The Sound of Laughter

by Peter Kay

  American Studies turned out to be a complete waste of time altogether. I'd only picked it because the prospectus stated, and I quote, 'you will be covering all aspects of modern American media'. I thought that sounded right up my street and quite fancied a few weighty discussions about JFK's assassination and The Godfather trilogy. But in the six months since I'd been attending the lectures all we'd ever talked about was O J Simpson's film career and two of the Latino actors out of Sesame Street.

  On Thursdays we did the only part of the degree I enjoyed – practical workshops in drama and theatre studies. That was more my cup of tea and I quickly came to the conclusion that I needed to be doing a more practically-based course, and so in my spare time I started to look at other universities. Bit cheeky when you think that I shouldn't even have been doing the degree in the first place. Ah well, God loves a trier.

  After lengthy research I came across an HND in Media Performance at Salford University. It was a two-year course that seemed to cover all the areas I was interested in – drama, singing, script writing. But the one subject that attracted me most was stand-up comedy. I couldn't believe they actually did a course in stand-up comedy. I was hooked and decided to call them.

  After chatting to a very high-pitched admissions tutor (he sounded like Joe Pasquale on helium) I was pleased to discover that the course was mostly practical. The students were assessed and graded on performance skills rather than dissertations and coursework and there were no exams. It sounded perfect for me, a kind of showbiz Mode II with jazz tap instead of car maintenance.

  Another bit of good news was that, because I would be transferring from a combined honours degree onto an HND, and would therefore seem to be academically taking a step backwards, the high-pitched admissions tutor said they'd 'welcome a higher-level student like you, with open arms'. (His voice actually went a little bit higher when he said that – in fact there was only me and a few dogs that heard him.) I was thrilled and delighted, so much so that I failed to mention that I only actually had one legitimate qualification and that was in art.

  They wrote to me with an unconditional offer that I, of course, immediately accepted. So in September 1994 I started my new course at Salford University. The next two years were a complete blast for me. I acted in plays, wrote scripts, recorded radio dramas. For the first time in a long time I was completely in my element.

  I no longer felt thick, I no longer felt academically inferior. I started to excel like I never had before. I was enjoying what I was doing and rose to every challenge they put before me. Even my dance lessons every Tuesday afternoon. They were actually more hi-energy aerobics than Royal Ballet, but I gave it my best shot, regardless of the fact that I was no Patrick Swayze. Nobody puts Peter in a corner.

  The other thing I loved about the course was that I was able to go home every night. I could separate myself from the course and switch off at the weekends. It also meant I could go back to my part time jobs at the cinema and the arena. Even though it was work, it gave me peace.

  Don't get me wrong, I genuinely loved the course, but I just didn't subscribe to student life. I was three years older than most of the other students and when you're twenty-one, three years feels like a lifetime.

  Thankfully most of the students on my course were normal (well as normal as you can get for a bunch of 'showbiz wannabes'). They came from industrial towns throughout the north of England – Sheffield, Leeds, Liverpool – and the Midlands (we even had one from Wales).

  I also liked the fact that they didn't fall into the archetypal student bracket. You know the ones I mean. They turn up on Freshers' Week searching for a new identity, dye their hair purple and pierce themselves in an assortment of places because it's their first time away from home and they want to rebel against their parents. They blow their grant money on a pair of thigh-length leather boots and a donkey jacket from a local charity shop. Then, completely broke, they refuse to get any kind of part time job to support themselves and choose instead to spend the rest of the term living off handouts from Mummy and Daddy, whilst sending their dirty washing home once a fortnight. Not that I'm generalizing or anything.

  One of the subjects I enjoyed the most was my characterization classes, which we had on Friday mornings with our lecturer Bob Steen. He was quite a character. Tall and permanently tanned, he paraded himself around campus in a denim shirt unbuttoned to his navel, like Barry Gibb on stilts. As the dark nights drew in Bob chose to wear a cloak and now resembled something out of a Seventies prog rock band like Yes or Emerson, Lake and Palmer (the latter has always sounded like a firm of solicitors to me). Bob wouldn't have looked out of place playing synthesizer in the middle of the desert, silhouetted against a setting sun. He loved himself and, bizarrely, so did most of the female students. They hung on his every word, buzzing round him like flies round shit.

  We did a few productions over the two years, the first of which was a Greek tragedy, Electra by Sophocles and it was directed by Bob Steen. He came up with the idea of setting our production against a backdrop of Sixties gangland London after watching The Krays on ITV one Saturday night. The lads wore long black cashmere coats and the girls had to wear mini skirts (which he loved) and we all talked in bad cockney accents – like Sophocles had written an episode of Eldorado.

  Bob could be a moody swine sometimes, especially if he hadn't had his daily fix of six black coffees and some marijuana. I remember one weekend myself and the rest of the cast had come in to help paint the set for Electra. It was November and some of us had walked leaves into the theatre on the bottom of our shoes. Hardly a hanging offence, but when Bob saw them on the stage, he stopped dead in his tracks and bellowed 'Who has walked leaves onto my set?'

