See, I did warn you!

       INTRODUCTION

      My name is Michael Pennington and I am not a comic character. I’m often mistaken for one, though – as much by myself as anyone else.

      See me in the street and you might shout ‘Hey, Johnny!’ or chant, ‘Vegas!’ Langtree-Stadium style (home to St Helens’ finest, the mighty SAINTS!), then most likely invite me out on the lash with you. But don’t be offended if I wave awkwardly before walking away (and please know that he is dying to take you up on the offer).

      That title – Johnny Vegas – belongs to my best friend and my worst enemy, my nemesis and my deliverer, the one person who stuck up for me when everyone else had quietly written me off, but then tried to out-and-out assassinate me; a walking encyclopaedia of human frailty who started out as a fearlessly confessional stand-up comedy persona (and who now thinks I sold him out in favour of flogging teagbags alongside a far more media-friendly knitted sidekick, when I’m not busy on panel shows, cosying up to the very same comedy establishment he’d set out to obliterate).

      Like a special schizophrenic edition of Who Do You Think You Are? I want to trace the conception of Johnny Vegas: his awkward gestation, violent birth, messy adolescence and distraught assault on the UK comedy stand-up circuit. I’d like to know how I could be so blind to a fact so obvious to everyone else. I didn’t make him up as my ego would have us all believe: he always was me! The part of me I mistakenly thought I could put back in the bottle once he’d served his purpose. How did I miss the real joke that everyone was in on, except us?

      I need to make sense of this as much for myself as for you, the reader. But I don’t want you feeling like you’re intruding on some personal journey. As with any self-respecting clown, there will be laughs along the way, but this is an attempt at telling my story warts and all, with the aim of delivering something a little more substantial than a Christmas-stocking filler. Dare to scratch beneath the surface with me and together we’ll find the good stuff, the home truths, the black gold stuck to the bottom of that circus bucket full of confetti. And I genuinely hope the blood, sweat, tears and other less socially acceptable bodily fluids will be worth whatever they end up charging you for this in Tesco’s.

      But what I’m praying for deep down is answers.

      This book is about the real me, Michael Pennington, looking back and trying to find the source of what you think you know and (hopefully) love about Johnny. I’ll no doubt moan about the loss of innocence and blah de blah de blah, but I want to know how a genuine alter ego is born, and then manages to take over completely.

      No doubt Johnny will want to turn his back on this book – publishers are pimps! He might be willing to prostitute his past for a cramped wee slot on the bookshelf of showbiz banality but, just like Julia Roberts, you won’t catch me kissing on the corporate lips of ‘Hey, hey, look at me’ celebrity literature. Or even try to destroy it if it gets too close to the difficult truths he was meant to protect me from – truth is a trombone, capable of sweet yet sombre serenades, but in the wrong hands it’s nothing more than a long, wet, amplified fart that sends its audience scurrying for the earplugs of inebriation. But sod Vegas …

      I was here first.

       1.

       THATTO HEATH RHAPSODY

      When I go back to the very beginning, I can’t help but smile. Like a Ken Loach film, there was a joy to be mined from everything life threw my way. It was who we were and how we lived. It was the perfect