Life and Laughing: My Story

by Michael McIntyre

  ‘I’m sorry, sir, it’s a mystery,’ said the engineer. Well, the mystery ends here.

  Sam and I had tried following girls in Corfu without success, but now we had a new plan. We would go to a nightclub. We scanned the clubbing section of Time Out magazine and selected a trendy hotspot just off the King’s Road. The major stumbling block was that we were two years underage. I was sixteen and looked younger. My most adult feature was the hair under one armpit. I thought of trying to comb it across to the other side or cutting one sleeve off a shirt to reveal my manliness, but it would be no use. There was just no way we could pass for eighteen. Sam looked even younger than me.

  ‘Sam, there’s just no way we’ll get in. You’ve got to be eighteen,’ I said, deflated.

  ‘That’s not a problem. I know somewhere we can get fake ID,’ Sam replied confidently.

  This was a tremendously thrilling and illegal prospect. Fake ID could open up the entire adult world to me. A world I was desperate to gain entry to. Thank God for Sam, he’s so cool, so well connected. We’ll hook up with his contacts at MI5 who will furnish us with new passports, new names, new identities. Identities of eighteen-year-olds, eighteen-year-olds who have sex, I’m going to have sex as a fake eighteen-year-old with a new name.

  Maybe I could select a name that might help me seduce women, like Don Juan or even David Juan, Don’s older brother who taught him everything he knew. I could choose the name of a dynasty synonymous with wealth, like Kennedy or Getty or Rothschild. I could choose a family name that has become a successful brand, like Cadbury, Ford or Guinness. I could be a Freud or a Von Trapp. The possibilities were endless and exciting. After much deliberation, I decided to keep my first name. Michael was a name I was used to. I liked it and I was worried that if I changed my name to, say, Jake, I might confuse myself unnecessarily. I imagined myself dancing in a nightclub just off the King’s Road when a gorgeous eighteen-year-old girl approaches: ‘Hi, it’s Jake, isn’t it? I want to have sex with you.’

  ‘No, I’m Michael, I think you’ve got the wrong guy,’ I reply. ‘No, wait, I actually am Jake, look, look at my fake ID, I mean ID.’ I couldn’t risk it.

  So it was decided my new name would be Michael Casio-Sony. I decided to take advantage of my oriental looks and pretend to be heir to both the Casio and Sony empires after my mother, Kati Casio, married my father, Ray Cameron Sony, in a ceremony that started precisely on time and where the music for the first dance was listened to on Walkmans.

  ‘Where are we going to get the fake ID from?’ I asked Sam.

  ‘The YHA,’ Sam said.

  ‘The what?’ I questioned.

  ‘The YHA, the Youth Hostel Association,’ Sam explained.

  ‘What is that?’ I asked.

  ‘It’s the association of youth hostels, what do you think it is? You just join up and fill in your details and apparently they then give you a card with your details on,’ Sam explained.

  ‘How does that help us?’ I was genuinely confused.

  ‘You don’t give them your real details, you give them a fake name and date of birth, and then they give you a card with whatever you told them written on it. Bingo, fake ID.’

  It might not have been the passport issued by Q from James Bond that I was hoping for, but it seemed worth a shot. Although I was worried that even if the nightclub bouncer believed we were eighteen, did he really want to let in people who were members of the Youth Hostel Association, was that really the kind of clientele this trendy hotspot was looking for? I wanted to look like someone who was going to be drinking cocktails and chatting up girls, not someone seeking shelter.

  Sam and I headed down to YHA headquarters in central London and joined the massive queue of foreigners lugging enormous backpacks. I bought my passport-size photo and filled out my form with the key lies. Name: Michael Casio-Sony, D.O.B: 21/2/1974. When I finally reached the front of the queue, I handed over my false information and, just as Sam had said, it was instantly processed with no questions asked. Within minutes, we were both fully fledged YHA members. With a bit of luck, we would be handed cards to use as fake ID to get into nightclubs, and as an added bonus, if we pulled, we could take the lucky ladies to over 20,000 youth hostels worldwide.

  We were indeed handed official-looking YHA memberships that displayed our photos, our new names and ages. So far, so good. Unfortunately, the membership card was an enormous piece of paper, about A4 size. It was basically a certificate. But we had queued for most of the day, we’d come this far, it was too late to back out. We went home to freshen up and negotiate our curfew with my mum. We checked Time Out magazine; the club opened at 9 p.m. and closed at 3 a.m.

