Changing nappies was a pain. My mum had been wined and dined by a tweed-jacketed trailer salesman throughout my early teens. Then they decided to get a place together and she became pregnant. My mum loved kids. She had two sons by him, Sam and Jools (now two wise giants, mellow as yoga masters), making five lanky sons in total but sadly no daughters. I found being around babies a surprisingly effective way to soothe the angst of adolescence. Unfortunately, being around their father was only a surprisingly effective way to annoy the shit out of me.
For the purposes of this book, I’ll call this new man ‘Sir’, because he had a thing about formality: knocking on doors (‘You have to ask permission before you enter my lounge-room’), sitting at tables (‘All joints [elbows] on the table shall be carved’) and leaving tables (‘You can leave the table, but I don’t know if you may’).
He was also very tight, even by Scottish standards, though he had a fair bit of money coming in. I could almost empathise when he’d peel an orange in his pocket – so he wouldn’t have to share it with anyone else, of course – but I’ll admit even I was shocked when one day I discovered him peeling a potato in his pocket. Then he’d think he was being nice on a Saturday morning by letting Mum have a lie-in, but as far as we were concerned being asked, ‘Would you like an egg or a tomato on your toast?’ wasn’t the greatest way to kick-start a weekend.
Mr Miserly wasn’t aware that most children would rather visit the dentist than the opera, and so, in the early part of the courtship, we’d be forced to endure three hours of Don Giovanni for an interval choc-ice – ironically, hastening our next visit to the dentist. Years later, when Brian May asked my band to come and see his musical We Will Rock You, I remembered the paint-stripping boredom of bourgeois theatreland and made my excuses.
His son from a previous marriage was Phil Kay, the wild, free-spirited Scottish comedian who bounced through TV screens bollock-naked on his short-lived Phil Kay Feels Channel 4 TV show back in the late nineties. Both of us happen to have protruding jug ears. We’d spend the weekends together playing football, our nicknames being ‘Scottish Cup’ and ‘European Cup’, in reference to the respective trophy’s generous handles – better than being called ‘World Cup’ for having no ears, I suppose. Phil’s trademark has always been maintaining a positive mindset at whatever the cost – he’ll tread barefoot in fresh cow shit before breezily declaring, ‘That’s a nice warm feeling.’
Phil’s father lost the plot with a spectacular nervous breakdown, all those deceptions came crashing down around him, and my endlessly resourceful and unlucky mother had to bring up sons (a total of five now) on her own again, teaching Italian evening classes and tour-guiding in the holidays. His dad may have been the tightest man in all of Scotland, but now Phil is the funniest man in Scotland. The connection is obvious. Don’t worry if you come across a stingy person in your environment. It’s just God’s way of developing your sense of humour.
