I Used to Say My Mother Was Shirley Bassey

by Stephen K Amos

  I did manage to get the visa and on the fateful day of travel I arrived at Heathrow Airport with Chris in tow. Though Chris was a well-rounded young lad he was still six years my junior and I had a sense of responsibility because I was in charge of a minor. Plus my mum had said that she would kill me if I allowed anything to happen to him. There’s nothing like the threat of death from someone who’d lived through the Biafran war to focus the mind. I looked over at Chris, with his shoes untied and chewing gum, and resolved that we were going to have an amazing time. He may have been my second choice of travelling companion, but he didn’t have to know that.

  17

  ‘NEW YORK! NEW YORK! It’s a helluva town!’ So the song goes. And it really is a non-stop madcap place of pure mayhem. When Chris and I arrived at the immigration desk, after all the rigmarole in the UK of queuing up at the embassy to get visas from a surly official, the guy at the desk was surprisingly friendly and welcomed us with a big smile. We got our bags and headed for the taxi queue, where immediately as we came out of the terminal I saw my first American arrest. A Latin American taxi driver (maybe he was driving without insurance?) was stopped by the cops and face planted to the ground. I looked at Chris and if we had ever doubted that New York was basically a film set blown up to city size, we were now under absolutely no illusion.

  When we got our cab the driver was a black guy who had his hair intricately braided into a dollar sign. He turned to me and Chris and said, ‘Where you going? The 212? The island?’ We looked at him like he was totally mad. ‘Are you guys going to Manhattan or what?’ We nodded and he pulled off at speed. We immediately hit unbelievable traffic and, just as we were getting used to the idea of sitting through a long and expensive hold-up, the driver just powered over to the hard shoulder and drove down it at about eighty miles an hour. As four lanes of stationary traffic honked and shouted abuse at us, in the back of my mind, I started thinking of Nigeria.

  I am no fearful driver myself, but was totally terrified and clung to my seat for dear life as we careened around on the half-muddied dirt track next to the motorway. The driver tuned the radio to full blast hip-hop and Chris shouted out, ‘Oh my God! Is this Hot 97?’

  ‘Sure is. You heard of it?’

  ‘Of course! It’s in all the best hip-hop tracks. “Hot 97 so I guess I’m flexible. Twee! Twee!”’

  ‘KRS 1?’

  ‘Stop that Chris!’ the older brother in me snapped. I had no idea what they were talking about but apparently Chris and our cabbie had just launched into a rendition of a famous song by some rapper. That’s New York for you. Even the radio stations are world famous.

  In Manhattan itself, from bridges to streets to museums to squares, you literally see one incredibly well-known sight after another. The cabbie dropped us off at our hotel off Broadway and immediately gave Chris his beeper number. ‘Beep me 911 when you want to go out and I’ll show you the clubs.’ We had arrived in the Big Apple and it was a friendly place.

  I’d done my research before heading over there so that I could fit in. But I found out that I couldn’t possibly fit in because Americans have no idea of what to think of a black British person. They haven’t got a frame of reference. They’re used to the Harlem style and a certain attitude. They were confused by me. I went into a local coffee shop and simply said, ‘My good man, I’ll have a cappuccino please.’

  They were like ‘Say what?!’ Gesturing in disbelief to the other waitresses in the shop to run over to us. ‘Alopecia! Get over! Anaconda! Get over! Now say it again!’

  I said, ‘My good sir. A cappuccino, please.’

  ‘Whoo-ee! It’s Geoffrey from the Fresh Prince.’

  New York is different to London in many ways and one of them is the attitude. People are overall a lot more friendly than they are in England. For example, in London, if you see someone dressed in a Lycra catsuit roller-skating along with a boom box belting out Kate Bush in Hyde Park, you shuffle quietly away. In New York there’ll be like ‘Yo! Way to go. More power to you!’

