The Sound of Laughter (3 page)

Morris screeched into a disabled bay outside the A&E unit.

'Right, g-g-get out,' he growled. I hopped out of the truck with my sock in my mouth. Before I could shut the door, he had reversed and was starting to drive off with the passenger door still swinging.

'Hey,' I shouted to him, 'where are you going?'

'Back t-t-t-to work,' he b-b-b-barked (he's got me at it now).

'How am I gonna get home?' I said with tears in my eyes.

'Sweet J-J-J-Jesus,' he shouted and, reaching into his pocket, threw a ten-pence piece at me. 'Here, ring for a f-f-f-f-f-f-fucking t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-taxi,' he said, and sped off.

As I picked up the ten-pence piece and put it in my pocket I glanced down at my big toe. It looked like Trevor McDonald's nose.

The accident-and-emergency unit was packed. Well, it was July, so it was full of kids with broken limbs. I was given a ticket and told to wait until my number came up. You know, like you do in Argos, where you have to wait and listen to that annoying recorded female voice repeating, 'Customer number five, to your collection point please.' (You obviously won't be getting the benefit of the impression I just did, but take my word for it, it's a very annoying voice.)

Hold on, my phone's ringing now... it was my nana. I bought her a boxed DVD set of
24,
Season One, off t'Internet, because she's a big fan of
CSI: Miami
and I thought she'd lap it up. I mean, it does keep you on the edge of your seat, I'm sure you'll agree. Anyway, she was calling to tell me that it doesn't make any sense and she's
having trouble following the story. Now there's six discs in the box set and four episodes on each disc, hence twenty-four. My nana had put disc one in, watched an episode, then taken it out, then put disc two in and watched an episode, taken that out and ... I could go on but I think you get the gist. 'I put the second one in and Kiefer Sutherland's wife's been kidnapped ... it doesn't make any sense, Peter,' she said. I've just had to try to explain that there's four episodes on each disc. 'It's twenty-four, just follow the clock.'

Anyway, where was I? Oh yes, I was in A&E and had just got to the front of the queue for the payphone.

'Hello, Mum,' I said as normally as I could muster.

'Well, how's it going, are you on your break?' said my mum.

'Er . . . well, kind of, I'm at the hospital.'

'You're
where?
The hospital? Jesus, Mary and Joseph, what's happened?'

'I dropped a bin on my foot,' I said matter-of-factly.

'What kind of bin?'

'A two-ton steel one.'

'Oh my God.'

By this time my dad had overheard my mum's side of the conversation and was starting to shout questions over her shoulder.

'What's happened? Where is he?'

'It's R Peter. He's dropped a bin on his foot and he's down the hospital.'

I could see that my credit was running out on the phone (they just eat money).

'Tell him I'm coming down now,' shouted my dad.

'No, no, Mum, tell my dad to stay there, I'll be all right, my pips are going to go.'

'Oh my God, his pips, his pips are going now, he's losing his pips,' said my mum in a lather.

'His what?' asked my dad.

'MUM, PLEASE TELL MY DAD I DON'T WANT HIM TO COME DOWN!' I shouted after her, but it was too late, she'd gone. 'Shit!'

I hung the phone up and turned round to find half the A&E staring at me. Lord knows what they made of that conversation.

The last thing I needed right now was my dad coming down. He was always the same. Whenever I had any kind of an accident he would somehow find it funny to wind me up. When I was a child and I'd fall over and cut myself, I'd come staggering in from the backyard sobbing, snot dripping down my top lip, and sure enough my dad would look at the blood on my knee or elbow and shout to my mum:

'Deirdre, go and get the saw out of the shed, I'll have to cut it off,' and then I'd start wailing like a banshee.

I fell for it every time, hook, line and sinker, and now this sadist was sat on a bus on his way to A&E.

