by Bishop, John
The following day I had to fly from Manchester to the office in London. When I boarded the plane I could see people looking at me with expressions that suggested they assumed this was part of the trip of a lifetime to Disneyland whilst there was still time. When the air hostess asked if I was OK as I lifted my bag into the overhead locker, I just said, as a joke, ‘Yes, thanks, every day’s a bonus,’ and I swear she almost burst into tears. When I realised she thought I meant it for real, I said, ‘It’s OK, I’m not dying. I just shaved my hair off in the bath to wind my wife up, but she never really noticed.’ Which probably made me look even sadder than someone on treatment. When the same members of staff saw me on the shuttle flight back that evening, they seemed slightly less supportive.
Although I never wanted us to split up, it had reached a point of no return, so we put the house up for sale and proceeded to look for separate places to live. It was such a civilised split that we both went to look at each other’s new places, and engaged in conversations about décor and kitchens for homes that we would both visit to collect our children from the person we had once loved, but would never now live with.
I was determined not to be a distant father: seeing the kids on a Sunday afternoon and sitting in McDonalds, trying to replace a stable family unit with a Happy Meal. The boys were aged one, three and five, and I couldn’t imagine not seeing them every morning and every evening. The reality was, however, that I didn’t see them every morning or every evening anyway, because I was busy working to make our life better; and, by doing so, I had played a part in making it worse. I had become boring, remote and preoccupied, and had failed to see the signs that leaving Melanie at home facing endless days of child-centric activities was driving her mad. I was just working hard believing that was my role. I thought if I did that, wouldn’t everything else just fall into place?
Due to my work commitments, I couldn’t say what days I could have the boys in the week, so I said that I would have them every weekend. That meant collecting them from school and nursery on Friday afternoon and taking them back on Monday morning.
I bought a nice, small, three-bed semi 15 minutes from Melanie’s house. I was in one room, the boys’ room had bunk beds and a cot, and the third room had just enough space for me to have a desk.
Whoever thought of the phrase ‘box room’ got it right in my new home, as the third bedroom made you feel you were inside a shoe box. I think there should be a rule that if you open the door of a room and the width of the door is longer that the rest of the room, it should not be called a ‘box room’ but a ‘box with a door’.
When we sold our marital home, Melanie’s house purchase was delayed for the first few weeks, so the boys came to live with me full time. It was only then that I realised I didn’t have a clue what I was doing: I burnt nearly everything I cooked, clothes came out of the washing machine the wrong size, or pink – regardless of what colour they went in. When a child needed attention, I was on the phone to work or dealing with another child. That meant they went unattended or, more usually, just increased their volume so that they could not be ignored any more.
It wasn’t that I was incapable; it was just that, within the preceding years, we had fallen into a very traditional marriage. Melanie had given up work to look after the kids, and I had become the company-car-driving bread-winner. I still retained the ability to cook vegetarian stir fry in a wok, which had been one of my staple diets as a student, but it’s surprisingly unappetising for boys aged one, three and five to be faced with a plate of crisp vegetables soaked in soya sauce.
For Joe’s fifth birthday, he asked me for a Manchester United kit, which was understandable. He was living in Manchester and, as a five year old, had no concept that such a decision changes the whole course of your life – particularly if your dad is a Liverpool supporter and will never speak to you again. As a compromise, I bought him an Inter Milan kit which was blue with black stripes, and which allowed me time to get him to Anfield before he made a final decision.
I remember washing the kit for the first time and reading on the label that dark colours had to be washed separately, which completely threw me: if something had black stripes in it, how could you wash the stripes separately? What was worse was that I was so incapable, I had to phone my mum for advice. It is no surprise that for the first six months or so after we separated I never even went on a date. A man in his thirties working in middle management, with three kids and a failed marriage, who has to phone his mum about how to wash a football kit, is not a great catch.
Life had not turned out the way I would have liked, but I just had to get on with it.
Once we got into the weekend routines I started to enjoy my time with the boys. I began to call them my three amigos, which is why I gave the production company I set up years later the same name. For months I would work in the week and if the opportunity presented itself to stay at a hotel I would take it – anything to avoid returning home to an empty house. But on Fridays I would always make sure I was there to pick up ‘the amigos’ and take them home for our time together.
I got to know them and they began to know me. I am not pretending it was all easy, but we had a garden and lived close to a park, and I ensured I had no distractions from the moment I collected them to when I took them back. Girlfriends was not something I was interested in, and though after a few months I did see one or two really nice girls, nobody ever met the boys or saw me of a weekend – those days were sacrosanct. It was our time and, after long Saturdays playing, I would love nothing better than to sit on the couch with the boys in pyjamas, gradually falling asleep on me whilst watching the telly.
