Life and Laughing: My Story

by Michael McIntyre

  ‘Niiiice …’ he said slowly. I was so sure he was going to say ‘car’ that I started waving and nodding like the Queen in her motorcade. But then the real reason for all the open-mouthed staring became apparent. ‘… mullet!’ Karim finished, to giggles from his groupies and lots of laughing and pointing from what felt like everybody else in Finchley.

  The only positive from this latest humiliation was that Tina didn’t witness it. My new mobility meant that I could drive to the hairdresser in my lunch break and immediately remove my mullet. After a false start, the mullet-less me was now on a mission. I was desperate for Tina to see me in my hot wheels. Every day when I drove in, I looked for her. Finally, one morning I spotted her. But what was I supposed to do? I couldn’t hoot, I didn’t know her. I couldn’t exactly call out to her, ‘Hi, it’s me, the guy who was looking for room 42. Look how cool I am, do you want a lift somewhere, like my bedroom?’

  So I decided to rev the engine in the hope that the sound would make her turn around and see me cruising with my roof down and my conventional hairstyle blowing in the summer breeze. But for all the Spitfire’s sporty looks, the engine size was only 1300cc, like a Mini. I had noticed that when I dropped down a gear the engine made a growling sound. So I whacked the car from third to first gear for maximum effect. It worked, and the car erupted with a magnificent roar. However, the sound did not get Tina’s attention. Nor did the crunching sound that followed, the sound of the gearbox breaking.

  I now couldn’t get the car into any gear, so I just sailed in neutral for as far as the momentum took me, then stopped in the middle of the road. The cars behind me started hooting and shouting at me to get out of the way. Thankfully, this still did not get Tina’s attention. I put my hazard warning lights on (only one worked so it actually looked like I was indicating) and got out of the car apologizing profusely to the traffic behind.

  I had seen people pushing cars to the side of the road when they had broken down, so I started to push my car. But I forgot that there should be someone in the car, to steer it. So when I pushed my car, it just rolled away and crashed straight into the side of a parked Mercedes. This did get Tina’s attention. I had fantasized endlessly about Tina behaving like a girl in a Diet Coke advert as I bombed past her in my sports car, but here was the reality. She watched me push my car into another vehicle while being abused and sworn at by commuters.

  It seemed that every time I envisaged a scenario whereby I was cool, it would backfire. But I never got disheartened. I was young, filled with optimism, exuberance and hope. I was seventeen, on the threshold of officially becoming a man. I had my whole life ahead of me.

  But before my eighteenth birthday my life would be changed for ever.

  13

  My dad had started to come to London regularly to generate some income. It wasn’t easy as time had passed and the faces in the industry had changed. He was an older big fish in a small pond that now had new fish in it (I think I’ll leave the fish and pond analogy alone now). He was searching for an idea or a show that could resurrect his career. He contacted Kenny Everett, Barry Cryer and others he used to work with, but they had moved on.

  I remember being with him in the flat he borrowed in London when he visited. He was on the phone to Barry saying, ‘Let’s make magic again, Baz.’ I was seventeen years old and wrapped up in my own nonsense (as laid out in the previous chapters), but I knew that the magic he and Barry had created was over, and he probably knew it too. It must have been soul-destroying for him trying to go back, but he was desperate.

  My dad had left London at the height of his powers, and now he was returning to a changed landscape. His tea boy when he worked in the record industry was now running a major label. From when my parents got divorced to when he left for America, he had had a personal assistant, Pete. Pete was a kid then, eighteen years old. He was always around my dad, driving him, buying his cigarettes, doing his washing. Now Pete was running a successful music video production company.

  Lucy and I were so excited to see our dad on these fleeting visits. We would go to the cinema and out for pizza. We argued a bit because I was a teenage pain in the arse, but it was a joy to see him. He seemed optimistic about his new ideas and projects, but I could sense his unrest and worry. He talked a lot about money, mistakes and bad luck. He was still smoking constantly. I watched him puffing away on his little borrowed patio and he looked distracted and frail. He made an effort with Lucy and me, but seeing him alone with his thoughts, it was clear that he was deeply troubled.

