The Sound of Laughter (12 page)

The cast of TV's
Diff'rent Strokes

This is one of the only photographs I've got of myself in the mid-nineties and even then I had to lean into the frame just to get on it. It was taken by the side of Lake Windermere, there's nothing more to say except I used to love that shirt.

Not content with my part time jobs I often resorted to having sales outside my house
with some of the other local kids. Included in this sale was my Millennium Falcon, a
This
Life
boxed set and some homemade bottles of Rose perfume. The local Avon lady shit
herself when she found out.

This is my graduation photograph and a newspaper article from the
Bolton Evening News.
I had to combine the two when I suddenly realised I'd run out of room in the photo section (I knew I should have left the
Diff'rent Strokes
one out). The graduation photo
always makes me laugh as I'm actually holding a piece of a drain pipe with a ribbon tied round it as the scrolls hadn't arrived.

Okay, you've looked at the pictures now buy the book or get out of the shop.

As a result of this we had at the very most three customers a day, possibly twelve on a Saturday, which Regina considered to be a rush.

She was a lovely lady, a trifle stern and old-fashioned in her approach but then again so would I be if I'd been trapped upstairs in a morgue of a record department for over a quarter of a century. She also sported a grey beehive of a hairdo, which most people found visually distressing; it was like being served by the bride of Frankenstein.

Regina had very little time for contemporary sounds. OMD and KLF were just letters to her and when a customer once asked her about Aztec Camera she directed them to a local photography shop.

Granted, she may not have known how to jack her body or pump up the jam, but she did know how to create a fan-shaped poster display for the new album by Brother Beyond to cover up a rising-damp stain on the wall above the Folk & Country section.

To be fair, even though we had very few punters her mission to turn them into customers never wavered. She lived faultlessly by the motto 'If they'll browse, they'll buy'. She even felt-tipped her motto on to a piece of paper and stuck it under the counter (out of the customers' view of course). Derren Brown was no match
for Regina when she tapped into a customer's mind. Casually she'd start by mentioning the state of the weather and ten minutes later some unsuspecting customer would be walking downstairs bewildered, clutching a carrier bag full of cassettes, albums and a laser disc of
The Eagle Has Landed.
Problem was, they never came back after they'd once been duped by Regina into buying a load of shite they didn't need.

I was the complete opposite of Regina, in that I hated ripping people off. I knew from the other music shops in town that Regina's stock was vastly overpriced, and on the odd occasion she left me alone I made it my moral duty to inform the customers of any discrepancies in value for money. For example: 'Why don't you try the Vinyl Countdown?' I'd say. 'I was in there the other day and I saw the very same album for half the price.'

I would have appreciated it if a shop assistant told me the truth when I went shopping. I just wasn't cut out for the dog-eat-dog world of retail. Maybe what I did was slightly dishonest, but with a fresh taste for deceitfulness I was about to take it to a higher level.

Now, I've never stolen anything in my life – well, not unless you count the odd sweet from the pick 'n' mix down the multiplex, but then again everybody does that . . . don't they? Well, if you don't you should, especially
when you go to the counter and realise the prices they're charging – 14p for penny chews.

I'll stop digressing to tell you that I'm not proud of the actions I took during my time at Edwin P. Lees. All I can say in my defence is that I'm a human being at the end of the day and human beings make mistakes.

What I'm about to tell you, I've never told anybody else – well, not that many. But hey, isn't that why you buy an autobiography, for moments of truth like this? I just hope you don't think less of me as a person and I just pray that one day we'll be able to look back at the whole sorry episode and laugh at it together.

I was now into my second week of the work placement. Regina and I had established a working relationship and a modicum of trust had built between us. She'd nip into town on the odd occasion to do some errands and trust me to hold the fort. That's when the shit hit the fan.

Leaving a music nut like myself alone in a record department is like leading a smackhead into a pub full of dealers. I had all the music I could ever dream of at my disposal and absolutely no way of adding it to my own music collection ... unless I could devise a cunning plan.

That was the moment, dear reader, that I fell to the dark side. I figured that if I could just 'borrow' (and 'borrow' is the key word here) a few selections of music,
then I could take them home, copy them (with my high-speed dub facility) and return them to their rightful place on the shelf the next day. Surely there wasn't a court in all the land that could construe that as theft? I was merely borrowing the music after all, rather like the library service that I'd grown so fond of on the other side of town.

I hand-picked a few choice cuts of music, such as the original soundtrack to
Dirty Dancing
and Wet Wet Wet's
Memphis Sessions
(hardly worth taking the risk on reflection).

Then, and here's the cunning bit, I decided to smuggle the music out of the building by shoving it down the front of my pants. I stuck to cassettes for obvious reasons. Shoving a couple of LPs down there would have given me an indiscreet square bulge and probably given the game away slightly.

