anyway. It’s enough just to have made the final. I’ve won tournaments before, but never made the final of anything so hugely significant. Just getting here, that’s enough. I’m happy now.
What am I thinking about? I have two jacks and a man’s gone all-in! It’s Christmas! I call.
Sid rolls over two nines.
Poor Sid. It’s a nice hand. He’s entitled to be in front. He’s entitled to a 50/50 against a couple of overcards, and he’s entitled to be better off even than that. I raise a lot more often than he does. I’ve raised with some outright rubbish in this tournament so far, and got away with it. He’s entitled to a pass from me in this spot. He’s unlucky I’ve got two jacks.
Then again, no early cheers. Plenty of nines left in the deck. Two of them. Two fat apostrophes. Two evil hand grenades, waiting to explode out of the dealer’s fist and kill my brave jacks. My vulnerable knaves. Poor boys. I will protect them. I will protect them from the nasty nines. Nina from Pasadena will not come flirting off the deck to wink at my helpless little jack tars, turn their heads and sink their boat. No nine!
The flop comes: K♦ . . . 4♦ . . . 10♣.
That’s okay. No risky backdoor flush draw. Sid doesn’t have the nine of diamonds. The curse of Scotland. But why have I let that card come into my head? Why did I even think about it? It’s like I want it to come! I’m practically SUMMONING it out of the pack! Like I’m URGING the turn card to give Sid a set! Go away, curse of Scotland. Focus. Jack of spades, jack of spades, jack of spades . . .
K♥.
No problem there. Two pairs each. Mine are better. Blank, blank, blank . . .
J♠.
The jack of spades! Just the fellow I wanted to see! Not that it makes any difference. A blank would have done. I don’t need the full house. But I thought about the jack of spades and he just showed up, like sometimes when I’m thinking about my dad and then he rings. Always quite a comforting feeling. A good sign. Good omen. My dad ringing, likely to be a good day. Jack of spades showing up, maybe a good tournament.
Unlucky, Sid. Well played.
Wow. I seem to have quite a few chips now. The crowd is shouting encouragement as I stack them.
And there are only seven of us left.
2
THE CHIMNEY SWEEP
‘Good luck will rub off when I shakes ’ands with you . . .’
– from Mary Poppins
As I deliver the punchline, I run a finger across my chest, describing an imaginary slogan on a T-shirt.
Then I tell the audience, ‘That wasn’t really a joke. I just felt like touching my tits.’
They fall about. I seem to have found their level.
‘Well,’ I continue, ‘if you want something done properly . . .’
Another roar of laughter and a round of applause. I’m not actually being funny. I’m just exploiting the fact that it’s 2 a.m., everyone in the club is drunk and a female stand-up comic is a bizarre curio, like a talking monkey. Throw in something rude, and they’re in your pocket.
It is a good feeling. It seems unfair that butchers and doctors and electricians don’t get applauded for doing their jobs, too.
♠
I have just left school and I’m so happy I could kill myself. Now to work out what to do with the rest of my life. I’ve been writing a ‘teenage newspaper column’ for a couple of years, and an agent got in touch to ask if I’d like to join a stand-up comedy show at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival. Why not? I’m immortal. Nothing could ever frighten me again, after walking into the school hall every lunchtime and wondering who to sit next to.
So I have chanced my way into this strange, counter-cultural, late-night community. It is a pure meritocracy: you can hold your own or you can’t. London’s little circuit of subterranean comedy clubs, packed and hot if there is an audience in double figures, is utterly seductive for the insecure. You can hide in a private world and prove yourself publicly at the same time.
It seems to be thought of as a man’s business, with very few female comics in these clubs, and the idea that ‘women can’t hack it’ is irresistible.
When I’m sitting around with a bunch of comedians in a room above a pub, after the shows are finished, drinking and listening to stories, I feel, for the first time away from my family, an epiphany of belonging. All the school rules are overturned. You can be fat here. You can be short or short-sighted, Jewish or Asian, useless at sport, baffled by sex – it doesn’t matter, as long as you’re brave and quick-witted.
In fact, the worse your social skills, the more you have to talk about.
♠
I play poker occasionally. Some of my brother’s friends know a couple of people who run a private cash game in Archway, so I visit a couple of times. They are a nice, funny group. A couple of them are famous: Ross Boatman, who’s in London’s Burning, and Jesse Birdsall, who’s in Eldorado. The others are just gamblers who haven’t got to grips with life yet: Barny Boatman, who works for P&O; Chris Colson, who doesn’t seem to do anything much; and Patrick Marber, a stand-up comic who’s thinking of writing a play.
The games are Omaha, seven stud and hi-lo split. But the stakes are a bit rich for me. I love poker, but I’m bad at it. I lose £200 or £300 every time. I’m currently making £210 a week working in a shop, and £25 a time for comedy performances. The only way to learn poker is to go to a casino (far too scary) or get fleeced in these expensive live games. I can’t resist stopping by every so often for the fun, the scathing banter and the takeaway pizza, but I can’t afford it more than once every few months.
♠
I tell my parents that when the year comes to an end, I’m not going to university. I think I’ve found a sort of vocation in comedy. I love the underworld, I love the screwed-up people, I finally fit in and I am happy. I’m not going to give it up to study T.S. Eliot and The Wife’s Lament. I can’t bear to re-enter the misery of my school years. And I sense that I’d never go back to comedy if I stopped to be a student for three years. I’d lose my nerve, and I can’t risk that. Something finally feels right to me. I’m on my yellow brick road. So, I’m going to write to the admissions tutor at Oxford and say thank you very much, but they should give my place to somebody else.
Then I look at my father’s face. I love him more than anyone in the world.
‘It’s okay,’ I say. ‘I was only joking.’
♠
Having saved up all my shop and comedy money, I have managed to swerve the expensive poker games for long enough to build a travel budget. Most of the girls from my school have gone to India, where
