by Peter Kay
I was quickly turning into a bit of a joke at the Wine Lodge, but I wasn't laughing. After two weeks the manager decided to 'let me go'. And even though it was just another dead-end job I was gutted again. I seemed to be being 'let go' all over Bolton. I could see a pattern emerging.
Why couldn't I just settle down into a job and work like a normal person? Because I was living a lie. Deep down, no matter how hard I tried to deny it, I knew that my destiny lay elsewhere.
Secretly I still fantasised about being a comedian and was tired of being told what 'a funny fucker' I was by other staff at work. But funny at work wasn't enough. I had to be funny enough to work. (Did you see what I did there?)
So after much deliberation I decided to go back into further education, or in my case forward to university. The only problem was I had no qualifications but, hey, I wasn't about to let a trivial thing like that get in the way. I decided to bluff my way in. I realised that there might be consequences to my actions but what did I have to lose? Nothing.
The first thing I had to do was get the proper application forms. When they came I filled them in at the garage. I bought a thesaurus and the other lads chipped in by helping me write fictitious references and forging lecturers' signatures. Then I popped the forms in the post recorded delivery and waited. Within a week I had a reply and was called for an interview at Liverpool University.
I'd deliberately applied to universities close to home. Some people don't have a problem with distance, they're able to fly the nest with ease, but home is where my heart has always been. People sometimes make you feel ashamed of admitting that, but I've always loved being around my family.
Astonishingly, following my interview, I was given an unconditional offer at Liverpool University for a place on a combined honours degree. I chose Drama and Theatre Studies, American Studies and Information Technology, or IT as it's called in the business (what business?). Now all I had to do was make it past the education board with no qualifications.
The Sunday night I left home was heartbreaking. I had all of my worldly goods crammed into the back of my Uncle Tony's trusty Sierra including a 12-tog duvet, six bottles of Vimto and my black-and-white portable telly. I felt like a contestant on The Generation Game.
My Uncle Tony couldn't see out of his back window, the car was packed that tight. I still felt sick to my stomach as we headed down the East Lancs in silence. I was about to pass a point of no return for the first time in my life and everybody in that silent car knew it. Except my Uncle Tony, who just kept slagging off all the tracks they were playing on the Top 40 countdown: 'There's no melody anymore, it's just drumming'.
I carried my gear up the stairs to my halls of residence and was immediately overwhelmed by the smell of Dettol and marijuana. I was paying fifty-two quid a week and I'd still got to design my own nameplate for my door in felt tip. Quietly we said our goodbyes and I remember bursting into tears as the Sierra turned the corner and drove off into the night.
I must have sobbed myself to sleep and then a few hours later I was woken up by the sound of an electric guitar reverberating through the paper-thin ceiling above me. I stared at my official 'Gladiators' alarm clock. it was twenty past two in the morning.
Slowly I staggered up a staircase with my 12-tog draped round me and hammered on the door of the culprit. The noise subsided and the door was opened by a tall blond lad wearing a bandanna.
'Rock 'n' roll, dude,' he roared into my face. 'My name's Brad, I'm from Salisbury, come into my crib and smoke some blow.'
I scanned his room. He had a lava lamp and a poster on his wall with the lyrics from 'Stairway to Heaven'.
'I can't, dude,' I said, 'and unless you fancy going up the stairway to heaven tonight I suggest you unplug your guitar and go to sleep before I wrap it round your neck.' I really didn't want to be there. Who was I trying to kid? This student life wasn't for me.
Shattered, the next morning I made my way over to the main hall for enrolment. It was make or break time. I had correspondence from my local education authority and my passport as proof of ID. The only thing I didn't have was any proof of my qualifications (which I obviously didn't have as they only existed in my fabricated world of lies and deceit). I reached the enrolment clerk. Pleasantly, she took all my details and that was it, she never asked to see any proof of anything. I was so completely thrown for a second that I almost offered to show them to her like a fool. I didn't though. I might be dumb but I'm not stupid.
I approached a lecturer and asked him what time lessons started, to which he replied 'next week'.
'Next week?' I said. 'What are we supposed to do until then?'
'Get to know your fellow students,' he said, 'settle in and enjoy Freshers' Week, familiarise yourself with your Student Union rep . . .'
I left him jabbering on because I was off. I ran straight out to the main road, got a bus to Lime Street station and caught the first train back home.
I rang my mum up from the payphone at the top of the street.
'Hello,' she said. 'Hello,' I said. The silence was painful and stilted.
'So, are you settling in?'
'Yeah, not so bad. I miss home. What are you having for tea?'
'It's Monday, your favourite: chicken Kiev, chips, beans and a fried egg. What are you having?'
'Oh, I might have a walk round to the university refectory, see if there's anything left and see if I can make some friends, you know. Anyway I'll give you another call tomorrow.'
