The Sound of Laughter

by Peter Kay

  'He turned downstairs into a nightclub,' said Bert, 'and Perry did quite well for himself until someone found a dead body in the cellar. Then he turned it into a Laser Quest and buggered off to Marbella.'

  Finally Bert took me round to the back of the building and, unlocking a padlocked fire door, he led me up an old staircase into some half-flooded dressing rooms. It was eerie – they still had the costume rails standing in the room and some torn variety bill posters on the wall from years ago. They were left over from the days when the cinema doubled as a theatre.

  'They've all played here at one time or other,' he said proudly, with the water almost up to his waist. 'Laurel and Hardy, The Beatles, Depeche Mode.' I was astonished that I'd been working with so much history around me and had never realised.

  Funnily enough, the cinema was demolished just a few weeks ago (another bloody building demolished behind me; I must be jinxed). The Bolton Evening News did a story about the demolition company uncovering this hidden screen in the back of the building, with a hand-painted mural of a gondola and two gold columns on either side of it. I felt honoured to have seen it years before with Bert by torchlight.

  To mark the hundredth anniversary of cinema in Britain, the powers that be held a National Cinema Day in May 1995, which again basically meant everybody could see any film they desired all day for one English pound. As a result we were packed out.

  I remember being stood at the bottom of the stairs watching Twelve Monkeys and keeping an eye out for crafty smokers sneaking a fag on the back row. That's when I saw a rat. I wasn't sure what it was at first but then when I focused my eyes during the bright scenes and I could see it really was a rat slowly making its way down the steps of the far aisle.

  'Oh my God, if anybody sees it there'll be a stampede,' I thought. 'They'll shut us down and I've got a lot of overtime coming up.'

  The rat seemed to be swaying from side to side as if it was drunk. Then I realised that it must have swallowed some of Bert's poison and was about to croak it. I made a split-second decision and, casually walking over to the far aisle, I booted it straight under a radiator. Everybody was too busy watching the film to notice and thank God because it was a big fat frigger. It was also the closest I'd been to a rat since I brushed passed Jeffrey Archer at the Southport Flower Show.

  You know, behind the scenes the cinema may have been held together by Sellotape and string, but once you'd swept the last few remaining pieces of popcorn under the seats, turned on the red gel mood lighting at the front of the stage and given Bert the thumbs up to stick on his eight track of the Hits of Richard Clayderman, nobody could ever see the join at the Lido.

  It must have been hard for Mrs Hayworth though. She was a nice lady who'd been working in cinema most of her life. And we actually used to get on quite well, which was a first for me when it came to a manager. She must have felt as though she was banging her head against a wall sometimes, in fact I actually caught her doing it once in the storeroom but I never let on.

  She used to get really upset if she ever overheard any of us talking about visiting the multiplexes.

  'They've not got anything we haven't got,' she'd say, but they had and she knew it. They had curtains that closed for a kick off, toilets that didn't leak and they also didn't have drunken rats staggering down the aisles. She was just fooling herself.

  I used to go to the multiplexes all the time on my nights off. But it turned into a bit of busman's holiday, especially as I'd already seen most of the films at work, several times. The main draw for me was that they had a decent sound system and the Lido didn't. Instead of having Pro Dolby Logic surround sound Bert just used to turn it up full blast and deafen the punters into thinking it was good.

  One thing I did enjoy was building the huge cardboard stands that advertised the new releases just like the ones they used to have in the foyer of the Odeon. We also used to position them in the entrance and at the top of the stairs.

  They'd come in very handy, especially in summer when the heat was unbearable. I'd sometimes remove a piece of card from the stand and use it as a makeshift fan. I never once realised how odd it must have looked to the customers, turning the corner to find me stood at the top of the stairs fanning myself with Gene Hackman's head.

  That reminds me of the time we had a bloke come into the foyer who suffered from epilepsy. It was a Saturday afternoon, the place was packed out, we had over four hundred kids spread between two screens when this guy came in off the street. He looked pale and emaciated. He also had some spit in the corner of his mouth and was wearing denim. I thought he'd come to give us a quick rendition of 'This Ole House' but instead he just handed me a scrap of paper and said, 'I wonder if you can help me. I suffer from epilepsy and this is the number of my care –' and before he could say 'worker' he fell on top of me like a dead body in a film.

  It took me all my strength to prop him up. Struggling, I shouted over to Jackie, 'Go and get Bert,' as he was the only qualified first-aider in the building. The only problem was he was four flights up and was just about to start showing Jumanji.

  'Hurry up, where's Bert?' I said. The guy was beginning to get heavy and, God forgive me, I dropped him. Well, what did you expect me to do? He was starting to jerk around in my arms. Anyway, the carpet was a thick shag so I don't think he hurt himself.