It was the first time I'd been at the hospital since I was struck down with a water infection the previous summer. I went to watch Genesis in Leeds and to cut a long story short, I caught thrush off an Orangina bottle. A few days later I started to notice a burning sensation when I passed water (and I don't mean when I cycled past the reservoir). The burning was getting worse. I thought I was going to set fire to the bathroom curtains at one point. After much denial I finally went to see the doctor. He was a big, bearded fellow with a booming voice and reminded me of Brian Blessed. In fact, if this book is ever made into a film Brian Blessed would be the perfect actor to play the doctor.

I told him about my burning sensation and for some reason he weighed me. 'Fifteen stone, my God, boy,' he boomed, 'you must have balls made out of ivory.' Then he handed me some dolly mixtures out of a jar on his desk and sent me to see a urologist.

On reflection this isn't a very big role for Brian Blessed. He's only got one line and although it's a good one, with plenty of booming, it's really not worth an actor of Brian's pedigree getting out of bed for. I'll give it to Paul Shane from
Hi-De-Hi.

I had to take a sample of urine with me when I went
to see the urologist at the hospital. I couldn't get anybody else's so had no choice but to take my own. I'd never given a sample before and the letter I'd been sent didn't specify how much they required. My mum wasn't available for advice so I filled up half a bottle of Lucozade and put it in my rucksack and headed for the hospital. I got to the packed waiting room in the outpatients department, reached inside my bag for the bottle and found that most of its contents had leaked. It must have been all the jigging about I'd done running for the bus. I had half a mind to write a strong letter of complaint to Lucozade regarding the state of their screw-top lids. The reception nurse wasn't overimpressed either as I passed her the piss-stained bottle with see-through label.

After a wait of ninety minutes (thanks to Thatcher) I finally got to see the urologist. She (and by 'she' I do mean a lady) asked me about my condition.

'A couple of questions for you, Mr Kay. When you pass water is it a trickle or is it a good healthy jet?'

I had to confess that I'd never really noticed. It was an uncomfortable thing for a lad of fifteen to discuss, especially with a female doctor. I was just incredibly shy. Then I slipped out of my dungarees (I'm kidding) and climbed up on to the table.

'Lie on your side, Mr Kay, and pull your knees up into your chest.'

Pull my knees up into my chest? I thought, Christ, you'll be lucky, I haven't seen my ribs since we lost Shergar.

'High as you can, Mr Kay,' she pleaded, 'and try to breathe deeply.'

Breathing deeply was the easy bit. I don't remember her asking me to roll my eyes back into my head and bite the back of my knuckles but that's what I did when she inserted two of her fingers into my anus.

'Good God in Heaven!' I said, trying to disguise it with a cough and almost severing her fingers.

'Is that tender, Mr Kay?' she asked.

'Tender? It's brilliant, Doctor ... Er ... is there any chance you could do it with a bit of a rhythm?'

I'll not disclose what happened next. Suffice to say I wasn't invited back to her outpatients clinic.

Fast-forward one summer and I'm back here once again. Same hospital, different table. With my toe still throbbing I lay in the curtained cubicle, studying the nurse in front of me as she held a large needle over a naked flame.

'Where are you going to put that?' I asked nervously, as the end started to smoulder.

'Through your toenail,' she replied.

I gulped loudly

'It's either that or you lose the nail,' she said.

That's when I started to think, do I really need a toenail, I mean, do they actually serve any purpose in life? But before I could arrive at any kind of conclusion my train of thought was derailed by the sound of my dad charging through A&E.

'Where is he? Down here?' There then followed a shriek – 'Sorry, love, wrong curtain' – then our curtain tore back and there he stood. He turned his attention to my toe, took a sharp intake of breath, smiled proudly and said:

'I think I better go and get a saw. It'll have to come off.'

The next day I was back at work, limping dramatically. I think Morris must have taken pity on me because I was taken off shit-shifting duty and put to work on a line with the women.

I was sixteen, I was naive and I had never heard filth like it in all my life. These women were mothers, grandmothers, but their endless barrage of filth and sexual innuendos would have made Bernard Manning blush. It was certainly an education for me and they were far worse than any blokes I've ever worked with.

But despite their passion for smut and their obsession with grabbing my arse every time I tried to reload the foil machine, I learned to love them all dearly and have
nothing but fond memories of my time spent with them.

