Under the Microscope Read online

  Praise for Dave Spikey:

  ‘One of the most original, funniest men to have emerged in years.’

  The Stage

  ‘There really is a wonderful comic warmth to Spikey’s writing.’

  Johnny Vegas

  ‘Not only a very funny and accomplished comedian, but one of the finest raconteurs around.’

  Time Out

  ‘He’s premier league.’

  The Times

  ‘A comic who walks a tightrope between the comedy of the everyday and the surreal, pausing occasionally to place a foot down firmly on either side.’

  The Guardian

  ‘Pure comic gold.’

  Lancashire Evening Post

  ‘Whenever older women, shaved-headed hard knocks, entire families and trendy students are all filling up with tears of laughter, then you know you are watching a top-class comic … a national treasure … down-to-earth genius.’

  Liverpool Daily Echo

  ‘His easy patter and affable demeanour act as the perfect foil for his astute eye for detail in the everyday absurdities of life, sprinkled with a few well-placed flights of fancy. That, allied to timing that is Swiss-watch perfect, makes for a formidable combination. Brilliant.’

  Manchester Evening News

  ‘A clever man who has a beautiful eye for detail.’

  Lancashire Telegraph

  ‘Absolute comedy brilliance.’

  Sunderland Echo

  MICHAEL O’MARA BOOKS LIMITED

  First published in Great Britain in 2010 by

  Michael O’Mara Books Limited

  9 Lion Yard

  Tremadoc Road

  London SW4 7NQ

  Copyright © Dave Spikey 2010

  This electronic edition published 2010

  ISBN 978-1-84317-562-9 in EPub format

  ISBN 978-1-84317-561-2 in Mobipocket format

  ISBN 978-1-84317-386-1 in Hardback Print format

  The right of Dave Spikey to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

  All pictures courtesy of Dave Spikey, and reproduced with his kind permission, apart from: page 3 (middle), photo courtesy of Herald Express, South Devon; page 6 (middle), photo by Paul Cliff, courtesy of Goodnight Vienna Productions; page 8, photo by Neil Genower (www.neilgenower.com).

  Every reasonable effort has been made to acknowledge all copyright holders. Any errors or omissions that may have occurred are inadvertent, and anyone with any copyright queries is invited to write to the publishers, so that a full acknowledgement may be included in subsequent editions of this work.

  All rights reserved. You may not copy, store, distribute, transmit, reproduce or otherwise make available this publication (or any part of it) in any form, or by any means (electronic, digital, optical, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of the publisher. Any person who does any unauthorized act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.

  A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

  www.mombooks.com

  www.davespikey.co.uk

  Designed and typeset by e-type

  Plate section designed by Deep Rehal

  Contents

  Let Me Take You Back

  The Best Medicine

  Early Days

  Class Clown

  Grans and Grandads

  Street Life

  Snow and Sun

  Playground Laughs

  5 November 1960

  BWFC

  Blow Me, It’s Christmas

  Holidays

  Sex Education

  All Change

  Lyrically Speaking

  Joy to the World

  Never Lie at Interviews

  Howzat?

  Blood, Spit and Tears

  Bloody Hell (Not)

  Dirty Old Town

  Medicine Man

  D-I-S-C-O

  The Discovery of DNA

  Cadet Nurses

  Regrets – More Than a Few

  Nurse Bramwell

  Senior Service

  TATT

  The Beautiful Game

  Listen to This

  O Kay!

  I Name This Ship

  Spikey and Sykey

  It’s Raining Dogs

  A Night at the Opera

  Club Nights

  Animal Farm

  I’m Buzzing Now

  Compère and Contrast

  And the Winner Is

  Bertie and the Chicks

  The Turkey Who Would Be King

  Ungrateful Beasts

  And the Winner Is … II

  Chain Chain Chain Chain … Chain Letters

  He’s Behind You

  A6 in a Camper Van

  That Peter Kay Thing

  Decision Time

  Phoenix Nights

  My Dad

  Mayday, Mayday

  Buddy Holly and the Dragon Tattoo

  Lost in Translation

  Just Say No

  Overnight Success

  Bear with Me

  Schools These Days

  Dead Man Weds

  Tom-Tom

  Getting It Write

  TV Tales

  The Spice of Life

  My Brother Pete

  Life Goes On

  Index

  Plate Section

  To my wife and best friend Kay for her love, support and tolerance.

