by Peter Kay
I'm surprised he didn't take the money in hindsight, as he was a dodgy bugger. We hadn't even finished boarding the coach in Bolton and he was already on the mike reading out the obligatory list of coach rules.
'Don't even think of using the toilet on board unless it's an emergency and even then, if you do, no solids. I don't want any of you messing about with the emergency exit at the back of the coach. I had one young boy fall out en route to Legoland and he's now fed through a straw, so think on,' he said.
Don't breathe, Don't smile – you'd think we were going on holiday or something. It was one rule after another, but the rule he kept banging on about at every opportunity was, 'Don't bring any cans of pop on board the coach as they can easily roll under my foot pedals and cause a major road accident.' Then the cheeky snake pulled over for a toilet stop right in the middle of some barren French desert, in the arse-end of nowhere, opened the boot and began to sell us 'warm' cans of Rola Cola for a pound each.
Later in the journey we managed to talk the teachers into watching Beverly Hills Cop, but we only got three minutes into it before it was hastily ejected by Miss Hofflestien (our Jewish French teacher) after she heard 'Get the fuck out of here' three times. She replaced it with a punishing double bill of The Jazz Singer and Yentl. I was just grateful Schindler's List hadn't been made otherwise we would probably have had to sit through that too.
There was another uproar when we watched The Terminator. It came to the classic sex scene between Sarah Connor and 'the goodie' bloke from the future – I forget his name now but he was in Aliens. They started to shag and you could have cut the atmosphere with a special atmosphere cutter. The teachers all started to cough nervously and look round at each other and then Mr Almond (the French Geography teacher) climbed down behind the driver in an effort to turn off the video. The video player was situated on a shelf directly behind the driver's seat. Mr Almond had to pull back a pair of curtains and stretch over the driver's shoulder in order to work the controls.
The screen went blank and there was a huge boo from everybody on board. But the boos were replaced by cheers when the picture flickered back on and they were still mid-shag. Then the picture paused and all we could see was 'the goodie' fella left holding Sarah Connor's breasts in mid-air. There were more cheers and then the whole coach exploded in hysterical delight when they started to shag backwards in slow motion. The noise of wolf whistles was deafening. Then the driver came on the microphone.
'Hey, keep it down, I'm trying to drive here,' he shouted.
Mr Almond got back into his seat, saw what was on the screen, turned red with embarrassment and climbed back down to the video recorder shaking his head.
The screen went blank again for a few seconds and then the picture came back on but now they were shagging forward in slow motion. The bus erupted once again with wolf whistles and cheers. We overheard the driver on his mike telling Mr Almond to 'leave it alone and sit the fuck down before we crash'. Poor Mr Almond reappeared looking more defeated than ever, having subjected us to the longest sex scene in motion-picture history.
Mr Almond was dogged with bad luck on that school trip. Unbeknownst to him he was robbed outside the Eiffel Tower when a thief unclipped his bumbag and ran off with three hundred quid's worth of traveller's cheques, then he got his genitals stung by a jellyfish on a day trip to the beach and had to be rushed to Le A&E because his balls were swelling up to the size of grapefruit.
I don't know if it is just the Catholic religion but I was brought up to believe that sex is a sin. It was always an awkward subject to discuss in front of adults, even worse in front of nuns. I'll never forget the excruciating experience when the time came for sex education at school. I knew there was going to be trouble when I noticed all the science textbooks had been glued shut on the chapter entitled 'Reproduction'. Then the nuns made us take notes home in order to get our parents' permission before we could learn the facts of life.
Personally I thought having nuns teach sex education was a bad idea to begin with. I mean, let's be honest they're hardly experts in the field, are they? I wish I could say the same about priests but hey . . . let's not go there.
The nun that we had taking us for our painful journey into the facts of life was Sister Act II. She opted for the slide-show technique, but I've got to tell you, 'What Mr Bee and Mrs Flower got up to in the garden' was one of the most embarrassing things I've ever had to sit through. Not only was it dated, juvenile and patronising, but it was confusing too.
Afterwards she turned off the projector and flicked on the lights. 'So is that all clear to you now?'
Clear as mud. There was a stunned silence. I mean, how you could get a lady pregnant by hovering round a daffodil was beyond me. She'd lost us and she knew it.
'It's Mother Nature,' she said, desperately attempting to elaborate. 'All God's animals "do it" . . . some of you must have witnessed dogs doing it in the street.'
'You mean shit, Sister?' said Clive Whitworth, sticking his hand up.
'No,' said Danny Thorncliffe, 'She's talking about shaggin' aren't you?'
But by now Sister Act II seemed unsteady on her brogues and had moved over to the science lab window for a little fresh air.
Things weren't much better for me at home when it came to the facts of life. My mum had sent away to the Daily Mirror for a leaflet by Claire Rayner. Occasionally when we were all watching television as a family a sex scene would rear its head and my mum would say,
'That reminds me, I must let you read that leaflet I got off Claire Rayner . . .' (as if she was a personal friend of hers).