  ‘Mum?’ I asked within moments of arriving back. ‘Can Sam and I go to the cinema tonight?’

  ‘Sure. What’s on? Do you want me to drive you?’ helpfully asked my mum, forever trying to be nice to her bolshie, hormonal sixteen-year-old.

  ‘No, thanks, we’ll take the Tube,’ I said.

  The word ‘thanks’ was a mistake. I don’t think I’d used it since the first hair appeared under my left armpit. She knew something was up.

  ‘It’s quite a long film, so we might be home quite late, please.’

  Please? What was wrong with me? I was completely malfunctioning. That ‘please’ didn’t even really fit into the sentence.

  ‘What time?’ my mum asked sceptically.

  ‘I don’t know, midnight, maybe later,’ I said, pushing my luck.

  ‘Michael, you have to be home by eleven. That’s the rule. That’s more than enough time to see a film, and if it isn’t, see another one. I know you’re up to something, so whatever it is, be back here by eleven o’clock.’

  ‘Fuck off, I hate you, I hate you!’ I screamed before running upstairs to my bedroom and slamming the door behind me.

  Sam and I plotted our evening. It takes forty-five minutes to get back home from the King’s Road, so we would have to leave the club at 10.15 p.m., which leaves us with one hour and fifteen minutes of clubbing time. We’ll have to make them count. I perused my wardrobe. What to wear? What will make beautiful King’s Road chicks fall at my feet?

  I knew nothing about fashion. I still don’t. If I had done, I would have known that my outfit selection was putting me at a severe disadvantage in the pulling arena. My grandma had bought me a beige T-shirt covered in prints of African elephants. I knew it was expensive, so I thought it must be cool. Just the kind of thing the heir to two electronics empires would wear. Jeans have never suited me; in case you’re wondering why – then imagine me in jeans. Go on, do it now … See what I mean? So I opted for cords. Brown ones. Little did I know then, but it has since been scientifically proven that it is impossible for a woman to be attracted to a man wearing brown corduroy. So with my brown cords and African elephant T-shirt, what better way to complete the ensemble than with a pair of black loafers? Believe it or not, I did look in the mirror before I went out and thought I looked good.

  We were concerned about the club being very busy, so we arrived half an hour early so that we might be first in the queue. We needn’t have worried. Nobody, literally nobody, apart from Sam and me in 1992, has gone to a nightclub at the opening time. Most clubbers show up at midnight or later, but there we were loitering on our own at the entrance at 8.30 p.m. It was still light. At 9 p.m. our big moment came. Two burly bouncers (is there any other kind?) were standing outside as Sam and I confidently strode up to the entrance.

  ‘Are you open?’ Sam said, his voice breaking on the words ‘are’ and ‘open’.

  The bouncer couldn’t help himself from chuckling as he saw the pair of us.

  ‘Do you want to come?’ he asked.

  Nerves overcame me, which, as you know, results in me becoming extremely posh.

  ‘Yes, please, we want to come into this night establishment,’ I said.

  ‘Night establishment?’ the bouncer asked. ‘How old are you two?’

  ‘Eighteen,’ we both said in unison,
practically before he’d finished asking the question.

  ‘Have you got any ID?’ the bouncer pressed.

  This was the moment we had been preparing for all day. We instantly whipped out our A4 YHA certificates. The bouncer scrutinized them. He didn’t seem to be perturbed by the size or nature of them, he just checked the information. Sam’s name and birth date on his fake ID were both strokes of genius.

  ‘That’s today’s date. It is your birthday today, David?’ the bouncer asked Sam.

  ‘Yeah, it is, mate,’ Sam replied in an odd cockney accent.

  ‘Happy birthday,’ the bouncer said, seemingly genuinely. ‘David Kray, any relation?’

  ‘Yeah, leave it will ya?’ Sam confidently revealed.

  Now, in my opinion, there’s no way on earth that the bouncer believed him. I think he just admired his audacity – so much so that he let us both in. Sam and I got into the hottest club in London with our fake IDs, at 9 p.m. We paid the exorbitant entrance charge and took a look around. What we found was an empty nightclub. The music hadn’t even started yet. There was a barman cleaning glasses and another man mopping the floors. We took further advantage of our fake IDs and drank a Malibu and lemonade each, but the scene in the club hadn’t changed by the time we had to go. We were the first to arrive and the first to leave.

