Life and Laughing_ My Story - Michael McIntyre [64]
‘Niiiice …’ he said slowly. I was so sure he was going to say ‘car’ that I started waving and nodding like the Queen in her motorcade. But then the real reason for all the open-mouthed staring became apparent. ‘… mullet!’ Karim finished, to giggles from his groupies and lots of laughing and pointing from what felt like everybody else in Finchley.
The only positive from this latest humiliation was that Tina didn’t witness it. My new mobility meant that I could drive to the hairdresser in my lunch break and immediately remove my mullet. After a false start, the mullet-less me was now on a mission. I was desperate for Tina to see me in my hot wheels. Every day when I drove in, I looked for her. Finally, one morning I spotted her. But what was I supposed to do? I couldn’t hoot, I didn’t know her. I couldn’t exactly call out to her, ‘Hi, it’s me, the guy who was looking for room 42. Look how cool I am, do you want a lift somewhere, like my bedroom?’
So I decided to rev the engine in the hope that the sound would make her turn around and see me cruising with my roof down and my conventional hairstyle blowing in the summer breeze. But for all the Spitfire’s sporty looks, the engine size was only 1300cc, like a Mini. I had noticed that when I dropped down a gear the engine made a growling sound. So I whacked the car from third to first gear for maximum effect. It worked, and the car erupted with a magnificent roar. However, the sound did not get Tina’s attention. Nor did the crunching sound that followed, the sound of the gearbox breaking.
I now couldn’t get the car into any gear, so I just sailed in neutral for as far as the momentum took me, then stopped in the middle of the road. The cars behind me started hooting and shouting at me to get out of the way. Thankfully, this still did not get Tina’s attention. I put my hazard warning lights on (only one worked so it actually looked like I was indicating) and got out of the car apologizing profusely to the traffic behind.
I had seen people pushing cars to the side of the road when they had broken down, so I started to push my car. But I forgot that there should be someone in the car, to steer it. So when I pushed my car, it just rolled away and crashed straight into the side of a parked Mercedes. This did get Tina’s attention. I had fantasized endlessly about Tina behaving like a girl in a Diet Coke advert as I bombed past her in my sports car, but here was the reality. She watched me push my car into another vehicle while being abused and sworn at by commuters.
It seemed that every time I envisaged a scenario whereby I was cool, it would backfire. But I never got disheartened. I was young, filled with optimism, exuberance and hope. I was seventeen, on the threshold of officially becoming a man. I had my whole life ahead of me.
But before my eighteenth birthday my life would be changed for ever.
13
My dad had started to come to London regularly to generate some income. It wasn’t easy as time had passed and the faces in the industry had changed. He was an older big fish in a small pond that now had new fish in it (I think I’ll leave the fish and pond analogy alone now). He was searching for an idea or a show that could resurrect his career. He contacted Kenny Everett, Barry Cryer and others he used to work with, but they had moved on.
I remember being with him in the flat he borrowed in London when he visited. He was on the phone to Barry saying, ‘Let’s make magic again, Baz.’ I was seventeen years old and wrapped up in my own nonsense (as laid out in the previous chapters), but I knew that the magic he and Barry had created was over, and he probably knew it too. It must have been soul-destroying for him trying to go back, but he was desperate.
My dad had left London at the height of his powers, and now he was returning to a changed landscape. His tea boy when he worked in the record industry was now running a major label. From when my parents got divorced to when he left