I hung up and then I legged it two hundred yards round the corner to our house and banged on the front door – she must have thought it was the bailiffs again. Opening the door she saw me stood on the front street beaming like an idiot. We hugged for what seemed liked for ever. It was good to be back and we both had to laugh when we realised I'd only been gone for twenty-four hours.
Chapter Twelve
Let's Tickle Those Balls
What's got ninety balls and screws old women? 'Bingo.' That was without a doubt the worst job I ever had – working at the Top Rank bingo hall in Bolton. There didn't seem to be a cloud in the sky during that summer of '94 but maybe it just felt like that to me because I was stuck in a building with no windows.
Surely you must remember that summer? It was the hottest one we'd had for a hundred years – well, that's what Wincy Willis said on Good Morning Britain.
Wet Wet Wet were number one for what seemed like for ever with 'Love is All Around' from the hit film of that year, Four Weddings and a Funeral. I didn't mind the film but couldn't really relate to it, having never been to a wedding in a castle. I also didn't know anybody who'd set foot in a marquee, except for my dad going in the beer tent at the Bolton marathon, but that doesn't count really.
Every wedding I ever went to was either in the function room of a working men's club or in a tatty room over a pub with dads playing air guitar and grandmas leaving early. But I'll save all that for another book.
The Top Rank used to be the Odeon cinema and I'd considered it to be an absolute sacrilege when the cinema had been shut and turned into a bingo hall ten years earlier. I never imagined that I'd be working there one day as a part-time customer-care assistant. Not that any of the customers needed any care or assistance. What they needed was dropping into a vat of boiling oil, as far as I was concerned.
When I first started working at Top Rank I used to try to be nice to the customers but it was short-lived. Because as soon as they set foot through the front doors they'd turn into a pack of vicious wolves. They just seemed to change, as if they'd been brainwashed in one of those religious cults you see on CNN. Sweet grey-haired old ladies would turn into the devil and eat their young if it meant getting a win on the bingo.
They'd pour in week in and week out, the same faces in the same seats – their lucky seats – and heaven help you if you ever sat in one by accident. They'd break your arms. And believe me, I've seen it happen. I've witnessed the violence of bingo first-hand. The swearing, the lying, the fighting —
I even saw two grown women dragging each other around by the hair in the foyer over a 1 Op slot token.
I don't mean to appear sexist but bingo was and is very much a ladies' sport. You didn't get a lot of men in, apart from the odd gay bloke in a shell suit or occasionally a woman daring to show up with her husband in tow. Then, I swear, the other women would boo and hiss the couple as they took their seats in the hall. Women reckoned it was their only safe haven of pleasure and that the blokes should be back at home looking after the kids.
The other thing that amazed me was their concentration during the game. They would be so focused on what they were doing, they wouldn't budge or even flinch when they were playing, they'd hardly even breathe. I remember one woman collapsing halfway through a game. The paramedics were called to the scene, they took her to hospital, ran some tests, she woke up, discharged herself and was back playing bingo the same night. Now that's what I call dedication ... 65. (That was just a crap gag on those compilation albums. No? OK, forget it.)
The women couldn't spend their money quick enough. I'd see old people with pension books burning a hole in their shoulder bags, loose change, life savings. They didn't even have enough left for a still orange from behind the bar. That's why most of them brought their own drinks in. I'm not kidding. They used to come up to the bar and ask for water with ice because it was free, then they'd take it back to their table and sneakily top it up with a bottle of orange cordial they had hidden under the table in their handbag.
Janice, the supervisor, used to do a stocktake on the bar once a week and bemoan the fact the profits were always down because nobody bought a bloody drink. But the Top Rank water bill was massive. It was a pity they weren't able to charge for 'Corporation Pop', they would have made a fortune.
My job was mainly washing cups and plates in the back. Occasionally I'd have to venture out into the hall during a game of bingo and do a bit of glass collecting. The women could be very fussy about that too. I'd attempt to pick a glass up off the table during a game only to have my hand slapped away by some misery. 'It's not finished,' she'd shout when all I could see was the tiniest speck of fluid at the bottom of the glass. Sometimes they'd shout at me with such ferocity that the caller would construe their cries as a 'house call' and the whole game would be thrown in to disrepute.
I remember one woman called Martha who was always false-calling and causing chaos, but she couldn't really help it as she was numerically dyslexic, the poor cow. The other women hated her for it. She was forever shouting out 'House' and stopping the game. The caller would read out her numbers and they'd all be completely wrong. The management had no choice but to ban her in the end because the regulars were threatening to firebomb her flat. That reminds me of a joke. How do you get a room full of women to shout bollocks? Shout 'Bingo'!
