The Sound of Laughter (23 page)

Continuing to think on my feet, I decided to run with it and, picking the bottle up, I began explaining to them why I had a Coke bottle filled up with orange cordial. I told them about my mum making me a packed lunch and about the note that she'd secretly stashed in between my bread.

'I was still choking in the gents when I heard my name being announced,' I said. The sandwich incident had totally thrown me initially but, because I'd talked about it honestly, the audience seemed to warm to me and somehow find it funnier. Encouraged by their response, I decided to dig a little deeper.

'Why do mums always buy crap pop? My mum does her Friday big shop and always comes home with bottles of Rola Cola, three litres for 40p, and it tastes like floor cleaner. What's worse is the bottles are too big to go in the fridge, so now we've got crap pop that's warm.' I was going down a storm. Just like in the open spot the previous year, I didn't do any of the material that I'd prepared. I told it straight from the heart.

I continued by telling the story about the time I caught thrush from the Orangina bottle and had to endure a rectal examination by a female urologist. They loved it. So I told them about our dog Oscar and how he used to like to get his lipstick out in front of female company. They loved that too – perhaps because the stories were rooted in reality and told with conviction. I wasn't sure, but one thing I did know was that the whole thing had been a happy accident. Perhaps it had been fate that my mum had put the note in the middle of the sandwiches, who knows? Clutching my cordial, I left the stage to the sound of laughter and smiled graciously at the previous winner as I walked past him at the bar.

Eight comedians later, the judges made their announcement. I won the heat and was through to the grand final in two weeks' time. I truly couldn't believe it. It was only my third time on stage and my first time in a proper comedy club. Out of my mind with joy and fear I ran to the pay phone to tell my mum the good news — and to tell her she'd almost killed me.

The pessimist inside me made sure that the joy of victory was short lived, as I started to doubt that I'd ever be able to pull it off again. Luckily a friend of mine set me straight as we travelled home on the bus that night: 'You can't see the wood for the trees, can you? What you don't understand is that it doesn't matter if you're
making people laugh in a works canteen or sat in the back of a hire car at two o'clock in the morning. And it doesn't matter if it's three people or three hundred people. You've been preparing for this your whole life. You were born to do it.'

I said, 'Shit, we've missed our stop,' and we had to walk home in the rain.

Three weeks after the heats I got off a bus outside the Levenshulme Palace. Personally I'm still surprised they haven't been sued under the trade descriptions, because one thing it certainly isn't is a palace, not by any stretch of the imagination. I read the large banner that had been pinned across the entrance above the doorman's head. 'Thursday 25th September – The Grand Final Of The North West Comedian Of The Year 1996.'

The first thing I noticed was that the place was packed out, and then I noticed the heat. It was stifling. I'm sure the management had cranked the boiler up in an effort to sell more drink.

Backstage Agraman – The Human Anagram had gathered all the finalists from the heats together. I remember trying to make small talk with the other comedians, but they weren't having any of it. I put this down to nerves at first, but sadly over the next few months I was to discover that a large number of stand-up comedians are vicious, two-faced bastards with egos the size of Belgium and hearts the size of fly shit.

An exception was the compere that night, another comedian from Bolton and previous winner of the competition, Dave Spikey. It turned out he worked in the haematology department at Bolton General Hospital and was just doing stand-up at the weekends. We hit it off straight away. Chatting about living in Bolton and comedy, we quickly discovered that our sense of humour was very similar. Who knew at that point what the future held for us both?

Each of the finalists had to pick a name out of a hat to decide the running order. I have no idea whose hat it was, but as luck would have it, I was to be the last act on the bill.

Now most people, including myself, would consider being last on any bill the best spot of the evening. But when the bill consists of twelve comedians whose acts are of varying lengths and quality, and you're stuck in a room for over four hours with the heat intensity of equatorial Africa, then being last on that particular bill isn't very good at all.

