Life and Laughing_ My Story - Michael McIntyre [18]
It was during my childhood TV viewing that I found out I was heterosexual. I can actually pinpoint the moment. It was in 1983, so I was seven years old and watching Billy Joel’s ‘Uptown Girl’ video featuring the model Christie Brinkley. She was gorgeous. I felt peculiar. I revisited those feelings a few times pre-puberty, and approximately every seven seconds post-puberty. Lynda Carter’s Wonder Woman was a favourite, as was golden-bikini-clad Princess Leia, obviously, and there was a scene in Flash Gordon (the camp one with music by Queen – ‘Flash, Aaaaa!’) where Princess Aura is being whipped that I rewound so many time the video tape broke – as did the video player and the television. (I’ve just looked the clip up on YouTube. Tremendous.)
I got carried away a bit there with eighties television – back to the story. So there I was with my vocabulary of three words watching The Towering Inferno, toddling around our little Hampstead flat, keeping out of the living room, with my baby sister who I had made feel a bit like Sarah Connor from The Terminator. I was being raised by my mum, who looked more suited to Wham!’s ‘Club Tropicana’ video, and by my chain-smoking, booming-laughing, Kenny Everett Show-writing dad.
My family. All together.
My family. All together. But not for long.
That’s a very dramatic end to quite a light chapter. It’s designed to make you read on.
5
A child’s job is relatively simple. At breakfast-time your goal is to eat the sweetest option available, Frosties, Ricicles, Sugar Puffs, or ideally just a bowl of sugar with a sprinkle of sugar. If you’re leaving the house, you want to leave it until the last possible minute when your mother reaches a certain decibel of helplessness. Then you must lose one shoe – ‘For Chris-sake, where’s your other shoe?’ – and avoid wearing a coat regardless of the temperature: ‘I don’t wunna wear a coat.’ When in the road, your goal is to avoid handholding and to explore the city on your own. Splashing in the bath is fun, but everything else in the bathroom is unnecessary. You never want to brush your teeth, and if you’re a boy having your hair washed, you will scream like a girl, and if you’re a girl, you will just scream.
Lucy and me in the bath in Hampstead. Check out the wallpaper and the tassles on the side of the bath, not to mention the razors within easy reach of children.
At mealtimes, you will find one food that you like (chicken nuggets, pasta) and stick to it. Despite your parents’ claim that vegetables are good for you, you and other kids know the truth. They are deadly and to be avoided at all costs; the only things good for you are sweets, chocolate and ice cream. ‘Bedtime’ is a concept created by adults, but in actual fact does not exist. There is no time of bed. Sleep is not needed. Do everything you can to delay getting into bed. When finally in bed being read a story, always aim for one more story than has been agreed. Shouting ‘One more!’ usually does the trick.
As a parent your job is to threaten your children, often with death, so they do what you want. ‘If you don’t wear a coat, you will die of pneumonia’, ‘If you don’t hold my hand, a car will hit you and kill you’, ‘If you don’t brush your teeth, they will rot and fall out, then you can’t eat and you will die’, ‘If you don’t wash your hair, you will get worms living in it that will eat into your head and kill you’, ‘If you don’t eat your vegetables, your bones will crumble and you will die’, ‘If you don’t go to bed now, I will strangle you to death.’
The problem is that kids don’t really believe their parents’ threats. Personally,