Life and Laughing: My Story

by Michael McIntyre

  That’s not to say there weren’t some characters. One old-timer from the Midlands always struggled onstage but thought he was God’s gift to comedy. I once saw him say to an audience who weren’t laughing at him, ‘I’m good at this, you know. Google me.’ He was convinced that he was brilliant, but the only reason he wasn’t successful was that everyone kept stealing all his jokes.

  ‘Peter Kay’s at it again,’ he announced in the dressing room of Nottingham Jongleurs while ironing his shirt. I looked around the empty room in the hope he was talking to someone else.

  ‘At what?’ I asked.

  ‘Stealing my material,’ he revealed in his Brummie accent. ‘Yep, I was watching him the other night, just ticking off the jokes, mine, mine, mine, mine, it was unbelievable.’

  ‘Unbelievable’ was right. I hadn’t seen this guy write a joke in years, nobody had.

  ‘He’s not the only one, you know,’ he carried on, steam pluming from his iron and from his ears.

  ‘Oh really, who else?’ I enquired.

  He stopped ironing and faced me for added drama.

  ‘Jay Leno,’ he revealed.

  ‘Jay Leno? The host of The Tonight Show on NBC in America has been stealing your jokes?’ I asked, trying not to laugh.

  ‘I know, incredible isn’t it?’ he said, thinking I was as baffled as him.

  ‘How did he do it? Do you think he comes to Jongleurs and sits at the back with a pad?’ I asked, looking forward to his explanation.

  ‘No. Don’t be silly. He’s a massive star. There’s no way Jay Leno would do that … He hires people, local people to do it for him. I’ve seen them, you know, in the audience, at the back, taking notes.’

  ‘I’m shocked!’ I said, already itching to share the hilarity of this conversation with Kitty.

  ‘Me too, but there’s no other explanation. And he’s not the first American talk show host to steal my material, either.’

  ‘This has happened before?’

  ‘A few years ago.’ He again put down his iron and dramatically turned to face me.

  ‘David Letterman,’ he revealed. ‘I sent him a tape of my stand-up set to try and get on his talk show and the next time I watched it, he’d stolen all my ideas.’

  ‘He can’t get away with that. What were the jokes?’

  ‘Topical stuff,’ he declared.

  ‘He told your jokes, word for word?’ I asked, loving his level of fantasy.

  ‘Not exactly, but he took all the subjects. George W. Bush, the Iraq war, Dick Cheney, it was all there. But who’s gonna believe me?’

  It seemed like this was the best I could hope for by playing Jongleurs. I wasn’t going to be famous, but maybe I could be totally deluded. I occasionally played other clubs like the Banana in Balham, Up the Creek in Greenwich, the Glee in Birmingham, the Hyena in Newcastle, and I would come alive and get a sense of how much better I could be. The audience were more focused, allowing me more time to express myself onstage. But I felt any good work that I would do would be undone by returning to Jongleurs for the next few weeks.

  Then a genuine opportunity presented itself. Duddridge announced that he was taking me to perform at the Edinburgh Festival. This was what I had been waiting for. This was my chance to make a name for myself. Edinburgh is where stand-up stars are found. There are hundreds of shows in every nook and cranny of the city. Open a cupboard door in Edinburgh during the Festival and there will be a wannabe comedian performing a show to a handful of punters.

  The opportunity that Edinburgh provided was the Perrier Award. This is where a panel of about twelve journalists, comedy fans and TV execs see every show, nominate the best five shows and then pick a winner. Just to be nominated will set you on your way to stardom, as demonstrated by the esteemed list of comics the panel have unearthed through the years, including Frank Skinner, Jack Dee, Eddie Izzard, Steve Coogan, Harry Hill, Lee Evans, Dylan Moran, Bill Bailey, Johnny Vegas, Peter Kay, the list runs and runs. Household names who were nobodies before the Perrier panel found them. It seems that if you’re going to become a successful stand-up comedian, you will be nominated for the Perrier Award. Very few people slip through the net. The year before I was set to make my debut, 2002, the Perrier panel again proved their worth by nominating the then unknown comedians Jimmy Carr, Omid Djalili and Noel Fielding. The winner was Daniel Kitson.