  Just when it seemed hopeless, it looked like the show that got him started in comedy would return to save him. Jokers Wild had last aired in the seventies, and now twenty years later the show was to return. My dad was to produce a modernized version called The Hecklers. It was a pilot for the BBC, but if it went well it would be good news for everyone. My dad would be working again, and if a series was commissioned, he would have to move back to London. For Lucy and me, this was a wonderful prospect because, although he was visiting regularly, we were also saying goodbye regularly, which was always painful.

  The Hecklers was to feature new comedians, so my dad, who was now totally out of touch with the UK comedy scene, had to go talent-spotting at London’s comedy clubs. I didn’t know anything about stand-up comedy. I had only seen three comedians on TV, and although I enjoyed them, I didn’t have an epiphany or anything. I saw the American Steven Wright, who delivered a stream of monotone one-liners (‘I bought some batteries, but batteries weren’t included’). I’d also seen Lee Evans and Lenny Henry in their live shows, but my mum and Steve were laughing so much I didn’t catch many of the jokes.

  When my dad came to London, he went out every night to comedy clubs to unearth the stars of tomorrow. Lucy and I would spend the day with him before he’d drop us off in his rented car and say he was off to the Comedy Store in Leicester Square or riffling through an A–Z to locate clubs in Greenwich, Balham and Battersea. I had never heard of comedy clubs, I had never even heard of these places in London, but one day I would. He was going to a club called Up the Creek in Greenwich, the Banana Cabaret in Balham and Jongleurs in Battersea. In the years to come I would play these clubs hundreds of times, and I don’t think there was a time I set off in my car that I didn’t think of my dad setting off to the same place.

  This was an era when Eddie Izzard was the king of stand-up but refused to appear on television, and Tony Slattery refused to do anything that didn’t involve appearing on television. So after extensive scouring for talent, my dad finalized the line-up for the pilot. The unknown comedians would be Mark Steel, Steve Coogan and Richard Morton, and the host, you guessed it, Tony Slattery.

  My dad bought himself a new black jacket for the pilot. This became my first experience of live comedy, and I had never laughed so much in my life. Each comic performed a few minutes to introduce themselves to the audience, and they were all hilarious. Tony Slattery, in particular, was hysterical.

  Everybody seemed thrilled with the pilot, but, as with all pilots, Dad would have an uncomfortable wait before the powers that be made their decisions. While he was waiting, he continued to come to London to drum up business. In November 1993, Lucy and I said goodbye to him on the steps of the flat he borrowed in Maida Vale. We weren’t upset, as he already had another visit scheduled for soon after Christmas.

  That Christmas he sent Lucy and me our presents, and we got up early together before the rest of the house awoke to open them. We didn’t want to open them with Mum and Steve because our relationship with our dad was very separate and personal to us. We knew he was struggling financially so didn’t expect much, but his presents were lovely and thoughtful, especially the book about how to fix classic cars. We spoke later that day to wish each other a Merry Christmas.

  That would be the last time we spoke.

  Since I had my driving licence, I was barely at home. On the evening of 27 December, I was in Highgate at the house of a friend whose parents were away. There
was a group of us, including Sam and some girls, most of whom I fancied. We had been larking about all day, watching movies, smoking cigarettes, eating junk food. This was prior to the days when everyone had a mobile phone, so my mother was clueless as to my whereabouts. I remember the phone ringing and being told it was for me. ‘Hello?’ I said.

  ‘Michael, it’s Mum. I’ve been trying to find you all day. You need to come home immediately.’

  ‘Why? Has something happened?’ I asked, not overly concerned.

  ‘You just need to come home now. I can’t tell you over the phone,’ my mother said coolly. Her voice seemed relatively normal. I didn’t sense that anything terrible had happened.

  ‘Why can’t you tell me now? Is it something bad?’ I pushed.

  ‘Michael, don’t worry. Just come home now, OK?’