  Bert arrived on the scene mid-fit and put the guy into the recovery position. Jackie called for an ambulance and his care worker. Luckily for us the foyer was empty but then I realised the time.

  'Oh no! Toy Story's coming out in a minute. This foyer's going to be full of kids. What are we going to do?'

  'Quick, get that thing,' Bert shouted, and before you could say 'Green Door' we were both carrying a ten-foot cardboard cut-out of Flipper across the foyer. We stood it upright in front of the fella and thankfully it almost covered him.

  We were just in the nick of time. All the kids started pouring out of Toy Story and luckily they never noticed a thing. The paramedics turned up a few minutes later with the bloke's care worker.

  'Where is he?' she said.

  Guiltily, I just nodded towards the Flipper in the corner. All you could see was the guy's head sticking out at the end, next to 'coming this summer'. She must have thought we were sick.

  We used to get some really thick customers at the cinema. They'd lean around the door in the foyer and say, 'Have you any idea what time the films start?' or 'Do you know what films you're showing tonight?' I wanted to drag them outside by their hair and show them the huge twenty-foot canopy displaying the film titles that you could see for miles around.

  I remember someone coming up to the kiosk once. He looked at the admission prices, studied them for a second, then turned to me and said, 'Can you tell me if that's any good, that Senior Citizens?'

  I said, 'It's like a Mexican version of Cocoon, now get out.'

  I used to really enjoy telling people the endings of the films as they came in. Like the time when we were showing Seven. As I was ripping their tickets I'd turn to Connie and say, 'Hey, I didn't expect Gwyneth Paltrow's head in a box at the end, enjoy the film.' Or, when we were showing The Sixth Sense, 'I was surprised when Bruce Willis turned out to be a ghost.' I know it was cruel but it helped pass the time.

  I started to bring plays to work with me to read when it was quiet. I had joined the American Literature Section at the Central Library in Manchester so I could borrow plays. I've always loved plays because I find them concise and to the point. They also tell you which characters are in the room. Novels confuse the hell out of me. I always have to go back a few pages just to find out who's where. I also never know who's speaking but with plays it's written there on the page, enter/exit, it's straightforward and you know where you are.

  I must have read over twenty plays that summer and they taught me a lot about writing. Especially the plays of Neil Simon. I'd fallen in love with his writing after reading The Odd Couple, Brighton Beach Memoirs and Last of the Red Hot Lovers. I enjoyed the
sarcastic humour and the wit. Plus I liked them because they were very thin books and I could easily conceal them from Mrs Hayworth in my trouser pocket.

  Not that she ever said anything when she caught me sat at the top of the stairs reading. We'd come to an understanding, you see.

  A few weeks earlier I'd been to the Warner multiplex in Bury and who should I see strolling out of James and the Giant Peach? Mrs Hayworth. Her face was a picture when she saw me standing outside the Gents mouthing the word 'Judas'. After all she'd said to us, preaching about the evils of multiplexes, making us all feel guilty about going to the cinema and all the while she goes her-bloody-self. So I continued to read my plays that summer and Mrs Hayworth never once said a word.

  Chapter Fourteen

  The Magic Thumb Trick

  How sad was I? Every few weeks I'd visit other jobcentres just to see what work was available. I'd go to Bury, Wigan and Manchester a couple of times a month and I'd always have a quick browse in the jobcentre while I was there. I was quite content working at the cinema but there's never any harm in looking, is there? In fact, if I hadn't bobbed into the jobcentre in Manchester when I did I wouldn't have got my last ever part-time job, working as a steward at the newly constructed Manchester Arena.

  Being a steward, now that would be a crackin' job because basically I'd be getting paid to watch concerts. It'd also be good to be indoors. I'd started to hate going to outdoor gigs mainly because I was sick to death of being treated like shit.

  The last one I'd gone to was U2 at Roundhay Park in Leeds and it was joke. The tickets cost a fortune and then there was the booking fee. We paid ten pounds to park in a primary school car park four miles from the gig and to make matters worse I'd had all my wisdom teeth taken out three days before and my cheeks were still severely swollen. I looked like Gail Tilsley bouncing about in the crowd. I really shouldn't have gone by rights but I didn't want to miss it.

  We brought a load of food and drink with us but then some bollocks at the gate said we couldn't bring any of it in. We tried to argue the toss but it was pointless. They do that so you have no choice but to spend a fortune on their grub once you're inside.

  I couldn't believe what I was seeing. People were tipping their untouched food and drink into wheelie bins outside the gig. I thought, sod that, I'm not going to let the system beat me and so stubbornly I stood in front of the security blokes and downed all my food and drink in one. I felt like Paul Newman in Cool Hand Luke. And eighteen ham sandwiches and six litres of Tizer later I defiantly handed them my ticket, entered the grounds and threw up behind a tree.