I could have died of embarrassment. I just smiled politely and uncomfortably reached for something to read, the back of a box of tissues, anything just to distract me from the sex scene on the TV. Equally embarrassed, my dad would be quickly flicking over to something less provocative on the other channel, usually two rhinos shagging on BBC1.
I ended up reading the Claire Rayner leaflet myself one weekend when my mum was away at my Auntie Barbara's in Milton Keynes. I found it hiding at the bottom of my mum's knicker drawer one Saturday night after Tales of the Unexpected. I lay on the bed reading it, but I was still none the wiser. It was full of foreign words I'd never even seen before like 'labia' and 'clitoris'. I couldn't even pronounce them let alone find them on a woman. Hopefully I wouldn't need to for some time, I was only eleven and I didn't fancy burning in hell just yet.
But just when I'd given up any chance of discovering the truth about the Facts of Life good old Channel 4 decided to start screening adult films late on Friday nights. It was known as the 'Red Triangle' film season because they had a red triangle in the corner of the screen throughout the film to let viewers know the material was X-rated.
Millions of confused adolescents like myself gave a resounding sigh of relief as the season became a haven for us. With black-and-white portables flickering in bedrooms up and down the country, suddenly, between the subtitles, it all made sense. I wrote a letter of gratitude to Gus McDonald at Right to Reply but he never read it out.
Meanwhile, back at school, the nuns decided to follow up on sex education by taking us into the hall and making us sit through a slide show on abortion. I still recoil now when I think of the graphic images they forced upon us that day. Mr Bee and Mrs Flower were replaced by coloured slides on a twelve-foot screen of aborted foetuses (and just before dinner too). They even passed round a plastic replica of an aborted foetus so we could see the size for ourselves.
At the time we all just accepted it as the norm (and I don't mean that fat bloke off Cheers), but looking back the nuns were completely out of order for subjecting us to that. Not only were we eleven years old but the thing that infuriates me the most when I think about it now is they never gave us both sides of the story. It was just one biased opinion after another. Clearly the nuns were against abortion but instead of shocking us into having the same opinion as them they should have given us all the facts. They knew that those images wo
uld have an impact on us at a tender age, and believe me, they did.
The nuns never mentioned the argument for pro-abortion once and they quickly bundled Natalie Cunningham out of the hall when she informed them that her sister had had an abortion. I half expected to see Natalie's head impaled on the school gates at home time – come to think of it I never did see her again . . . shit!
It made me realise how dangerous Catholicism could be. When I was at school I was always told that if I was bad God would punish me and in the same breath I was told that God would forgive me for my sins whatever they were. It was a bit like being slapped one minute and getting a big cuddle the next. Catholicism sure knew how to mess with a child's head.
The confusion began to get me down but still I never once questioned my faith. Now I don't want to get all Da Vinci Code on you (and I'm sure the publishers, Random House, would prefer if I didn't either, they've have had enough drama with Dan Brown in the dock without Peter Kay ending up in court again! I say again as I did jury service in '96. And I lost a fortune on bus fares that the court wouldn't refund, the swines.) But over the years I've come to the conclusion that Catholicism is rife with hypocrisy and confusion. It's preyed on people like myself while people like myself were busy praying. (Do you like what I did with the word praying there? Hey I don't waste my evenings.)
For example, I was always taught to go to church every Sunday and we did until my mum discovered a loophole in the Bible. It basically says keep the Sabbath day holy; it doesn't actually say anything about having to go to church. So we just used to watch Praise Be! with Thora Hird and have a sing-song.
I also believe that a man called Jesus did walk the earth at one time but I don't think he was the superhero that the Bible makes him out to be. Could he really turn water into wine? Did he raise people from the dead? Well if David Blaine can't survive underwater in a tank for seven days without needing medical attention, then I very much doubt it. I think Jesus was just an ordinary person like me and you (well, I'm comparing you with myself in the hope you're not a mentalist). I believe that Jesus spoke about peace, he spoke about turning hate into love, tears into laughter, war into peace and — hold on a minute, this is Johnny Mathis. Jesus's teachings spread and quickly he built up a passionate following. People hung on to his every word, some would even walk for miles just to catch a glimpse of him. I can only imagine it must've been like that for Henry Winkler when he played the Fonz in Happy Days. Ultimately Jesus's success bred contempt, people of power weren't fond of this hip and trendy preacher and before you could say 'Happy Days' Jesus was beaten, whipped, nailed to a cross and crucified. They didn't understand him, so they murdered him, in their ignorance and fear.
But Jesus had the last laugh. Apparently two days later on Easter Sunday he came back from the dead. Well, he'd have been daft not to with all those chocolate eggs knocking around. I mean, look at me, I bought three Yorkie eggs from the Texaco garage just because they'd been reduced to a quid. Pig that I am.
