The Sound of Laughter

• Title
  
• Title Page
  
• Copyright Page
  
• Dedication
  
• Chapter One Oscar's Lipstick
  
• Chapter Two Trevor McDonald's Nose
  
• Chapter Three The Moon Landings of '84
  
• Chapter Four A Highland Toffee and a Packet of Three
  
• Chapter Five Catholic Intercourse
  
• Chapter Six The Holy White Triangle
  
• Chapter Seven Music Was My First Love. . .
  
• Chapter Eight The Vinyl Countdown
  
• Picture Section
  
• Chapter Nine We Be Jammin'
  
• Chapter Ten 4 p.m. till Raid
  
• Chapter Eleven Dettol and Marijuana
  
• Chapter Twelve Let's Tickle Those Balls
  
• Chapter Thirteen With Bert by Torchlight
  
• Chapter Fourteen The Magic Thumb Trick
  
• Chapter Fifteen Nobody Puts Peter in a Corner
  
• Chapter Sixteen A Happy Accident
  
• An Epilogue
  
• Footnotes
  

T
HE
S
OUND
OF
L
AUGHTER

P
ETER
K
AY

This eBook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author's and publisher's rights and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.

ISBN 9781409062769

Version 1.0

www.randomhouse.co.uk

Published in the United Kingdom by Arrow Books in 2007

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Copyright © Peter Kay, 2006

Peter Kay has asserted his right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988 to be identified as the author of this work.

This book is a work of non-fiction based on the life, experiences and recollections of the author. In some cases names of people, places, and the detail of events have been changed and characters created for artistic purposes and to protect the privacy of others.

This electronic book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher's prior consent in any form other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser

First published in the United Kingdom in 2006 by Century
First published in paperback in 2007 by Arrow Books

Arrow Books
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A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

ISBN: 9781409062769

Version 1.0

For Charlie Michael and Michael John

Ding Dong! Was that the doorbell? You can never be too sure. I didn't get up to answer it. I waited for it to ring again and confirm my suspicions. I waited and I listened. I listened by leaning my head forward and tilting it slightly to one side. Everyone knows that when you lean forward and tilt your head to one side the volume of life goes up.

Ding Dong! Now that made me jump, even though I was expecting it, like when I'm staring at my toaster waiting impatiently for my toast to pop up . . . when it does I jump, every time, never fails.

I've always disliked doorbells, but this has become worse since I got into showbiz. Most people who have experienced success have this fear of getting caught,
found out, the-dream-is-over-type fear. My own version of the fear is that the Showbiz Police have come to take it all back. I imagine them stood at the door in green tights and holding a scroll like those blokes out of
Shrek 2.
There's two of them, one plays an introductory bugle, the other clears his animated throat:

'I'm sorry, Mr Kay, but I have orders to tell you that you've had a good run, sunshine, but the time has come for you to go back to your cardboard-crushing job at Netto supermarket.' He puts his hand out. 'House and car keys please.'

But I wasn't enjoying any kind of success when the doorbell rang in 1990. There was a completely different reason for my fear. It was my driving instructor ringing the doorbell and the time had come for my first ever driving lesson.

Raymond was his name. He was a big burly fella, constantly tanned, like a cross between Bully from
Bullseye
and a fat Des O'Connor. If you can picture that, then I think you need help.

It wasn't the first time I'd met Raymond. He'd been my mum's driving instructor a few years before. I'd often seen my mum sat nervously in Raymond's Montego by the side of the laundrette, which was directly opposite our house. Incidentally, ours was a Victorian terrace house, a bit like Coronation Street but with a posh four-foot garden at the front. For some reason every gable-end house was a shop. We had a fruit shop at one end of the row, a chippie at the other (Elizabeth's beautiful fish, before she moved to Lytham) and directly opposite a TV-repair shop and the laundrette. I'd spent my life in that laundrette before we got a washing machine. My mum used to go in three times a week with three big bags and me in a pram. Apparently I used to sit in my pram singing 'Una Paloma Blanca' to the women. Years later me and R Julie used to play tennis up against the gable end of the laundrette during Wimbledon fortnight with the other local kids. That's where Raymond parked up smoking his pipe. Usually he'd be snapping at my mum because she was over-revving and couldn't find her biting point. But the advice must have paid off, because after three attempts my mum finally passed her test. We never bought a car though, we simply couldn't afford one. Nowadays my mum won't even consider it, she says there's too much traffic on the roads.

So going out in a car was a treat when I was growing up. I can still remember the excitement waiting for my Uncle Tony to swing around the side of the laundrette in his navy Sierra (well, if truth be told he wasn't my real Uncle Tony but my dad had borrowed his orbital sander once, so he was as good as). He was a tall, wiry man with a pencil moustache, a bit anaemic-looking. As long as I'd
known him, he'd always looked as if he was at death's door, but he's seventy-two now and still banging on. He'll outlive us all. He'd take R Julie and me out for the day, usually to the seaside, or if it was raining he'd take us ice skating in Blackburn. I was just happy to be travelling in a car.

