Life and Laughing_ My Story - Michael McIntyre [82]
‘Grandma, please can we change the subject? If you must know, I have met a girl.’ My grandmother’s reaction to this was unexpected. I thought she would be pleased. This after all was what she said she wanted for me. But her face dropped.
‘Really? You hev a girlfiend?’ she asked, sceptically.
‘No. But I have met someone, and she’s the one. I can’t stop thinking about her,’ I admitted.
‘She’s not right for you,’ my grandma concluded, based on no evidence whatsoever.
The thing with my grandma, and I suppose I was realizing it then, was that she wanted to be the most important person in my life. It was the same for my mother. My grandma never liked my dad or Steve, because she felt, in her warped way, that they were stealing her daughter from her, and now I was going to be on the receiving end. She wouldn’t accept anyone as my girlfriend.
‘Well, she’s not interested in me. I blew it, but I’m going to get her. I’m in love with her,’ I confessed.
‘Don’t vaste you time,’ my grandma replied, nastily, ‘she’s only after ze money.’
I wanted to say, ‘What money? My Scrabble winnings?’ but it would have been no use. I felt sorry for my grandma; all she wanted was to play Scrabble with me every day. But that wasn’t quite the future I wanted. When I got home, I took off my oversized cashmere coat that she had given me. It was a weight on my shoulders. It was symbolic. I wasn’t really my own man. I was surviving on £50 notes from my grandma, I was wearing all these odd clothes she was buying for me. I had dropped out of university, I didn’t have a job, nobody had committed to my script, I couldn’t write another one, and I actually really wanted to have sex with Marta.
I was twenty-one years old. What was I going to do? Who was I? But I already knew; I always knew what I wanted to do. I was already doing it unofficially. My whole life revolved around making people laugh. Every time I went out, I would come home and judge my performance. A good night for me was when I was funny. The only positive reactions to my script were to do with the jokes. I would hear people laughing when they read it, laughing out loud. Comedy was what I did. I’m a comedian. I’m going to be a stand-up comedian.
I announced the news to everybody. Here is a selection of their responses:
Lucy: ‘Brilliant, Mike, that’s brilliant. You’re so funny, I’m so pleased for you.’
My mum: ‘Oh my God, Michael, I’m so worried about you. That’s a very difficult thing to do. Your father said it was the hardest job in the world.’
Sam: ‘I’m funnier than you.’
Grandma: ‘Don’t be so bluddy stupid, vot kind of a job is dat? You vill starve if you do dat. Now, whose turn is it?’
Kitty: ‘I can’t talk right now, but please leave your message after the tone and I’ll get back to you.’
At this point, I had never seen any live stand-up comedy. So Lucy and I headed to the Comedy Store in Piccadilly Circus and also booked tickets to see Jerry Seinfeld at the London Palladium in his only London performance. It was so wonderful to witness live comedy. I loved how instant the reaction was. I was used to packaging up scripts, sending them off and a month later being rejected. In stand-up, you spoke and if it was funny, people laughed. Bang, no argument. The comedians had their own points of view, their own styles and their own outlooks on life. The audience either enjoyed it or didn’t. I had my own point of view, my own style and outlook on life, and I knew it was funny; I made people laugh every day.
I had been nervous going to see live stand-up. I was nervous because I thought that maybe I was kidding myself and that although I was funny in the pub, professional comedy might be another league of funny. However, I left the Comedy Store and the Palladium having laughed my head off, but confident that I could do it. When my sister and I went to an open-mike night at a club called the Comedy Café off Old Street, the new acts were awful, cringe-worthy apart from one, the host. He was a few years younger