  Our clubbing adventure did not produce the results I was hoping for. Although I think even if we had stayed until three in the morning, Michael Casio-Sony wouldn’t have had much luck with the ladies. The problem was the clothes on my body and the spots on my face. But, as if by magic, these problems would disappear. On holiday. On holiday you don’t really wear clothes. As long as you don’t wear Speedos, and I didn’t, it’s difficult to go too far wrong. Also the sun had a miraculous effect on my skin. It cleared my spots up almost entirely and made me much better-looking. In fact I tanned quite well, which would bring out my blue eyes. I had been doing endless sit-ups in my bedroom, a bit like Robert De Niro when he was incarcerated in Cape Fear. So I was in good shape, the best shape of my life, it would turn out. Put simply, after three or four days on holiday, I was gorgeous.

  That summer Lucy and I were not visiting our dad, as we would be spending Christmas with him instead. So I organized some serious summer vacationing. It kicked off with a two-week family holiday in Malta with Lucy, my mum, Steve, Nicholas and Thomas (Andre still not born). Then Sam and I were Interrailing around Europe. Our itinerary was as follows: London to Paris, Paris to the South of France, where Sam had relatives and we had friends, South of France to Monte Carlo to meet up with my grandma (Helllo, daaarling) and Jim for a few days, South of France to Switzerland, where Sam had a royal relative living in a castle, Switzerland to Italy, where we also had a friend to stay with, and then Italy to home. I set off with my rucksack, my passport, my Interrail ticket, some travellers’ cheques and my virginity. During that summer I lost my rucksack, my passport, my Interrail ticket, some travellers’ cheques and on the very last day I lost my watch. I’m kidding. I lost my virginity. Unfortunately, losing my passport was about as pleasurable.

  Sam and me in the South of France during our Interrailing trip, scouring Europe trying to lose my virginity.

  It came to the last day of my summer. I had visited four countries and one principality without closing the deal. But now on the final night of our adventure, I was odds-on for some nookie. I had met a French girl in Malta; her name was Sandrine and she was reasonably attractive in the right light, more attractive still in no light. We shared some passionate moments at night on the beach in Malta. We’d reached second, maybe third base, using the popular baseball analogy. Continuing the baseball analogy, I would say that both of our techniques were as accomplished as the hitting skills of Danny Heep. She was also a virgin. Not ideal. I’ve always felt that life would be so much easier if boys were shown the ropes by an older, more experienced woman. I would actually make it compulsory, like jury duty. Single women in their late thirties should be assigned a teenage boy each. They would be sent a name and address in the post and they have six months to have sex with him or face jail time. This is probably a bit extreme (although I bet there are some single women in their late thirties totally up for the idea).

  Anyway, after a lot of nocturnal fumbling in Malta, we said an emotional goodbye and exchanged details. It turned out she lived in Calais. Who lives in Calais? Does she live in the port? Is she a ferry driver? Regardless, this was good news for me, as I would be passing this port, with my passport, twice over the coming weeks. So when it came to the last day of my trip and my virginity was intact, Sam and I decided to stop off at her Calais residence. Sam provided me with sexual tips. Embarrassing as it may be to admit, he even drew me a diagram on a napkin of areas to aim for on the female form. ‘Make sure you talk to her, girls love it. Tell her how beautiful she is, compliment her,’ Sam advised.

  ‘But she isn’t really,’ I admitted.

  ‘That’s not the point, this is your first time. You have to start somewhere, and girls need to be coaxed, they need to be turned on. Listen to me, or it will be a disaster,’ Sam continued.

  When we arrived at Calais train station to be picked up, the scene was tremendously awkward. Sam and I spoke GCSE French, and Sandrine and her parents spoke Baccalauréat English. This worked quite well at the beginning, but we soon used up all our phrases in the car journey.

  ‘Hello, how are you?’, ‘What is your name?’, ‘My name is Michael’, ‘How old are you?’, ‘Can you tell me the way to the train station?’, ‘Why? We’ve just come from the station’, ‘What time is it?’, ‘I would like some bread.’

  The last ten minutes of the journey passed in silence until her father said, ‘This is our home.’

  To which I said in French, ‘Where do you live?’