I was never a big fan of ice skating. I could never get the hang of it. That and the fact it's so bloody slippy out on the ice. I also think ice-skating rinks are a haven for paedophiles, skating around all day, hanging on to kids' heads, pretending to fall over. 'They should hang them on the Lottery', as my grandad used to say. When the bodies drop, the feet set the balls rolling.

I took a girlfriend ice skating once on our second date and I fell and broke my arm in two places. Luckily the whole disaster worked out for the best as the girl took pity on my incompetence and eventually she married me (I hasten to add there was a five-year gap between the broken arm and the wedding day).

Ding Dong! Hold on, I've got to answer this fecking door. I opened it nervously clutching my provisional.

'Hello, Peter, are you ready, son?' said Raymond.

'I suppose,' I said.

'Is your mum in?' he said, peering over my shoulder.

'Yeah, she's in the backyard bathing the hamster.'

'Mind if I say hello?' And before I could say 'no' he
was halfway down the hall whistling the theme from
The Deer Hunter.

Bloody hell, I wanted to get going, it was costing me £12 an hour for this and we were already down to £11.50.

I could see my mum through the kitchen window. She was in the backyard wearing pink Marigolds, struggling to hold the hamster in one hand and prise the top off the Vosene with the other.

R Julie had bought it from the pet shop beside the convent. We'd all been expecting a playful little thing, but as soon as my dad tried to stroke it, it took a chunk out of his wrist.

'Oooo, the vicious little swine,' my dad said as he ran to the medicine cupboard dripping blood everywhere.

After further investigation (R Julie borrowed a book on hamsters from the library) we discovered it was a Russian hamster and that they weren't the friendliest of creatures. I used to hear it moodily thrashing around in its cage, mumbling things in Russian. Often we'd wake to find bits of straw and tiny bottles of vodka strewn all over the kitchen floor. I'm joking of course, we never had any straw. Anyway, as with all the other pets we ever owned, eventually it fell victim to the Kay family curse and dropped dead. When exactly, though, we never knew, because it slept all day and nobody dared go near
the vicious little sod so it could have been dead for weeks. In fact, if it hadn't been for me poking it relentlessly with a biro in the middle of the
Brookside
omnibus it might have lain there stiff as a board for months.

'Hello, Deirdre,' said Raymond. 'Have you not got yourself a car yet?'

'Hello, Ray. Have you got time for a cup of tea?'

No he hasn't got time, I thought as I shook my head violently and pointed towards the souvenir Pope John Paul II clock on the wall in the kitchen.

'I better not, Deirdre, I've got to take this lad up the bypass,' he said, winking at me. I gave him a nervous double take and had a quick check for a wedding ring.

'Is it a he or a she?' said Raymond inquisitively as he groped towards the hamster cage.

'We've no idea, nobody's ever got close enough to check because he —' and before my mum could say the word 'bites' Raymond was leaping around the backyard with the hamster's teeth embedded into his index finger.

I was now ten minutes into my first driving lesson and I hadn't seen hide nor hair of a steering wheel.

When I finally sat in the passenger seat of Raymond's Montego I couldn't help but stare at his blood-soaked bandage as it dangled over his gearbox.

'This is the handbrake, son,' he said with a quiver of discomfort in his voice and he pointed to the handbrake.
I nodded in amazement but I knew damn well what a handbrake was, I'd seen enough episodes of
The Dukes of Hazzard,
plus I'd also released a handbrake myself – it was on a milk float at the top of Mercia Street in 1979.

We saw it parked at the top of the hill. The milkman was halfway down the street chatting to a woman and showing off his yogurts.

'Go on, I dare you,' said Jason Mullet. I said I didn't even know what a handbrake was, let alone know how to release one. 'It's the black stick in the middle,' said Troy Moran. 'Just pull it down and leg it, I double-dare you.' 'Now hold on,' I said, 'I might only be six years old but nobody is going to double-dare me and get away with it.' I checked to see if the milkman was still preoccupied then climbed into the milk float and delicately released the handbrake. And ever so slowly the float began to move. I quickly jumped out of the front seat and ran back to my so-called friends. All three of us stood with our mouths open and watched as the milk float advanced down the street, picking up speed and heading towards the milkman.

His attention caught by the rattle of a thousand gold tops, the milkman spun round in slow motion to find a year's wages charging towards him. He let out a high-pitched yelp, you know, the kind a dog makes when you fire an air rifle at its genitals (or maybe you don't).

Dropping his yogurts, the milkman leapt on board the milk float as it shot past him and, reaching for the steering wheel, managed to turn the float around 360 degrees. I looked on quite impressed with his manoeuvre until I noticed he was now coming up the hill towards us with thunder in his eyes. 'Stay there, you little bastards,' he shouted.