Later, after the crucifixion, Judas, who shopped Jesus for thirty pieces of silver (about £16.50) could no longer live with the guilt of his betrayal, committed suicide by hanging himself from a tree. A scene that ITV decided to cut out of Jesus Christ Superstar in their infinite wisdom, when they showed it last Easter Sunday afternoon. So not only did it look as though Judas didn't have a conscience but it also looked as if he got away with it.
The reason I'm telling you all this is that basically I believe in the same principles as Jesus or, as they've now become known in the last few paragraphs, 'The Johnny Mathis Principles'. And these fundamental teachings are at the core of most religions.
Basically we should try to follow the fundamental rules that were laid out for us in the Ten Commandments (obviously use your own judgement when coveting your neighbour's ox). Treat others like you would like to be treated (that obviously excludes people like Gary Glitter). And try to stand up for old people on public transport every once in a while (no matter how badly they may smell of piss and biscuits). If we all did this then I'm confident that the world will be a better place for all of us.
One thing I've never been keen on is the Catholic Church continually turning to its parishioners for funding. I think people should support their parish when it comes to the odd broken window or maybe the annual trip to Lourdes but why doesn't the Vatican dip its hand in its deep pocket when it comes to the missions and training new priests? Why do the parishioners have to fork out all the time?
The Catholic leaders seem to sit on all of this wealth in the Vatican, and why? What good does it do? Why are all of these priceless possessions gathering dust when the riches they would provide could be put to better use elsewhere? The Catholic leaders tell us that they're there to honour God, but it just doesn't make sense to me when Jesus supposedly led a meagre life of virtual poverty.
The one thing that illustrates my point better than most is the final scene at the end of Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. (I can't remember much of the film as I was on a double date with Paddy at the time and he was trying to get to second base with Geraldine Sloane. He thought he had his hand on her bust for most of the film but when the lights came up at the end it turned out to be her handbag. 'I thought she'd had her nipple pierced,' he confessed to me later on the bus home.) After chasing after the Holy Grail for most of the badly CGI'd film, Indiana Jones's quest finally reaches its climax in a cave of some sort. The Holy Grail takes the form of Christ's chalice but instead of one, they are presented with a choice of two. The stupid greedy Nazi goes for the most expensive-looking chalice but it's the wrong choice and he falls to his death (with a badly dubbed scream). But thankfully R Indy knows his stuff, he's studied the subject. He knows that Jesus didn't have a pot to piss in and so he chooses the knackered-looking chalice and lo and behold it's the Holy Grail.
I quizzed Sister Matic about this in RE when we got back to school after half-term, but the only answer that she could provide was 'Insolence', which she screamed at me before throwing a board duster at my head. I was lucky – twenty years earlier she probably would have just pulled out a gun and shot me for asking such a question.
That reminds me of a very funny story I once heard the late, great Dave Allen tell. He said that when he was a child his parents sent him away to a Catholic boarding school deep in the Irish countryside. They drove him up to the gates, he got out with his suitcase and, frightened, he walked up to a huge pair of wooden doors. He banged on the knocker as hard as he could and eventually a fierce-looking nun answered the door.
'Yes?' she bellowed.
'Er . . . my name is David Allen, Sister, and I've come to stay,' he replied nervously.
'And are you going to behave yourself, boy?' asked the nun.
And then Dave Allen said that he looked over the nun's shoulder and saw a man nailed to a cross hanging from a wall, and said,
'You bet your sweet arse I'm going to behave myself, Sister.'
I was a great admirer of Dave Allen. He liked to send up the Catholic Church and his material was considered very controversial at the time. I certainly sympathised with his humour, being educated by the nuns and having served as an altar boy for a total of seven years, man and boy. I would like to say that I did it for the love of Our Lord Jesus Christ but it was actually because Jason Wallace told me that he'd got a tenner from a widow for serving a funeral.
After a while, though, I discovered he must have been lying because I did a whole raft of funerals and never got paid once. I even used to pretend to cry. I could have got a BAFTA for the heartbreaking performances I gave up at that crematorium.
Being an altar boy also meant that I was on call twenty-four/seven. I'm surprised the priest didn't issue all the altar boys with beepers like they have on ER. Because whenever a funeral came in and the nuns got a call, I was dragged out of school and sent up to the church to serve. To hell with my education, Jesus is calling. One minute I'd be in PE, walking across an upturned gym bench and the next thi
ng you know I'd be kneeling beside a coffin pretending to cry.
I also had to serve Mass every Sunday. My mum was so proud, though, seeing me up there in all my altar-boy regalia. Being on the altar gave me the chance to be in front of the congregation every week and was my first experience of being in front of a large crowd. And believe me, I played in front of some packed houses – we could have about seven hundred people in some Sundays.