I got carried away a bit there with eighties television – back to the story. So there I was with my vocabulary of three words watching The Towering Inferno, toddling around our little Hampstead flat, keeping out of the living room, with my baby sister who I had made feel a bit like Sarah Connor from The Terminator. I was being raised by my mum, who looked more suited to Wham!’s ‘Club Tropicana’ video, and by my chain-smoking, booming-laughing, Kenny Everett Show-writing dad.
My family. All together.
My family. All together. But not for long.
That’s a very dramatic end to quite a light chapter. It’s designed to make you read on.
5
A child’s job is relatively simple. At breakfast-time your goal is to eat the sweetest option available, Frosties, Ricicles, Sugar Puffs, or ideally just a bowl of sugar with a sprinkle of sugar. If you’re leaving the house, you want to leave it until the last possible minute when your mother reaches a certain decibel of helplessness. Then you must lose one shoe – ‘For Chris-sake, where’s your other shoe?’ – and avoid wearing a coat regardless of the temperature: ‘I don’t wunna wear a coat.’ When in the road, your goal is to avoid handholding and to explore the city on your own. Splashing in the bath is fun, but everything else in the bathroom is unnecessary. You never want to brush your teeth, and if you’re a boy having your hair washed, you will scream like a girl, and if you’re a girl, you will just scream.
Lucy and me in the bath in Hampstead. Check out the wallpaper and the tassles on the side of the bath, not to mention the razors within easy reach of children.
At mealtimes, you will find one food that you like (chicken nuggets, pasta) and stick to it. Despite your parents’ claim that vegetables are good for you, you and other kids know the truth. They are deadly and to be avoided at all costs; the only things good for you are sweets, chocolate and ice cream. ‘Bedtime’ is a concept created by adults, but in actual fact does not exist. There is no time of bed. Sleep is not needed. Do everything you can to delay getting into bed. When finally in bed being read a story, always aim for one more story than has been agreed. Shouting ‘One more!’ usually does the trick.
As a parent your job is to threaten your children, often with death, so they do what you want. ‘If you don’t wear a coat, you will die of pneumonia’, ‘If you don’t hold my hand, a car will hit you and kill you’, ‘If you don’t brush your teeth, they will rot and fall out, then you can’t eat and you will die’, ‘If you don’t wash your hair, you will get worms living in it that will eat into your head and kill you’, ‘If you don’t eat your vegetables, your bones will crumble and you will die’, ‘If you don’t go to bed now, I will strangle you to death.’
The problem is that kids don’t really believe their parents’ threats. Personally, I didn’t listen to my mum because she wasn’t wearing a coat, ate Frosties and screamed when my father washed her hair. I think they should have broadcast a fake Newsround every day with John Craven saying things like, ‘Today, previously healthy Jamie Dunn, aged five and a half, from Milton Keynes, died instantly from pneumonia after leaving the house without his coat. Jamie’s mother said, “I warned him, but he just didn’t listen.” Today’s weather will be warm, but nothing like 1976. Stay tuned for The Towering Inferno.’
My sister and I would not only be battling our mum for more sweets and toys, but also be in competition with each other for various childhood perks.
‘I want to go first.’
‘No, I want to go first.’
‘Let your sister have a bite.’
‘No, it’s mine.’
‘I want the window seat.’
‘No, I want the window seat.’
‘I want to sit in the front.’
‘No, I want to sit in the front.’
Which is why it came as a surprise when we got bunk beds, and I said, ‘I want the top bunk’ and my sister answered, ‘OK.’
‘No, I want the top bunk,’ I replied automatically.
‘I don’t want it,’ reiterated my sister.
I couldn’t believe this. The top bunk is where it’s at. Elevated sleeping is the Holy Grail of child slumber. I can see our room, indeed the world, from a new perspective from up there, like the students in Dead Poets Society standing on their desks. ‘Are you sure, Lucy?’
‘Yes, Michael, I don’t want to sleep on the top bunk.’ Carpe diem, I’m taking it. That night our dad read us a story, kissed us goodnight and dimmed the light, leaving us just enough illumination not to be scared.
On the top bunk with my sister Lucy, where she correctly predicted the ceiling would fall down.
‘Lucy?’ I said from my upper berth.
‘What? Don’t interrupt me, I’m drifting off to sleep,’ came the reply from beneath. Like all little girls, she was articulate and advanced beyond her years.
‘Why didn’t you want the top bunk?’
‘Because the ceiling is going to fall down in this room, and it’s safer down here,’ she answered factually.
‘No it isn’t,’ I said.
‘Do you see that crack in the ceiling? That will worsen and the ceiling will fall,’ she insisted.
‘Don’t be stupid,’ I said, before losing consciousness.
