Life and Laughing_ My Story - Michael McIntyre [51]
He never reacted to me and I must have pushed him right to the edge. Many lesser men would have reacted. There was one moment when, looking back, he says he was close to breaking point. After months of behaving appallingly, I went down to the kitchen for a drink. This normally involved standing at the fridge and drinking out of a bottle or carton. I was wearing a dirty old T-shirt and my boxer shorts the wrong way round. I opened the fridge and scanned the contents. I couldn’t see anything I wanted, so I had a good rummage around. Steve then entered the kitchen to be met with the sight of me bending down. Now, you know that little opening on the front of boxer shorts? Well, that was now at the back and wide open due to my bending.
‘Oh, for fuck’s sake!’ Steve exclaimed.
‘There’s nothing to drink,’ I moaned with my head in the back of the fridge.
‘Do you know that your arsehole is on display?’ Steve asked in disgust.
‘What!’ I quickly stood up, knocking my head on the shelf, spilling yoghurt on my hair and covering the back of my boxer shorts with my hands. After countless teenage strops and tantrums, this could have been the final straw. Steve walked out muttering to himself about how he couldn’t take much more. But he didn’t (for want of a better word) crack, and he never did. Not with me anyway.
As I’ve previously mentioned, Steve is a remarkably good-natured man. My teenage shenanigans weren’t enough to derail his passive personality. He never even raised his voice. But it soon transpired Steve did indeed have a breaking point. One average summer’s day he was driving my mum in the BMW 3-Series with their two toddlers Nicholas and Thomas (Andre wasn’t born yet) in baby seats in the back. I should mention the car is the same 3-Series as before and was now so old that actual grass was growing on the floor. Grass. Growing in the car. I don’t know if this has ever happened to another car. I remember the day when my mother announced the phenomenon and the subsequent debate over whether to cut it or add an herbaceous border.
Anyway, so Steve was driving to or from a spot of shopping in Temple Fortune when a car full of yobs pulled up alongside our moving garden. They started hooting to get attention, and making lewd gestures and suggestive remarks to my mum. Make no mistake, these thugs were wild-eyed and dangerous. My mother told them to fuck off, but Steve calmed her down, not wanting to encourage them. He tried to manoeuvre the car away from the ruffians but ended up directly behind them in traffic. My mum was rattled, but luckily the kids in the back were pretty much oblivious to the unsavoury incident.
The traffic started to move, and Steve began to pick up speed when the hoodlums in front braked suddenly, deliberately forcing him to do the same. He screeched to a halt. My mother reached in front of Steve to hoot them, but Steve again felt it would only encourage them to respond. The traffic moved once more, and again the villains in front braked hard, forcing Steve to do the same. This time the whiplash hurt one of the kids, who started crying. The yobs in front were swearing and laughing. The situation was getting tense. They had to get out of there.
My mum was hysterical and scribbled down the licence plate of the ASBO wannabes and told Steve to drive immediately to the police station, for their own safety as much as to report the incident. Steve remained ice-cool. He managed to drop back in traffic and reach the police station without further trouble. They got out of the BMW. My mum, still shaken, lifted the kids out of the car. Steve then spotted the culprits sitting in traffic a little further down the road.
‘There they are,’ said Steve methodically.
‘Quick, Steve, get in the police station!’ my mum implored.
‘Wait here,’ Steve said in an unfamiliar voice and with a look in his eyes she’d never seen before. Only one person had seen this look before, the bully who locked him in the cupboard on his first day at school. My mother screamed for him to