Later, when I settled into working with them at Franny Lee's, I used to bring my radio-cassette player with me. It was quite a heavy piece of kit from the days when the general consensus seemed to be 'the bigger, the better'. Size mattered and seeing a half-naked male stagger down a beach with a stereo the size of wheelie bin on his shoulder wasn't an uncommon sight at all in the late 1980s.

My stereo wasn't as big as that, but it still needed eighteen double-D batteries. I honestly don't know how I managed to carry it to work with me every night. I brought it with me because I'd seen some documentary about the Second World War with all the women working in the munitions factories and singing along to
Workers' Playtime
on the wireless in a very British way. I suppose I wanted to re-create that camaraderie. And then when I turned round to find the room engaged in a singalong to Andrew Gold's 'Never Let Her Slip Away', it made dragging my stereo to work worth it.

Occasionally, I got a lift home from Donna Moss, who worked on kitchen roll and drove a Metro. I was grateful for the lift, especially having the stereo in tow. We became good friends over the summer. One night when she confessed to being let down by a babysitter I was more than willing to offer my services. Well, after all
it was the least I could do. She'd saved me a fortune in bus fares.

I'd met her children already. They were lovely girls. Granted I didn't have much experience in looking after children but by the time Donna left the house they were already settled in bed. My job was done.

I nosied through her record collection and apart from the latest album from Debbie Gibson and the single 'Japanese Boy' by Aneka that I found jammed down behind the drinks cabinet, everything seemed in order. It was then I remembered what Donna had said to me just before she dashed out to her waiting taxi: 'Just help yourself to whatever you like.' Two minutes later I was opening a family-sized tin of corned beef and settling down to watch
Quantum Leap
on BBC2. Heaven.

Call me eccentric but I just fancied a corned-beef sandwich. Only problem was I'd never opened a tin of corned beef before in my life, let alone a family-sized one. I knew that there was some sort of key involved and that you had to drag it around the side of the can in order to open it. But with my attention distracted by the television, I looked down to find I'd wandered off-course. The key had now spiralled out into mid-air, so in a desperate effort to get it back on-course I decided to grab the tin key and drag it round the tin. I watched in astonishment as the razor wire sliced through my hand
and blood ejaculated up into my face. 'Ow, that hurt,' I thought as I stared at the wound.

A sudden realisation enveloped me and without thinking I let out a scream. I was rapidly becoming dizzy as the blood drained from my stupid brain. I reached for some kitchen roll (she should've had plenty) but all I got was an empty cardboard tube. Sod's Law. Just like your shoelaces always snap when you're in a rush to go out.

As I drunkenly swayed around the lounge to the theme from
Quantum Leap,
I heard a child's cry on the baby monitor. 'Shit!' My scream must've woken the children. I climbed the stairs in an effort to settle them. With hindsight, staggering into a child's bedroom in the middle of the night covered in blood was probably not the wisest move I've ever made.

With the children now screaming for mercy I ran downstairs to the kitchen to try to find some Farley's Rusks. Lord only knows why I thought two girls aged five and seven would want Farley's Rusks. A warm blanket and therapy would have probably been a preferred option.

Frantically I swung into the kitchen, thumping through the cupboards, my blood smearing the white Formica, like a scene from
Scream.

I heard a door slam. A front door.

'Hiya. Only me, I forgot my purse.'

It was Donna. She was home! Before I had a chance to explain she was halfway up the staircase. I closed my eyes and heard her scream.

Well, I don't blame her, I would have screamed if I saw my children sat up in bed sobbing with their faces smeared in blood.

Leaping the complete length of her staircase she kicked open the lounge door like a Ninja to find me cowering next to her serving hatch.

Before I knew it, she had punched me and pushed me out of the front door. I passed out.

Donna was always frosty with me after that night. She stopped offering me lifts home and never again asked me to babysit for her.

A friendship lost. All for a bloody corned-beef sandwich (NO PUN INTENDED).