When I wasn't collecting glasses I'd be out collecting plates, dirty plates of half-eaten fish and chips left rotting underneath the table. I hated that with a passion, especially in hot weather. Some of the women could be dirty bitches when the weather turned clement. They'd sit dabbing their bingo cards with one of those huge coloured felt tips in one hand and a battery-powered pocket fan in the other; they'd also like to take their shoes off and rest their stinking bare feet either side of the tray of food. Then I'd have to crawl on my knees like a dog in an effort to try to rescue the tray of crockery from underneath their table. I'm retching just writing about it.
One night when I was out glass collecting, a woman down at the front of the hall had some kind of fit. I've no idea what was wrong with her. All I saw was her topple out of her seat and the next thing she was jigging about on her back.
But what freaked me out was that everybody just carried on playing. Nobody even glanced over to see what was happening because bingo was so important to them. Eventually a supervisor came over and put her in the recovery position while another member of staff called for an ambulance.
Similarly, Roy, the bingo caller (I'll get on to him in a minute), just continued reading out the numbers as if nothing had happened – 'Five and one, fifty-one, Six and two, sixty-two' – but finally he had to shout for another member of staff to go over and help the woman's husband because he was struggling with two bingo cards. He was doing his own and his wife's and he couldn't manage! Unbelievable!
The Top Rank had managers and assistant managers, but it was Roy Diamond who really ran the bingo. He was the self-proclaimed King of the Callers and what he said went, staff included. He was a tall wispy man who put me in mind of a black Bruce Forsyth. He always wore a rainbow-coloured cummerbund and he'd force Janice the supervisor to iron it every night before he went on stage for 'a session', as he liked to call it. He used to play 'Let's Get Ready to Rumble' before he went onstage too and as soon as we heard it everything had to stop at Roy's insistence. He called the shots. Bloody bingo mafia!
Roy used to have a little room underneath the stage where the organ had been when it used to be the Odeon. He'd converted it into a dressing room complete with a minibar, a fan and one of those mirrors with bulbs around the edges. An ex-supervisor once told me that it was her job to push 'play' on his midi hi-fi before he went onstage. She said he took it all very seriously. Apparently he'd knock back energy drinks and do a bit of a workout, stretching and all that, before he went onstage. Christ knows why because when he got up there he just stood still for twenty minutes and called out the numbers. I mean he was hardly Daley Thompson.
But for some reason the women loved him. They idolised him and Roy Diamond knew it. They'd try and touch him as he walked past their tables on his way to the stage. It was quite sickening to watch. Especially when he used to snog the pensioners full on the lips. It would turn my stomach because everybody knew Roy was gay. He'd been an item with Jason off the slot machines for years.
Even my Auntie Phyllis knew that Roy Diamond was gay. I remember her telling me on her deathbed down the ICU.
'He's as bent as a figure eight, everybody knows that,' she said under her oxygen mask. 'You know there only used to be two queers in Bolton at one time, everybody knew who they were and everybody stayed AWAY!! And if you ever saw them coming down the street towards you, you crossed over.'
Mind you, she was delirious on morphine at the time and went on to tell me she'd just seen a forty-foot Chris de Burgh in the car park kicking Minis over for charity. Bless her!
My nana belongs to the generation that is totally oblivious to the ever-changing world of political correctness. I could have died the other week when we were in Primark and she asked the young shop assistant if the blouse that she'd seen in the sale was available in nigger brown?
'What? It's a colour,' she said as I dragged her out of the shop.
Some people thought that Roy had his favourites among the women. He'd kiss them one night and then they'd win the next. I'm not saying it was rigged or anything but God help you if you won too often, the other women could get so vicious and jealous. I'd overhear them when I was glass collecting making comments about the winners under their breath.
'Look at her, the dirty slut, giving Roy the glad eye. I'll break her legs and then she won't be able to spread them so easily.'
I know that Jason would occasionally get fed up with Roy's flirtations with the female punters. And if he ever dared linger too long on the lips of certain women Jason would leg them up as they left the bingo hall at the end of the night. He ended up getting suspended for breaking a woman's teeth with a plastic tennis racket.
I don't know if Roy drank out of both taps or not but what I do know is that, love him or loathe him, the Top Rank bingo would have been empty without him. He had a fortnight in Fuengirola the summer before I worked there and attendance figures dropped by 64 per cent. The managers didn't know what to do, they crapped themselves because they actually had to come in and do a bit of work.
After charming the ladies Roy would eventually climb up into his pulpit and start the game. He used to begin each night by reading out dedications and b
irthday wishes.
'Hello, everybody, welcome to the Top Rank. My name's Roy Diamond and it's great to see so many of you here this evening ... was the cemetery shut? Ha, ha, ha, ha, only kidding. Just a couple of hellos before we begin. It's birthday wishes for Elsie Jackson at the back somewhere tonight. Hello, Elsie love, seventy-eight years young today. Many happy returns, my love, that's from your sister-in-law Andrea and your daughter-in-law Cherise, and I'm telling you, Elsie, if I was ten years older . . . you'd be dead.'