Odds on favourite with the bookies that night was a comedian from St Helens called Johnny Vegas, and he was a powerhouse. The place was in uproar at the very mention of his name, and an aching desperation fell over
me as the audience began chanting his name 'Johnny, Johnny'. He leapt from his seat and charged the stage like a rhino in flares. Clutching a copy of
City Life
(who were sponsoring the event), he shouted out
'City Life?
You mean Shitty Life'. The audience went wild as I leaned over to my friend Michael and said 'If we go now, I think we can catch the last bus.' So far as I was concerned, the verdict was signed, sealed and delivered. Mr Vegas was a comic triumph. I'd never seen anything like it in my life before or since.

I was a total wreck and the night seemed to be taking forever. I swear the brewery clock on the wall was turning backwards when Dave Spikey announced yet another interval. The audience was now more than a little worse for wear. Drunk and overheated, their patience had worn thin and they were merciless with the act that preceded me. Sister Henrietta Boom-Boom, the roller-skating nun, had travelled all the way from the Isle of Man to be in the final and was dying a death.

It was hard for the audience to hit a moving target as she wheeled back and forth around the stage singing songs about the crucifixion and playing the ukulele. I don't think the audience hated her because she was blasphemous, I think it was because they were tired and she was shit.

I wasn't relishing the idea of performing in front of an
angry mob. I paced around backstage with the sweat pouring off me, the running order of my material racing through my head. I had been through my set a million times the last three weeks. I'd performed it over and over for anyone and anything that would listen. Even a woman waiting with me at the bus stop got a free performance.

I knew what I had to do, but I was quickly losing all confidence in my material, just like at the open spot when I'd over rehearsed. Suddenly my opening gag seemed stilted and weak. This audience was asleep. They needed grabbing by the balls and shaking, so at the eleventh hour I had an idea: to reverse the running order of my act. I decided to begin with my big finish and worry about the rest later.

I could hear Dave Spikey through the stage curtain: 'Give it up for Sister Henrietta Boom-Boom, ladies and gentleman, all the way from the Isle of Man. Have a safe journey back, Sister. Now let's keep things moving and, don't worry, there's just one more act to go.' I thought, cheers Dave, that'll get them whipped up into a frenzy. 'Please will you welcome all the way from my hometown of Bolton, your last act tonight, Peter Kay.'

Then the weirdest thing happened. Just as I was about to go on, Sister Henrietta Boom-Boom wheeled past me
in floods of tears and grabbed my hand. 'Knock 'em dead, my child,' she said and skated off. Her hand was cold and, seeing her stood in front of me dressed as a nun, I was transported back to my childhood for a split second. That it should happen just as I was about to walk on stage was even weirder. Maybe it was divine intervention.

I ran on stage, grabbed the microphone off Dave and said, 'Why is it every time you go to a wedding reception all you see for the first hour are kids doing this on the dance floor?' And then running across the huge wooden stage, I dropped to my knees and slid the rest of the way on the floor. I was right; it was just what the audience needed. I'd lit the blue touch paper, now all I had to do was stand back (or up, as the case may be).

I hit them with all I'd got in the ten minutes I was allowed. I told them about the robbery at the Cash and Carry. I told them about the time I accidentally pushed the panic button at the garage whilst trying to steal some Juicy Fruit. I told them about the epileptic guy at the cinema and how we hid him from the kids behind a cardboard cut out of Flipper. I told them about growing up, about my family, about my life. I knew it would all come in handy some day.

Other comedians talked about sex, drugs and drink, but I didn't drink, I'd never done drugs and if I had
talked about sex my mum would have battered me senseless out of embarrassment. So I talked about what I knew best, myself, and it proved to be a breath of fresh air.

Fifteen minutes later I was stood in the gents waiting for the judges' decision. This was more nerve-wracking than the build up to the performance. Based on the reaction I'd got from the audience, the best I could hope for would be second to Johnny Vegas.

I could hear Dave Spikey reading out the results through the toilet door. I can't remember who was third, but I know for a fact that it wasn't Sister Henrietta Boom-Boom. My heart leapt just before Dave read out the second name, but it was Johnny Vegas. I was disappointed. 'Bloody hell, I didn't even make it into the top three'. Then my mate Michael looked at me and said, 'You've won, it's you,' and Dave read out my name. I'd won.

