Life and Laughing: My Story

by Michael McIntyre

  ‘Well, she’s not interested in me. I blew it, but I’m going to get her. I’m in love with her,’ I confessed.

  ‘Don’t vaste you time,’ my grandma replied, nastily, ‘she’s only after ze money.’

  I wanted to say, ‘What money? My Scrabble winnings?’ but it would have been no use. I felt sorry for my grandma; all she wanted was to play Scrabble with me every day. But that wasn’t quite the future I wanted. When I got home, I took off my oversized cashmere coat that she had given me. It was a weight on my shoulders. It was symbolic. I wasn’t really my own man. I was surviving on £50 notes from my grandma, I was wearing all these odd clothes she was buying for me. I had dropped out of university, I didn’t have a job, nobody had committed to my script, I couldn’t write another one, and I actually really wanted to have sex with Marta.

  I was twenty-one years old. What was I going to do? Who was I? But I already knew; I always knew what I wanted to do. I was already doing it unofficially. My whole life revolved around making people laugh. Every time I went out, I would come home and judge my performance. A good night for me was when I was funny. The only positive reactions to my script were to do with the jokes. I would hear people laughing when they read it, laughing out loud. Comedy was what I did. I’m a comedian. I’m going to be a stand-up comedian.

  I announced the news to everybody. Here is a selection of their responses:

  Lucy: ‘Brilliant, Mike, that’s brilliant. You’re so funny, I’m so pleased for you.’

  My mum: ‘Oh my God, Michael, I’m so worried about you. That’s a very difficult thing to do. Your father said it was the hardest job in the world.’

  Sam: ‘I’m funnier than you.’

  Grandma: ‘Don’t be so bluddy stupid, vot kind of a job is dat? You vill starve if you do dat. Now, whose turn is it?’

  Kitty: ‘I can’t talk right now, but please leave your message after the tone and I’ll get back to you.’

  At this point, I had never seen any live stand-up comedy. So Lucy and I headed to the Comedy Store in Piccadilly Circus and also booked tickets to see Jerry Seinfeld at the London Palladium in his only London performance. It was so wonderful to witness live comedy. I loved how instant the reaction was. I was used to packaging up scripts, sending them off and a month later being rejected. In stand-up, you spoke and if it was funny, people laughed. Bang, no argument. The comedians had their own points of view, their own styles and their own outlooks on life. The audience either enjoyed it or didn’t. I had my own point of view, my own style and outlook on life, and I knew it was funny; I made people laugh every day.

  I had been nervous going to see live stand-up. I was nervous because I thought that maybe I was kidding myself and that although I was funny in the pub, professional comedy might be another league of funny. However, I left the Comedy Store and the Palladium having laughed my head off, but confident that I could do it. When my sister and I went to an open-mike night at a club called the Comedy Café off Old Street, the new acts were awful, cringeworthy apart from one, the host. He was a few years younger than me, had a beard, thick glasses and a stutter. He was called Daniel Kitson and he did worry me. Jerry Seinfeld hadn’t, but this teenage misfit did. Seinfeld delivered wonderful word-perfect routines, but Kitson was just so natural and creative. He wasn’t just funny, he had a stage presence that belied his awkward looks. I realized then that there was more to this business than just saying funny things. You need to have gravitas, the audience has to believe in you, you have to be a performer. I knew I could be funny, write funny, but would I connect with an audience? Well, there was only one way to find out.

  The booker for the club, Hannah Chambers, went to Westminster School, and we had friends in common. So despite there being a long wait for a slot, she booked me in the following week for my first gig.

  That week I was so terrified, I could barely eat or sleep. I wrote joke after joke of mixed quality, some bad, some worse. I was trying to write jokes in the style of Woody Allen or one-liners like Steven Wright. I didn’t have a style, I had never done this before. I compiled my five minutes and rehearsed it endlessly in front of the mirror, holding my pen as a microphone (I’ve never owned a hairbrush, perhaps you’ve noticed). The jokes were forgettable, which is why I can’t remember most of them. Here are the ones I can remember:

  ‘I remember when I was born because it was the last time that I was inside a woman who looked genuinely pleased when I got out.’