Regina never noticed a thing, not even me sweating like a pig and grunting my goodbye in fear as I left the shop. I was a nervous wreck and remember feeling dirty with guilt as I ran across town to the bus station. Perhaps it was because I had
Dirty Dancing
down the front of my pants, who knows?

Once home, I felt safe and I ran upstairs into my bedroom to copy the cassettes immediately just before the fraud squad kicked my front door down. I could feel
the threatening gaze of a thousand Catholic eyes staring down at me from heaven. My dreams were filled with dead nuns wagging their fingers and chanting, 'We knew you'd end up like this.' I could hardly sleep.

I came in early the next morning and slipped the cassettes back on the shelf before Regina arrived. Phew! The relief was immense – I felt as though I'd been pardoned at the eleventh hour. But like most addicts, once you get away with it you keep going back for more.

That night my bulge was bigger, as I somehow managed to shove
Now 11, The Best of Level 42
and U2's
Rattle and Hum
down the front of my pants. Happy days!

I must have taken more than twenty cassettes over the next few nights. As I got braver my bulges got bigger and every morning I expected Regina to stop me and say, 'Have you got cassette tapes down your pants or are you just pleased to see me?' She never did. But life has a cruel way of teaching you a lesson and one evening at closing time she said to me, 'If you ever fancy taking any music home to copy, then just help yourself, I do it all the time.'

I was so mortified, I wanted to drop my pants right in front of her and shout,

'Look at these, Regina.'

I'd been living the life of a sinner for days, pale and
emaciated from a lack of sleep, racked with guilt and ready to burn in hell over Level 42 and
Dirty Dancing.

So the moral of the story is this: either honesty is the best policy,
or
if you're planning to smuggle something down the front of your pants, don't be too hasty because you never know, you might be allowed to already.

Ding Dong! Now that was the doorbell, I didn't even have to tip my head to one side this time because I heard it loud and clear. It was my new driving instructor, Marion of Marion Moran's School of Motoring and I was expecting her to call. My driving lessons had come to an abrupt halt after I'd decided to let the inimitable Raymond go, way back at the beginning of the book. I'd been itching to get behind the wheel again ever since and then as fate would have it Marion drove into my life, literally.

I'd got a new part-time job working as a cashier at a local petrol garage and one day Marion came in to fill up her Clio. She looked pleasant enough as she limped towards the counter dragging her orthapaedic shoe, so I
plucked up the courage to ask her if she'd take me for some lessons.

I briefly told her about my past history with Raymond and she laughed. Apparently I wasn't the first person to suffer his pipe smoke. We set a date for the following week and then she left owing me a penny, a sign of things to come.

Originally, I'd only taken the job at the garage because I thought it might educate me in the ways of motoring. I'd already had over thirty driving lessons by this point and still I hadn't even been put in for my test. I needed as much help as I could get and surely I'd be able to pick up a few tips working in a garage. But the sad reality was, I remained totally illiterate when it came to cars.

One night I had a drive-off. Some knobhead filled up his car on the forecourt and sped off. It wasn't even busy, but the smart-arse had hung a beach towel out of the boot so I couldn't read the reg. The only thing I did manage to read was '. . . zarote' down the side of the beach towel as he screeched off the forecourt.

We had CCTV cameras installed at the garage but they didn't work. Vernon, the manager, was a tight-arse and he'd just had them wired up to a battery so that the light flashed constantly as a deterrent.

The police eventually rolled up about four hours later
(no surprise there). I was still in shock. I remember the policeman asked me,

'What kind of car was it?'

I said, 'It was green and it sloped down at the back like this.' (I motioned with my hands.)

'Oh well,' he said, 'we've as good as got him.' The sarcastic pig.

It wasn't my fault the drive-off had covered up his registration plate with a beach towel! Anyway, even if I'd got his reg I still don't think the police would have done much. They way they saw it was Esso's petrol and a big company like that was guaranteed to be insured against theft, so what was the point of chasing a two-bit chancer over a tenner's worth of unleaded?

I would have pushed the panic button if I'd known we had one but in the fortnight I'd been employed nobody had bothered to mention its existence – it was left up to me to discover that the hard way.

One Saturday afternoon after much soul-searching I decided to help myself to some Juicy Fruit. When I say help myself, I mean steal. I'd seen a few of my co-workers helping themselves to the odd bar of chocolate or the occasional packet of crisps, so I thought I'd have a go, seeing as the coast was clear and it was sat right in front of me on the counter. Well, it was either Juicy Fruit or a Magic Tree and the latter didn't look very appetising.