  ‘OK,’ I said, hanging up.

  Because of my mother’s tone, I was intrigued rather than panicked. As I drove home I wondered what might have happened. Might it be to do with one of my brothers or Lucy or Grandma or Jim or Steve’s parents? All I knew was that it couldn’t be that serious. My mum’s performance on the phone was too convincing. As I neared Golders Green, the thought suddenly entered my head: what if it is something serious? That’s exactly how my mum would behave on the phone. It was like when my dad asked me to sit down when he told me I was leaving Merchant Taylors’ – people don’t like to deliver bad news on the phone. I was so consumed with mucking about with my mates and my various teenage crushes that I hadn’t really thought this through. Something bad had happened. To whom? As I drove alongside the park towards my house, my father’s face popped into my mind. A chill came over me.

  I turned the corner into my road just as the panic in my mind was reaching a crescendo. The front door of my house was open, my mother was standing outside, her body buckled with pain, tears streaming from her face.

  I jumped out of my car. ‘What is it?’

  ‘Your daddy’s died.’

  It was strange because I felt like I knew before my mother opened her mouth to tell me. I knew, I knew my father had died.

  ‘Where’s Lucy?’ I said.

  I ran upstairs to find Lucy in my bed waiting for me, crying. Through all the changes in my life, my parents divorcing, remarrying, moving home and school, having new half-brothers and sisters, Lucy was the constant in my life. We experienced everything together. Our dad had a new life, a new family, and so did our mum, and as hard as everybody tried for it not to feel this way, Lucy and I were stuck in the middle. But we had each other, and at this moment we needed each other more than anybody else.

  The previous day, Boxing Day, my dad had complained to Holly about chest pains in the night. He went out for a walk and some fresh air, had a heart attack and died on the side of the road. It destroyed me to think of him on his own, strangers trying to help him. He was fifty-three years old.

  Holly lost her husband, their children Billy and Georgina lost a dad they hardly got a chance to know. His first wife, to whom he was married long before I was born, held a memorial service for him. A death affects so many people in so many different ways. For me, I lost a future with my dad. I felt that our relationship had been dominated by circumstance and distance, but that we were cut from the same cloth and that we would become closer and I would learn from him. But that was not to be.

  The months following were a bit of a whirlwind. My dad was cremated, and Holly brought his ashes over from America. We didn’t really know what to do with them. Holly, Lucy and I decided to go to Scotland, where his parents were originally from before emigrating to Canada. We went to Edinburgh and walked up Arthur’s Seat, which is the main peak of a group of hills that overlook the city. It was a typically blustery, chilly Scottish day. We climbed as far as we could, Holly clutching the solid brass urn containing my father’s remains. It was surreal and ultimately comical. We selected a spot. Dog-walkers kept passing by. ‘Good morning!’ they would say in their thick Scottish accents.

  We waited for some privacy, and then Holly tried to say a few words, but they were blown downwind so Lucy and I struggled to hear her. Then it transpired there was no way to open the urn. There was no lid; it was solid brass all the way around. We’d taken a five-hour train journey, booked hotel rooms and climbed a small mountain only to find we couldn’t get it open. The only solution was to try to smash it open against a rock. So Holly repeatedly banged the sealed-shut container against the largest rock she could find. After a period of denting, she finally broke through at a moment that coincided with a large gust of wind, which blew my father’s ashes all over her face and hair. She was covered in grey soot, she could barely get her eyes open. Another Scottish dog-walker passed saying, ‘Good morning’, before noticing Holly’s appearance and scuttling off encouraging her dog to follow: ‘Come along, boy, hurry up.’

  ‘Your dad would find this hilarious,’ Holly said as she shook his remains out of her hair.

  We all laughed at the absurdity of the situation.

  Holly then changed her position, the ashes caught the wind once more and now flew freely along the hilltop, billowing in the cold morning air and then disappearing.

  Goodbye.

