CONTENTS
Introduction
PART I: THAT THERE MIKE PENNINGTON
1. Thatto Heath Rhapsody
PART II: SEEDS OF JOHNNY
2. The White Father
3. Upholland First Year: ‘Underlow’
4. Orwell’s Words Were My Silent Lullaby
5. The Vatican Didn’t Stand a Chance From That Moment On
6. A Decanter of Sherry
7. Upholland Second Year: ‘Low Figs’
8. Fuck Catholic Guilt! or The Dynamics of the Communal Shower
9. Madame Had Real Class
10. A Slow-acting Poison Whose Symptoms Won’t Dilute
11. Benediction Had Long Finished
12. The Blue Blazer
13. Cat’s Arse-kisser and Desmond Tutu
14. Rowena Vs Ian
15. The Catholic Men’s Society Newsletter
16. Nutgrove’s Here
17. A New Voice
18. Saved by the Wheel
19. My True Vocation
20. Argos Fuck Yourself
21. Project Guttenburg
PART IV: JOHNNY TAKES ROOT
22. Let’s Get a Perm
23. Live Bait
24. Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Middlesex Poly (But Were Afraid To Ask)
25. ‘Mad Dog’ Mike Pennington’s Third and Final Gig
26. Graduation
27. The Brown Edge
28. Storming The Citadel
29. ‘So You Think You’re Funny?’
30. The Old Frog
31. Let Go, Let Johnny
32. ‘Lust for Life’
33. Amos 3:3 – ‘Do Two Walk Together, Unless They Have Agreed to Meet?’
Picture Section
Afterword
Acknowledgments
Copyright
About the Publisher
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. 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.
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