Life and Laughing_ My Story - Michael McIntyre [3]
(I’ve just realized that I have to be careful about how much personal information I reveal. I think there’s already enough to answer most of the security questions at my bank and get access to all my accounts.)
I have details about my birth from my mother, who says she was there for most of it. I weighed 8 pounds and 11 ounces. I’m telling you that because the weight of babies seems very important to people. No other measurement is of interest: height, width, circumference – couldn’t give a shit. But the weight is must-have information.
I was a big baby. My mother tells me this, and so does everyone else when they learn of my opening weight. Like it was my fault, I let myself go, I could have done with losing a few ounces, a little less ‘womb service’ and a little more swimming and maybe those newborn nappies wouldn’t have been so tight.
Not only was I a big baby, I was also remarkably oriental in appearance. Nobody really knows why I looked like Mr Miyagi from The Karate Kid and, let’s be honest, my appearance has been the source of quite a lot of material for me. A midwife asked my mother if my father was Chinese or Japanese. My grandparents thought my parents took home the wrong baby. Questions were asked about my mother’s fidelity. My father beat up our local dry cleaner, Mr Wu.
My mother wondering whether she’d accidentally picked up a Super Mario Brother from the hospital.
Every year I, like you, celebrate my own birth and the fact that I am still alive on my birthday. This is always a very emotional day for my mother, who annually telephones me throughout the day reliving my birth. She calls without fail at about 3 a.m. telling me that this is when her waters broke, and I get phoned throughout the morning and afternoon with her updating me on how far apart her contractions were. At 5.34 p.m., I get my final phone call announcing my birth, and then she reminds me that I was ‘8 pounds 11 ounces, a very big baby’.
Since I became a comedian, she now adds that the labour ward was also the scene of my very first joke. Apparently, when I was only a few minutes old, the doctor lay me down to give me a quick examination, and I promptly peed all over him. I’m told it got a big laugh from the small audience that included my mother, father, the midwife and the doctor. Knowing me, I probably laughed too.
It was the first laugh I ever got.
2
Why do I look foreign? Let’s examine my heritage. My parents are not English people. My father is from Montreal in Canada, and both my mother’s parents were from Hungary. I am therefore a ‘Canary’. I consider myself British. I have only visited Hungary and Canada once.
My one and only visit to Hungary was with my grandmother and my sister Lucy. I was twenty years old, Lucy was eighteen and my grandma was seventy-nine. My grandmother was an eccentric woman, to say the least. Think Zsa Zsa Gabor or Ivana Trump, and you wouldn’t be too far out. She was funny, glamorous and rich. A true character. I will do my best to convey her accent when I quote her.
‘Helllow, daaarling’, that kind of thing.
This is actually how she wrote English as well as spoke it. Born in Budapest, she claims to have ‘rrun avay vith the circuss’ as a child before marrying scientist Laszlo Katz. When