  We all just looked at each other and shrugged. We all had. It was autumn outside – what did he expect us to do, levitate into the building? I shut my eyes, expecting him to explode with rage, but instead he just pulled a joint out of his back pocket the size of a roll of wallpaper and, lighting it, said 'I like it, I like it. Let's bring the outside inside. Let's bring the outside inside!' The next thing I knew, he had us all outside in the car park filling up carrier bags with leaves and then he made us throw them all over the set.

  Electro, was very intense and bleak (well, it is a Greek tragedy) but our next production was even bleaker. It was The Crucible by Arthur Miller. In case you're not familiar with The Crucible, it's basically the story of the witch-hunt trials that took place in Salem, Massachusetts in 1692, when local villagers burnt each other at the stake after accusations of heresy. It wasn't Grease, let's put it that way.

  I found it slightly frustrating, as it was the second serious production that we'd done since I'd arrived and I really wanted to have a stab at doing something comical. Bob Steen gave me the lead, John Proctor, because he reckoned it would be a good discipline for me. I strongly disagreed and so, on the last night, I thought I'd inject a little bit of humour into the production. Unbeknownst to Bob, I decided to end the show with a big band number and with a karaoke backing tape behind me, I belted out Frank Sinatra's 'Witchcraft' as I burned at the stake. Even Bob managed to see the funny side and it went down a treat with the audience. A few of them even woke up and sang along during the chorus. It reminded me of The Wizard of Oz all over again, but without the lion costume obviously.

  After that the staff looked favourably on my pleas for comedy and chose an ageless Russian farce called The Government Inspector as out next production. I've mentioned to you before that I'm not very keen on farces, but it was the closest we'd come to doing a comedy so far and beggars can't be choosers etc, etc, etc.

  The story is based on a classic case of mistaken identity. In fact John Cleese and Connie Booth paid homage to the play and adapted the same storyline for an episode of Fawlty Towers that they entitled 'The Hotel Inspector'.

  I was given the role of Mayor. It was a comic tour de force and I relished the opportunity. Bob Steen even allowed me to improvise my lines, a process I found trul
y liberating.

  The University of Salford had many patrons, Robert Powell, Ben Kingsley, Ice T (I'm joking) and the wonderful writer Jack Rosenthal, who sadly passed away a few years ago. He was married to the actress Maureen Lipman and one day, totally unannounced, she popped into the theatre to watch us rehearse The Government Inspector and then gave us a fascinating talk on theatre and comedy. She even singled me out as being a naturally gifted comedian at one point. I was genuinely thrilled to receive such an accolade from someone I admired so much. But I wasn't half as thrilled as I was three months later when Maureen Lipman phoned our house and invited me to audition for a part in a West End show.

  My mum was speechless and dropped the phone in shock. It turned out that Maureen (I think I can safely use her first name), had gotten my number off Bob Steen, after contacting him at the university. Apparently a director friend of hers was casting a farce in the West End and for some reason she had mentioned me to him.

  My stomach churned at the enormity of the proposition that lay before me. It was a huge opportunity, to be plucked from obscurity and offered a chance to appear in a West End comedy. Okay another farce, I grant you, but hey beggars can't. . . Oh, I've just said all that, well you know what I mean.

  A week later I was travelling down to London town on the train with my dad sat beside me. He insisted on coming with me. In fact his exact words were 'it'll be a nice ride out'. It was a difficult time for him, as he'd been made redundant from his engineering job a few weeks before. But I had no idea how bad things had got until he pulled out a notepad on the platform in Bolton and proceeded to write down the numbers of the passing trains.

  'Oh my God, what are you doing?' I said, mortified.

  'I've decided to do a bit of trainspotting,' he said, as he flicked through his notepad, revealing page upon page of names and numbers. The Conservative government had a lot to answer for.

  'A bit?' I said, 'it looks like you've seen half the trains in Britain already.' No wonder he was so keen to come with me. This journey to London clearly ticked a lot of boxes for him.

  'Put it away,' I said. 'Christ, we're in the middle of the rush hour man.' The platform was choc-a-bloc with morning commuters and I hardly had any credibility left in Bolton as it was.

  Personally, I could never see the point of trainspotting. You write down the name and number of a train in the hope that one day you'll see it again and then, when you do, you write it down again. When does the fun ever end?

  I arrived at the Criterion Theatre in Piccadilly Circus two hours too early – just to be on the safe side. It was the first time I'd been to London since a school trip in 1984 and that turned out to be a complete waste of time. After a four-hour train ride we got put into groups and assigned a group leader. Sadly I got saddled with a Polish nun who was terrified of traffic. So while the other kids went to Buckingham Palace and Big Ben, we sat on Euston station waiting for our train home. The most I saw of London was a map of the underground fastened to the wall outside WH Smith's.