As if we would. We legged it – well, myself and Troy Moran did, but as Jason suffered from spina bifida we had no choice but to leave him. He tried his best but even he couldn't outrun a milk float travelling at two miles an hour. So he did what any respectable child of six would do in that situation and shopped the lot of us.

Later we were paid a visit from our local bobby, PC Hassan. He gave me a bit of a talking-to then offered me a Lion bar when I started to cry. But my dad gave me a clip round the ear when he got home from work. Happy days.

Thank God this was in the days before the ASBO had been invented, otherwise my life could have gone in a completely different direction and instead of writing this I could have been learning how to yacht with a bunch of glue-sniffers on taxpayers' money. Doesn't sound so bad when I put it like that.

So I got off lightly with the milk-float incident and hadn't touched a handbrake since.

'Don't be frightened of it, son, it's only a handbrake,' said Raymond. 'Just push the button in at the top with your thumb and lower it slowly.'

Then, slipping the gearstick into first, Raymond finally drove us away.

'Another one bites the dust,' said my mum as she dropped the dead hamster down the toilet. We'd been through that many pets by this point I'm surprised we weren't under investigation by the RSPCA. We'd had the lot: budgies, goldfish, two rabbits – Mork and Mindy (we'd been shot of them since Live Aid and we were still finding Maltesers behind the skirting boards), a tortoise called Flash. I could go on . . .

... in fact I will. The last family pet that we ever had was a dog called Oscar. He was a cross between a springer spaniel and a little bastard. Well, that's what my dad used to shout whenever he came downstairs and slipped at the bottom in Oscar's shit. He wasn't a bad dog, but he liked to eat CDs and get his lipstick out when visitors called round. It'd be very embarrassing for everybody concerned as he walked back and forth in front of the TV, smiling and his lipstick out glistening in the glare of the screen. It was quite a talent, in fact I was actually considering writing to
That's Life
but then he died.

That was a sad day. I was in the bath on a Sunday afternoon listening to Right Said Fred (don't ask) and the next thing I heard was R Julie shouting upstairs:

'Peter, come down here quick and bring the Dettol.'

I leapt out of the bath and ran downstairs to see Oscar taking his last dying breath in the backyard.

R Julie said he'd gotten out through a hole in the back gate, and managed to make it as far as Hibernia Street before he got into a fight with some other dogs. Well, I think it was other dogs because he had bite marks on his lipstick.

It was heartbreaking. Helpless and in pain, Oscar took one last look at us and then, to the sound of 'Deeply Dippy' echoing from the upstairs bathroom, he shat himself and died.

Bloody hell, I'm filling up. Writing this has brought
it all back . . . just let me get a tissue...............
where are they?.............. That's better. I had to
ring my Uncle Tony and ask him if he'd mind giving me a lift up to the pet crematorium on the other side of town (well, I say crematorium, it was more of an allotment with an oven). Uncle Tony wasn't best pleased as he was in the middle of watching the Grand Final of
Masterchef.

We lowered Oscar into an empty Walkers crisp box – it was all I could find at short notice – put him in the boot and drove off.

We pulled off the main road and on to the set of
The Blair Witch Project.
We'd've been lost if it hadn't been for A4 Day-Glo cards with arrows drawn on them nailed to every third tree. Eventually, we came across a caravan sat in the middle of the woods with no wheels. We were greeted at the door by a white woman with dreadlocks carrying a shovel.

'What?' she said aggressively.

I nodded down to the box we were holding.

'Oh right, you better come in,' she said and retreated inside.

We followed her through some beads into her front room/mortuary. There was a foul stench in the air. She motioned for us to come in further. Reluctantly we walked forward. The woman pointed to a 'No Smoking' sign on the wall by the door which was odd as neither of us was smoking. Then she pointed to a couple of other signs on the adjacent wall. 'Cash Only' and 'Two for a Tenner' were written in the same felt tip on the same Day-Glo card that we'd seen in the woods, only she'd made a bit of an effort with these and cut them into star shapes. I started to get the creeps. Well, I had every reason to, I was stood in a static caravan holding a dead dog in a crisp box.

Meanwhile, back on my driving lesson Raymond was
still behind the wheel and cruising down a busy main road.

We slowed down at the pelican crossing and an Asian lady pulled up alongside of us in a Mercedes. Raymond shook his head.

'That shouldn't be allowed . . . look at her, she can't even see over the steering wheel.' Then he turned to me, looked me straight in the eye and said: 'If you ever see me driving round sat on cushions, shoot me.'

I had no idea what he was talking about – all I wanted to do was drive. Wasn't that the whole point of having a driving lesson, that you drove? In my head I was screaming, 'Gimme the wheel, fat boy,' but in reality I just smiled politely and nodded.