The Sound of Laughter (22 page)

Desperately trying to read the script in the darkness, I followed her to the stage and casually glanced up. Oh my God! The place was huge. Mesmerized, I stumbled towards the spotlight in the centre of the stage like a big fat moth. The light was blinding and I couldn't see
anything except the enormous black void of the auditorium and a couple of green exit signs.

'It's Peter, am I right?' said a voice in the darkness.

'Yes, I think so, unless my parents are playing a big elaborate joke.'

There was a laugh. Southerners, they find anything funny. Mind you, so would I after twenty-five years of Jim Davidson and Jethro. (Now come on southerners, that was just a bleedin' joke, me old cock sparras.)

'Maureen speaks very highly of you' said the voice in the darkness.

Good old Maureen, I thought to myself. I must write a part for her one day and return the favour.

'You're reading the part of Derek,' said the voice, 'he's a bit of a cockney wide boy.'

'Right,' I said, clearing my throat several times in a desperate attempt to stall for more time. I then proceeded to read the lines badly and quickly. I sounded like Dick Van Dyke on speed.

There was a pause. A very long pause. So long I could have bobbed out to Greggs and bought myself a meal deal in the time it took them. I had paranoid visions of the director turning to the producer and saying 'Maureen raved on about this?'

Eventually the voice spoke and asked me to read out the lines again, only this time much slower and in my
own accent. I obliged and actually managed to get quite a few laughs. More silence followed and then the voice said the inevitable. I was told that I wasn't really what they were looking for and they thanked me for travelling so far to the audition.

I should have been crushed by the rejection, but I wasn't. Well I was a little but not that much. It was a beautiful day and I was still made up about being singled out by Maureen and invited to the audition in the first place. I don't want to sound sickeningly humble, but that really was good enough for me. And besides, I'd never be able to stomach being away from home doing a play for six months. I'd slit my wrists with depression.

I met back up with my dad at Euston station. He was on platform fourteen, scribbling into his notebook like a madman. 'Look,' he said ecstatically, 'I've had to buy another pad. I filled the other one up, there've been that many trains.' It was a shame to disturb him as he was as happy as a sand boy, but we had to go home.

'Here, grab this,' he said, passing me a half-drunk bottle of Schweppes Lemonade. I had to laugh because, even though the pop was flat and warm, he made me carry it all the way back home.

'Why don't you just throw it away?' I said as we chugged through Rugby.

'Not a chance, it cost me one pound eighty,' he said, taking the bottle from me. 'I'm gonna enjoy every mouthful if it kills me.'

Every year Granada Television held a directors' training course in an effort to give up-and-coming directors a chance to break into the business. Part of the course was to direct and film short pieces of drama in the studio. Luckily for me, the actors that year came courtesy of Salford University, ten minutes down the road.

Even though the students didn't get paid, it was a great opportunity for the fortunate ones who got chosen. We all got a chance to audition for the trainee directors and Granada executives. Most of the students performed extracts from pieces that already existed, but I decided to write something of my own. That's when I first came up with Leonard.

It was a short monologue loosely based on my old friend Leonard, you know, the bloke from Chapter Eight who used to call into the garage when I worked there and chat to me for hours. I'd occasionally recorded our conversations and it was those tapes I returned to as the source of most of the monologue.

Leonard

(A lady is sat in a bus shelter by the side of a main road, waiting patiently for her bus to arrive. Leonard approaches her whistling 'Young at Heart'. Startled, the lady smiles politely as Leonard attempts to make conversation with her)

Hyer flower, been waiting long? Hey, you'll stand here for ages and then three'll come all at once. It makes you laugh, doesn't it? I tell you what else makes me laugh, this weather, it can't make its mind up can it? I didn't know what coat to put on. (
Embarrassing silence)
I don't usually get the bus, I've got a car, a Reliant Robin, hey and they are you know. It's a super little runner, it gets me from A to B. Hey, it blew up last Tuesday, it's in the garage. I've just bought a sticker for it, it says Don't Follow Me, Follow Jesus.
(Leonard chuckles. The lady just smiles politely.)

Do you believe? I do. I always have. I found God in Fleetwood in 1980 and I became a Christian. Oh I go to The Church of the Nazarene behind Rick Johnson's Swim
School
(pointing).
When I'm not at church I go to work, well I say work, I can't work really because I'm registered disabled. I work with the elderly pensioners at the ol' people's home on Lever Edge Lane. They pay with a meal or a packet of fags. I shouldn't smoke really because I suffer from angina. I've narrow veins like Jack Duckworth. But I haven't let it stop me. A good friend of mine, Jimmy Boydell, he works at Kwik Save collecting the trolleys, do yer know him?