  In the UK, people tell you that you can’t do stuff but in the States they say, ‘Yes! You can!’ And it was in New York that I met someone who would completely change my life for ever. They managed that by simply telling me that I could do something that up until that point I’d never even considered.

  My one contact in New York was Michael. I had met Michael back in London and we’d developed a good friendship that had sadly been cut short when he went to live in America. Michael lived for the theatre and, more specifically, he lived for musicals. Since seeing Cats with Fola when I was fourteen years old, I hadn’t gone back to the West End to do anything other than visit a pub. But when I met Michael and he said, ‘Stephen! We’re stepping out!’ you couldn’t say no.

  We had gone to see Five Guys Named Moe in the West End, which had been a real toe-tapping sing-along (of course Michael’s friend had been in the show). On another occasion, I didn’t consider it a date but Michael might have had other ideas, we went to see the amazing Chita Rivera, star of The Kiss of the Spider Woman. This time we were in the front row and I could actually have reached out and touched the leading lady.

  Michael’s love of the theatre, the stars, the razzmatazz (is that even still a word now?), meant that he had a burning desire to go and live in New York, where he is to this day. How he got to live there and get a job as an assistant at an actors’ agency remained a mystery. You could visit America quite easily back then but to secure the elusive green card to work there was virtually impossible. I never asked but he was irrepressible and so he told me how he’d done it. He’d married an American girl that he’d never even met! His boyfriend, though, was lovely.

  Chris and I spent the first few nights with Michael and we saw the sights of the city. Two shows a night was normal for him and in the middle we’d go to the local steakhouse where ribs were the size of your head. Luckily for me, visiting Michael in New York at the same time as us was his best friend from London. It was a lady named Delphine Manley.

  Chris and I met her one morning at Michael’s apartment. The apartment was everything I expected from a central Manhattan tenement block. It came complete with those wrought-iron metal fire escapes at the back, which are straight out of Cagney and Lacey. Of course my first suggestion was to re-enact an episode by running up and down those stairs playing cops and robbers and shouting ‘Hold it,’ in a Bronx-style accent.

  At nine o’clock in the morning, this was not warmly received by Delphine, who was staying there too. She was a well-spoken, slight girl who was pretty, talkative and full of positive energy. I hit it off with her immediately and shortly she suggested that we all go out to a local bar that was serving a New York brunch. This was otherwise known as an all-you-can-drink margarita brunch. (Proper New York margaritas.) Brunch. It was the first time I’d ever heard the word and it stuck. Forget the Irish, the Scottish, the Ozzies and even the English – the biggest drinkers in the world live on the East Coast of America. I made Michael’s place my first stop of the morning, where I’d use the word ‘brunch’ euphemistically, frequently and mostly inappropriately.

  ‘Who’s for brunch?’ I’d say at 10 a.m, while pouring tequila shots.

  ‘You’re really funny, Stephen. You should do stand-up.’ Delphine dropped the bomb.

  ‘What? Don’t be silly. I’ve never even seen a stand-up show,’ I replied.

  ‘I think she’s right,’ quipped Michael.

  I was taken aback. People said that I was funny, but I was still foreign to the world of performance and I had no idea what a stand-up show would entail. Not only had I never been to see any live comedy, the stand-up that I had seen on television was definitely not aimed at me. In fact I couldn’t relate to most of it. Mainly portly, middle-aged men from the North in dinner suits – all telling black jokes, Paki jokes, gay jokes and mother-in-law jokes. The audiences may have been guffawing, but I didn’t belong to that arena. The only time we ever watched comedy at home was if Lenny Henry w
as on and I said so.

  ‘No,’ Delphine continued. ‘There’s a whole new wave of alternative comedy in the club scene, it’s really growing.’ I looked quizzical. ‘I’m going to open a comedy club in London. I’ve been running them at university,’ she said.

  ‘That would be amazing!’ shrieked Michael, clapping enthusiastically.

  ‘And I want you to be the resident MC,’ Delphine continued while smacking down her margarita.