  ‘I have a car, it’s a good runner. It gets me from A to B, except I live in Kew.’

  ‘There are a lot of gay politicians. It gets confusing when they’re in the closet, then they’re in the cabinet, then they’re in the closet and in the cabinet, then they’re out of the closet but still in the cabinet, then they’re out of the closet and the cabinet … and on to the back bench.’

  I was mid-rehearsal when the phone rang. I flicked my eyes at my state-of-the-art caller ID. These were the digits I had been longing to see displayed for weeks.

  ‘Hello?’ I said.

  ‘Hi, it’s Kitty,’ came the reply I thought I might never hear again, ‘I heard from Joe that you were trying stand-up and I just wanted to wish you luck.’

  We chatted for over an hour, like old friends even though we’d met only three times. I was elated after she had phoned. I suddenly felt that my life was now full of ambition. I had goals to be a stand-up and to make Kitty fall in love with me. I knew they might be long roads, but I was on them. I was at the beginning of the roads, the two long roads (I’m struggling with this analogy); it was a dual carriageway.

  Wednesday night was my big night. My five minutes of jokes were spinning round and round in my head. I went with my sister and her boyfriend. Lucy had helped me so much that week that she knew my act word for word. On the Tube, I asked her if she could perform it for me. When we arrived at the club, I thought I might vomit. The Wednesday new-act night has free entry, so the audience was packed with people who don’t like to pay for entertainment. I made this remark to my sister and she laughed. I should have mentioned that onstage, that’s the kind of comedy I should do, that I do best, just say things that made me laugh.

  Instead, I kept rehearsing my act, the keywords of which I had scribbled on my hand. There were ten of us on the bill, each doing five minutes. It was easy to spot the other acts loitering about, pacing nervously, biro all over their hands. I was on third. Daniel Kitson was again hosting and was just as hilarious as the previous week. He was enjoying himself and doing far too long between the acts. The audience were in the palm of his biro-free hand. He would introduce each act almost as if he was apologizing for the interruption to the Daniel Kitson Show, and it wasn’t an interruption the audience appreciated because he was significantly funnier than everybody else.

  The first two acts were decidedly amateurish. They got a few small laughs but nothing like the sound of the laughs Daniel was getting. I was next. My sister squeezed my hand, ‘Good luck.’ She left me waiting in the wings and took her seat. Daniel started bantering with the audience, who were rolling about with his every word. He had hit a goldmine with a character in the audience and wasn’t about to pass over the reins. Occasionally, it would seem he was about to bring me onstage, but then something else hilarious would occur to him.

  ‘OK, ladies and gentlemen, it’s time for our next act.’ He took out the list of acts from his pocket and read out my name, beginning my comedy career: ‘Michael McIntyre.’ The audience applauded as I walked towards the stage and took the microphone out of its stand. I had been advised to look into the middle distance. As I’m writing this I can see that there’s a routine just in looking into the ‘middle distance’ as opposed to the ‘long distance’ or ‘near distance’, but then I was a comedy virgin with no instinct as to what might work onstage. So I looked for the middle distance, and gazed into it.

  The view from the stage was surreal. Nothing can prepare you for all the expectant faces staring at you. I can’t remember wha
t I opened with, but I remember hearing the sound of laughter. It was amazing, I felt like Jerry Seinfeld. ‘I’m a natural,’ I thought, ‘this is a breeze.’ Unfortunately, I then proceeded to struggle for the remaining four and a half minutes. I walked offstage to lacklustre applause, and within moments Daniel had them back laughing at full volume.

  But I was away, off the mark. Technically the gig was a disaster, but I did get one laugh, one solitary laugh, something to build on. I was so relieved that it was over and proud that I had cleared the most terrifying hurdle of my life so far. I sat in the audience at the Comedy Store and the Palladium confident in my ability to succeed as a stand-up, but now I knew that was because the comedians made it look easy. It wasn’t.