(
The lady shakes her head. Leonard misreads her acknowledgement as an invititation and innocently takes a seat next to her on the bench in the bus stop. She immediately stands and begins to nervously move forward towards the kerb)

Anyway well Jimmy's registered disabled just like me, he got a pacemaker fitted for Christmas but he's always listening for the bleep, you can't live your life like that can you? In fear, it's wrong innit? You've got to get on with things, after all we've only got one crack at the whip. Everyday's a blessing, everyday's a gift. Life's an adventure! Someone once said to me, how can you be bored
when you don't know what's comin' next? Isn't that true flower? Live your life. I'm fifty -eight flower and I've plenty of life left in me yet. I'm never lonely, I've got plenty of friends and . . . oh, is this one yours love?
(The lady inches herself forward to the edge of the kerb as her bus approaches)
Okay right. . . mine's the next one . . . well take care flower, nice meetin' yer and God Bless.

(The lady boards the bus and it departs. Leonard walks off behind the bus shelter. Another person approaches, stops and waits for a bus. Leonard approaches them from behind.)

Hyer cockers, been waitin' long? Hey, you'll stand here for ages and then three'll come all at once.

It was quite a funny piece, but I wanted to give it some underlining pathos. I also wanted the lady's reaction to reflect what I believed most people's initial impressions of Leonard used to be. At first glance, they always mistook his unusual attire and happy demeanour as a threat and, as a result, they never hung around long enough to really get to know the man.

I performed the piece with a friend off the HND called Sian. When we'd finished, the directors, lecturers
and Granada executives gave us a spontaneous round of applause. We were delighted. Then they asked if we'd like to perform the piece in front of the cameras over at Granada TV? Of course, we said yes.

So, I found myself back at Granada Television once again. Only this time I wasn't being offered the job of making tea. I was now on the other side of the camera. It's funny how life turns out. I know it wasn't in the same league as
Cracker,
but everybody's got to start somewhere.

I was assigned to an Irish director, called Brendan. He was pleasant enough and seemed quite skilled at his job, which is why I was shocked to see his name on the end of
DIY SOS
the other week. We spent the morning rehearsing in a small studio at Granada and then we went over to the main studios in the afternoon to record the piece to camera.

I really didn't know what to expect, but I was completely gobsmacked when I walked into the studio. The production team had constructed a whole set just for the purpose of my script. Everything was there in amazing detail from the bus shelter scrawled in coloured graffiti to the real life foliage that sat behind some cast iron park railings behind the bus stop. They even had a pavement complete with double yellow lines. It looked incredible.

Both in costume, Sian and I took our places on the set. It was a very strange feeling, but I have to be honest, I wasn't nervous in the slightest. That was mainly because I knew the piece so well and also because there was hardly anybody there, just a couple of lighting blokes occasionally shining lights to signify passing traffic. Brendan, the director, was up in the gallery (TV talk) calling all the technical shots from there.

The whole thing went smoothly and we recorded the scene in just two takes. The first take had to be abandoned due to some sort of technical hiccup (they'd forgotten to press record). I was extremely proud, especially when they gave me a finished VHS copy of my performance to keep forever (well until my mum accidentally taped over it with an episode of
Hornblower).

Meanwhile back on the HND my first year was coming to an end. I'd thoroughly enjoyed it and couldn't wait to get stuck into my second year options, including my weekly lecture in stand-up comedy.

But as fate would have it, I got a chance at stand-up even earlier than I'd imagined. Returning to the course in September, I decided to assert myself straight away by putting my name forward as compere of a cabaret night the students were holding upstairs in a local pub in Salford.

It was the first time I had ever really stood up in public and performed any of my own material, so you can imagine how nervous I was. I had some rough ideas — observations about Salford, the weather we'd had over the summer, Michael Barrymore coming out of the closet, nothing too ground breaking.

Because I was compere on the night, I decided to take the liberty of using cards as visual aids. Not only was I able to have the name of the next act written on the cards, but I could also write one or two key words referencing my own material.

It should have worked like a charm, but I was so nervous that every time I casually glanced down at the cards, the words made no sense at all. Staring at them, I became completely paralysed with fear. What did they mean? And so the first couple of times I just resorted to gabbling the name of the next act as I fled the stage in terror.