  Then once inside you're just herded like cattle. If you want to get close to the stage you've got to turn up to the gig a week before they've built it. You daren't go for a piss because the Portaloos look like something out of Tenko. I ended up spending three quid and forty minutes queuing up for a warm can of Panda Cola and then by the time I found the others in the crowd I'd missed the support act. U2 eventually came onstage five hours later. We were so far away that I just ended up watching them on the enormous video screen. I'd have been better off sticking a portable telly at the bottom of the garden and watching a video of them live in concert, while sipping a warm glass of cola.

  Toby Foster is a very good friend of mine and fantastic stand-up comedian. I remember him telling the story of how he took his girlfriend to that very same concert.

  'I don't even like U2,' he said, 'but the girlfriend did and the whole day cost me a packet – tickets, merchandise, food and drink. The final insult came when Bono sang the only song I like, "Where the Streets Have No Name", and when he got to the chorus the cheeky bastard stuck his microphone in the air and shouted to the crowd, "You sing!" I shouted, "No, No, No, Bono, you've just cost me over a hundred quid . . . you fucking sing."'*8

  And then when U2 finished we couldn't see anything. It was pitch black and we had to slide about in mud for ten minutes as we tried to find something that resembled an exit. Then to cap it all, as we wearily traipsed the four miles back to the car, I noticed hordes of scally kids sitting in backstreets feasting on confiscated food and drink out of upturned wheelie bins.

  It was getting light when I fell into bed feeling as if I had been trampled on by a herd of African elephants. I quickly nodded off to sleep mumbling the words 'never again'.

  I filled out my application to be a steward while I was in the jobcentre and within a week I was called to the Free Trade Hall in Manchester for an 'Inaugural Recruitment Campaign'. The place was packed. I'd never seen such a cross-section of people in one room at the same time. Every race, creed and colour that you could imagine was in the Free Trade Hall that day. Black, white, old, young, smackheads, hippies, ginger — it was like the enrolment day from Police Academy. And I quickly came to the conclusion that everybody who had completed an application form had been offered a job.

  Marshall Entertainment were the Canadian company that had built the arena and their name was emblazoned everywhere. Banners, flyers, they even had specially designed lighting gobos projecting the words 'Marshall Entertainment' on to the back of the stage. We took our seats and were each given an itinerary booklet the size of a small Argos catalogue. I thought, 'Jesus how long is this going to take? I was hoping to be home for Countdown! The lights slowly dimmed and dry ice drifted across the stage.

  Then I heard the opening bars of 'Ride Like the Wind' by Christopher Cross (for what reason I'm still not sure). And as the music built from behind the curtain I saw the silhouette of a tall stocky man making his way towards a podium in the centre of the stage. The lights came up and the music faded clumsily. The man beamed a confident smile and hesitated as if anticipating applause – none came. Then there were a few embarrassing claps from other Marshall Entertainment employees at the back but they soon ceased when they realised they were on their own.

  'Welcome, one and all, to this inaugural recruitment campaign for the new Manchester Arena.' He had a deep Canadian accent – I found it quite attractive, in a Paul Gambaccini meets James Earl Jones kind of way. I glanced down at page 1 of the bulky itinerary. It said, 'Opening Introduction with Marshall Entertainment's Director of Operations, Mike Gunner IV.'

  'Manchester,' he continued, 'famous for many things around the globe, like Manchester United.' There was a bit of a mixed reaction to that mainly from the Manchester City supporters.

  'Famous for its weather, in particular its rain,' he laughed – alone.

  He was starting to struggle a bit with this crowd and from where I was sat I could just make out the beads of perspiration as they began to roll down his forehead.

  'And Manchester – famous for Boddington's Bitter.'

  There was a huge cheer and you could see the relief in his smile, finally having made a positive connection.

  'Yes, that's right Boddington's Bitter and just like Boddington's it's my belief that you too are the cream of Manchester.' Nice pun. 'You have all been individually chosen, hand-picked from thousands of prospective employees.' I could have sworn I heard someone cough out the word 'bollocks' on the row behind me.

  We were in there for what seemed like for ever. And they could have condensed all the information contained in their itinerary booklet on to the back of a fag packet for all the good it was. I even nodded off at one point. They ended by subjecting us to an excruciating training video from Canada – 'How to Give Customers a Solid Gold Service'. It was corny and clichéd, with all the 'dos' in colour and all the 'don'ts' in black and white. Every time one of the 'don't' scenarios came up all the wannabe stewards laughed. I could see Mike Gunner IV and his associates looking increasingly worried at our responses. Why were we laughing at all the bad scenarios? The cream of Manchester my arse.

  We were told to reconvene a week later for an initial training course at a secondary school in the centre of Manchester. We had the place to ourselves as the kids were off on their big summer holidays. The weather was glorious outside and I found it quite claustrophobic being cooped up i
nside a classroom for three days listening to a couple of clowns from a specialist security company called Live Sec.