That's the last I can remember. I've sat for the past few minutes and thought about what happened, but honestly it's all a total blur. I had quite a bit of support in from Bolton that night, family and friends. One of my friends had an Audi convertible for some illegal reason I can't remember and we drove back to Bolton with the roof down in the moonlight. I sat in the back singing 'Don't Look Back In Anger' as loud as I could, clutching
a bottle of champagne and a cheque for £125. Happy days.

I gave the champagne to a local hospice for a raffle and bought
The Beatles Anthology
boxed set on VHS for myself. Well, I think I deserved a treat.

The day after I got a call from Agraman – The Human Anagram. He congratulated me on winning the competition and asked if I'd be interested in doing twenty minutes stand-up at a club called The Boardwalk in Manchester. He said he could offer me £30 and would I be interested? I almost did a back flip for the second time in my life, but I'd put a bit of weight on since we'd bought our first video recorder.

£30 for twenty minutes work? I couldn't get my head around it. I worked four shifts at the cinema every week and I still didn't get that. Things were certainly starting to change.

Ding Dong! Was that the doorbell again? You can never be too sure. Only this time I was expecting the doorbell to ring. It was my new driving instructor and this one actually seemed to know what he was doing, or perhaps at last I was finally getting the hang of it all. He'd been taking me for lessons over the summer and now said he felt confident about putting me in for my test. Fifth time lucky?

It's bad enough when you fail the first or second time. Family and friends will always try to comfort you by saying things like 'look at your Uncle Tony, he passed third time', but when it gets to your fifth time their references have run out and the silence is unbearable. Nobody knows anybody who's
that
crap at driving.

I'd just become indifferent to the whole 'learning to drive' thing. The excitement had long gone and I'd been round the block, quite literally, so many times that Bolton council had built a completely new contraflow system.

I remember Raymond saying to me on my first lesson that it'd take time for everything to click into place. I just never imagined it would take five tests, six years and a hundred and sixty seven lessons.

The point is, I couldn't have cared less whether I passed or not when the examiner took me out for my test that day. I was still high from winning the competition and maybe that was the reason I passed.

'I've what?'

'You've passed, Mr Kay,' he said.

I remember staring at him for a few seconds and then I tried to mount him. The other examiners gave me a round of applause. I knew them all by now and they were no doubt sick of the sight of me. I can't describe to you the feeling of joy I felt when I finally passed my test. It was such a relief, I cried. Nobody deserved to pass more than me that day.

I once sat down and calculated how much I'd spent on learning to drive. I'll not disclose the eventual figure I arrived at but, suffice to say, I could have bought myself an Audi convertible.

That night I went out to celebrate both passing my test and my best friend's birthday. We ended up in a nightclub in town and to say I was in a good mood would be putting it mildly. I was wired to the moon.

Now I've not really talked to you much about the girls in my life. There were a few and I quite literally mean a few. I always ended up falling into the 'just good friends' category, so I finally decided to give up looking for love. I was tired of waiting for the right girl to come along – in fact I was tired of waiting for 'a' girl to come along. So after winning the competition, I made a conscious decision to concentrate on my new career.

They say 'love always hits you when you least expect it' and that happened quite literally to me, as I bounced off the bonnet of her car at the traffic lights. I'm joking of course. I met her in the club that night and on our second date I decided to take her ice-skating in Blackburn and I slipped 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). And, if I'm right, this is where my story began in Chapter One.

I'd come to the conclusion that Leonard was right, life
is
like waiting for a bus. Nothing happens for ages and
then three come all at once. I mean, what a week! I'd finally met the love of my life, passed my driving test and won The North West Comedian Of The Year.

I thought about what Sister Sledge had said to me all those years before, just after I cocked my leg up on the tree during
The Wizard of Oz.
'Is that what you're going to be when you grow up, a comedian?' Back then what I had really wanted to say was 'Yes, Sister, it is' and now I finally could.