Читать книгу Bigger than Hitler – Better than Christ - Rik Mayall - Страница 9

“Fucking hell, look at the size of his cock!” said the mid-wife who delivered me. “It looks like he’s got three legs. Perhaps he should be called The Tripod.” This is true. She really said this. But I was called Richard instead and the rest is history.

I went to school at the local primary school, right? That’s where I went to school. I didn’t have to pay anyone, I just got in. No questions, no bodies. I was in. The infants. I don’t want to talk too much about it because it was like sucking shit through a shoot. But I tell you what. And I’ll tell it you now. It was a Tuesday night, 17^th December 1968. Choir concert. Got that? Me too. All the infants were there. All the parents were there. This is true, this. My fucking class teacher, Mrs “please kick me in the face violently” Andrews lined up all the tables against the wall and told us all to stand on them facing the audience.

“Call that a stage?” I thought, “I’d rather slam my bollocks in the fridge door.” But I got on the stage and I was right, it was a shit stage. And that bitch Andrews stuck me right up at the left hand side of it, right at the edge and at the back. I was practically off stage (which means not on stage). And I’m never off stage. I’m always on. I’m on now, look. And guess what. No but really, guess what. No don’t actually, I’ll tell you. I’m doing it right now or I will after I’ve done this sentence. And I’m getting there now. Right here we are, I’m there. Told you I would be. So shit off if you don’t believe me. Right what was I going to say? Bollocks. Oh I know, shut up and listen. New paragraph—this is good.

Mrs Andrews said to me—and get this because this is true—“Now Richard, pay attention and stop doing that to Penelope. I have something important to say to you. The success of the whole of this evening’s concert depends on it. So pay attention, it’s very very important. Now Richard, I don’t want you to sing this evening. Not at all. Not one note. I want all of the other children to sing but not you. Because you’ve got a horrible voice. So what I want you to do is just move your mouth as if you’re singing but not actually sing. If you sing, you’ll spoil the whole evening’s entertainment. Have you got that?” she said rather too emphatically an inch from my face. What do you think of that? Me too. I wasn’t going to take that. Me neither. Or me. She was dealing with Rik Mayall (i.e.^* me). That’s what she didn’t know. She used to call me Richard. Bitch. I wasn’t going to take that lying down. “Right, Richard,” I said to myself. “What are we going to do? I’ll tell you what we’re going to do. We’re going to steal the show. Let’s do it. (Like a firestorm, obviously.)” So, what I did was just that. Fantastically too. I pulled faces at the audience while I was mouthing the wrong words to Away in a Manger, made extremely vulgar gesticulations and upstaged the entire cast (there were about thirty opponents up there, don’t forget. This was thirty to one.) I transformed the whole evening into a breakthruough comedy entertainment format. You should have heard them laugh when Annette Jennings’ knickers and tights suddenly came shooting down her legs, tangling up her shoes and she fell into the front row. It was all going on. Hilarity prevailed. Quite a few people had a good time until suddenly, the Headmaster grabbed me by the ear, pulled me off the stage onto the floor of the auditorium (form 3B) and marched me to the corner of the room and made me stand face to the wall in FULL FUCKING VIEW OF MY AUDIENCE thinking it would humiliate me. Like fuck. That’s when it all kicked off big style. So the Headmaster ordered me out of the hall. And that’s when I threw my first really good tantrum. I bit Mrs Andrews in the face, ran a mock with my matches in the cloakroom causing over eight thousands pounds worth of damage, flooded the girls’ toilets, and shat in the gym master’s holdall^*. As a seven year old, you can only take so much.

The thing is, I was very misunderstood at school. Quite often, when the other children were playing kiss chase in the playground, I was tied up in the toilets with my pants stuffed into my mouth. Even the teachers used to spit on me as they passed me in the play ground.

I’m putting all this in the book, viewer, because I want to show you what a hard life I’ve had and how I rose above it. It’s really very Jesusy when you think about it. I remember as though it was yesterday when the Headmaster was beating me in his study one day and I looked up at him and said, “Judge not lest ye be judged you fat motherfucker.” He just went on beating me. His house burnt down shortly afterwards. I had nothing to do with this.

Picture the scene: Spring 1967. Got it? Everyone else was on the Isle of White watching Jimmy Hendrix burning his guitar but I was at school. They had decided to change the state school system so that no one would be equal anymore. The rich would go to one sort of school and the poor would be put in holding pens before they were taken off to factories. It was different in those days. We had factories and people went there and made things. They were called jobs. You don’t have them now. There was still a Labour Party in those days. Nowadays there are just slaves on the other side of the world that make stuff for us. Unless we bring them over here to do it. Then we call them immigrants and pay them fuck all and make them live in the old holding pens that the white working class used to have. Until they’re fucked up and knackered and useless and then we send them home again. Or to somewhere in Croatia where they’re made into dog food.

Now, it’s worth knowing, viewer, that the old education system was governed by an exam called the Eleven Plus. This was an exam which separated the creepy frightened kids that behaved themselves at school and managed to learn something from the stupid kids who didn’t give a shit and were happy. You took it when you were eleven and, rich or poor, you were divided into two groups and “educated” in one of two separate schools depending on your ability. But the rich who were in control of the state at the time decided that they were going to destroy this system and replace it with two different kinds of schools—good well-equipped schools for the children of the wealthy, and sad empty blank voids for the children of the poor. So, I was in the shit. Big time. Lots and lots of shit. You had to be eleven to take the Eleven Plus, you see. It was the last year they were doing it before they scrapped it forever and I was only nine! Plus my mum and dad weren’t rich so I had no chance of an education. Fucky-fuck-fuck, shitty pants and deary me, I’m bollocksed, I thought. EXCEPT, my mum and dad just happened to be teachers^*, so they prepped me up for the Eleven Plus exam and I got into an expensive school full of posh kids called the King’s School Worcester—when I was nine! How’s about that for cool? And that’s where I taught people how to drink and lose their virginity and be happy because I was a nice bloke and they were all wankers. I’ve always been like that, I’ve always offered a helping hand to others on life’s, you know, whatever. I was the youngest in the school but almost straight away I fell in with the hard guys like Simon Rex and that other one with the ginger hair, you know, that psycho who liked to do that thing with cats and a screwdriver. He’s dead now, thank fuck.