  I had been bitten by the comedy bug. I booked myself into several other new-act nights and I was now on the road, but what about the other lane of my road, the Kitty Lane? (Sorry, I genuinely thought I’d left this analogy behind.) Well, we started talking on the phone regularly. I had learned my lesson from before and eased off a bit. She and her friends, including my sister’s boyfriend, would go to the Lansdowne, a pub in Primrose Hill. I would head down there to run into her accidentally on purpose. My natural instinct every time I saw her was to drop to my knees and ask for her hand in marriage, but I just about managed to hold it together. We were becoming friends. I was one of her many friends, an alarming number of whom were men with a similar yearning look to me. There was no doubt about it; I faced a lot of competition.

  My days revolved around writing jokes, wondering whether to phone Kitty and hoping she would phone me. My state-of-the-art BT caller ID phone was playing a huge part in my life. To see her number flash up on the display was the highlight of my day. When my lease ran out on my studio flat in West Hampstead, I took my obsessive behaviour to the next level. I found a small one-bedroom flat two roads from the flat she shared with her parents. My new residence was in a 1930s block called Stanbury Court that overlooked her local pub, the Steeles, where we first met. She seemed to welcome my being local, and we started spending evenings together, drinking and laughing. At regular intervals, she would remind me that we were just good friends; either by saying the words ‘We’re just good friends’ or telling me about other men in her life. Although this was like a dagger in my heart, I played it cool.

  I once tried to make her jealous by telling her about a fictional girl I had met. Unfortunately, she seemed genuinely pleased for me. Not only that, but she really wanted to meet her. She was also very keen to come to one of my gigs, but that was out of the question. After my Comedy Café debut, I had had about five further gigs and still hadn’t really added to my tally of one laugh.

  The holy grail of stand-up for a new act is playing the Comedy Store in Piccadilly Circus. The Comedy Store has an amazing history. Everyone starts out at the Store: Lee Evans, Jack Dee, Jennifer Saunders, Dawn French, Eddie Izzard, Clive Anderson. Robin Williams has played there. For me, just walking around the Store as a punter was magical. There are photos and press cuttings of its illustrious history adorning the walls. It’s underground, the ceiling is low, the audience are packed in, surrounding the comedians, no more than a few feet away, the atmosphere is electric. It’s the perfect comedy club.

  The Store is owned and run by the legendary Don Ward, ‘The Don’. Don could easily sit back and rest on his laurels. His club is the hottest comedy ticket in town. But Don has always supported new talent. On every bill of the best stand-ups around, he will give an ‘open spot’ a chance. It’s part of the tradition of the Comedy Store and fun for the audience to see how a rookie fares; but for the new acts it’s an incredible opportunity to test themselves at the highest level and potentially get a leg up in what my dad called ‘the toughest business there is.’

  Having spoken to other new acts during my first five ill-fated gigs, it became apparent that competition for ‘open spot’ places at the Comedy Store was fiercer than for the stool next to Kitty in the pub. Apparently, it was at least a six-month waiting list to get a five-minute spot. This was perfect for me; I needed those six months to prepare. My plan was to work every day and gig as much as possible. Then I would take my big chance at the Store with the big boys and under the watchful eye of Don Ward, who would then set me on the path to glory. I daydreamed about this sequence of events repeatedly. The audience would be whooping and cheering as I took my triumphant bow and then I would call for Kitty like Rocky calling ‘Adrian’ having defeated Apollo Creed in Rocky I (Adrian? Apollo Creed must have thought he’d been beaten by a homosexual). Kitty would run into my arms as the audience gave me a standing ovation.

  This dream was a long way off. I had only received one laugh as a stand-up. Kitty had no romantic interest in me and thought I was seeing a fictional girl. Also the Comedy Store has a strict policy about the audience getting onstage. Enormous bouncers are poised throughout the show, so Kitty would have been physically removed from the club before she made it to my arms.

  I telephoned the Comedy Store and got a date, in one year. Although it seemed like too long, I felt that at least I’d be ready. I took a deep breath when I hung up the phone. I had one year to make this daydream a reality. Rather than getting straight to work, I decided to have the daydream again. Just as I reached the bit where the audience were whooping and cheering, the phone rang. My heart leapt at the prospect of Kitty’s numbers lighting up the display but it simply read ‘Unavailable’. ‘Unavailable’ is a gamble, but my life was at the stage where I had to gamble, I had to pick it up.

  ‘Hello?’