But as the night went on, my nerves began to subside slightly. I started to feel more confident and at ease with the audience. One of the good things about being a compere is that you don't have to be the centre of attention. A lot of the pressure is lifted. And by the end of the night I was flying. It felt so comfortable being up on stage and it also felt different, because for the first time ever I was relying on my own wits and material.

It completely opened my eyes. If I could do that and feel comfortable, who knows what would happen if I went on stage in a real club?

After the show I was approached by a degree student. She was doing a BA in media production and had to make a documentary in her final year and she wondered if I'd be interested in taking part.

'Me? Doing what?' I said.

'Stand-up comedy.'

Her proposition was to film me performing stand-up for the first time at an open mic night in Manchester. At first I said 'no' and nervously laughed off the idea. But I thought about what she'd said as I travelled home on the bus that night, and I discovered that, secretly, I liked the idea. This documentary could be the chance I had been waiting for my whole life.

It's been eleven years since I first performed stand-up at the open mic night in Manchester. I've just watched it back on video and it was odd because, as soon as I saw myself walking towards the club and heard the narration on the documentary, my nerves came flooding back. It seems like only yesterday, and not only am I amazed at how confident I appear to be, but also at how thin I once was.

I had spent a lot of time preparing my material for that night, rehearsing it in front of the full-length mirror on the landing at home and recording the whole of my act into a Dictaphone, so I could listen to it every morning as I travelled into Salford on the bus. But at the last minute I decided to completely change my act. I
mean literally as I was walking towards the stage. Perhaps it was a combination of nerves and adrenalin, but suddenly I didn't have confidence in my material anymore. I think I'd rehearsed it to death and sucked all the fun out of it as a result.

I've still no idea where most of my material came from that night. In fact at one point I even shout to my mate Michael sat in the audience: 'I didn't plan on doing any of this'.

I do some material about a TV programme that had been on the night before. It was all about the convicted mass murderer Fred West. I say 'no matter what people say about him there's no denying he's a grafter' and then I tell the audience that apparently 'he's selling his house on Cromwell Street and it's advertised in the local property guide as a two up, nine down'. I get laughs, but I haven't got a clue what I'm doing.

I then go into a completely bizarre routine about the Yorkshire Ripper being a guest on
This Is Your Life.
I describe Michael Aspel having to wheel Peter Sutcliffe on set in a cage and how later Dave Lee Travis appears as a guest, simply because they resemble each other physically. Again I get laughs, but on the whole I find the material unrefined and tasteless in a few places, which I think is quite out of character for me. One thing that is clear is that my delivery is much stronger than my material.

I leave the stage after about ten minutes to generous applause and, even though I considered my first open mic spot to be a success, I didn't return to stand-up again until the following spring, when it would become part of the HND timetable.

There weren't a lot of universities that could boast having stand-up comedy as part of their curriculum in 1996. In fact, saying that, I don't think there's that many today. Every Tuesday afternoon eight students, including myself, would do our very best to 'stand-up' to our tutor, the uncompromisingly bitter Paul J Russell.

I don't know what experience you need to teach stand-up comedy, but Paul J Russell reckoned he was an expert, after having been a regular performer at the world famous Comedy Store in London
^*9
. With the bright lights of London now faded, Paul had chosen to pass his distorted wisdom on to us – whether we wanted to hear it or not.

We spent the majority of each lecture deconstructing stand-up videos. We'd analyse the different styles of comedians, look at the way they linked their material
and study their stage presence. And then, at the end of each lesson, it would be our turn to step up to the mic. Every week we'd have to perform three minutes of our own material, derived from a variety of topics that Paul had set us the previous week. These ranged from holidays to DIY, space travel to the priesthood, golf to anal sex. I think you get the picture.

The idea was to gradually build up a comic portfolio over the duration of the ten-week course and then perform our material live on stage in a packed pub on Salford Crescent. Not only would our fellow students be in the audience, but there'd also be a panel of moderators lurking in the darkness, grading our performances on the night.

I'll not bore you with the material I did on that night because, suffice to say, I'll probably still be trotting it out on my 'If It Ain't Broke, Don't Fix It' tour in a few years time. I didn't do too badly considering it was only my second performance. Saying that, I would have been gutted if I hadn't done well, considering I'd only enrolled on the HND to do stand-up comedy in the first place. With my two-year course drawing to a close, I could feel the cold chill of the real world whistling under my door. I knew that I couldn't hide in further education any
longer – it was time to face reality once again.