  For all the tough Jongleurs gigs, here was my big chance to break away from the pack. In addition to the main award, there was also the Newcomer Award for which I would be eligible as I was making my debut.

  Duddridge managed to book me into the much sought-after Pleasance Courtyard for twenty-five shows in August. The Pleasance Courtyard is a real hub of the Festival. Hundreds of people flock there, drinking and socializing and choosing from a multitude of shows starting hourly in a series of venues ranging from the 350-seat Pleasance One to my venue, the sixty-seat Pleasance Attic. I now had something to aim for, a focus.

  Edinburgh, however, is a gamble. For all the success stories aforementioned, there are many more whose dreams were not realized, leaving them in massive debt. The Edinburgh Festival is very expensive, costing between £5,000 and £10,000 to put on a show. It takes a lot of soul-destroying Jongleurs gigs to pay that back. But it was a gamble worth taking, a gamble all aspiring comedians had to take.

  I headed to Scotland filled with optimism and adrenaline. The Festival lasts three weeks, and the plan was for Kitty to join me on weekends. I shared a flat with the comedian Paul Tonkinson. Paul is from North Yorkshire and was my only real friend in comedy. We had met at the Glee Comedy Club in Birmingham, and he became my biggest fan. Nobody believed in me like Paul did, he saw something in me that nobody else had, not even me. He lived near me in London, and we had been spending time together, talking about ideas and stand-up. Paul had been a comic for ten years, he had played clubs all over the world, appeared on several TV and radio shows, but he kept telling me he wanted to learn from me. I was flattered, but deep down thought he must be as deluded as the Brummie comedian who was now claiming the sitcom Seinfeld was his idea.

  Paul was more excited about my Edinburgh show than his own. ‘You’re gonna win the Perrier Award, mate,’ he kept saying over and over again. He even went to the bookies to try and put money on it, but they had as much idea who I was as Jongleurs had when I called up about my open spot.

  The night before my first gig, I couldn’t sleep with excitement, I was raring to go. I cobbled together all my jokes and just about had an hour’s worth. I also had a lot of untried ideas about Edinburgh from my days as a student. My main worry, however, was who I was going to tell these jokes to. My pre-sales for the Festival were one ticket. Just one person had bought a ticket to see me; and it was a 2-for-1 deal. This one person couldn’t even convince someone else to come with him for free.

  The poster from my first Edinburgh show in 2003 that enticed precisely one person to buy a ticket, and it was a 2-for-1 deal. The quote from the Sun was made-up.

  The omens were not good, but when showtime came I got a few last-minute bookings and had an audience of about thirty, thanks mainly to the 2-for-1 deal. The Scots love a bargain. I also benefited from the overspill from sold-out shows like Jimmy Carr and Dara Ó Briain in Pleasance One.

  I opened the show commenting on all the Scots who had shown up simply because of the 2-for-1. I impersonated them booking the tickets in my pretty decent Scottish accent, and they lapped it up. I also made jokes about Scottish money, how they had their own money, but not their own currency. I would impersonate the business news on Scottish TV: ‘The exchange rate remains stable at one pound to the pound.’

  My adrenaline helped me have a successful first few nights, but when the 2-for-1 offer ended and the tickets went to full price, I started to struggle to attract an audience of more than ten, not enough to put on a show and create anything like an atmosphere. I had some awful gigs, getting no laughs at all. I even had people walk out, halving the audience.

>   My only hope to increase my audience was to receive some positive reviews for my show. With hundreds of comedy shows, the competition to get a journalist to see your show is fierce. I employed a PR girl, but unfortunately she was useless. The first time I spoke to her, I knew things probably weren’t going to work out.

  ‘Hi, it’s Michael,’ I said.

  ‘Michael who?’ she replied in her Mancunian accent.

  ‘Michael McIntyre.’

  ‘Michael … Macin-tower,’ she said, trying to place me.

  ‘McIntyre. You’re doing my PR,’ I said, wondering how it was possible that the person in charge of publicizing me hadn’t managed to publicize me to herself.

  ‘Oh yes, of course. Hiya, love. What are you up to?’ she then said like we were old friends.

  ‘I’m performing a show at the Edinburgh Festival,’ I said with more than a hint of sarcasm.

