Kay - The Sound of Laughter

Ding Dong! Was that the doorbell? You can never be too sure. I didn't get up to answer it. I waited for it to ring again and confirm my suspicions. I waited and I listened. I listened by leaning my head forward and tilting it slightly to one side. Everyone knows that when you lean forward and tilt your head to one side the volume of life goes up.

Ding Dong! Now that made me jump, even though I was expecting it, like when I'm staring at my toaster waiting impatiently for my toast to pop up... when it does I jump, every time, never fails.

I've always disliked doorbells, but this has become worse since I got into showbiz. Most people who have experienced success have this fear of getting caught,found out, the-dream-is-over-type fear. My own version of the fear is that the Showbiz Police have come to take it all back. I imagine them stood at the door in green tights and holding a scroll like those blokes out of Shrek 2. There's two of them, one plays an introductory bugle, the other clears his animated throat:

'I'm sorry, Mr Kay, but I have orders to tell you that you've had a good run, sunshine, but the time has come for you to go back to your cardboard-crushing job at Netto supermarket.' He puts his hand out. 'House and car keys please.'

But I wasn't enjoying any kind of success when the doorbell rang in 1990. There was a completely different reason for my fear. It was my driving instructor ringing the doorbell and the time had come for my first ever driving lesson.

Raymond was his name. He was a big burly fella, constantly tanned, like a cross between Bully from Bullseye and a fat Des O'Connor. If you can picture that, then I think you need help.

It wasn't the first time I'd met Raymond. He'd been my mum's driving instructor a few years before. I'd often seen my mum sat nervously in Raymond's Montego by the side of the laundrette, which was directly opposite our house. Incidentally, ours was a Victorian terrace house, a bit like Coronation Street but with a posh four-foot garden at the front. For some reason every gable-end house was a shop. We had a fruit shop at one end of the row, a chippie at the other (Elizabeth's beautiful fish, before she moved to Lytham) and directly opposite a TV-repair shop and the laundrette. I'd spent my life in that laundrette before we got a washing machine. My mum used to go in three times a week with three big bags and me in a pram. Apparently I used to sit in my pram singing 'Una Paloma Blanca' to the women. Years later me and R Julie used to play tennis up against the gable end of the laundrette during Wimbledon fortnight with the other local kids. That's where Raymond parked up smoking his pipe. Usually he'd be snapping at my mum because she was over-revving and couldn't find her biting point. But the advice must have paid off, because after three attempts my mum finally passed her test. We never bought a car though, we simply couldn't afford one. Nowadays my mum won't even consider it, she says there's too much traffic on the roads.

So going out in a car was a treat when I was growing up. I can still remember the excitement waiting for my Uncle Tony to swing around the side of the laundrette in his navy Sierra (well, if truth be told he wasn't my real Uncle Tony but my dad had borrowed his orbital sander once, so he was as good as). He was a tall, wiry man with a pencil moustache, a bit anaemic-looking. As long as I'dknown him, he'd always looked as if he was at death's door, but he's seventy-two now and still banging on. He'll outlive us all. He'd take R Julie and me out for the day, usually to the seaside, or if it was raining he'd take us ice skating in Blackburn. I was just happy to be travelling in a car.

I was never a big fan of ice skating. I could never get the hang of it. That and the fact it's so bloody slippy out on the ice. I also think ice-skating rinks are a haven for paedophiles, skating around all day, hanging on to kids' heads, pretending to fall over. 'They should hang them on the Lottery', as my grandad used to say. When the bodies drop, the feet set the balls rolling.

I took a girlfriend ice skating once on our second date and I fell and broke my arm in two places. Luckily the whole disaster worked out for the best as the girl took pity on my incompetence and eventually she married me (I hasten to add there was a five-year gap between the broken arm and the wedding day).

Ding Dong! Hold on, I've got to answer this fecking door. I opened it nervously clutching my provisional.

'Hello, Peter, are you ready, son?' said Raymond.

'I suppose,' I said.

'Is your mum in?' he said, peering over my shoulder.

'Yeah, she's in the backyard bathing the hamster.'

'Mind if I say hello?' And before I could say 'no' hewas halfway down the hall whistling the theme from The Deer Hunter.

Bloody hell, I wanted to get going, it was costing me 12 an hour for this and we were already down to 11.50.

I could see my mum through the kitchen window. She was in the backyard wearing pink Marigolds, struggling to hold the hamster in one hand and prise the top off the Vosene with the other.

R Julie had bought it from the pet shop beside the convent. We'd all been expecting a playful little thing, but as soon as my dad tried to stroke it, it took a chunk out of his wrist.

'Oooo, the vicious little swine,' my dad said as he ran to the medicine cupboard dripping blood everywhere.

After further investigation (R Julie borrowed a book on hamsters from the library) we discovered it was a Russian hamster and that they weren't the friendliest of creatures. I used to hear it moodily thrashing around in its cage, mumbling things in Russian. Often we'd wake to find bits of straw and tiny bottles of vodka strewn all over the kitchen floor. I'm joking of course, we never had any straw. Anyway, as with all the other pets we ever owned, eventually it fell victim to the Kay family curse and dropped dead. When exactly, though, we never knew, because it slept all day and nobody dared go nearthe vicious little sod so it could have been dead for weeks. In fact, if it hadn't been for me poking it relentlessly with a biro in the middle of the