  ‘What’s an MC?’ I enquired, genuinely wondering if it had anything to do with MC Hammer.

  ‘You know. The host. The guy that introduces the comedians.’ I racked my brain to recall any stand-up I’d seen on TV that had an MC. Nothing came to mind.

  Delphine went on. ‘Just think about it. Let’s exchange numbers and get together in London.’

  With that, we exchanged contact details and Michael was genuinely excited and pleased that a connection of sorts had been made. I put Delphine’s details away in my wallet, nestling between the remaining few dollars I had to spend and my credit card (which was now for emergencies only!) and I thought no more of the conversation.

  Fun times in New York were over far too quickly and I was back in London, with my younger brother safely in tow. I almost lost him altogether on our last day when we had a huge argument. I can’t recall what it was about but I was probably suffering from the overprotective older brother syndrome and was telling him off over some trivial thing. We were riding the subway together still smarting from the argument and the next thing I knew, he’d disappeared.

  Good. At first I was pleased that he’d fucked off because that meant I had won the argument and therefore been proved right! But after a little while I panicked. He may have stormed off in a teenage huff but I had no idea how to find him. He’d gone and I wasn’t even sure if he knew how to get home. The only thing I was completely certain of was that I was not leaving this country on my own.

  I’d witnessed lots of people haunting the underground network and drinking from mysterious brown paper bags while shouting maniacally. At the time, New York was not a safe place for a young foreign black man to go out in alone. And after seeing the overzealous arrest of the taxi driver at the airport, I was always on the lookout for trouble. Several times I’d crossed the street when I saw an undesirable type walking towards me. It was mostly the uniforms and the badges that were offputting.

  Honestly, I don’t know what I feared for the most: the loss of Chris if I couldn’t find him or the loss of my life, when my mum found out. Losing one son in a bizarre accident is one thing, but killing another son as punishment? I didn’t know if Mum would go that far but it was a definite possibility. In a panic I got off the carriage to begin looking for him. As the train pulled away, I looked behind me for a split second. Chris was still in the same carriage as before but had just moved to a seat further away from me. We both realized what had happened but it was too late. The train had moved on.

  I decided to catch the next train as I hoped he would get off at the next stop and wait for me like any naughty brother would. When we slowed down at the next station, peering out of the window, I saw Chris, and a huge sense of relief washed over me. The look of relief suddenly drained from my face however, because my train did not stop. I had inadvertently got on a fast train on a different line heading straight for the airport. Disaster!

  This was in the days before we all had mobile phones, so I had no way of contacting him. Besides we were underground, so they wouldn’t be a lot of use anyway. Chris couldn’t be relied upon to know where we were staying and I didn’t think he had any money to get a cab either. There followed a distressing three hours of two lost Englishmen in New York playing a game of cat and mouse chasing each other round the subway and the city. It was a nightmare, but on the plus side I now know the Manhattan underground transit system really well.

  He wasn’t at the hotel that we were staying at and finally, in despair, I went to where Michael lived. I’d done all I could and, as I got off the train, I was practising what I’d say to Mum, while also thinking of what to write in my own farewell note. But there on a bench by the exit I saw a familiar and exhausted face. While I had been frantically retracing our steps Chris had sensibly found his way to the stop that we always got off at for morning brunch. It took three hours out of our day to reach this point but at least we were both going to stay alive. We laughed, embraced and neither of us could remember what the argument had been about in the first place.

  This was just one of the many stories that I regaled to Dustin when I got back to London. For weeks afterwards, I could see the envy in his eyes. I’m pretty sure that had he known how much fun we’d have, he would have taken some time off work or even gone halves with me on the Hoover. However, he didn’t say anything and I respected that. It fits in with a never apologize, never admit you’re wrong way of thinking.

  A couple of weeks later I had the pictures from our trip developed. Now that does seem like an outdated thing to say. To the kids reading this: look it up! That’s how we did things in the olden days. Some of the pictures were blurry and others had just my brother’s finger on them. That was the problem with old rolls of film – you paid a flat fee to get them processed but out of a typical twenty-four exposures, eight could be put straight in the bin.