  ‘Brilliant, I should come and see that, shouldn’t I? I’ll check my diary and try to squeeze it in.’ This was horrifying. She was supposed to be getting the press to see me, and she could barely book herself to see me.

  ‘What about the newspapers?’ I pushed.

  ‘I’ve got them,’ she said, nonchalantly.

  Thank God, I thought. She does know what she’s doing. She’s booked some journalists to my show. I’ll find out the dates and make sure those are my best gigs.

  ‘Which ones? When?’ I said, my excitement building.

  ‘All of them. This morning. We get the papers every day to see if there’s anything in them about the comedians.’

  ‘Oh right,’ I said, deflated, realizing she was referring to having bought the newspapers. ‘Was there anything in them?’

  ‘Not today, but it’s early days yet, don’t panic,’ she said.

  ‘I think you should try and get the papers to see my show, the Times, the Guardian, the Independent, I’m seeing reviews in them every day. Reviews of new comics like me playing at the Pleasance. Can’t we get them to come to my show?’ I said, reminding her of her job description.

  ‘What a good idea!’ she said. ‘I’ll see what I can do.’

  A few days later she called me back.

  ‘Fantastic news!’ she said, ‘I’ve got the Guardian.’

  ‘Wonderful, when?’ I said.

  ‘The nineteenth, to Gina’s show,’ she proudly announced, referring to Gina Yashere, another comedian she was doing PR for at the Festival.

  ‘Do you think you could get them to see my show too?’ I asked.

  ‘On the nineteenth? I don’t think so, they’re seeing Gina.’

  ‘No, on another date,’ I suggested, losing any remaining hope that she could do her job.

  ‘Great idea, I’ll see what I can do.’

  The Festival was leaving me behind. All the other shows seemed to have photocopies of reviews pasted on top of their posters that were all around the city. ‘5 Star, The Times. 4 Star, the Guardian’. My posters only featured my hopeful smiling face.

  I started doing impressions of how bad my PR girl was in my show. I would pretend to call her and she would pick up the phone shouting, ‘Four star!’

  ‘Really? I got a review?’ I would excitedly respond.

  ‘Oh, no, sorry,’ she would say, ‘I’m in the petrol station. Who’s calling?’

  I would pretend to call her another time. ‘Three star!’ she would say, picking up the phone.

  ‘That’s not so bad. At least I got a review,’ I would reply.

  ‘What? Sorry, love, I’m just booking a B&B. Who is this?’

  And I would end the joke with her picking up the phone saying, ‘One star!’

  ‘Hello, it’s Michael calling.’

  ‘I know, love, you got a review today in The Times.’

  This may have been funny, but making jokes about how badly my Festival was going to about ten people in an attic was not ideal. Then things took a turn for the worse. I had a show where I sold the grand total of zero tickets, nil, zilch, none whatsoever. It was as if I wasn’t at the Edinburgh Festival at all. Other shows had queues of people snaking all around the Pleasance Courtyard, and not one person wanted to see my show. I headed down to my venue in the hope that somebody might show up, but nobody did. I had never felt like more of a loser. I hung out with the technicians who worked at my tiny venue and tried to make light of the situation, but they seemed genuinely sorry for me. I went back to the flat despondent, deflated and defeated.

  Peter Kay’s stand-up show was on Channel 4 that night, and I lay on the sofa watching it while my flatmate Paul was performing his show to a packed crowd. Peter Kay was incredible, so funny, his huge loving audience wiping away tears of laughter. Peter Kay had entered ‘So You Think You’re Funny?’ in 1997 and won the whole competition with one of his first gigs. The following year, he had gone to the Edinburgh Festival and been nominated for the Perrier Award. I didn’t get anywhere near winning ‘So You Think You’re Funny?’ and here I was in Edinburgh with no audience. Our lives were worlds apart. I thought I was wasting my time, I didn’t stand a chance.

  I could find comedy in most things, but this wasn’t funny. Paul tried to make me feel better but I could tell he hadn’t expected me to struggle so much to get an audience. He had been to the Festival several times before and had never heard of anyone not selling a single ticket.