  ‘Hi, is that Michael?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘It’s Charlotte from the Comedy Store. We’ve just had an open spot drop out of the show tonight. I can’t get hold of anyone, and your number was in front of me. So do you want to go on?’

  ‘Tonight?’ I said in disbelief.

  ‘Yes, I’m sorry it’s such short notice.’

  This was a split-second decision. I wanted six months to prepare, I thought I had a year, now I had an afternoon.

  ‘OK, I’ll do it.’

  18

  I had been going to the Comedy Store with my sister regularly since I became a stand-up. I watched the acts thinking, ‘I’m going to be on that stage one day.’ It was an exhilarating feeling. The best comic I had seen there was Terry Alderton. He was sensational, a powerhouse who had the whole audience on their feet at the end. It was inspiring to see a man reduce an audience to tears of laughter.

  As I headed out on the Tube with my sister to make my Comedy Store debut, I thought about Terry’s performance and realized I had made a terrible mistake. I was totally out of my depth. I was going to ruin everything. I was so nervous and panicked, I was struggling to speak in sentences to my sister as the Tube rattled along the Northern Line from Belsize Park to Leicester Square.

  ‘This was a mistake,’ I announced dramatically. ‘Don Ward is going to see me and think I’m shit. Because I am shit.’

  ‘Michael, you can do this. I think deep down you know that, which is why you took the gig. Don’t think about Don Ward,’ Lucy encouraged.

  ‘Yes, but I should have been more prepared for when he sees me for the first time. You don’t get a chance to do impressions.’

  What I was trying to say was ‘You don’t get a second chance to make a first impression’, but due to the stress my brain was malfunctioning. Lucy tried to make sense of my remark, leading to a bizarre conversation that almost ended up with me trying impressions at the gig.

  I was a mess.

  When we arrived at the Comedy Store, the queue was enormous. The club holds 400 people. A line of 400 people seems to go on for ever. I took my place at the back of the queue, with the audience. I checked in at the box office and was pointed towards the dressing room behind the stage. My sister found a seat at the back of the club and crossed her fingers.

  I don’t remember the other comedians on that night apart from Terry Alderton. I wanted to tell him how much I enjoyed his
performance the other night, but rather than get the words in the wrong order, no words originated from my mouth whatsoever. In fact I couldn’t even get my mouth open. I wasn’t just nervous, I was in danger of passing out. The dressing room of the Comedy Store is tiny. There is a white board with the bill listed on it, and there was my name.

  ‘Michael MacIntire (5 mins).’

  The ‘McIntyre’ had two spelling mistakes, but there it was, my name in marker pen, on the bill at the Comedy Store. Just a few months after I had realized that maybe all the laughs I get in my everyday life could actually lead to a career as a stand-up comedian, here I was at the home of stand-up to find out.

  What I didn’t know then, as I paced around the dressing room with my heart beating out of my chest, is that the Comedy Store is actually the easiest gig on the circuit. The five gigs I had done were for small audiences of people who hadn’t paid for entertainment. They knew you were a new act and had low expectations. Often most of the audience at these ‘open mike’ nights are made up of the other ‘open spots’ and their friends. The gigs are poorly lit, the sound is bad, it’s just some bloke standing in the corner of a pub function room. But at the Comedy Store, conditions were perfect. When the ‘open spots’ are introduced, the compere doesn’t tell the audience they are a new act until afterwards. All the comedians are introduced in the same way. So when the compere says, ‘Ladies and gentlemen, are you ready for your next act of the evening?’ they are expecting a seasoned professional when they cheer their encouragement. ‘Please welcome Michael McIntyre …’

  I walked onstage with the audience whooping and cheering encouragement. This time, when the first thing I said got a laugh, it was the most magnificent sound I had ever heard. The Comedy Store laugh is like no other, it reverberates in the bunker-like room and smacks you in the face. The deafening sound of the audience laughter washed away all my nerves, and I didn’t just tell my jokes, I expressed them, I shared them with the audience and remembered why I thought they were funny. I left the stage to appreciative applause. The compere then told the audience it was one of my first gigs, and as I re-entered the dressing room, I received another round of applause. Terry Alderton was eating a plateful of food; he applauded by banging his fork on his plate and with his mouth full said, ‘You were really funny, mate.’