  Waiting for us was Sandrine. She was hairier than I remembered. I wondered if she might be related to Panos Triandafilidis from Merchant Taylors’. She was pleased to see me, she liked me; I just wished she liked deodorant as much. She had a friend with her who was much better-looking. Sam swooped instantly. Sandrine showed me around her sweet home. Strangely, her parents went out, encouraging me to take their daughter’s virginity. Sam also disappeared, with the hottest girl in Calais. ‘I told you I had a girl in every port,’ he said as they left. ‘Remember,’ he whispered, ‘compliment her.’

  She showed me to her bedroom. It was neat and tidy and had views of the Channel. We sat on her bed, with my diagram in my pocket, and shared a bottle of duty-free wine and giant Toblerone from the local booze-cruise supermarket. I was a little freaked out by a shrine she had constructed in her room. It was a shrine to the few days we spent together in Malta. It was a bulletin board that had the note with my address on it as well as the tickets from a disco we went to and photos of us together. This was obviously the moment. I couldn’t not close this deal. She had a shrine. To me. In her bedroom.

  I don’t want to go into too much detail, but by the third mountain of giant Toblerone I made my move. We started kissing and undressing. Sam had briefed me on the potential stumbling block of the bra strap. Rather than risk an awkward hiccup, he had equipped me with nail scissors which I subtly removed from my back pocket and cut clean through the strap behind her. Bravo. It worked a treat. I went swiftly though first, second and third bases, but I was nervous, so I then went back to second base, then back to first base, then to third. What kind of a baseball game was this?

  This was probably the most nervous I had ever been in my life, which, of course, made me super posh when I followed Sam’s advice to compliment her. ‘You have quite the most beautiful …’ I scanned her for her best feature. She had pretty good legs. I was all set to say ‘legs’ when I noticed this enormous birthmark on one of her thighs. So I decided to say ‘leg’. But then I thought, ‘I can’t, I can’t say, “You have the most beautiful leg.”’ I ended up saying ‘room’. ‘You have quite the most beautiful room.’ She didn’t seem to mind that I’d overlooked ev
erything about her and commented on the scenery.

  In fact, she loved it. ‘Merci, merci, Michel.’ It really got her going.

  This encouraged me. ‘I’m particularly fond of your lamp; is it antique?’ Things moved swiftly from here. Before I could comment on her rug (the one on the floor), I found myself at home base. I’d scored. It lasted no more than about three minutes (still a record for me) and afterwards I felt like a man. At last.

  I lit one of her duty-free Gauloises cigarettes and looked out of her bedroom window as the sun set over England.

  ‘I’m coming home. I set sail tomorrow. Lock up your daughters!’

  In retrospect, I think saying this out loud was disrespectful.

  12

  My main priority on my return home was not to lose my tan. I was a tanned, sexually active man, and I wanted it to stay that way. Nature dictated that my tan would gradually fade. Every day I was becoming paler, and my spots were returning. My newfound power to attract girls who make shrines to me in their bedroom was leaving me. However, I was determined to fight nature and purchased some Clarins fake tan. I now had a fake tan and fake ID. I was the real deal. Unfortunately, my application of the Clarins fake tan was far from expert and, in my haste to darken my face, I forgot about my neck. This was OK while I still had the remnants of my real tan, but when that disappeared, I had a face that looked like it had just got back from two weeks in the Caribbean and a neck that looked like it had just got back from two weeks in Glasgow. To say that I was teased about this at Merchant Taylors’ would be an understatement. I claimed that I fell asleep sunbathing in a polo neck, but nobody believed me, and I was soon forced to admit that my bronzing was fraudulent. I then seemed to have even fewer friends there than the zero that I had before.

  I look quite good here with Lucy. I’m thin, I have a tan, but of course I have to ruin it with those glasses and that ‘I’m on my gap year’ necklace.

  Unbeknownst to me, my days at Merchant Taylors’ were numbered. I was in my first year of A-Levels and, despite my failure to connect socially with anybody there, I was settled. I had worked hard and done well in my GCSEs (five As and four Bs) and was studying Biology, Chemistry and Geography for my A-Levels. I didn’t particularly enjoy these subjects, but I was pretty good at them. They weren’t vocational; I didn’t plan on becoming a doctor or a weatherman. I opened the batting for the cricket team and was top scorer in the hockey team. I had less than two years remaining, and then I suppose I planned on going to university like everyone else. But then, totally out of the blue, in the middle of term, in the middle of the week, my father telephoned. We normally spoke on Sundays, so his phoning was irregular.