‘I have just spent the equivalent of a small car on this diamond ring, why don’t you get down on YOUR knee?’

That was more or less my joke, and it always got a big laugh. It’s not what happened of course. I’m not that rude. The only truth was that I did buy her a Tiffany ring. I suppose the shock of the price inspired the routine. I did also take her to an Italian restaurant, Villa Bianca, her favourite, where she finally succumbed to my two-year harassment. I envisaged this to be the perfect romantic setting to pop the question. If Kitty suspected anything, she didn’t let on. We were just going out for dinner. I was naturally tense, I wanted to get it right, for it to be perfect. I booked the same table that we sat at before. I thought I would ‘pop’ the question at the end of dinner. I had a whole speech planned in my mind that I was going to launch into after dessert. But after we ordered, I was struggling to make normal conversation as my mind was preoccupied with the proposal and constantly checking that the most expensive thing I had ever bought was still in my back pocket.

‘What’s wrong with you?’ Kitty said, sternly.

‘Nothing,’ I said, defensively.

‘You’re acting really weird, really rude. You’re not really listening to me.’

‘Sorry, what did you say?’ I said, fidgeting with my pocket again.

‘You’re not even listening to me now are you?’ she snapped.

‘What?’ I said, with a blank expression.

‘Why don’t we go home, Michael? What’s the point in going out to dinner, if you’re not going to talk to me or listen to me?’

We were in danger of having a row. This wasn’t the plan. I realized I had to change the plan, I had to propose now before we fell out. She seemed really pissed off. We were in danger of splitting up!

‘Darling, I’ve got something to say,’ I began, taking her hand.

‘What?’ she said softly. I was off the hook. She knew what was coming.

‘Well, we’ve been together for nearly two years and I don’t know how it’s possible, but I love you more every single –’

‘MR WILSON!’ shouted the maître d’. It was so loud the whole restaurant, including us, turned to see who had just walked in.

Walking into the restaurant was Richard Wilson, the star of
One Foot in the Grave
. Suddenly the whole restaurant was focused on Richard Wilson.

‘That’s what’s-his-name?’ said Kitty.

‘Richard Wilson. I’m trying to propose here,’ I said.

‘Sorry, Michael, carry on,’ Kitty said. I composed myself and continued.

‘Darling, what I was saying was that –’

‘I DON’T BELIEVE IT!’ shouted an Italian waiter, badly impersonating Richard Wilson’s catchphrase, much to the enjoyment of the other waiters, as Richard Wilson and his dinner guest were seated directly next to us.

‘MR WILSON, WHAT CAN I GET YOU?’ The celebrity diner seemed to be making the normally quite prickly Italian waiters very loud and animated. ‘LET ME TELL YOU ABOUT THE SPECIALS …’

I had no choice but to pronounce my everlasting love to Kitty and ask for her hand in marriage while an Italian waiter shouted about the specials to Richard Wilson from
One Foot in the Grave
at the next table.

‘I have always loved you, I can’t imagine the world without you in it … WE HAVE A RISOTTO MARINARA, MR WILSON, VERY NIIICE … from the moment I met you in the Steeles pub wearing my massive coat … WE HAVE A LOBSTER SPAGHETTI TONIGHT, CHEF’S SPECIALITY, MAGNIFICO … you became the only girl in the world to me, I loved you more than I knew it was possible to love someone … WE ALSO HAVE A VEAL ESCALOPE, MR WILSON, THIS IS MY FAVOURITE … I dreamt for so long that we could be together and how it would be if we were together and our love has exceeded … AND FINALLY WE HAVE A PENNE ARRABIATTA AL DENTE … anything I could have imagined. Kitty, I love, I will love you for ever …’

I took out the ring from my back pocket and opened the case.

‘Will you marry me?’ I said.

‘I’ll just have the lasagne,’ said Richard Wilson.

‘I DON’T BELIEVE IT,’ said the waiter.

‘Yes,’ said Kitty.

21

Kitty and I then entered a wonderful magical time of announcements and wedding planning. I was to marry the love of my life, and although I didn’t get a chance to express it to her fully in Villa Bianca, the point I wanted to make was that I didn’t really know her when I was infatuated by her, but she had surprised me with just how perfect she was, and just how perfect we were together.

Everybody was thrilled for us. Kitty was glowing with happiness, I had never seen her like that, she couldn’t stop smiling. The only person who I wished could share in our joy was my grandmother. But it had now been years since we last spoke; she had no interest in me whatsoever. Our relationship was over. I had come to terms with it, but deep down I clung on to the hope that we would see each other again, that she would be at my wedding. It was so brutal for her to love me so wholly and unconditionally and then turn her back on me so completely, so quickly. But it wasn’t to be; she died in her sleep a few months after I became engaged. All the memories of our happy times came flooding back and I was devastated, but soon I remembered everything else, all the pain she had caused. The truth was she had gone years before; this just eliminated any chance of reconciliation, but there was probably none anyway.