I would hate the arrival of Monday, knowing that I would not see them again during the week. I won’t be the only father who has sat in his car outside the house where his kids are being put to bed by his ex-wife, not knowing why he is there but knowing he just wants to be close, even if the rules of divorce mean he can’t simply knock on the door to kiss them goodnight because it’s not his time of the week. Melanie and I were pursuing the divorce through solicitors, and had little reason to see each other. Within a short space of time we had become the ‘ex’ to each other, even if the legal matters were not finalised.
One Saturday morning Melanie came around to the house to drop off some of the boys’ things that I needed. It was a very rare thing for all of us to be in the same room together – the boys were watching Saturday morning TV as I struggled to get them ready to go out.
Our relations had been cordial and, by this stage, we had been living apart for nearly six months, and so in many ways the rawness of the separation had just been replaced by a dull sadness.
‘Do you want a cup of tea?’ I asked her.
‘No, thanks. Are you boys going out?’ The boys cheered in the excited way children do when there is no reason in life not to be excited.
‘Yes. I know it’s a bit wet underfoot, but I thought we would go to the park.’
‘Sounds nice.’ There was a moment, a pause when she looked at the boys in various stages of readiness, and I could see the regret in her eyes.
‘Why don’t you come?’
‘Yes, Mum, why don’t you come to the park?’
‘It would be nice … for all of us.’
Melanie looked at me, and her eyes had changed. Sometimes, when things hurt too much you have to protect yourself first: if you let your guard down, there is every chance you will get hurt more. We both knew this, and I had let my guard down by inviting her out as if we were still a family. It was clear she was not ready to lower her protection.
‘I can’t … I have stuff to do. You boys have a good time.’
When she left, I tried to carry on with the normal day I had planned with the boys, but suddenly emotion overwhelmed me. It was well and truly over. One day she would meet someone, and I would have to accept another man having a role to play in the boys’ lives. That realisation cut me in half. I just slumped on the stairs and couldn’t stop the tear
s from falling as I tried to get Daniel into his wellington boots to go out to the park.
No man wants to cry in front of his sons, but it’s even worse when you don’t know you’re doing it. Daniel was nearly two, so his experience of people crying was vast. He was in nursery full time, where crying was something that all his peers engaged in with varying degrees of frequency during the day, and he had developed a wonderful skill of being able to help. He just put his hands on my wet cheeks and said, ‘I’m your friend.’
He must have been surprised to find that what worked in the nursery with two year olds only served to turn his 34-year-old dad into a blubbering, heartbroken wreck. But at least he tried.
• • •
Dropping the boys off on Mondays became the hardest thing in the world. At the time, I was the sales manager for Fujisawa, a company specialising in immunosuppression with a product that helped prevent people from rejecting their organs after transplantation.
I had a small sales team and I organised my week so that I would always have a telephone conference on a Monday morning after I dropped the kids off at school and nursery. The teleconference was usually over by 10.30 a.m., which meant I then had the rest of Monday to do what is euphemistically called a ‘working from home day’, but what should really be called a ‘doing very little but being near a phone’ day.
It was one of these days that changed my life. Had I gone into the office on Mondays and been surrounded by people, or gone to the gym to let off some steam, I would have perhaps never been in the position to write this book, as I would never have fallen into the depression that led to me sitting at home on a Monday drinking a bottle of wine while watching daytime TV.
If you were depressed, the daytime TV of the late 1990s was not going to help, particularly Richard and Judy, who seemed to be a constant reminder of what the world looked like if you were not getting divorced and your life was not in bits. They even read the same books, for God’s sake!
The rest of the week I functioned normally, but Mondays were a wipe-out. One week, when I was particularly depressed after dropping the boys off, I opened the first bottle of wine during the telephone conference. It was 10 a.m., and I was already looking forward to the numbness inside that the alcohol would induce as I swallowed it. I was drowning out the pain of the only person I really loved not wanting me any more, and washing away the agony of knowing that my sons would be sleeping in a bed 15 minutes’ walk away and I would not be able to see them.
One of the sales team was talking about a clinical study and, as I held the phone to my ear, I looked at the open bottle of wine. The bottle just seemed to stand there, challenging me: ‘Take a drink. Go on, if you’re man enough, pick me up and take a drink.’
The voices on the other end of the call seemed to fade away. In that moment, the only things that existed in the world were me and that bottle. With startling clarity, I realised I had a choice: to pour a glass of wine, numb the pain and descend on a slippery, downward spiral, or rise to the challenge and try to be a better man.
Whilst the teleconference was still going on, I picked the bottle up, walked to the sink and poured the wine away. I made an arrangement to meet one of the sales team locally, and within 20 minutes I was showered, shaved, in a suit and out of the house.
Little did I know that within 24 hours the way I saw the world would be changed for ever.
CHAPTER 23
FROG AND BUCKET
In pouring the wine down the sink, I’d made a positive step forward and didn’t want to lose the momentum by staying in on that Monday night. My usual routine had been to get drunk by the early evening and go to bed early. This Monday was to be a new start.