  To Stephen and Jill, my wonderful children, for their unconditional love and friendship.

  To Jenny, my capricious daughter next door.

  And

  To my mum, for deciding that if my Aunty Dorothy was having a baby, so was she.

  Let Me Take You Back

  A WISE WOMAN, a nun I believe, advised us to start at the very beginning because it’s a very good place to start. And that is indeed sound advice – but define the ‘very’ beginning.

  My very first vivid memory was attending nursery school for the first time when I was four. I remember the smell of the place, I remember the noise, the hustle and bustle, my first taste of crayon, Keith Wright peeing in his canvas cot during the afternoon nap and I remember clearly my first ever disappointment in life when I was allocated my peg in the cloakroom. All the pegs had pictures on them and I wanted a train or a castle or a lion or a monkey; yeah, a monkey! Monkeys are great. And I got a flower. A single flower, not even a bunch. My first ever school nickname was ‘Daisy’ (which was ridiculous because it wasn’t a daisy, it was blue; so maybe a hyacinth or a lupin).

  But I started thinking, what if that wasn’t the ‘very’ beginning? What if there was something before that? Something important. I decided that if I was going to write a book based on and around my life it would be only right that I investigate that possibility thoroughly … and so I did.

  I visited an eccentric woman in Burnley, who was called ‘Vinegar Vera’ for reasons unclear, but which I suspect arose from a previous profession that involved a hot bath, a bent coat hanger and a bottle of gin. Vera put me in a trance and then took me back. That’s where she took me … back. She had me stare at a dot on a ceiling tile until my eyes got tired and then she said that it was alright to close them and have a bit of a rest. So I did and then she began to peel back the layers – and it turns out that I had been, in previous lives and in no particular order:

  A dervish – not a whirly one, just your bog-standard dervish and listen to this! I was stoned to death for stealing a crust of bread. That’s a crust! Nowhere near a full loaf, not even a slice! I mean, banish me to Thrace, fair enough, I’d go along with that, co
uldn’t really argue with that, but executed, come on, be fair.

  I was also Ham. Not the meat; Noah’s son. While Vera had me under, I actually re-lived in vivid detail a massive argument that I’d had with my father after the rain had started coming down big time (‘scattered showers’ it said on the forecast!) and he was acting all smug-like because he’d built this ark (turns out he had inside information). So he’s trying to get two of every animal on the earth onto the ark, which is a total nightmare. Can you imagine how stressful it is trying to separate just two sheep or two lemmings or two wildebeests from the rest of the flock/herd/whatever?

  It really kicked off when I was busy trying to sex a bunch of guinea pigs (you press your thumbs into both groins and a penis either does or does not pop up) and I noticed that he was letting two gophers on! What was he thinking?! We’d already had a huge row about the termites and the woodpeckers, and now he’s letting these two goofy-looking critters on, and suddenly I’m shouting, ‘Dad! Check out the teeth! Remember the type of wood you used to build this thing with, yeah?’ Then he’s actually let them on! I can’t believe it! I look around in despair and now I break into a cold sweat because I can’t see the beavers anymore and the last time I looked they were definitely there, right in front of the dodos and they’re still there. Surely he’s not …

  Staying with the animal theme, I had a rubbish life when I was a daddy-long-legs. I was born, lived for about six hours, then a five-year-old kid with buck teeth pulled my legs off – it was shit.

