Life and Laughing_ My Story - Michael McIntyre [35]
He was charming and very keen to strike a deal with my mum and Steve. Making polite conversation, they found themselves discussing David’s new business venture. He had recently founded a new architectural company and purchased a snazzy new computer design system and was looking for somebody to operate it. ‘What a coincidence,’ lied the job-hunting Steve, ‘I can do that.’ A visit to WHSmith and a few days and nights cramming later, Steve landed himself a job at David’s company. He worked there for the next ten years.
8
Some time during my domestic turmoil, I started ‘big boy’ school. I went to a lovely school called Arnold House in St John’s Wood, London. I wore a bright red blazer with dark trim. It looked like a ladybird costume. Unlike Steve’s first day, when he was beaten and locked in a cupboard for wearing shorts, everybody in the Arnold House Junior School obeyed the rules and wore tiny little shorts, like the ones worn by footballers in the seventies. At break-time there were more goose pimples in the playground than on a battery farm in the Arctic. Matters were made even worse for me as my mum put my shorts in the wrong wash, not only shrinking them but also giving them a slightly golden sheen after they shared the machine with one of her Dynasty-inspired trouser suits. I was going to school in hot pants looking a bit like Kylie Minogue in the ‘Spinning Around’ video.
Arnold House is a private all-boys school and cost my father a fortune. It was oddly formal. I remember referring to all my friends by their second names. My best friend, Sam Geddes, was known as Geddes, and I was McIntyre. The school register in the morning sounded like a list of advertising agencies. Teachers had no names at all and were called ‘sir’ or ‘miss’. When the teacher walked into the classroom, all the boys would stand up until ‘sir’ told them to ‘Be seated.’ What’s that all about? It’s the wrong way around. I’m paying a fortune for this school; shouldn’t the teacher call me ‘sir’ and stand up when I walk in?
The school was also a bit religious. Every morning we gathered in the gym for assembly and recited the Lord’s Prayer. The headmaster, Mr Clegg, would lead and the teachers and whole school would mumble along: ‘Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name … Give us this day our daily bread … And forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive them that trespass against us … For thine is the kingdom, the power, and the glory, for ever and ever …’
At the end, we’d all very loudly say, ‘Amen.’ Every day I said this, for six years. I didn’t have a clue what it meant and nobody explained it. I remember thinking, ‘What daily bread? I had cereal this morning’, ‘Does this mean I’m allowed to trespass?’, ‘Why should I forgive people who trespass against me?’ There was a grassed area in front of the junior school that had a ‘No Trespassing’ sign. I used to walk across it safe in the knowledge that God would forgive me.
Academically I was unpredictable. One year I was literally bottom of the class in every subject. I got 4 per cent in French, 7 per cent in History and got lost on the way to the Geography exam. My Maths was so bad that I didn’t actually know what per cent meant. My poor grades may have been due to my problems at home, or simply because I already knew I was going to be wildly successful thanks to the Tarot cards. My mum didn’t seem to mind at all.
My end-of-year report was a collection of slips of paper written by the teacher of each subject. It was so awful that I threw most of it in the bin