Life and Laughing: My Story (8 page)

‘Wine, women …’ I think it was more like ‘Champagne, men …’ Kenny and my mum, going by the name Marianne, just back from Waitrose.

After the shopping was done – ‘Come on, Coke, I’m ravenous’ – it would be off to La Sorpresa in Hampstead for lunch, where the Italian waiters welcomed them with open arms.

‘Mr Kenny, Miss Coca-Cola, hello, come have seat, favourite table.’

In they would stumble. Kenny was in the closet at this time, so everyone thought they were a couple. My mum would often be referred to as ‘mystery blonde’ in the tabloids. There was so much goodwill towards Kenny (he once knocked over a cyclist in his BMW who proceeded to ask for an autograph) that lunch was usually on the house. Either they would frame the cheque or just refuse payment. Once Kenny didn’t have a pen and wrote the cheque using toothpaste they’d just bought from Waitrose. ‘You’re so funny, Mr Kenny.’

He wouldn’t just eat for free, but also take whatever he fancied from the restaurant. ‘Do you like this vase, Coke?’

‘I love it,’ giggled my mother. ‘I quite like that ashtray, too.’ They would leave the restaurant with most of the tableware (and once a lamp) with the full blessing of the Italian owner, who would be laughing and applauding his celebrity guest as Kenny and my mum walked out with nearly enough furnishings to open their own Italian restaurant.

After lunch they would pick up Lucy and me from school. You can only imagine the looks on the other conservative parents’ faces when my mum walked through the school gates in fits of laughter on Kenny Everett’s arm. As the schoolchildren came out, Kenny would guess their future professions: ‘Accountant’, ‘Wrestler’, ‘Osteopath’, ‘Dictator’. The kids themselves went nuts with excitement. When the future accountant, wrestler, osteopath and dictator saw Kenny, it was bedlam. The day after the first time Kenny collected me from school, my popularity rocketed.

‘Is Kenny Everett your dad?’, ‘Is Kenny Everett your dad?’ I must have been asked a hundred times by everyone from my friends to the teachers, dinner ladies and, coolest of all, the big boys. This was a crunch moment for me. I’d gone from pea-dropping freak to potentially the most popular boy in school, and it seemed to hinge on my response. ‘Is Kenny Everett your dad?’

I paused, thinking of my real dad, who I loved and was my hero. ‘Yes, Kenny Everett is my dad,’ I said. I was the most popular kid in school.

My popularity lasted a term and a half until the fathers’ race at sports day. I don’t think there has been as much excitement surrounding a hundred-metre dash since Jesse Owens claimed Gold in the 1936 Berlin Olympics. I was terrified about my lie being revealed. My dad looks nothing like Kenny Everett. On the morning of sports day, I tried to convince my father not to attend, but he was breathing hot coffee, cigarettey morning breath into my face at the time, which I think muffled my request. The crowd was enormous, every pupil and parent focusing on the starting line. Other events occurring elsewhere on the sports field were completely ignored as child competitors looked confused as to why their parents hadn’t shown up to cheer them on.

‘Where is he? Where is he?’ murmured sections of the crowd. Some parents had dressed up as their favourite
Kenny Everett Show
characters; I saw three Sid Snots and a Cupid Stunt. I couldn’t bear to watch. When my dad was introduced there was a gasp from the crowd. Not before or since has an athletics crowd been so disappointed (Ben Johnson’s 1988 cheating doesn’t come close). The Cupid Stunt ripped off his wig and stormed off to his car, still in his fake tits.

‘Kenny Everett’s not your dad’, ‘Kenny Everett’s not your dad’, ‘You’re a liar’, ‘Liar’, said everyone from my friends and the teachers, to the dinner ladies and, worst of all, the big boys. I was the least popular kid in school.

Oh, and I should also mention my dad came last in the race, and in the wheelbarrow race I fell and landed head-first on a fake egg, from the earlier egg-and-spoon race, which gouged my eye. All in all, a terrible day.

This wasn’t the only time I lied as a child. There is one lie that I have carried with me until this very moment, in this very book. In the summer holidays after my disastrous sports day, we went on holiday to Florida. We stayed at the Hilton Fontainebleau, an enormous hotel seen on the opening credits of
Miami Vice
with Don Johnson. Lucy and I loved it there. There was a waterfall and waterslide into the pool. My father got into a row with the manager at breakfast because a pot of coffee cost differing amounts depending on how many people were drinking it, even though it was the same sized pot. So if ten people had a sip each, it cost ten times the amount of one person drinking the whole pot. It makes me angry just thinking about it. Anyway, that’s not why I’m telling you this.

During our stay a major motion picture was being filmed at the hotel, resulting in part of the pool being closed for a few days. The film was the cult classic
Scarface
starring Al Pacino. The poster has adorned the walls of just about every teenage boy’s bedroom of the past twenty-five years. There’s a scene where the camera pans across the beach, and I claimed that I was in the shot for a split second. Everybody believed me. I have been gaining credibility over my
Scarface
appearance ever since. People don’t question it – they just say, ‘Wow, cool, you were in
Scarface
, that’s awesome.’ I wasn’t. I lied.

Kenny and my mum weren’t just spending days together; they were partying into the night, too. My dad was literally from a different generation to my mum, so after a hard day’s writing or filming, he just wanted a good meal, a hot bath and a thousand Marlboros. The problem was his wife was in her early twenties and wanted to party. It’s a bit like getting a Labrador; they’re really cute and blonde but a lot of work. ‘Coke’ had devoted much of her youth to motherhood. You just don’t see a lot of pregnant or breastfeeding women in nightclubs. But now the kids had been weaned and she wanted to go out with her new girlfriend, Kenny Everett. My dad was happy, it meant my mum could burn some of her youthful energy in the company of homosexuals who were no threat to him.