I carried on working at Franny Lee's for another six months but I had to leave after the management decided they wanted to change to 'Continental shifts' and I refused to wear a sombrero. I'm joking of course. Truth is I couldn't do the new shift hours because I'd just started at college and the hours of my course clashed. I'd enrolled on a BTEC in Performing Arts. It was the first of its kind to be set up in Bolton and you can get any images you may have of
The Kids From Fame
out of your head straight away. Don't forget this was Greater Manchester in the early 1990s. It was more drug-taker than star-maker and the only time I ever saw someone on a car roof it was during the poll tax riots.

I found enrolling on a performing arts course quite a
difficult decision to make, because while most of my friends would be studying for their A levels, I'd be walking against a strong wind in a black leotard pretending to be a mime. It really didn't feel like a sensible road to take, but then again sometimes the right road never does. (Oh, that was a bit deep.)

I'd always enjoyed making people laugh. All through school I'd been the class clown, a role that I revelled in. I even have a school report that reads: 'Peter seems unable to resist trying to amuse the children around him.' The teacher wrote that in 1978 when I was five years old. Even at that age I had a feeling for where my vocation in life was going to take me. Even then I kind of knew my talent for comedy was more of a vocation, a calling. That may sound really wanky, but I knew the time had now come for me to seize the day. That was the scary part.

Show business felt a million miles away from Bolton. I'd no connections in showbiz. In fact I'd never even met anybody in showbiz, not unless you count Fred Dibnah and he'd only waved at me from his steamroller as he drove past us at the Bolton Show. None of my family had ever been entertainers. My grandad liked to play 'The Ballad of Davy Crockett' on the comb and tissue paper every now and again but we never had Hughie Green knocking on the front door.

But I liked to perform as a child. I enjoyed the attention – well, providing the attention was getting laughs. When I was three or four I'd put on shows for the family. My sister and I would hang a duvet over a clothes line that we had in the back room and pretend it was a stage curtain. I'd then give her a nod, she'd kick the plug on the record player, and simultaneously lowered the pulley on the clothes line, causing the duvet to rise majestically and reveal me in some costume or other (usually a pair of my dad's wellies and a plastic cowboy hat).

My poor family then had to sit and watch as I lip-synced badly to a song from my
Muppet Show
LP, marched up and down with a mop over my shoulder to the theme from
Upstairs, Downstairs
or performed impressions of Frank Spencer and Louis Armstrong. Every credit to them, they always clapped and cheered and the memory of their false smiles will stay with me for ever.

I never got much of a chance to entertain at school – well, not legitimately anyway. We hardly ever did any shows or plays and I blame the nuns for this. Nuns featured very heavily in both my primary and secondary educations and I speak from bitter personal experience when I tell you that nuns and showbiz don't mix (apart from
The Sound of Music
of course but that goes without
saying). In fact I never understood why we didn't perform
The Sound of Music as
a school production. We already had half the costumes and I'm not referring to the Nazis either. No, a show like
The Sound of Music
would have been far too daring for the Sisters of the Divine Virginity, so instead we had to play it safe by doing the Nativity every bloody year.

I didn't just have nuns teaching me, I had humans too, real people, and they'd do their best each year to try and freshen up the age-old story of the Nativity. They'd experiment with different ways of staging. One year the Three Wise Men arrived on BMX bikes and a couple of years before that, after the success of
The Wiz
at the cinema, a few radical members of staff decided to black up the cast, including Mary and Joseph. I'll never forget the stunned reception we received from the clergy on the opening night. It was controversial for 1979, even making headlines on the front of the local free paper. The nuns weren't happy bunnies and had to catch a bus to the Bishop's house to apologise in person. You've got to remember this was ten years before Madonna did her notorious 'Like a Prayer' video.

I, on the other hand, would have happily blacked up just to get out of the choir and on to the stage. I was sick of singing the same songs every year. Granted I got to sing the odd solo here and there on 'Silent Night' or
'Little Donkey', but there was nothing I could get my teeth stuck into. Then luckily Stuart Regan got suspended for solvent abuse and I was given his role as the Innkeeper. I had one line to learn and no time to waste.

