Category: Comedy

As an eight-year-old, at Christmas, I believed there were two ways I could get drunk – like my relatives.
The first was Pimm’s:
My auntie, who also lived in our Balham flats, whilst being sponsored by Embassy before they ventured into supporting snooker and darts, would have bottles of virtually everything alcoholic in her flat except potcheen (and she didn’t have that because of her allergic reaction to potatoes).
It was tradition on Christmas evening to go to my auntie’s and, whilst everyone else got Pimm’s, I had a glass full of half the contents of the greengrocers opposite the flats, lots of lemonade, a tiny umbrella, as used by The Borrowers, but not a sniff of Pimm’s.
The second route, I believed, was with the help of the mandatory Christmas box of chocolate liqueurs.
However, after eating a third, I’d already began to feel nauseous. Given that you need to eat 700 grams (that’s fourteen Picnics!) to get one shot of liqueur, I’d have had to have eaten one anti-emetic tablet every time I’d tuck into a Tia Maria Bounty (never did quite learn the names).
A consequence of this lack of alcoholic intake meant I remained stone-cold sober, although often felt sick and burped a lot courtesy of more than enough chocolate and a surfeit of lemonade!
A third route could have been with Advocaat, but I didn’t like the taste of “Snowballs”, having massive doubts about the colour and felt the texture was like that of blancmange which was past its sell-by date.
So, needing to go to meetings saying, “my name is Michael and I think I have a problem”, was never necessary as an eight-year-old!

The nights are drawing in and with that the advent of cold weather.
I look back to my childhood in 1960s south-west London and wonder why I never had hypothermia more frequently?
My winter attire was a mac (I’ve seen thicker veils) with a belt which, when my mother put it on me, acted as a tourniquet; a yellow and black school scarf which itched so much it was like having Scarlet Fever permanently; and gloves, which were attached to a long loop of elastic, taken, I think, from my Nan’s knickers as she coincidentally never left her flat during winter. I refused to wear a balaclava as I found the thought of messing up my hair abhorrent and one of the major reasons I never joined any terrorist organisations.
Everything was marked “Michael Richards Class 7” and all this whilst wearing shorts! Captain Oates had more protection!
Nowadays there are so many German-sounding layers of clothing to keep you dry, warm and to cheat the wind. I was not allowed to wear such things as my Nan thought there was a danger I’d look like Himmler. Given his uniform was made by Hugo Boss, I fear she may have missed a trick; still, I enjoyed the sanatoria which were located by the seaside!

I remember vividly the first Pippa Dee party I ever attended.
My mother would throw such parties for her friends in our Balham flat.
The invitation was never officially extended to me as I’d have been sent to bed earlier after a mug of warm milk, a chocolate digestive and above the legal limit dose of Gripe Water (I can never drink Ouzo now without conjuring up scary bedtime stories).
I can recollect entering a lounge through a fug of Embassy cigarettes, the bouquet of Blue Nun and witnessing rather a lot of Innoxa make-up to see several women holding up Baby Doll negligées.
The nights were drawing in and my practical, eight-year-old brain, calculated that the length of this garment wasn’t practical and probably wouldn’t have been for the guests’ daughters’ Barbies.
My stay (before I could be offered a fag or a sip of Black Tower from a glass procured courtesy of the local Esso garage) was short-lived and my return to my bedroom was threatened with less Gripe Water the subsequent evening!
I’m assuming that Pippa Dee parties were replaced with Ann Summers parties – with even shorter negligées, although probably more fire retardant?
Whatever happened, a Baby Doll night dress nor a vibrating rabbit could never replace a container which kept food fresh. But then, there’s nothing sexy about a Tupperware box and certainly wouldn’t make you smile quietly to yourself!

Once a year, during the summer, in the sixties and seventies, I would leave the safety of my parents’ flat on Balham High Road and temporarily set up camp with my paternal grandparents in a rented house on the coast somewhere.
For several years, we rented a house at Greatstone, on the Kent coast; we were so close to the Dungeness nuclear power station, I’m surprised I never grew a third arm.
Money was tight and our humble abode reflected this (even the squatters had given it a bad review on Trip Advisor) and for our evening meals we were given a budget of 8/6 (42.5 new pence for my younger readers).
As we sat, waiting to order our evening dinner at a cafe in New Romney, mathematical juggling was the name of the game. (8/6 in 1970 is worth £6.24 in today’s money). Being good at darts as a 12-year-old stood me in good stead!
However, my dilemma was that I wanted sausage, egg AND chips AND cassata siciliana – the combined cost of which was ten bob – one and six over my allotted allowance.
Did I go the high cholesterol route or a lump of multi-coloured ice cream with random bits which’d stick in your teeth most of the holiday?
New Romney is famous mainly for smuggling during the 18th Century. I bet Dr Syn, the fictional anti-hero who operated around these parts, had more than eight and six to spend for his tea? I couldn’t even afford sherry trifle, let alone anything with brandy in it!

I could never have made a career in campanology.

As a teenager I sang in a church choir which would perform two concerts a year.  As I lived in the flats next door to the church on Balham High Road, my task was to call on the 600+ flats to sell tickets.

I didn’t know, in the mid-70s, that so many different doorbell chimes existed.

The task of selling tickets to hear Handel’s Messiah or Mendelssohn’s Elijah was hard (the residents were more likely to listen to “Chirpy, chirpy, cheep, cheep” than Chopin, “Ernie” than Elgar or “Shang a lang” than Shostakovich).

We thought we’d have more luck with people whose door chimes played a sophisticated tune, sadly they had the sound because they liked the tune in a cigar advert!

The most worrying noise was the bark of a clearly dangerous dog. Either the dog behind the door had trained at Wandsworth Prison or had three heads, and therefore guarding the gates of Hell (I was in my mid-twenties before I realised that Hell wasn’t on the fifth floor of my block of flats).

Many doors had spy-holes and the chances of the door being opened to a long-haired git in a cassock and surplice was never going to happen unless the Archbishop of Canterbury had moved county.

However, the most disturbing thing for a shockingly naive teenager, was the sound of “My ding-a-ling” playing as Mrs Robinson, the siren of the third floor, opened her door.  I could have died and gone to Heaven – bit like Elijah!