  Nervously I sat backstage at the Criterion Theatre, waiting to be called through. There was nobody else there, except for an elderly man who was working the stage door. He sat in his booth reading the Daily Star and dipping his KitKat. I don't think he was up for an audition.

  I was terrified. It was like the whole Granada interview thing all over again. The next thing I knew my bowels kicked in and I must have pumped about forty times in a row before a pretty girl leaned round the door and called my name. I could tell by the look on her face that the smell that greeted her wasn't very friendly. I naughtily gestured over my shoulder to the old bloke working the stage door as I followed her into the theatre, shaking my head.

  She handed me some photocopied lines as I walked towards the stage. 'Here's your script,' she said. 'Sorry, I didn't get it to you earlier, the copier was out of ink.' Jesus, I'd been here almost two hours. I would have been word perfect by now. I'd always been crap at sight reading, especially at school. I hated it when the nuns made us read out loud from a book in class. We had to read a paragraph each, and so I used to have to count how many people there would be before it was my turn, and then count the same number of paragraphs down the page. It gave me a little time to scan the text for any big words. But sometimes the nun would say 'Continue' after I'd confidently read my paragraph. 'Eh? What does she mean continue? That was a paragraph, she said a paragraph.' I'd turn to the others around me, but it was useless. I had no choice and in a blind panic I went from Laurence Olivier to Joey Deacon in two lines. So I don't know what this girl was expecting me to do with the script that she'd handed me at the eleventh hour. Out of ink indeed. It was the West End not a public library.

  Desperately trying to read the script in the darkness, I followed her to the stage and casually glanced up. Oh my God! The place was huge. Mesmerized, I stumbled towards the spotlight in the centre of the stage like a big fat moth. The light was blinding and I couldn't see anything except the enormous black void of the auditorium and a couple of green exit signs.

  'It's Peter, am I right?' said a voice in the darkness.

  'Yes, I think so, unless my parents are playing a big elaborate joke.'

  There was a laugh. Southerners, they find anything funny. Mind you, so would I after twenty-five years of Jim Davidson and Jethro. (Now come on southerners, that was just a bleedin' joke, me old cock sparras.)

  'Maureen speaks very highly of you' said the voice in the darkness.

  Good old Maureen, I thought to myself. I must write a part for her one day and return the favour.

  'You're reading the part of Derek,' said the voice, 'he's a bit of a cockney wide boy.'

  'Right,' I said, clearing my throat several times in a desperate attempt to stall for more time. I then proceeded to read the lines badly and quickly. I sounded like Dick Van Dyke on speed.

  There was a pause. A very long pause. So long I could have bobbed out to Greggs and bought myself a meal deal in the time it took them. I had paranoid visions of the director turning to the producer and saying 'Maureen raved on about this?'

  Eventually the voice spoke and asked me to read out the lines again, only this time much slower and in my own accent. I obliged and actually managed to get quite a few laughs. More silence followed and then the voice said the inevitable. I was told that I wasn't really what they were looking for and they thanked me for travelling so far to the audition.

  I should have been crushed by the rejection, but I wasn't. Well I was a little but not that much. It was a beautiful day and I was still made up about being singled out by Maureen and invited to the audition in the first place. I don't want to sound sickeningly humble, but that really was good enough for me. And besides, I'd never be able to stomach being away from home doing a play for six months. I'd slit my wrists with depression.

  I met back up with my dad at Euston station. He was on platform fourteen, scribbling into his notebook like a madman. 'Look,' he said ecstatically, 'I've had to buy another pad. I filled the other one up, there've been that many trains.' It was a shame to disturb him as he was as happy as a sand boy, but we had to go home.

  'Here, grab this,' he said, passing me a half-drunk bottle of Schweppes Lemonade. I had to laugh because, even though the pop was flat and warm, he made me carry it all the way back home.

  'Why don't you just throw it away?' I said as we chugged through Rugby.

  'Not a chance, it cost me one pound eighty,' he said, taking the bottle from me. 'I'm gonna enjoy every mouthful if it kills me.'

  Every year Granada Television held a directors' training course in an effort to give up-and-coming directors a chance to break into the business. Part of the course was to direct and film short pieces of drama in the studio. Luckily for me, the actors that year came courtesy of Salford University, ten minutes down the road.

  Even though the students didn't get paid, it was a great opportunity for the fortunate ones who got chosen. We all got a chance to audition for the trainee directors and
Granada executives. Most of the students performed extracts from pieces that already existed, but I decided to write something of my own. That's when I first came up with Leonard.

  It was a short monologue loosely based on my old friend Leonard, you know, the bloke from Chapter Eight who used to call into the garage when I worked there and chat to me for hours. I'd occasionally recorded our conversations and it was those tapes I returned to as the source of most of the monologue.