In full costume and make-up I sat nervously in Class 3 waiting for my first big moment. Eventually I felt the cold hand of a nun touch me in the darkness. She led me towards the dimly lit stage. My chance had finally arrived. I knew what I was meant to do but for some reason I didn't want to do it. With a packed hall out front I decided that instead of telling Mary and Joseph that there was 'no room at the inn' I would offer them an en suite with full English. The nuns were not amused but the audience loved it. What a wonderful feeling it was to stand onstage and listen to that sound, the sound of laughter. I felt happy, I felt safe.

After primary school I made a huge move of a hundred yards up the road to my big school, called Mount St Joseph (and apparently the nuns sometimes did). I got off to a reassuring theatrical start by bagging a pivotal role in that year's production,
The Times They Are A-Changin'.
Inspired by the Bob Dylan song, it was specially devised by the staff and pupils in order to celebrate fifty years of the nuns' occupation of the convent (which is currently being converted into a Muslim girls' school at time of going to print).

It was really more of a revue than a show. There were songs from the Second World War for the pensioners, Brendan Crook stuck on a false beard and mimed to Bob Dylan and I had the privilege of walking on the moon. Well, I say the moon, it was a couple of white duvets, but I couldn't have cared less. It was a magical experience for a boy aged eleven. With strobe lights flickering, I had to walk across the stage in slow motion to the theme from
2001: A Space Odyssey
and plant a big flag in the middle of some cotton wool. It was brave of the nuns to use strobe lights. They were a revolutionary piece of equipment in 1984 and still carry a medical warning today. I had to admire the nuns for showing such balls and everything would have gone according to plan if Alison Heggarty hadn't had an epileptic fit on the last night. Scene-stealing bitch. Everybody missed my flag because they were too busy trying to watch the nuns hold her tongue down with a shatterproof ruler.

Miss Scott, who was then head of drama, made a drama out of the whole 'strobe light' fiasco and left. There wouldn't be a school production for another four years, unless you count
Toad of Toad Hall
and I don't because it was shit! And I'm not just saying that because I didn't get a part.

Then came the winter of my discontent, a truly desolate time for performing. We got to read the
occasional play in English but even then nobody would dare attempt a character voice or even do an accent. But I wouldn't class that as drama and any kind of performing was never really encouraged by the nuns; the general consensus within the school seemed to be that if you liked acting you were either a puff or a snob. I was neither.

But then, miraculously, after much deliberation, the nuns decided they wanted to go over the rainbow. After calling a press conference in the convent, they announced that the end-of-year production would be
The Wizard of Oz,
the only snag being I was now in fifth year and any rehearsals would clash with my all-important final exams. But I couldn't miss a chance to be in
The Wizard of Oz.

I heard that they were holding auditions after school so I decided I'd call in after my paper round. Co-incidentally my paper round circled the houses surrounding the school. In fact, I used to deliver a paper to the convent, something that I dreaded after a few of the older, more senile nuns tried to coax me inside to watch
Jesus of Nazareth
with them.

The nuns were obsessed with
Jesus of Nazareth.
We used to have to sit through nine hours of it every Easter, the annual 'Jesus of Nazarethathon' as we liked to call it. Now don't get me wrong, I think
Jesus of Nazareth
is a
monumental piece of work. The definitive version of the Jesus story featuring a galaxy of stars from stage and screen and you'll never find a finer Jesus than Robert Powell from
Holby City.
But after watching nine hours without a break I personally felt as though I'd been on that cross with him.

We used to take our revenge in RE when Sister Matic read from the Bible. We'd take turns interrupting her.

'Then the soldiers took Jesus to see Pontius Pilate –'

'You mean Rod Steiger, Sister?' someone would ask.

'Yes, that's right, my child,' she'd say, slightly thrown but flattered that we were so interested. She'd continue, 'Meanwhile, Judas was –' Another interruption.

'You mean Ian McShane, Sister? From
Lovejoy?'