*

I graduated on 14th June 1996 with my mum, my dad, R Julie, my nana and Uncle Tony (he gave them a lift in his Sierra) proudly sat in the audience at Salford University. They were all smiles when my name was announced and I climbed the steps to the stage in my mortarboard hat and graduation gown. I was chuffed to bits. It was a hell of an achievement receiving an HND diploma for a boy with no former qualifications and I'm sure if the nuns from school could have been there they would have been proud too.

After shaking hands with some dignitaries, I exited the stage and immediately handed my diploma back to a woman with a facial hair problem behind the curtain. Apparently they only had six diplomas to go round as there was a 'balls-up at the printers' as she so delicately put it. 'You'll get your real one in the post in a few weeks' time'. Ten years have passed by and I've still not received it.

My mum has a framed picture of my graduation hanging proudly in her bungalow to this day. Can you believe she paid fifteen pounds for a copy of that photo and I'm holding a forged diploma? The photo didn't even come with a frame.

That night my fellow students and I went out into Manchester to celebrate. We had a great time and ended up staying over in a Travel Lodge. The following
morning we said our goodbyes and went our separate ways. I boarded the bus outside Marks & Spencer and with a heavy heart headed back to Bolton. I arrived home thirty minutes later to discover that the IRA had detonated a bomb in the centre of Manchester, and a whole area of shops, including almost all of Marks & Spencer, had been demolished after I'd left. Some things never change.

The biggest ambition of most of the students on the HND, once they'd left the course, seemed to be the acquisition of an acting agent. I was lucky, as after performing Leonard for the directors' training course at Granada and my West End audition for Maureen Lipman, I was snapped up by a local acting agency in Manchester called Victoria Management. It was a workers co-operative, which basically meant that we all had to chip in for tea and coffee out of our commission
^*10
.

I know I should have been happy about getting an agent but I wasn't. With my undying scepticism I just
saw them as a bunch of vultures preying on new talent in order to line their own pockets. I wasn't too keen on the other 'actors' in the agency either. They were all a bit stuck-up and they never made me feel very welcome. They were too busy bragging about being a burns victim in
Casualty
or having two lines playing a prostitute in
Band Of Gold.
I had much higher aspirations than that.

The only work Victoria Management ever 'managed' to get me was Theatre In Education work, an area most actors despise. It usually involves you travelling around the country performing educational plays about the inherent dangers of casual sex and drugs to completely un-arsed secondary schools students. So as a result, the only real acting I ever did was when Victoria Management would phone and I pretended to have a throat virus. Then I'd hang up the phone and go back to watching
This Morning
from under my duvet.

I knew exactly what I wanted to do. I wanted to work in comedy. But I also realised that being an actor was tough enough without limiting yourself to just playing comic roles. Thankfully I still had money coming in from my jobs at the cinema and the arena, but I also knew I'd have to get out and push for something bigger, otherwise all I had achieved on the HND would be in vain.

I looked to my peers for inspiration. At the time Steve
Coogan and John Thompson were breaking through and, as a result of entering the business via stand-up comedy, they were now recognised as comic actors.

So that's what I decided to do. If I could prove myself as a stand-up, then maybe I'd be able to do the same as them and secure some work as a comic actor. It sounded like a good plan. Now all I had to do was establish myself as a stand-up comedian — and a successful one at that.

Do you ever get one of those days when the world seems perfect? You wake up to the sound of tweeting birds, you pull back the curtains to find the sun beating down and blue skies above. Well 15th August 1996 was such a day. I felt as if I could conquer the world and his wife. Inspirational days like that don't come around very often and, totally caught up in the moment, I decided to respond to an advert that I'd seen in a copy of a local entertainment guide called
City Life.

They were asking for all budding stand-up comedians to step up to the mic and enter a competition called The North West Comedian of the Year, whose previous winners included Caroline Aherne and Dave Spikey. Any other day I'd have read the article, pondered 'what if and then turned to the TV page, but today was different because today the radio was playing 'Walking
On Sunshine' by Katrina and The Waves and I thought what have I got to lose?

I even surprised myself when I dialled the number at the bottom of the advert. A voice eventually answered:

'Hello this is Agraman – The Human Anagram'.