The problem with making the resolution to go out on a Monday night is that the rest of the world has normally made the decision to stay in. I called various friends, but there were no takers to join me: people were either committed to doing something, were recovering from the weekend or were simply not in the mood. Mel and I had been separated for over six months now, and the novelty of listening to me lament my misfortune over a drink was now well and truly over for most of my mates. Men are not the best at being supportive because we don’t really know what to say apart from, ‘Hard lines, mate … fancy a game of darts?’ My mate, John, would ring me on a regular basis with nothing to say, just to see how I was, which I always appreciated, but he lived in London, and on this night I needed to be out of the house. Talking on the phone would not help.
I tried to think of places that I could go on my own and not feel conspicuous. I checked the paper for the local cinema as I am very happy to go to the cinema alone, and still do it today, but there was nothing on I wanted to watch. I couldn’t see any concerts advertised. The only thing directed at men alone seemed to be lap-dancing bars, and I didn’t think that would help my state of mind. I couldn’t imagine sitting there by myself whilst some nubile girl displayed her wares, and all I would have had to offer would have been: ‘Nice tits, luv, but I’m only here because I am getting divorced as my wife doesn’t love me any more, and I don’t want to be sitting at home alone and drunk … Nice fanny, too.’
Basically I wasn’t great company, and I knew it, so I needed to go somewhere where I could sit and be entertained. I then saw the Frog and Bucket comedy club listed. I had been there once before for a friend’s birthday and remembered it was a good night. I had also been to the Comedy Store in London years earlier, and recalled that also as having been a fun night out. That had been my sum total of comedy club experiences: two packed venues, both having excellent line-ups. It made sense to replicate the experience and have someone make me laugh.
I drove to the Frog and Bucket. What unfolded that night I have recounted in my stand-up and interviews since and, although I don’t really want to repeat myself here, it was such a momentous night that I feel I must retell it, as it is fair to say no single happening has shaped the person I am today so much.
I hesitated when I reached the door of the place. There was no queue, unlike the only other occasion I had been there, and it looked so quiet I thought it was shut. I stood outside for a while wondering if this was really going to be the laughter-filled night I was hoping for, or if I should go and find that lap-dancer who really wanted to listen.
The bouncer on the door noticed me standing outside. ‘If you’re coming in, you’d better hurry up. The show’s starting soon.’
‘I’m just waiting for my mate … Tony. He’s always late. It was his idea as well, Tony. He loves his comedy.’
‘Well, Tony’s going to miss the start of the show, and so are you, if you don’t come in now.’
‘OK, I’ll come in. Typical of Tony – what’s he like?’
‘Right, it’s £4 to come in – unless you’re having a go.’
‘What?’
‘Didn’t Tony tell you it was open mic night?’
‘Who?’
‘Your mate, Tony. Didn’t he say it was open mic night?’
‘What’s that?’
‘People get up and have a go. If you want to get up, then it’s free to get in. If you just want to watch, it’s £4.’
In my head I made the quick calculation that the two comedy clubs I had been in had held at least 300 people. If 10 per cent had put their name down, that would be 30 people, and as I was obviously one of the last to arrive it would mean I would be one of the last names on the list. This meant I could get in for free now and, if the show was rubbish, I would have time to leave before my name was called. When you’re getting divorced, £4 in your pocket to buy a drink mattered. So I put my name down and walked in.
That spur-of-the-moment decision turned out to be a life-changer.
Once inside, I thought I must have walked through the wrong door. The usual hustle and bustle of the 300-seater venue was, on this occasion, more akin to a doctor’s waiting room. Just six people sat on the faded velvet chairs, their voices echoing off the black-painted walls. The tightly packed tables were eerily emp
ty and the stains on the carpet were all too visible without the usual crowds of people to hide them.
Before I had time to consider leaving, a voice announced through the speakers: ‘Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome your compère for this evening, Mick Ferry.’
A man walked onto the stage, took the microphone and started talking. I couldn’t believe he was actually doing the show without the rest of the audience arriving – surely a coach party was due soon? Mick is now a friend, and a fine comedian: despite everything that suggested the gig should not go ahead, he managed to galvanise us audience of seven into a united body by making us laugh. No mean feat, considering that when I walked in the last thing I thought this collection of people would ever do was laugh.
Mick then announced that five of the audience had agreed to take part in the open mic and would be getting on stage imminently. I couldn’t believe that, out of an audience of seven, five people had come to participate. It begged two questions: what were the other two people doing here, and why would five adults present themselves on a Monday night in the hope of making strangers laugh? I had an excuse: I was getting divorced and I was trying to avoid my weekly oblivion drinking. I was just a little lonely and I had nothing better in my life. I concluded the rest of them, unlike me, must have just been sad bastards.