'Yes,' she'd snap, now cottoning on to what we were doing. She composed herself and continued: 'As Jesus hung from the cross he looked down to see a centurion looking up at him –'

'You mean Ernest Borgnine, Sister, from
Airwolf?'
She'd lose it then and throw a board duster in the general direction of the voice. No sense of humour, nuns, 'nun' whatsoever.

Anyway, where was I? Ah yes, I was about to gatecrash the school auditions for the
The Wizard of Oz.
I'd come up with a plan. As I got to the end of my paper round the auditions would be coming to a close. The
whole plan hung on one of the teachers spotting me at the back of the hall and then persuading me into having an audition. In particular the lovely Miss Scott. She was back and raring to go after a couple of years in rehab.

I arrived at the back of the assembly hall in time to catch the last of the auditions.
The X-Factor
was no match for this as Mark Dempsey stomped round the stage singing 'If I Only Had a Brain' with a hare-lip.

My plan worked like a charm. Miss Scott saw me lurking at the back of the hall and invited me over for a chat. Ten minutes later I was reading the part of the Cowardly Lion and did I do it justice? Of course I did. I hadn't been sat up watching
The Wizard of Oz
on video all night for nothing. Not only did I get offered the part but I also got a round of applause. As the clapping subsided, Mr Lawson (the deputy head) shouted to me from the back of the hall.

'Bravo, very funny . . . but how funny will it be in twelve months when you can't get a job because you've failed your exams?' I could have swung for the miserable bastard. I wanted to reply with a witty comment, I wanted to tell him that in twelve months' time I'd be working at Franny Lee's factory packing cling film for £3.50 an hour but I couldn't think of a witty comment or predict the future, so I just shouted,

'Oh, I'll be all right,' and gave him a half-hearted thumbs up.

I hated Mr Lawson. He wasn't a nice man. In fact, I thought he was a bit of a bully. He'd strut round school like an arrogant Jimmy Tarbuck. The nuns thought the sun shone out of his fat arse, but all I wanted to do was kick it. We'd sit around at dinner thinking of different ways to destroy him.

He used to hate pupils wearing their coats in school as it wasn't part of the school uniform. They had to be in your bag and out of sight otherwise he'd confiscate them and give you a week's detention. Total knobhead.

So one night, after school, myself and a few of the other lads called into a jumble sale on the way home and bought a load of ladies' coats three sizes too small. It was worth it just to see the look of confusion on the pensioners' faces as we handed them our money and left.

Bright and early next morning the seven of us turned the corner in our brand new old coats. It was like the opening scene from
Reservoir Dogs
as we strolled past the convent in slow motion. I was particularly fond of my pink PVC lady's mac with its matching tie belt and press studs.

And sure enough, as we approached the gates, Mr Lawson swooped into position with a smug grin all over his fat face. He held out his hand and without even
arguing we took off our coats and handed them over. Lawson was loving it.

'Don't think you'll be seeing these again until the end of term,' he said gloatingly. 'I can only be pushed so far, boys.' I'd like to have pushed him, into a threshing machine.

We then went round the corner, took our real coats out of our bags and put them on. Lawson was so jubilant in his victory that he failed to notice our fashion sense was a trifle odd. I mean, how often do you see seven fifteen-year-old boys walking to school wearing an assortment of ladies' coats three sizes too small for them?

But we were in for the long con and three months later on the last day of term we tasted victory ourselves when we saw a furious Lawson staggering round the convent gardens carrying a mountain of ladies' coats.

'Well, they must belong to somebody,' he repeatedly said to passing pupils whilst attempting to hand them a pink PVC mac. They just walked off mystified. Apparently he ended up giving the coats back to the local jumble sale.

I found the rehearsals to
The Wizard of Oz
easy enough – every Sunday afternoon and a couple of evenings a week, after school. The hard part was revising for my exams. I've never been good at any kind of revision or dissertation. I start off with every good
intention but within five minutes I find myself distracted, watering plants or putting my CDs in alphabetical order . . . sorry, I just noticed my Lighthouse Family CD was in with the Beatles.