My engagement routine kept getting laughs at Jongleurs. Kitty not only found it funny, but loved that I was immediately telling an audience containing single girls that I was engaged to someone else. It always made me laugh that she could be jealous, that she could think I might cheat on her. I could never have an affair. Look at my track record with women – it would take me two years of stalking, harassing and hiding in bushes to get another girl to sleep with me.

However, the gloss of earning an income from stand-up was starting to wear thin. Jongleurs was not a traditional comedy club; it was a chain, like McDonald’s. The club offered an evening’s entertainment for weekend revellers, mainly large single-sex parties on stag nights, hen nights, birthdays or a work night out. The audiences were drunk and rowdy and had short attention spans. Fast, bite-size and usually crude jokes were most effective. The strapline under the Jongleurs logo read: ‘Eat, Drink, Laugh, Dance’. ‘Laugh’ was third on the agenda. I needed to become a better comedian and Jongleurs was not a conducive environment for that.

As an aspiring comedian, you need to play the full variety of gigs up and down the land. Jongleurs should be included in the mix, certainly. The ability to make a few hundred pissed punters laugh is an indication that you’ve got a bulletproof act, but to develop and improve as a comedian you need more, much more. I played other clubs, but usually only one weekend a month.

Not only was I trapped in Jongleurs, but I was also making no progress within it. I was always going on first, deemed the weakest on the bill, and the other comedians in some cases were astonishingly poor. Many of the comedians who played Jongleurs were old hacks. They never made it, leaving them bitter and cynical. They had lost their ambition and being around them was making me lose mine.

Just remembering the dressing rooms at Jongleurs sends chills down my spine. A typical Jongleurs dressing room had a couple of old smelly sofas, maybe a TV that didn’t work, an iron and ironing board, untouched fruit and an A4 print-out of the line-up on the wall. It was depressing enough before you add a few jaded and bitchy comedians. If you met some of these comics, you’d be amazed that they were in the entertainment industry.

That’s not to say there weren’t some characters. One old-timer from the Midlands always struggled onstage but thought he was God’s gift to comedy. I once saw him say to an audience who weren’t laughing at him, ‘I’m good at this, you know. Google me.’ He was convinced that he was brilliant, but the only reason he wasn’t successful was that everyone kept stealing all his jokes.

‘Peter Kay’s at it again,’ he announced in the dressing room of Nottingham Jongleurs while ironing his shirt. I looked around the empty room in the hope he was talking to someone else.

‘At what?’ I asked.

‘Stealing my material,’ he revealed in his Brummie accent. ‘Yep, I was watching him the other night, just ticking off the jokes, mine, mine, mine, mine, it was unbelievable.’

‘Unbelievable’ was right. I hadn’t seen this guy write a joke in years, nobody had.

‘He’s not the only one, you know,’ he carried on, steam pluming from his iron and from his ears.

‘Oh really, who else?’ I enquired.

He stopped ironing and faced me for added drama.

‘Jay Leno,’ he revealed.

‘Jay Leno? The host of
The Tonight Show
on NBC in America has been stealing your jokes?’ I asked, trying not to laugh.

‘I know, incredible isn’t it?’ he said, thinking I was as baffled as him.

‘How did he do it? Do you think he comes to Jongleurs and sits at the back with a pad?’ I asked, looking forward to his explanation.

‘No. Don’t be silly. He’s a massive star. There’s no way Jay Leno would do that … He hires people, local people to do it for him. I’ve seen them, you know, in the audience, at the back, taking notes.’

‘I’m shocked!’ I said, already itching to share the hilarity of this conversation with Kitty.

‘Me too, but there’s no other explanation. And he’s not the first American talk show host to steal my material, either.’

‘This has happened before?’

‘A few years ago.’ He again put down his iron and dramatically turned to face me.

‘David Letterman,’ he revealed. ‘I sent him a tape of my stand-up set to try and get on his talk show and the next time I watched it, he’d stolen all my ideas.’

‘He can’t get away with that. What were the jokes?’

‘Topical stuff,’ he declared.

‘He told your jokes, word for word?’ I asked, loving his level of fantasy.

‘Not exactly, but he took all the subjects. George W. Bush, the Iraq war, Dick Cheney, it was all there. But who’s gonna believe me?’

It seemed like this was the best I could hope for by playing Jongleurs. I wasn’t going to be famous, but maybe I could be totally deluded. I occasionally played other clubs like the Banana in Balham, Up the Creek in Greenwich, the Glee in Birmingham, the Hyena in Newcastle, and I would come alive and get a sense of how much better I could be. The audience were more focused, allowing me more time to express myself onstage. But I felt any good work that I would do would be undone by returning to Jongleurs for the next few weeks.

Then a genuine opportunity presented itself. Duddridge announced that he was taking me to perform at the Edinburgh Festival. This was what I had been waiting for. This was my chance to make a name for myself. Edinburgh is where stand-up stars are found. There are hundreds of shows in every nook and cranny of the city. Open a cupboard door in Edinburgh during the Festival and there will be a wannabe comedian performing a show to a handful of punters.