Life and Laughing_ My Story - Michael McIntyre [20]
Still to this day I cannot eat peas because of the memory of the Stepping Stones peas. They made me feel sick to my stomach. Just the smell of peas now and I am catapulted back in my mind to those horror school lunches when I was five years old. Sitting at long tables, with the white noise of children chatting and cutlery clattering, I would stare at my ‘lunch’, intermittently retching. The teachers would prowl up and down the tables like Dementors from Harry Potter, making sure you ate all your food. There was categorically no way I was going to put those peas in my mouth. So I would take a handful of them and, when the teacher wasn’t looking, throw them on the floor under the table. I got away with it. Every day, if I didn’t like something, I would subtly throw it on the floor. Some days I would just tip up the whole plate.
I don’t really understand why I was being made to eat all my food when it was so disgusting. This was a private school; my grandmother (‘Heelooo, daarling’) was paying good money for this. The teacher should come over to my table and say, ‘Is everything all right with the food, sir?’
I would reply, ‘No, the peas are making me vomit.’ Then he would apologize profusely, immediately remove my plate and take some money off the school fees as a goodwill gesture.
But we had to finish our revolting food or be forced to. So I took drastic measures, and, to be honest, I thought I was a genius to be getting away with it. However, it transpired that the teachers were fully aware of my devious dumping. In fact, unbeknownst to me, they were watching me in the wings and giggling as I tried to get rid of my peas, like Steve McQueen discarding earth in The Great Escape. Everyone had been watching and laughing, even the kids. It was soul-destroying. The teachers had a word with my mum, and soon peas were off the menu, and have been ever since.
While I was throwing peas on the floor, my mum was throwing magazines out of her car window and Lucy was predicting domestic disasters, my dad’s career continued to blossom. The Kenny Everett Show moved to BBC1 on Thursday nights after Top of the Pops. The nation was in love with ‘cuddly Ken’ and our life was becoming quite glamorous. Kenny was just about the most famous man in the country. Many readers will remember, but for younger readers who don’t, Kenny Everett was a sensation. It’s difficult to think of the equivalent today. His show was being watched by more people than watch The X-Factor. He was hysterically funny and loveable. Kenny and my dad clicked creatively, but Kenny and my mum clicked in every other way. My mum, ‘Coke’, became quite the fag hag. They became the best of friends. In fact, I remember my mum together with Kenny more than I remember my mum together with my dad.
The weekly shop is probably the least glamorous part of life. Not for my mum. The nation’s favourite funnyman, Kenny Everett, would join her in Waitrose, Temple Fortune. Kenny in his beige bomber jacket with fluffy collar and my blonde mum in her dungarees, would pick up a bottle of champagne each from ‘Aisle 12, Alcohol and Beverages’, then return to ‘Aisle 1, Fruit and Vegetables’, pop open their bottles of bubby and giggle their way round the supermarket. Kenny was such a megastar he could do as he pleased. The Waitrose staff loved it. Crowds of onlookers would gather outside as word spread on the normally sleepy suburban high street. Kenny would be cracking jokes about detergents and biscuits between signing autographs and swigging Bollinger, while my mum would be laughing hysterically, sometimes from inside the trolley.
‘Wine, women …’ I think it was more like ‘Champagne, men …’ Kenny and my mum, going by the name Marianne, just back from Waitrose.
After the shopping was done – ‘Come on, Coke, I’m ravenous’ – it would be off to La Sorpresa in Hampstead for lunch, where the Italian waiters welcomed them with open arms.
‘Mr Kenny, Miss Coca-Cola, hello, come have seat, favourite table.’
In they would stumble. Kenny was in the closet at this time, so