  I was also a soldier called Yannis at the siege of Troy. We’d been there for about ten years, right, and my friends Fat Yannis, Yannis the Cheese (mad on halloumi), me and a few others got drunk on ouzo one night and somebody – it was Yannis, I think – said to a now very drunken group of soldiers …

  Yannis: Do you know what I’m going to do tomorrow?

  Yannis the Cheese: No, what?

  Yannis: I’m going to build a horse.

  All: A horse?

  Yannis: A big, f**k-off horse.

  Me: I’ll help. Can I help? Let me help.

  Yannis the Cheese: What are you going to make it from?

  Yannis: Wood.

  Fat Yannis: How big is it going to be?

  Yannis: Massive big. Big as a house.

  All: Wow! Big as a house!

  Yannis: Then guess what I’m gonna do? I’m going to get inside! I’m gonna hide in it and then you lot pretend you’ve gone home and let’s see if the Trojans will take me inside the fortress. And if they do, right, I’ll sneak out and open the gates!

  Me: I’ll come with you.

  All: We’ll all come. It’ll be brilliant.

  And the rest as they say …

  My final incarnation may surprise you. I was a cauliflower. That’s right: you can come back as vegetables! You know it: just have a look around, you’ve met them, you’ve worked with them, you’re related to a couple.

  Now, you might reasonably assume that this revelation must have traumatized me, but it hasn’t – in fact, quite the opposite; it’s been cathartic. You see, ever since I can remember, I’ve had this irrational fear of cheese sauce. I’ve been in restaurants and at dinner parties and when the waiter or hostess says, ‘Cheese sauce?’ I freak out and I mean proper panic. ‘No cheese sauce! Bad, hot, burn, KILL!!’ Of course they respond: ‘It’s only cheese sauce, Dave.’

  So, without getting out my world gazetteer and encyclopaedia, I’m guessing the ‘very’ beginning was the poor dervish – and I’m so sad that I don’t know what my name was. I’d like to think it was still Dave. ‘Dave the dervish’ sort of works.

  Hey, all that for twenty-five quid – which included tea, cake and an all-over body with jojoba oil. And that was only one session, so I can’t say with any authority that that’s it. I’m tempted to go back because I suspect there may be more. I’m pretty sure that at one time I must have been a dog … but more of that later.

  The Best Medicine

  SO … TO MY very early memories of this current life. When I was very young and wanted to get out of going to school or church or getting the coal in, I would feign a vague illness.

  ‘I don’t feel so well, Mum,’ I would moan feebly.

  My mum would say, ‘You know what you want?’

  ‘No. What?’

  ‘Putting in a bag and shaking up.’

  ‘I don’t, Mum. Actually, that’s way down the list of things I want. That’s in the bottom three, along with prunes and the Aquaphibians off Stingray. No, seriously, Mum! Put the bag away, Mum!’

  Where did she get such a big bag from anyway?

  My dad had a more philosophical approach. He would hold me gently by the shoulders and say, ‘David? Laughter. Laughter is the best medicine’ … which is why, when I was six, I nearly died from diphtheria.

  Me: (Gasping for air.) Dad ... I can’t breathe.

  Dad: Knock, knock.

  Me: This isn’t going to work, Dad.

  Dad: Knock, knock.

  Me: Who’s there?

  Dad: Dunnup.

  Me: Dunnup who? Yes, very hilarious. Can I have some antibiotics now?

  No, I couldn’t. Not just yet, anyway – because if the laughter didn’t work, there’d be plenty more options before a real, proper, bona fide doctor would be required. I was sort of convinced as a kid that my mum and dad, respectively a part-time wages clerk and a painter and decorator (self-employed, no job too small), must have attended a night-school class in domestic medicine at Bolton Technical College – because they did appear to be prepared for any medical emergency.

  I say ‘prepared’ not in the sense that they would reach with confidence for the first-aid kit and medicine cabinet. Oh no, all that they needed could be found in a well-stocked kitchen pantry. Allow me to illustrate this, in the style of submitted papers to the British Medical Journal with some real-life case studies …

  Case Study 1:

  Aged six, I fell from the top of the coal bunker and landed on my head. A lump came up the size of an XL egg – you could have made an omelette. Dad triaged the injury and referred me to the emergency room (kitchen), where Mum didn’t hesitate: years of training kicked in as she instinctively went straight for the butter and applied a large dollop (‘a knob’ I believe is the technical term).

