Life and Laughing_ My Story - Michael McIntyre [30]
I think I will.
7
A new chapter in my life had begun. I didn’t know it at the time, but it was Chapter 7. There was a new man in my mother’s life, and because I was only seven years old and Lucy five, there was a new man in ours as well. We were the baggage that my mother came with.
Steve was pretty much the same age as my mum and looked almost identical to Patrick Swayze. Much to his embarrassment, his mother entered him into a Patrick Swayze look-alike contest by sending in a photo. He came second. I genuinely don’t know how he didn’t win; either it was rigged or the real Patrick Swayze entered. Steve was often mistaken for the Hollywood star in the most unlikely locations. ‘Oh my God, are you Patrick Swayze?’
‘No, do you really think Patrick Swayze would be buying paint in Wickes on the North Circular? Oh, look over there! It’s Tom Selleck looking at drills.’
Steve was young, more Point Break than Donnie Darko. He was an aspiring painter in the artistic sense but was painting in the painter/decorator sense to make ends meet. He grew up in Brixton with its predominantly West Indian community. He spoke in Jive as a party trick. His father was an electrician and his mother a dental nurse. On his first day of school he wore shorts, not knowing that the ‘all boys should wear shorts’ rule was ignored by every other boy at the school. This trouser-length faux pas led to him being ridiculed and locked all day in the cupboard that housed the fuse boxes and electrical meters. When Steve finally made it home, his father asked, ‘How was your first day at school?’
‘Much like your day at work, Dad, except I didn’t have a torch,’ he replied. The following day, now wearing trousers, he approached the largest of the bullies who had locked him up and punched him in the mouth, knocking several teeth out.
The father of his now front-toothless victim squared up to Steve’s father at the end of school. ‘Hey, your kid has knocked my kid’s teeth out.’
‘What do you want me to do about it? I’m an electrician,’ was Steve’s father’s now legendary response. ‘You want my wife for that. She’ll book you in for an appointment with the dentist.’
For all the punching in the stomach and ‘history of violence’ on his first day at school, Steve was and is the gentlest man I have ever met. He likes stamp-collecting and bird-watching and is extraordinarily passive and sweet-natured. Lucy and I liked him immediately. You might have expected the opposite reaction. Here was a man breaking up my family. But I didn’t see it that way. My parents were so unsuited to each other. It was now warfare. The last thing I wanted was for them to be together. How can two people who hate each other make a happy home?
Lucy and me hanging out with Patrick Swayze (Steve) on a summer’s day, reading magazines and killing ants.
Our Golders Green house was built in the 1930s. It required some work, but Steve was determined to do it all himself, not just to save money but also because his new girlfriend had a history of sleeping with contracted builders. It was detached with four bedrooms, a small kitchen, small living room, dining room and one bathroom. It was perfect for a young Jewish family. The main drawback was that none of us were Jewish. My mother’s father was Jewish (remember Laszlo, the Hungarian scientist whose sister’s son was Uncle Peter, the guy who gassed himself in the face?), but one Jewish relative is not enough to make you particularly welcome in the neighbourhood.
Although the house was a good size for the money, He-Man builder Steve could easily do any work necessary, and though