The forecourt was dead. The weekly convoy of Saturday shoppers had already passed by, their cars now safely nestled in various NCP car parks around town, while their drivers sat in Debenhams' cafe eating a cream tea and admiring the purchases they'd got in the Blue Cross sale. Meanwhile, three and a half miles away, I was sat eyeing up a packet of sugar-free Juicy Fruit. I was about to drift over to the dark side once again.

My co-worker Steve was round the back vacuuming his Escort, so casually I moved my left hand towards the spearmint rack and reached for a packet of Juicy Fruit. As I innocently gazed out of the window, my right hand was completely unaware of what my left hand was up to. Like a perspiring Dr Strangelove I was just in the middle of peeling back the silver foil when two police squad cars came skidding on to the forecourt and screeched up outside the shop. I jumped out of my skin which sent the evidence hurtling into the air.

'Shit, they're on the ball here,' I thought, 'it's only a packet of Juicy Fruit.'

Two officers came bursting into the shop and ran up to the counter asking me what the emergency was.

'Emergency? What emergency?' I said.

It turned out that unbeknownst to me, I'd leaned back in my swivel chair about half an hour before and accidentally pushed the panic button under the counter.

The coppers weren't happy. I tried explaining to them that I'd no idea that we even had a panic button but they were having none of it. It was only later, after they'd gone, that I realised it'd taken them over half an hour to respond, the bloody cheek! By that time any panic would have been well and truly over. I could have been lying in a pool of blood, riddled with bullets, by the time they'd finished their tea and headed over.

Anyhow, it was a lesson learned and I made damn sure I didn't lean back on my chair the next time I decided to help myself to a bit of Juicy Fruit.

When I first took the job at the garage I was surprisingly shy. I wouldn't have said boo to a goose, which never turned out to be a problem as we never had much poultry buying petrol. But I got so stressed with my new job that I almost quit after the first few shifts. I'd never had to deal with the public before, handling money, swiping credit cards, it was all too much for a seventeen-year-old to cope with. I was used to packing toilet rolls and I'd spent most of my life surrounded by family and friends. . . and nuns.

I didn't have a clue. I remember an Asian lad coming in once and asking for some Rizla papers. I thought he was looking to buy some kind of Asian newspaper. I had no idea what he was on about and immediately informed him that we didn't sell any magazines or newspapers.

Ironically, it was the customers themselves that coaxed me out of my shell. It wasn't the idle banter that we exchanged at the counter or the humorous small talk that we indulged in during payment, it was the fact that a large percentage of the customers were miserable bastards and I was tired of them treating me like shit.

The customers all had one thing in common: they seemed to hate visiting the garage. I mean, when you think about it nobody really wants to go to a garage. They resent it because garages are a necessity and if it was up to most drivers they'd sooner drive round on fumes all day with their orange fuel lights flashing than pull into a garage for petrol.

As a result I became a target for their frustrations. They seemed to blame me for everything, the hike in fuel prices, traffic congestion, England being out of the World Cup, whatever it was that was pissing them off the buck stopped with me. It got to the point where I'd had enough. It was time for me to shape up or ship out, so I began to give them as much back and in doing so I unleashed a dark sarcastic side to my nature that I'd never seen before.

When filling up most drivers liked to round things up. The cost of their fuel always had to be £10 or £15 and they hated it when they went over by a penny. No matter how meticulously they tried to fill up, that penny
always popped up at the very last second. It was the straw that broke the camel's back for one customer and he came charging into the garage like Michael Douglas in
Falling Down.

'What's going on? That car was at ten pounds exactly when I pulled out that nozzle, now the price has mysteriously jumped up a penny. Did you do that?' he said in a deranged fashion.

'Eh? Why would I want to do that?' I was shocked. I couldn't believe he was actually accusing me of rigging the pumps so I could pocket the extra penny.

'Well, it all adds up, doesn't it, a penny here, a penny there, before you know it thirty customers and –'

'– and what?' I said. 'I've got 30p? Look, get out before I push the panic button.' I looked around – I couldn't believe that it was actually me that had said that. I was shocked. Then he threw a ten-pound note at me and walked out owing the penny. Then he got back into his squad car and sped off.

I was joking about the squad car but it was hardly worth calling the police over a penny. I couldn't have cared less anyway, I was still in shock for standing up for myself. But I'd enjoyed it and so it didn't stop there. It started to happen all of the time.

Vernon, my boss, docked the penny out of my wage. He did it to all staff if a customer refused to pay. We
used to get our revenge by pissing in his milk. I'm only joking (or am I?)

I got a customer in one night who'd filled up his car with fuel and before he got to the counter to pay he was distracted by the sweet rack. He got a few bags of chocolate and when I tilled up the amount it came to a total of £12.42.

And then he did what most people do at that point: he fumbled around in his wallet like a tit and said,

'Do you want the 42p?'