  The handful of photos that did come out were a great talking point for the next few weeks when mates came round to visit. I think they only put up with me sharing stories about my trip to New York because they also shared my enthusiasm for New York brunch. It was during one of these boozy evenings that the phone rang and it was Delphine on the end of the line. She called totally out of the blue and, to be honest, it took me a while to recall who she was. She suggested demurely that we meet for coffee but I don’t drink coffee and suggested a proper ‘… drink! Like the ones we had in New York!’

  ‘Then we can go to a comedy club too, so you can see one in action for yourself,’ I agreed and we arranged to get together that Friday night. I was intrigued as to why Delphine thought that I could be a good MC. Dustin thought she may be a little bit arty and crazy perhaps or even simply after my pants, or, more accurately, what lay beneath.

  We met in a pub in Putney, South London and I arrived early, looking earnest with notepad and pen in hand. When Delphine arrived, she was all smiles and acted as though we’d not been apart since New York, which by now was nearly a month ago. I was taken aback at how much she believed in me, bearing in mind she had never seen me onstage before. I couldn’t help thinking it was a great risk to open a new comedy club with some new bloke at the helm, who had never, repeat never, ever, done it before.

  ‘You’ll learn as we go on,’ she said encouragingly.

  ‘I hope so,’ I replied sheepishly.

  ‘You can help me set it all up, get as much out of it as you can. Come on, let’s go upstairs, the show’s starting,’ she continued.

  All I could think was, What the fuck. What I have I got to lose? You don’t know until you try. When we went upstairs, I witnessed live stand-up comics onstage for the first time. The amazing thing was I didn’t hear a sexist, racist or homophic word uttered. I was hooked.

  The next week I saw my second ever stand-up night at the Big Fish Comedy Club in Richmond from the unique position of actually introducing the acts. All of my best mates turned up and laughed uproariously at everything I said. I thought I was a dab hand at this. The second gig didn’t go so well. The crowd in Richmond could be unpredictable. Sometimes it would be mixed and sometimes (the worst times) it would be the posh locals. It was my second gig ever and I stood there trying to banter with a bunch of people who just weren’t having it. I didn’t really have much material back then and I was just riffing with them when I said, ‘Ladies and Gentlemen! While I’m standing here talking to you, all my mates … are robbing your houses.’ One woman put her hand up (very posh for a comedy club) and said, ‘Excuse me? But isn’t that rather racist?’ I said ‘No … What are you saying? How do you k
now these friends I’m talking about aren’t white.’ And I won them back. Most of the best gags come to you when you go with the flow and that was one of the first lessons I learned in comedy.

  These days, comics start out doing five minutes, then ten minutes, then twenty. Once they’ve found their comedy voice through doing rehearsed sets then they can start compering, where you have to play it fast and loose and be in the moment. But I did it the other way around. I started out compering. So I never had to rely on scripted material and never had that white heat moment when you forget your next link or your punchline. Likewise, I’ve never had that long drawn out painful death when no one likes you or your material and you’ve got no option but to power through twenty minutes while getting nothing back from your audience (except undiluted hate). It was a baptism of fire, but it suits me to riff and play around with people and their expectations of me. I’m glad that I never listened when teaches or parents told me to sit down and shut up because now I’m never lost for words onstage and I like it best when I can chuck the rehearsed set out the window and just have fun.

  So just like that the Big Fish Comedy Club was launched upstairs in that pub in Richmond. Our budget was non-existent, so just like when you are decorating your house, mates and favours were called in. The Big Fish theme was extended to give the venue an identity and it was decorated like an underworld cave in the sea, with nets, plastic fish, seaweed and shells. Dustin got his class to do a project making fish of all different shapes and sizes to be hung around the venue. I told him how creative I thought the idea was; others may see it as free child labour.