  Case Study 2:

  Only one week later, I burned my hand lighting the fire. Emergency treatment? Bit of butter.

  Case Study 3:

  I contracted TB. Solution? Bit of butter. (Not true: but you get the picture.)

  Case Study 4:

  I got a bad cold. (You know, as opposed to a good one?) I had a very sore throat and the pantry nurse heaped a mountain of salt into hot water with instructions to gargle. And for that chesty cough? Mustard. Not to be taken internally – oh no, to be massaged into my chest. Dinnertime at school that day was a nightmare; all the other kids wiping their spam butties on me …

  Case Study 5:

  We couldn’t afford talcum powder, so when my baby sister Joy was born, my mum used self-raising flour. The first time Joy got nappy rash, she broke out in scones.

  Case Study 6:

  I injured my ankle playing football in the back street and was carried home by a neighbour screaming in agony (me, I mean). Dr Dad took one quick look and prescribed ‘knit bone’ – that’s knit bone (!) – and produced, like some ancient apothecary, a bunch of a weird-looking dried plant, which he soaked in a bowl of very hot water before plunging my swollen, throbbing ankle into it. Again, that’s very hot water …

  Me: Arrrrrrrrrrrrrrrgh!

  Dad: Don’t be so soft, that’ll knit your bones back together.

  Me: Oh, right. Is that why they call it ‘knit bone’?

  Dad: Yes it is, son.

  Me: Have they heard about this down at the orthopaedic hospital, Dad?

  Dad: Have you heard about a smack round the ear?

  Me: Have you heard of Childline?

  Dad: No, it’s 1958.

  I
now know that ‘knit bone’ is comfrey – a medicinal herb that the marketing people of olde obviously had trouble shifting in the Middle Ages. After a brainstorming session, the ‘creatives’ came up with the re-branding idea: ‘We’ll call it knit bone – it does exactly what it says on the stalk.’ Indeed, it was in medieval times that its reputation for knitting bones together flourished. That’s medieval times, Dad!

  My parents also practised preventative medicine. For example, did you know that if you go out to play with wet hair you will get double pneumonia, no question. Not single pneumonia: double pneumonia. The potentially life-threatening dangers of wet hair were well known in our family – but not, it seems, to generations of scientists since, who are still blaming it on the humble virus and/or bacteria.

  If all else failed, there was vinegar. According to my mum, vinegar was ‘nature’s cure-all’. (Which begs the question that if that was indeed the case, why did she always use other emergency condiments first? Why not go for the ‘Sarsons’ straight away? She was a bit vague on that subject. I did press her on it once and she reasoned, as mums always do, ‘Because I say so.’)

  Nevertheless, vinegar was liberally applied to my warts, acne and nettle rash. It was swallowed to combat heartburn and headaches, and used as an insect repellent in summer when I would attract midges by the thousand. Mum would rub vinegar all over me: ‘That’ll keep the little buggers away.’ ‘It’ll keep everyone away, Mum!’

  It was a real worry to me that in between applying or forcing vinegar down me, she also used it for descaling the kettle, cleaning the iron, getting rid of rust from the railings and dispersing stubborn soap scum in the bath.

  Should vinegar, against all the odds, not come up to scratch (not likely to happen, is it?), my mum could always spit on a hankie and apply to the injured area. Apparently, mums’ spit contains a powerful antibiotic which will kill 99 per cent of all known germs. (It is also the best thing for flattening your hair, cleaning round your mouth after a drink of Vimto and getting stains out of your jumper.) I think that the NHS should recruit an army of mums, issue them with hankies and send them into hospitals spitting and wiping. MRSA would be eradicated in a fortnight.