I said, 'Yes, I do, otherwise it'd just be twelve quid and that's not enough. Fool.'

I was starting to think maybe I needed to enrol on some kind of anger-management course.

And on one particularly bad shift a bloke leaned round the shop door and asked me if we had a toilet.

'The whole place is a fucking toilet mate,' I replied.

He just nodded and sheepishly shut the door.

We used to make plenty of brews at work and as a result there was always a half-bottle of milk sitting in the shop fridge next to cans of Coke and Diet Lilt (as if normal Lilt doesn't taste bad enough).

A customer approached the counter to pay once and said,

'Do you know you've got half a bottle of milk open in your fridge?

'Yeah, we keep in there to stop it going sour,' I said.

'Crikey, I know what you mean, there's nothing worse than sour milk, is there?' he said.

'Oh, I don't know,' I said. 'Aids is a bit of a pisser.'

Crestfallen, the guy picked up his Tiger Tokens and left. Now that was cruel, I know, but I was starting to hate small talk and what you've got to remember is that a lot of the customers were just as bad. I remember a guy coming in and asking for a vacuum token so he could clean his car out round the back. Five minutes later he barged back into a packed shop, pushed his way to the front of the queue, slammed his vacuum token down on the counter and said, 'You call that a vacuum? The wife sucks harder than that.'

I was truly speechless.

The worst customers were the ones that religiously collected their Tiger Tokens. I don't know if you remember them but a few years ago Esso garages used to give away these things called Tiger Tokens 'free' with every six pounds of petrol. They were an enormous success and the British public went mental for them. They'd hoard the tokens like gold.

I even used to get drivers filling up their cars with an extra bit of fuel, just so they could pick up an extra Tiger Token. Once you'd collected all your tokens you could redeem them against various gifts in the Tiger catalogue,
but most customers couldn't wait and with the tokens burning a hole in their shell suits they'd impatiently redeem them for a Tiger frisbee or a God-awful Tiger T-shirt.

Other customers had been collecting their tokens for ever. These people were on an unstoppable mission to redeem their tokens against the biggest and best gifts that the Tiger catalogue would allow, like a deluxe set of family-size leather luggage or a Black & Decker power bench. You could bet they'd be worth about ten thousand tokens and as staff we'd have to count each and every bloody one of them.

That could take an eternity. The manager of the other Esso garage in Bolton had the wisdom to buy a set of Tiger Token scales for his staff. They saved so much time. All you had to do was pop the tokens on the scales and, hey presto, the total amount would appear on screen. The scales were the way forward but Vernon was a tight-arse so there wasn't much chance of us ever having a pair of them.

'Have you seen how much they cost?' he'd complain every time we mentioned them. 'I don't see why should I fork out for scales when all you have to do is count.'

But, as I found, the problem was it could take ages and the arseholes with the most tokens would always want to redeem them at the worst possible time. Like
when we were just about to shut or in the middle of my shift with a queue snaking out the door.

I'd really had enough of these people and one night in the middle of the rush hour I saw a fat couple struggling to get out of a Sierra. It was a hot July evening and as the husband heaved himself out of the driver's seat I could see he was clutching a carrier bag full of Tiger Tokens. My heart sank.

'Please GOD, not now,' I said, looking through the window at the gridlocked forecourt.

They waddled into the shop. He was wearing a Tiger bumbag and she was dressed in a colourful XXXXXX-large T-shirt, sporting cartoon images of black children cavorting round a cartoon map of Jamaica and the words 'We Be Jammin' underneath. I hated them both already.

Slapping his carrier bag down on my counter, he said, 'There's nine thousand tokens here, son, and we want to order a set of conservatory furniture.'

'The deluxe set in Nigerian bamboo,' his fat wife added, standing on tiptoes because her head only came up to the screenwash display.

'I stand corrected,' said the husband. 'There's actually nine thousand and fifteen. We want one of those fancy Tiger T-shirts an' all.'

A queue of impatient drivers was already forming behind them and before I could tell them to FUCK
OFF! the husband tipped his carrier bag upside down and emptied the tokens on to my counter. I was livid.

I wanted to slap them and shout, 'Why are you doing this now, can't you see we're busy?', but I didn't; instead, I calmly leaned over my shoulder, lifted a pad of Tiger Token order forms off the shelf and said, 'I'm really sorry but we haven't got any of these left.'

Totally flummoxed, the couple looked at each other in shock, scooped up their nine thousand (and fifteen) tokens and left. I couldn't believe that the gormless sods had fallen for it. I had the order forms right there in my hand. Spurred on by my success, I started to do it all the time with any other customers who attempted to cash in their zillion Tiger Tokens at the most inappropriate moments.