Johnny Vegas - Becoming Johnny Vegas

The unmistakable weight and balance of a birthday envelope from Auntie Marjorie containing a classic car, golf trophy, gentleman fly fishing, or grouse shooting with a Labrador-themed card with money sellotaped to the inside of it –

‘Don’t just take the money! Read the card, properly, out loud!’

Uncle Joe’s insistence on filling in every fifth word with ‘doings’ when explaining something technical –

‘So I’ve stripped all the doings right back, cantilevered the cross doing with a strip of two by four doings and carried that through the same all the way along the doings. Do you see?’

My mum rocking and patting me as only she knew how whenever I was ill. There was rhythm to her mothering as beautiful and comforting as any Beatles ballad

My dad giving me a big slug of brandy when I was full of a cold, not knowing Mum had just given me a big dose of adult cough medicine. I fainted just like they do in the movies –

‘He’s going, Lol, he’s going – catch him!’

My dad bringing crisps home from the club and using them to explain the nature of different faiths –

‘So, imagine we’re all stood around this giant, 40-foot bag of crisps. We’re all looking at the same thing, but just from different angles. And people have to be willing to walk around and look at God from other folk’s perspective, rather than stand their ground and dismiss other points of view’

‘Including the Protestants’

‘Aye’

‘Even though they kept their gates’

‘Even though they kept their gates’

My mum bringing back leftover sausage rolls, bits of things on cocktail sticks, and triangular sandwiches, a bit stale around the edge where the bread had been cut. All wrapped in little napkins from a buffet at somebody’s party –

‘What’s this, Mum?’

‘Erm ... pineapple’

‘I don’t like it’

‘Well, leave it on the tissue and I’ll clear it in a bit. Don’t put it in the wicker bin, it’ll smell’

Us moaning because Dad would nab the chicken drumsticks and stick them in his family-sized Stork margarine tub makeshift butty box for work –

‘You have the butties, we’ll have the chicken’

‘When you go to work and I get to go back to school, it’s a deal!’

Getting Dad to sing or recite a poem so we could stay up just that little bit longer, or just hear him talk about his youth, and his family doing singalongs and putting on turns in their Thackery Row parlour. His twinkle when he talked about the nan and granddad we never got to meet. Even Mum getting weary and worrying what the neighbours might think –

‘So I’ll meet ’im later on,

In the place where ’e is gone,

Where it’s always double drill and no canteen;

E’ll be squattin’ on the coals,

Giving drink to poor damned souls,

And I’ll get a swig in Hell from Gunga Din!’

‘Lol, LOL! Get to bed ... you’re drunk’

‘Goodbyeee, goodbyeee,

Save a tear, baby dear,

From your eyeeeee!’

The dream of turning fourteen so I could play on the snooker-tables at St Austin’s Catholic Men’s Society Club

Dad getting slapped when forced to point out to a drunken lady guest that the club’s snooker tables were for men only –

‘You’re more than welcome to partake as a spectator’

‘Sexist pig!’

The mini ploughman’s lunches – two crackers, two onions, one mini slab of Red Leicester – that Jackie Henshall would buy me after his third Saturday afternoon pint before trying to teach me the basics of crown green bowling –

‘Toe’s not broke, just bruised, it’ll be right. Now, next time, yon mon, hold the bowl with two hands, yeah?’

Our Mark’s first Mod jacket, confirming his status as official family rebel. My contemplating cutting fishtails into the back of my kagool.

Hearing Quadrophenia for the first time –

‘You say she’s a virgin, well I’m gonna be the first in!

Her fella’s gonna kill me, wooooooaaaaaaoooh fu—’

‘Michael Pennington, get in here right now and explain to me what you think you just said!’

My mum always being there for us and maintaining a home, sometimes on a pittance, every day that God sent, always managing somehow to fill in the practical gaps that prayers so often seemed to slip through

My dad working every day God sent till Tory policy dictated otherwise, always willing to debate rather than simply dictate, and constantly trying to instill in me the need for patience and tolerance, who loved me even when I went out of my way to be thoroughly detestable –

‘Can I go camping, please?’

‘Nope’

‘Urgh ... I hate you!’

‘I beg your pardon?’

‘I said I hate yer!’

‘Well, guess what? I love you. I’ve loved you since the moment you were born, and I’ll never stop loving you, and what’s more, you’re stuck with that fact no matter what’

‘So?’

‘So ... hate is a very powerful word, an awful word, and it’s responsible for a lot of the evil and wrongdoing that goes on in this world. And, one day, maybe not tomorrow, maybe not next week, or next month, maybe not for years to come, but one day, you’ll remember saying that to me and it’ll make you so, so sad that you did, and regret’s an awful thing to carry on yer back’

‘I didn’t mean it ... not proper’

‘Then try not saying it unless you do, all right?’

Our Mark trying to mend the inflatable beach-ball I’d won after a school trip to Southport fair with a fork heated over the stove and then trying to get rid of the smell by burning toast and spraying me in Pledge –

‘Why does it have to be me what burnt the toast?’

‘Because you’re little’

‘I said try a plaster first!’

Not that bloke who offered me a drink of real beer if I’d have a wee in front of him –

‘I don’t feel like a wee’

‘You will if ya sups a bit of this?’

‘I’m not supposed have beer’

‘I won’t say nowt’

My mum rushing me home after I started crying because Sharon Carr had kicked me really hard in the shins, and I instinctively knew I couldn’t kick her back, partly because she was a girl, but mainly because she scared me –

‘Are you gonna tell the teachers what she did?’

‘I might have a word with her mam but, trust me Michael, you don’t want it going any further than me, you and the front door’

My fear of fish night when Dad would bring home stinky ‘Finney Haddey’ from the docks, gagging at the sound of him coming through the front door –

‘Why can’t we have a normal chippy night like everyone else?’

‘Action Man wouldn’t ...’

‘Action Man’s gone, Dad. Just answer the question!’

My mum’s baking. Her cherry pies and homemade quiche. Sitting peeling the skins off mushrooms while watching The Waltons with the smell of frying bacon drifting in from the kitchen

SAINTS!! Paying when Dad had the money, or climbing in to see a match when he didn’t. Seeing windows around the town decorated in red and white like a second Christmas whenever they made it to a Challenge Cup final and knowing my town was best at rugby league. And making glass

Setting light to plastic beer-crates to watch the hot gloop spit and drip but having to hide the burn from Mum because she’d go ballistic if she found out we were playing with fire

The Sunday bonfire club and setting light to anything that would burn over Hankey’s Well

Refusing to jump off the roof of St Austin’s Infant School and starting to cry when our Robert tried to motivate me by lying about the police coming –

‘You’ll go to jail and never see me Mam or Dad again’

‘They can come and visit’