Life and Laughing_ My Story - Michael McIntyre [92]
‘I don’t like the sound of this girl, Michael, she not right for you, she’s verry sickly, she’s always ill. You’re too young to settle down, play ze field a bit. Vot about Marta? My cleaner?’
So it was with some trepidation that I took Kitty with me the following week to my grandmother’s plush flat in Putney. Kitty was naturally very nervous, but I genuinely believed that, despite her reservations, my grandma would fall in love with her as I had.
The signs weren’t good when she opened her front door and – rather than say hello to Kitty – she asked first about the milk she had requested me to bring.
‘Oh fantastic!’ she exclaimed with a beaming smile when she saw us, giving me false hope. ‘You rememberred ze milk.’
‘Grandma, this is Kitty,’ I said, with my girlfriend smiling beside me.
‘I know, you better come in,’ my grandmother said, now with her back to us and scuttling along her luxurious corridor.
When we finally settled down with drinks – that I had to offer and pour – my grandmother proceeded to take the opposite approach to Alexandra. Rather than try to promote me to Kitty, she set about discrediting me.
‘Kitty, daaaarling, do you know zat Michael is a universiity dropout? He has no qvalifications, nothing.’
‘He’s doing well though now, as a comedian,’ Kitty said.
‘Daaarling Kitty, listen to me, I hev known Michael his whole life, never hes he made me laugh. He is meny things, but not a comedian. The funniest thing he hes ever said to me vas “Grandma, I vant to be a comedian.” He is a lozer!’
‘Anyone want any more drinks?’ I asked, interrupting, but Grandma wasn’t to be stopped.
‘I buy everything for him. I bought a car, do you know about this? He crashed it, this is his life, a car crash, a pretty girl like you could do better.’ Then she turned to me, as if Kitty wasn’t in the room. ‘What about Marta? You have feeling for her, yes?’
‘Grandma, what are you talking about?’ I said, jumping to my feet, ‘I’ve never even spoken to Marta! I’m going to get us some more drinks, let’s change the subject.’
‘Who’s Marta?’ I heard Kitty saying as I left for the respite of the kitchen.
While I was getting the drinks, my grandma said something to Kitty that we still laugh about today.
‘I’ll tell you something else, Kitty daarling, when Michael comes here to wisit, he teks the most enormous shits, he has the smelliest shits, like nothing I hev ever known, the whole place stinks for days, I hev to fumigate. Is dis the kind of life you vant, Kitty?’
It was funny, but it was ultimately very sad. My grandma was jealous of my girlfriend. It was a bizarre and unhealthy situation. She was spiralling out of control and over the next few months became increasingly rude to and about Kitty. She created an untenable situation. She would stop at nothing to get Kitty out of my life. She was forcing me to make a choice between them, so I did what was right. I split up with Kitty so that I could play Scrabble with my grandma and inherit her millions.
I’m kidding.
My grandma and I had a flaming row, and true to form she cut me out of her will. I was deeply hurt that my grandma could turn her back on me. She had fallen out with so many others that perhaps it was only a matter of time, but I thought our relationship was different. As unhappy as I was, I was also pleased that I could spare Kitty from the same manipulative unpleasantness that had dominated my mother’s life. I wanted my life with Kitty to be free from all that rubbish. I had hoped my grandma would change, but it wasn’t to be. So Kitty and I started our life together away from her shadow.
My grandmother had always been my safety net, she was always there to look after me and bail me out of any financial trouble. Now it was time for me to be my own man. Something I wished I had become years earlier. I didn’t have a penny and neither did Kitty. All my stand-up comedy was unpaid, and Kitty had decided not to pursue an acting career. So when we moved into a £190-a-week flat in Fleet Road, just down the road from Kitty’s parents, we had no means of paying