  The sudden nature of my dad’s death was shocking, and made it especially hard to deal with. One day I was chatting to him on the phone, the next he was gone. Little things freak you out, like his voice on the answerphone or his unmistakable smell on his clothes. I kept replaying our final goodbye at his borrowed flat in Maida Vale over and over in my head. I drove there in my Spitfire and sat outside. I drove to our old house in Hampstead and walked around the block, a walk I used to do with him as a child. He had just gone. Vanished.

  But a few weeks later, the most extraordinary thing happened. I received a letter from him, seemingly from beyond the grave. My dad had been on a turbulent plane journey on which the captain made the passengers sit in the crash position amidst panic and praying. It made him think about his mortality and the possibility of dying without being able to say goodbye to his family. So he wrote letters to his children that he planned to update over the years. It’s an extraordinarily thoughtful thing to do. Most people avoid the subject of death altogether, not wanting to tempt fate. Maybe my dad had this foresight because his own father also died young and suddenly, also in his early fifties. Or maybe he knew somewhere deep down that he was nearing the end. Whatever made him write it, I was so grateful. This letter was the most wonderful and thoughtful gift I have ever received. I have cherished it and kept it in my desk ever since.

  The letter starts with: ‘If you are reading this, it means the worst has happened.’

  It was like he spoke to me one last time. He apologized for the time we spent apart and advised me as best he could. It was poignant and from the heart and helped me to move on.

  He ended it with:

  You’ve got good stuff in you, so go get ’em! You’ve got your whole life ahead of you, and I want it to be as full of happiness as possible.

  I believe in you, Michael, always be the best you can be.

  I’ll love you always.

  I had experienced a terrible loss. There were things left unsaid, but my dad addressed them and left nothing unresolved between us and me in no doubt of his love for me, allowing me, in his words, to ‘go get ’em’.

  14

  I returned to Woodhouse to find that just when I thought things couldn’t get any worse, Tina had had a breast reduction. I had never even heard of such a procedure. That should be illegal, this is a man’s world, we can’t be having that. Tina’s shrinking tits were the talk of the college. Apparently her assets were giving her back pain so she was medically advised to reduce their size. If I was her doctor, I would have recommended back exercises or perhaps finding a hobby that involved lying down. Why didn’t she come to me? I would have helped her support them, taken some of the strain off her back, that’s the kind of guy I am, always thinking of others.

  The world was suddenly a v
ery different place, but I had no time to dwell, my A-Levels were rapidly approaching. This was the culmination of school life. Everything would come down to three grades, three letters that defined my academic abilities. A peculiar thing that happens before A-Levels is that teachers predict what grades students are going to gain. Despite displaying no psychic abilities before this point, they suddenly start to predict the future. These predictions are then put to universities, who may or may not make offers to students.

  I simply wasn’t prepared for my exams. Not only had I lost my father but I had changed schools mid-term and the standard of teaching at Woodhouse was a lot poorer than at Merchant Taylors’. In Biology, for example, the ‘teacher’ copied the textbook page by page on to the white board without saying a word. We then had to copy from the white board into our pads. At the end of the two years, we had each compiled handwritten versions of the textbook.

  The net result was that I was ‘predicted’ low grades and subsequently rejected by every university. This annoyed me. I thought the ‘prediction’ procedure was scandalous. They had no way of knowing how I would perform in my exams, and if they accepted ‘predictions’, couldn’t I tell them about the Tarot card reader? Maybe that would have helped my cause.

  The atmosphere at college was dominated by revision for the exams. Suddenly everybody was studious. The kebab shops were empty and the library was full. It was suggested that Tina had worked her tits off. This, after all, was the reason we were there. I got my head down and started cramming, but feared it was too late.

  My exam results were exactly as predicted. I got a C in Chemistry, a C in Biology and a D in Geography. This meant two things: my future was in turmoil and my teachers may actually have been psychic. Most of my friends were taking a ‘gap year’ between school and university. I told everybody I was taking a gap year, but in truth I had no place at university, so the rest of my life was lining up to be a series of ‘gap years’.