So nobody knew anything about anything. No one found the bodies. There were no traces and I passed the Eleven Plus! I did it. All on my own. Yes I did. Prove it if you can then. Get this, I was the youngest kid in England to ever pass the Eleven Plus. And I still am. Didn’t put that in the credits for Filthy, Rich and Catflap did they? BBC fuckholes. I’d got into a big posh school. But it was the very last year they were allowing kids like me to sit the Eleven Plus. After this, ordinary kids weren’t allowed to have well-equipped schools and teachers that could teach. But then. Now wait for this. You’ll like this, this is nasty. Just when everything was great, suddenly there’s this other kid at King’s called Gretisson who grassed (this is cool prison slang for told on) on me to Mr Cunley. The little shit (ugly too. And probably still is. I hope so.) gave him a list of all the boys who he thought were smoking and Cunley went through our desks at lunchtime and found our cigarettes. It was either six of the best or a one pound fine.

“How about this?” I said to him, “what about a ten shilling fine and three of the best? Do you play that kind of game?”

“Hold on a minute, Mayall. Did you say what I thought you just said?”

“Believe it if you need to, Mr Teacher Man,” I intoned moodily. Or was it huskily? It was a long time ago. I can’t remember^*. “How do you want this baby to come down?”

His face fell. He held both of his hands up defensively, backing away. “Whoah…Hold on there Mayall,” he croaked (no he didn’t really, he died a long time later. I had nothing to do with that either.) “Listen, I’m way out of my league here or whatever it is that they say in films. I’m not used to dealing with guys like you. I’m scared, man.”

I leant forward, took my ten Number Six back out of his top pocket along with the five pounds that he had fined the other guys in my posse.

“Shall we just say this never happened?”

“Thanks.”

“Not a problem, friend,” I said and patted him encouragingly on his shoulder. Then I turned on my heel.

“Ow fuck,” I said, “why do I keep doing that to my heel?” And I breezed, well, hobbled, looking cool, out of the room. Closing the door. After I’d left, obviously. Never works the other way round. I’ve been in that situation before. Told you it was nasty.

I swore a lifelong debt of hatred to Gretisson for that. And as for Cunley, I still have sharp stabbing memories of him when I run up the stairs quickly. Enough said.

I fucked up my “O” Levels not because I was stupid and naughty but because I was a wide-eyed anarchist at the gates of dawn even then and the world was against me, especially the teachers and the examination board because they had heard of me and they were jealous. I was like the Outsider and I don’t mean like the one in that shit book by Albert what’s-his-face. The only “O” Level that I did get was in English—it was a breakthruogh cutting edge grade six. And that was a pass, not like they say. That’s right, a pass. And that’s a fact, viewer. Rik Mayall got an “O” Level. In English. Go back and read that last sentence again—and read it out loud. Go on. Although what you do is your own business. That’s the thing about life. People. They’re all over the place. It’s exciting—and dull. And you don’t even have to do what I say if you don’t want to because I’m Rik Mayall, so don’t worry about it or even think about it. It’s as though you haven’t read the last paragraph which if you haven’t, well then, that’s fine. See if I care. Which I do and I don’t. See? That’s the beauty of my enigmas.

Headmaster’s Wife

Headmaster’s Office

King’s School

Worcester

April 14 1972

Dear Headmaster’s Wife,

I think I might be in love with you. I have seen you looking at me and I think you would probably like to do some fucking with me. Please do not tell your husband because he is a real old bloody bastard and I bet he cannot get erections like I can. I bet he needs that stallion cream like they sell in nude magazines. We could make love to each other on his bed. I want to do this to you because I am Gretisson, the nasty one with the curly hair. Please do not tell your husband because I will be expelled. My parents vote Labour as well. Please come round to my study and masturbate me whilst I read my magazines with naked women in them. You can even see my balls if you like and smoke some of my drugs which will make you high like a hippy at Woodstock and you can take all your clothes off and wear flared trousers and show off your midriff and not wear a bra. And you can call me Man and we can masturbate together to the Beatles (but not their disappointing phase) and wear those ridiculous blue glasses like John Lenin wears and sit around and talk about the sky and the trees. We could go and watch Bob Dillon singing out of tune and complain about the Vietman war together and read Oz Magazine and fight the power. I am Gretisson and I want to do it with you all night long.

Best wishes,

Gretisson.

Mr Priddy

Masters’ Common Room

King’s School

Worcester

April 15th 1972

Dear Mr Priddy,

You are a complete spasmo. That’s what I think. And if you give me yet another straight “A” in class for one of my appalling essays which I crib anyway, I will creep into your bedroom in the middle of the night with a knife between my teeth like in that film that was on the TV a couple of weeks ago and I will kill you in your sleep. Yes I will. This is not a joke. This is for real. I know where you live. Just off the parade—the one with the shit orange curtains. So just watch out. Please don’t tell the headmaster that I have sent you this death threat because I will be expelled.

Best wishes,

Spencer (the one with the speech impediment and the girl’s haircut who’s always blaming Mayall when he gets pushed down the stairs).