  Kitty came up to see me the next day, and I sat with her in Starbucks and burst into tears. I had reached rock bottom. We were sitting by the window facing the pedestrianized Royal Mile that was packed with people handing out fliers for their shows. Not just comedians but magicians, dancers, singers and theatre groups all dressed up in their stage costumes. As I sobbed into my latte, I said, ‘It can’t get any worse.’

  To which Kitty replied, ‘There’s always someone worse off.’

  ‘Who?’ I questioned.

  ‘Him,’ she said, pointing out of the window at a man wearing only a nappy, handing out leaflets for his show with his head sticking out of a toilet seat. She was right. It’s a jungle in Edinburgh, everybody’s trying to make it, to get noticed. I had two weeks left. It was Saturday night, the busiest night of the week, and that night I had sold about forty tickets, enough to put on a show.

  I had nothing more to lose. I bought a double Jack Daniels before the show and looked out of the window in the tiny room adjacent to my Attic venue that I used as a dressing room. I could see Arthur’s Seat glowing in the last light of the day. I hadn’t thought about my history with the city thus far, I had been so consumed with the pressure of my show. But now I thought of my dad, whose ashes I had scattered a few hundred yards away. He was watching over me, he must be. I can do this.

  I took a swig from my Jack Daniels and went for it. I ditched most of my mediocre material and just played with the audience. I improvised and enjoyed myself. I wasn’t trying to be funny, I was just having fun. Laughter filled my min-uscule Attic venue, and for the first time, I was myself onstage, the best of me. I didn’t care if there were any press in. That night I learned for myself that I could do it, I wasn’t wasting my time.

  But luck would have it that there was someone from the press there, Bruce Dessau from the Evening Standard. Here are some extracts from his review:

  Michael McIntyre is so sharp, he is in danger of shredding himself. This livewire was so busy bantering brilliantly that I’m not sure he did much scripted material … He teased a cabbie, mocked an hirsute schoolboy and snatched a sandwich from a punter … His publicity shots make him look like a squeaky clean teenager, but there is a wise head on those shoulders. He has been professional for only two years but worked the room like a man possessed … If McIntyre doesn’t make the Perrier shortlist, he will have been cruelly overlooked.

  I couldn’t believe it. I had gone from not selling a single ticket to being talked about in connection with the Perrier, and not just by anybody, by Bruce Dessau, who was on the judging panel. The review had an amazing impact on me, but unfortunately not on ticket
sales, as it was printed in a London newspaper, London being the capital city of a country that I wasn’t performing in. I could only imagine that Londoners were sitting on the Tube thinking, ‘That sounds like a good show. If I was in Edinburgh, I might go to that, but I’m not. This is my stop.’

  Bruce went back to his fellow Perrier panellists and reported his discovery. Suddenly I was in the running. The rest of the panel were dispatched to see me, including one night when ten of the twelve judges were the only tickets booked for my show. The remainder of the tickets were handed out for free to make up the numbers. I never quite repeated the heights of that one night but I had done enough. I was nominated for the Perrier Best Newcomer. My show then sold out for the remaining week of the Festival. I didn’t win it, but I had arrived. Having plumbed the depths of despair, I found somehow everything had turned around.

  Duddridge was thrilled, my mum was so proud, Paul thought I was robbed and should have won the main award, and my PR girl said she didn’t like Perrier and preferred Highland Spring.

  I was overjoyed with what was a successful Edinburgh, out of the blue. In three weeks’ time, Kitty would be marrying a Perrier Best Newcomer Nominee.

  Finally, everything seemed like it was coming together.

  22

  Everybody chipped in to give us a magnificent wedding. My mum and Steve bought Kitty’s wedding dress, Kitty’s parents provided the flowers and the food, friends purchased our wedding bands, Kitty’s parents’ friends kindly allowed us to use their wonderful country house in Somerset for the reception, other friends made the cake and hired us an old Rolls-Royce, Lucy paid for the wine and LloydsTSB Bank paid for the honeymoon.

  I borrowed £10,000 for the holiday of a lifetime to the Maldives. You only ever have one honeymoon, I was marrying the girl of my dreams, I had just been nominated for a Perrier Best Newcomer Award, I was twenty-seven years old with my whole career ahead of me. I was sure I could pay it back.