Every night, without fail, my sister would go to bed muttering about how the ceiling was going to cave in. I thought she was mad. And then, one day, the ceiling fell in. I remember my dad coming home from work with a smile on his face, which soon disappeared when he saw my mum and me standing in the front porch in tears with bits of ceiling in our hair. We weren’t hurt, although I received a glancing blow from one of the Junkins’ Lucozade bottles. (Luckily, it was a 125ml, and in the days before the ‘25% Extra Free’.)
Lucy was at the kitchen table combing the hair of a My Little Pony, rocking backwards and forwards, saying, ‘I told you’, looking like a character from a Japanese horror movie. For a while after her disaster prophecy, I was quite fearful of Lucy, especially when she became best friends with Annabelle Junkin from upstairs. Annabelle had fiery red hair and fair skin. Lucy and Annabelle standing together at the end of a corridor looked like a scene from Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining. I would spend days hiding behind plants in the out-of-bounds living room. Was my baby sister some kind of modern-day Nostradamus? Soon we settled back into a relationship typical of siblings with a two-year age gap. We fought with each other and loved each other. We slept in the same room, had baths with each other, ate with each other and went to pre-school together.
In my garden in Hampstead, trying to get away from Lucy and our neighbour Annabelle in a scene not dissimilar to The Shining.
My pre-school, Stepping Stones, the scene of the Poo-gate incident that scarred me for life, was a stone’s throw from our Hampstead flat. Mum would drop us off in her Capri every morning, although sometimes she let me drive. Lucy would go to her class and I to mine. I certainly didn’t enjoy it there, but what I hated more than anything else in my life, then or since, was school lunch.
Still to this day I cannot eat peas because of the memory of the Stepping Stones peas. They made me feel sick to my stomach. Just the smell of peas now and I am catapulted back in my mind to those horror school lunches when I was five years old. Sitting at long tables, with the white noise of children chatting and cutlery clattering, I would stare at my ‘lunch’, intermittently retching. The teachers would prowl up and down the tables like Dementors from Harry Potter, making sure you ate all your food. There was categorically no way I was going to put those peas in my mouth. So I would take a handful of them and, when the teacher wasn’t looking, throw them on the floor under the table. I got away with it. Every day, if I didn’t like something, I would subtly throw it on the floor. Some days I would just tip up the whole plate.
I don’t really understand why I was being made to eat all my food when it was so disgusting. This was a private school; my grandmother (‘Heelooo, daarling’) was paying good money for this. The teacher should come over to my ta
ble and say, ‘Is everything all right with the food, sir?’
I would reply, ‘No, the peas are making me vomit.’ Then he would apologize profusely, immediately remove my plate and take some money off the school fees as a goodwill gesture.
But we had to finish our revolting food or be forced to. So I took drastic measures, and, to be honest, I thought I was a genius to be getting away with it. However, it transpired that the teachers were fully aware of my devious dumping. In fact, unbeknownst to me, they were watching me in the wings and giggling as I tried to get rid of my peas, like Steve McQueen discarding earth in The Great Escape. Everyone had been watching and laughing, even the kids. It was soul-destroying. The teachers had a word with my mum, and soon peas were off the menu, and have been ever since.
While I was throwing peas on the floor, my mum was throwing magazines out of her car window and Lucy was predicting domestic disasters, my dad’s career continued to blossom. The Kenny Everett Show moved to BBC1 on Thursday nights after Top of the Pops. The nation was in love with ‘cuddly Ken’ and our life was becoming quite glamorous. Kenny was just about the most famous man in the country. Many readers will remember, but for younger readers who don’t, Kenny Everett was a sensation. It’s difficult to think of the equivalent today. His show was being watched by more people than watch The X-Factor. He was hysterically funny and loveable. Kenny and my dad clicked creatively, but Kenny and my mum clicked in every other way. My mum, ‘Coke’, became quite the fag hag. They became the best of friends. In fact, I remember my mum together with Kenny more than I remember my mum together with my dad.
The weekly shop is probably the least glamorous part of life. Not for my mum. The nation’s favourite funnyman, Kenny Everett, would join her in Waitrose, Temple Fortune. Kenny in his beige bomber jacket with fluffy collar and my blonde mum in her dungarees, would pick up a bottle of champagne each from ‘Aisle 12, Alcohol and Beverages’, then return to ‘Aisle 1, Fruit and Vegetables’, pop open their bottles of bubby and giggle their way round the supermarket. Kenny was such a megastar he could do as he pleased. The Waitrose staff loved it. Crowds of onlookers would gather outside as word spread on the normally sleepy suburban high street. Kenny would be cracking jokes about detergents and biscuits between signing autographs and swigging Bollinger, while my mum would be laughing hysterically, sometimes from inside the trolley.
‘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.
Life and Laughing: My Story Page 5
