Vegas - Becoming Johnny Vegas

HarperCollins Publishers
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First published by HarperCollins Publishers 2013

Johnny Vegas 2013

Cover layout design HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2014
Cover Photographs Andy Hollingworth

Images 2 and 31 St Helens Star; image 37 City Life Magazine; image 39 The Observer 1997.

A catalogue record of this book is available from the British Library

While every effort has been made to trace the owners of copyright material reproduced herein and secure permissions, the publishers would like to apologise for any omissions and will be pleased to incorporate missing acknowledgments in any future edition of the book.

Johnny Vegas asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work

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Source ISBN: 9780007382729
Ebook Edition SEPTEMBER 2013 ISBN: 9780007445455
Version: 2014-05-08

An art school exercise in releasing the ego.

See, I did warn you!

My name is Michael Pennington and I am not a comic character. Im 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 dont 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 Im 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. Id like to know how I could be so blind to a fact so obvious to everyone else. I didnt 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 hi s purpose. How did I miss the real joke that everyone was in on, except u s?

I need to make sense of this as much for myself as for you, the reader. But I dont want you feeling like youre 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 well 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 Tescos.

But what Im 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. Ill 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 wont 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 its 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.

When I go back to the very beginning, I cant 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 comic breeding ground, where self-deprecation shielded us from the indulgent evils of self-analysis, and we loved it that way. If I start my search hoping to find out where I got the feeling that I alone was not enough, then I know Ill draw a blank from my early years in St Helens.

I was loved as a kid; I was raised with more love and emotional support than most folks could wish for. Now, if you have siblings, youll already know that theres no guarantee how each individual brother or sister might turn out. But nothing about my family background suggested Id end up aspiring to anything other than what I already had.

Did I say aspiring? You see? I didnt even aspire. That better world was meant for folk who needed more, as far as I could see. I daydreamed, as all kids do, but never feared those innocent flights of fancy not coming true. My emotional cup overfloweth-ed with positivity, and financial hardship was hidden behind a wisecrack or a definite no to any unrealistic pleas for whatever was the latest rage.

Instead we counted days, weeks, months even, for birthdays and Christmas to come around. Thats the difference between the working and middle classes: our gifts werent token gestures. A birthday or Christmas wasnt a time for sitting back and feeling grateful for what we had. We had fuck all, in the material sense, so it was a time for getting things your selfish little heart had convinced itself you really, really needed. To this day youd be strung up in our house for trying to pass a Boots three-for-one gift option off as a main present: I can shower with bloody Fairy Liquid ... I need a BlackBerry!

The Fords, the Barnets, the Fenneys, the Croppers, the Rodens, the Leylands, the McGanns, the Dennings, the Carrs and the Kings these were the whole street of supporting characters who made up the Truman Show -esque microcosm of my world. I was happy with my lot. I wasnt fat at that point, I was fairly bright at school, and I had some great mates. Bryan Davies, my best friend to this day, was built like a brick shit-house from the age of five. From the first day at school, I decided I would befriend the grumpy-looking git.