So my mum would dance the night away at nightclubs such as Heaven and Stringfellows. In fact, for years there was a photo of them together adorning a wall inside Stringfellows. My dad would catch up on their exploits in the tabloids the next morning. Kenny would make up a different name for my mum every time they were papped coming out of a club; my favourite was ‘Melody Bubbles’. Heaven is, and was, London’s largest and most renowned gay club. Melody Bubbles would be the only girl in there, dancing the night away with just about every gay man from the 1980s, including Freddie Mercury, Boy George and
Sesame Street
’s Bert and Ernie.

Today, there is a comedy club that uses Heaven nightclub between 8 p.m. and 11 p.m., before it is open to gentlemen of a certain persuasion. I’ve performed there many times; it’s actually a great space for comedy. On leaving the venue, I’ve seen the gay men queuing for entry to the club. Security seems to be quite an issue. They have an airport-style metal-detecting security arch outside. I don’t know if they are worried about weapons or drugs or if it is some kind of ‘gaydar’ machine that beeps if you’re not gay.

Next to the detector was a gentleman frisker who looked like Jean-Claude Van Damme in a muscle vest and tight white jeans. It seemed obvious that the queue would much rather be frisked than not. There was huge disappointment when there was no beep. I saw one man make his own beeping sound and then jump into the arms of the frisker. People were holding whatever metal they could get their hands on to guarantee the detector sounded. One guy wasn’t leaving anything to chance and had dressed as a knight.

The presence of Kenny and his television show dominated my early years. I visited the TV studio several times and watching the show was the highlight of the week. There would be various props, bits of wardrobe, posters and VHSs from the show knocking around our Hampstead flat. In among them were these postcards with an image of big red smiling sexy lips on them. I don’t remember what the reference was, perhaps something to do with Hot Gossip, the Arlene Phillips-choreographed dancers who appeared on the show. I was very familiar with these cards being used for scribbles around our home, shopping lists, phone messages, that kind of thing.

Here I am in my trademark suit with my mum and Kenny on her birthday.

After days of having a wobbly tooth, the landmark occasion of my first tooth falling out was approaching. Your teeth falling out is grim, it’s literally like a bad dream, but the carrot was, of course, the Tooth Fairy. When my tooth finally freed itself from my mouth, I was to leave it under my pillow, whereupon a fairy would, in effect, buy it from me. The going rate in 1982 was a pound. Strangely, I think it still is a pound. The Tooth Fairy has obviously never heard of inflation. In fact if milk tooth prices rose in line with, say, house prices, by 2007 the price would have reached £14 (although now it would have dropped to about £12.50). What I never understood about the Tooth Fairy is, what exactly is she doing with these teeth she’s collecting? She must have millions of children’s milk teeth. Sick. And where does she get the money from? I bet MI5 have a file on her.

Anyway, my tooth finally fell out and I placed it under my pillow. In the morning I was thrilled to find a crisp £1 note under my pillow and something else unexpected. The Tooth Fairy had also left a calling card. It was a card with a photo of a set of glistening perfect white teeth. I immediately recognized this card to be one of the many identical cards from
The Kenny Everett Show
that were scattered all over our flat. I was confused. Why would the Tooth Fairy have one? Could … my mum … be … the … Tooth Fairy? I ran into my mum’s bedroom. ‘Mum, are you the Tooth Fairy?’ I enquired.

‘Why would you say that, darling?’ she replied convincingly.

‘Because there was one of these cards under my pillow and even though it had an image of teeth, which one would associate with the Tooth Fairy, I know these are cards from Daddy’s show.’

It was at this point my mother cracked under surprisingly little pressure and gave up all her parenting secrets in one of the most shocking and devastating moments of my life. ‘You’ve got me, you worked it out,’ she confessed. ‘I am the Tooth Fairy and the Easter Bunny and Father Christmas, don’t tell your sister.’ Bang, bang, bang. Three in one go.

I can’t imagine that in the history of parenting a mother has ever delivered such damaging revelations in such quick succession. I may have been on to the Tooth Fairy, but not for a second had I doubted the authenticity of the Easter Bunny and certainly not Father Christmas. I was mute for three whole days. My parents and all parents for that matter are liars. Well, I wasn’t going to be part of their deceit, so I told my sister. Lucy said she already knew and was humouring our parents. Then she said, ‘Planes will strike towers in New York City.’ I didn’t realize at the time she was predicting the horrors of 9/11; I just thought, ‘She’s been watching
The Towering Inferno
again.’

Kenny’s merchandise may have shattered my childhood innocence, but Kenny the TV comic was going from strength to strength. He was tremendously talented and, as my mother fondly remembers, deeply funny all the time. But harnessing his talent for a half-hour television series still took some doing, and by all accounts it was my father who was mainly responsible. Barry Cryer remembers: ‘Ray was pretty much directing the show.’

Kenny’s co-star, Cleo Rocos, recalls, ‘Ray was the heartbeat of the show. Kenny wouldn’t be Kenny without him. He was the pioneer and driving force.’ Dad had become a major player in the comedy industry, unofficially writing, directing and producing one of the biggest shows on television, but officially he was just a co-writer. It was time to make a career move.

So my dad took a giant showbusiness leap. He made a film. The film was called
Star Wars
. If only. The film was called
Bloodbath at the House of Death
. He wrote, directed, produced, edited, appeared in and raised the finance for it, quite a step-up from television co-writer. If it came off, we’d be rich. The film starred Kenny Everett at the height of his powers, the legendary Vincent Price (‘Darkness falls across the land …’), Kenny’s TV sidekick Cleo Rocos and Billy Connolly’s wife, Pamela Stephenson.