'Er . . . hello,' I said. 'My name is Peter Kay. I've just read your advert in
City Life
and wondered what do I do if I want to enter the comedy competition?'

'Have you ever done stand-up comedy before?'

'Well I did a bit at college and an open spot last year,' I said.

'Have you ever performed it professionally though?'

'No never, is that a problem?' I could feel my sun floating behind a cloud.

'No, that's exactly what we're looking for. Just fill the application form in, send it to us and we'll be in touch about a place in the heats.'

A date to appear in the heats – bloody hell! I couldn't believe what I'd just done and, as my nerves kicked in, I noticed it was starting to rain outside.

Sure enough, a few days later I got a call from
City Life
telling me the date of my heat. It was to be at a place called The Buzz Comedy Club in Chorlton, Manchester. I'd have to perform five minutes of stand-up for which I'd get £10 expenses. A tenner? I was made up just to get that.

My nerves were so bad I could hardly breathe when I turned up at The Buzz Club that hot September night. I'd travelled there by bus and, not exactly sure of where the place was, I arrived much too early. The front door was opened by a cleaner, holding a mop.

The Buzz was actually a function room situated over a pub. I sat in that room and waited. Eventually the bar staff and Agraman – The Human Anagram arrived. He came over and introduced himself. I recognised his voice from the phone and he turned out to be an amiable sort of bloke. I wasn't quite sure what all of that anagram bollocks was about but hey! That's comedy.

Slowly the place started to fill up with a mixture of punters and other potential stand-up comedians. They were easy to spot, as they were the ones going in and out of the toilet with terror in their eyes, mumbling and gesturing their material to themselves.

I managed to strike up a conversation with one of them, well, he was a stand-up but he wasn't taking part in the heats. He was a previous winner of the competition.

'So how many gigs have you done before tonight?' he asked.

'I've done a bit, but I've never really performed on a proper comedy night like this before.'

Then he looked me straight in the eyes and said
reassuringly, 'Don't you think you're a bit out of your depth, son?'

Now if there's one thing that fires me up more than anything else, it's when somebody tells me that I'm not up to a job. It was all I needed. I was like a bull to a red rag after that.

The next bit of 'good' news was that I was on first and, as everybody knows, first is the toughest spot of the night. The place was almost full. I could feel myself entering a deeper level of nervousness than I'd ever felt before. The butterflies in my stomach were doing the Macarena and I suddenly found I couldn't speak as my throat had dried. I reached into my rucksack and pulled out a plastic Coke bottle filled with orange cordial. I'd swallowed a few mouthfuls before I noticed a fierce-looking woman glaring at me from behind the bar. I hadn't realised what I was doing, but did now and smiled politely as I screwed the lid back on. I felt like one of the women from the Top Rank Bingo who used to smuggle their own drinks in.

My mum had made me a packed lunch before I left, as she knew I wouldn't be having my tea. Not only had she stuck the bottle of cordial in my rucksack, but she'd also made a couple of tuna mayonnaise spread sandwiches wrapped in foil left over from Franny Lee's. But what she'd failed to tell me was that she'd written me
a good luck note and stuck in between the slices of bread as a surprise. I didn't discover it until it was halfway down my throat. Choking, I ran to the toilets as Agraman — The Human Anagram came on stage and the audience applauded. He's the compère? I thought to myself as I kicked open the bog door.

Kneeling over the urinal I dragged the note out of the back of my throat: '. . . luck my darling boy' was all I could read. I appreciated the sentiment, but did she have to put it in between the bread?

The next thing I heard was Agraman – The Human Anagram shouting my name, and I realised that for a couple of seconds I'd completely forgotten the reason why I was there. I wiped the tears from my eyes and pulled open the toilet door to the sound of applause. This was it.

Everything seemed to be in slow motion as I walked through the applause towards the stage, still carrying my rucksack. It was lucky for me I did, as I was still clearing the remains of my mum's soggy note from the back of my throat and had to reach inside my bag for the bottle of cordial. By the time I'd gotten the bottle out of my bag and unscrewed the lid, the audience had already stopped applauding. I placed the bottle beside my feet and then, as I nervously adjusted the microphone stand, I accidentally knocked the bottle over. The whole room
watched in silence as the contents trickled over the edge of the stage and on to the cork dance floor. I could have died and the pause felt like an eternity as I desperately searched for something to say. 'I knew I'd lose my bottle' I said, and the audience laughed. I looked round: where on earth did that come from?