Life and Laughing_ My Story - Michael McIntyre [69]
‘Michael?’ said Jeremy.
Shit. I knew Jeremy. He was in my class at Woodhouse. What an unfortunate coincidence.
‘Jeremy! You’re Jeremy, this is your room,’ I said, stating the obvious and struggling to keep my balance on the ladder.
‘Are you a painter now?’ Jeremy asked, confused.
‘Yes, at the moment I’m doing some painting,’ I replied honestly, before trying to jazz up my responsibilities, ‘and … sweeping.’
‘How weird … running into you … in my bedroom … painting it,’ Jeremy correctly pointed out. ‘Oh, OK, well, see ya.’
Jeremy then ran off to celebrate his exam results while I finished decorating his bedroom.
He was embarrassed for me, but I wasn’t. I found it funny. I could see the comedy in the situation. I enjoyed telling people the story of how I had done so badly in my exams I was now painting the bedrooms of my former classmates. I was starting to make people laugh with little anecdotes and stories from my life. People were beginning to refer to me as ‘the funny guy’. I would mimic people and do impressions. I was constantly riffing on life to others and even to myself. I started to look for comedy in every situation. I would stand on my terrace in Golders Green at night, smoking cigarettes and chatting to myself, making myself laugh. Funny was starting to be my thing.
My dad’s old personal assistant, Pete, offered me a job as a ‘runner’ at his production company off Ladbroke Grove. It was a lovely circle of life that I should be working for him at the same age he was when he worked for my dad. It was good to get a little razzmatazz back into my life. Showbiz had been sorely lacking since my dad was making The Kenny Everett Show. Steve’s job in ‘computer-aided design’ just didn’t have the same ring. Pete’s company was called Partizan, and they made music videos for the likes of Björk, Radiohead, Annie Lennox and Massive Attack.
I was basically a dogsbody. Making tea and coffee for the producers, delivering things around London, doing whatever needed to be done. I worked alongside two other ‘runners’, Jamie and Steve, and the receptionist, Zelda. Being a runner is the entry point in the media – most successful people in film and television start out as runners. I was fortunate to land the job; every day we received CVs from well-qualified graduates desperate to make the tea that I was making. In fact, I’m sure they could have done it better – my tea-making was appalling. My toast-making was so bad, I had a tutorial from Pete on how to ‘Butter all the way to the edges’. I think if it wasn’t for nepotism, I would have been fired pretty early on.
Jamie and Steve were desperate to become directors, and Zelda was desperate to become a producer. I was just having fun. I was discovering my sense of humour and becoming addicted to the sound of laughter. It seemed to me that the whole of life was just there so that I could try to make it funny. I was also trying to impress Zelda. She was a 22-year-old bubbly blonde with a wicked sense of humour of her own. Despite her being in a long-term relationship with her ‘drummer in a band’ boyfriend, she became the latest unrequited love of my life. We pranked and laughed our days away. My time would be spent working in the office or on set when there was a shoot.
The first music video I worked on was for the Big Breakfast puppets Zig and Zag. Some savvy record producer called Simon Cowell thought he might be able to land a hit single with a novelty record. The song