Becoming Johnny Vegas. Johnny Vegas
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of off-side –
‘You’re a parasite, Pennington. Do you hear me? A parasite!’
Learning to swim courtesy of our headmaster, Mr McManus, after numerous lessons with my brother Mark had failed –
‘Put your hands on the sides again and I’ll stomp on ’em. Now move your arms, kick your legs and bloody swim!’
Paul Barnet sticking blades of grass up frogs’ arses and inflating them a bit before gently squeezing to make them fart –
Phhhhht
‘Can you make ’em burp?’
‘Nah, they’d be sick. That’d be cruel’
Believing Paul Barnet when he told me he was born on a meteor that crash-landed in Taylor Park and therefore he was half werewolf –
‘I don’t turn into a full wolf, I just get a craving for sausages and chops or owt else meaty when it’s a full moon’
Our Robert and Mark getting Paul to chase me down the street just so they could test their latest man-trap by lifting up a piece of fishing line at the last moment and nearly bloody decapitating me –
‘It’d work if you weren’t so bloody slow at running!’
Trying sterilised milk for the first time at Martin Hurley’s house and throwing up for three days straight at home afterwards
Eating snails at their house and throwing up at home afterwards
Eating a Goblin meat pudding at their house and throwing up at home afterwards –
‘Mum, can I go and play at Martin’s house after school?’
‘Yes, but best come home for your tea afterwards’
Martin’s mum taking us to see Grease even though we were under age and then to a curry house where she let us have a real beer shandy, then my throwing up on Martin’s hand after drinking it, which made him throw up in the restaurant fish tank –
‘Just the bill, please’
Hearing that my nan had died on the first evening of our caravan holiday in Rhyl and packing the car to go back home. There was no conversation to cover the sound of Mum weeping in the bedroom
Me and our Dimon pounding on a lad the afternoon after Nan’s funeral for shouting –
‘Ey-up, it’s Rentaghost!’
Leaving Mum in church on Sundays as she knelt and cried her heart out week after week after week
Playing Kamikaze golf in the Holkers’ bedroom and our Mark knocking the ball through their window and leaving a clean, golf ball-sized hole in it –
‘Catch a bird, kill it, say it flew straight through’
‘You’re an idiot!’
Watching Superman with Christopher Reeve and actually believing a man could fly!
Watching Superman II with Martin Hurley and his dad and seeing families get up and leave during the scene where Superman was in bed with Lois Lane –
‘But Dad, why?’
‘Never mind why, just get your coats. And bring that popcorn with you!’
Having nightmares about the bedroom filling with water and a shark getting in after our Robert told me all about Jaws chomp by chomp –
‘DUUUH DUH. DUUUH DUH’
‘Mum!’
I was crap at climbing. This tree had actually blown over in a storm.
The tree outside our bedroom window that looked like a witch
The parent alarm our Robert built with a Subbuteo floodlight and the switch contacts that he hid under the carpet outside our bedroom so we could play cards after lights out, not knowing that Dad used to stand outside tapping it for his own amusement –
‘Right, your turn ... shush!’
‘Twist ... shush!’
‘Twist agai—shush!’
‘Twi—shush!’
Watching the BBC Television Centre on telly and thinking it was almost as far away as the Star Wars galaxy, then committing the postcode to memory: ‘W128QT, W128QT, W128QT’
Vowing never again to waste a Saturday morning trying to call Swap Shop.
The look on eagle-eyed Action Man Talking Commander’s face when I brought home my first Star Wars figure –
‘Who’s this?’
‘Just a friend. Nobody special, why?’
‘No reason. I’ll be in my jeep if anybody needs me’
Playing round Alan Hale’s house with his massive collection of Star Wars figures and vehicles –
‘I want your life’
‘What?’
‘I don’t care if you have got Boba Fett, that is not enough troops to bring down an AT-AT!’
My sister Catharine’s fear of moths and the weeks it took gathering twenty dead ones to hide under her duvet –
‘I’m not going back in there, I’m sleeping round Janet’s’
Getting told off by the dentist’s receptionist for ripping a photo of Jimmy Connors from a magazine for my sister to apologise for the moths incident –
‘I just saw you tear it out and put it in your pocket! Magazines cost money, you know. Did you stop to think about the next person who might want to look at Jimmy Connors before an extraction? No, you didn’t, did you? Through there, second door on the right’
Thinking I was drunk after drinking Canada Dry at Father Chris’s ordination party because I’d seen ginger ‘ale’ on the can –
‘The bucket, Dad, in the cupboard, next to the bleach’
‘Michael, bed, now!’
Keeping nicks for Father Turner whilst our Simon helped himself to altar wine –
‘It’s borrowing, and it’s not a real sin ’cos it’s not actually Jesus’s blood yet’
‘Well, give us a bit then’
Martin Hurley getting the holy mother of all rollockings for sticking his tongue out at me with the practice Communion host still stuck to it –
‘This being a rehearsal does not change the fact that by your actions you have pulled a face at God and rejected Jesus Christ Our Lord!’
Losing a chunk of my front tooth when Bryan threw me over his back whilst playing ‘Mad Bryan on the Loose’
Telling Bryan it would be okay after his mam dressed him in short trousers on the first day of junior school
Bryan beating me at maths and spelling in that big test
My mum buying me a comic when I cried my eyes out after losing the egg and spoon race at St Austin’s sports day
Dad making ‘a moral point of order’ at Butlin’s about the amount of rented costumes as opposed to the ingenuity of those put together from items found on site –
‘It has nothing to do with the spirit of fun!’
My mum threatening to call the Queen on me for not wanting to go as Noddy in the fancy dress at the Silver Jubilee street party –
‘Never you mind how I got her number’
‘I told you I wanted to be a Womble’
‘Well,