Michael Kenton is a middle-aged man living in middle-class comfort with wife Lisa and daughters Millie and Katia. Drifting complacently towards retirement, Mike's world is turned upside-down when he is thrown unexpectedly onto the career scrapheap.
While Lisa's career sky-rockets, Mike slobs around in his track suit playing guitar, rekindling his teenage love affair with pop music. Knowing Lisa wouldn't approve, he plots a secret 'comeback' at a grimy Crouch End bistro where music executive Ben, desperate and out of time, asks if he can enter one of Mike's songs into the Eurovision Song Contest. With nothing to lose, Mike focuses on Eurovision but quickly finds himself staring down the barrel of low level fame. His crumbling marriage now page five news, he must choose between his musical dream and mending his broken family, a task complicated by the re-appearance of ex-love of his life Faye.
A laugh-out-loud comedy about love, family, friendship and Euro- tack by acclaimed stand-up and comedy writer Simon Lipson.
Excerpt
Mike
has just been fired by his boss Pete. He has spent the afternoon at home moping
in disbelief. Now his wife Lisa has just walked in and found him lying on the
bed staring at the wall.
‘Pete? How could he, the bastard?’ growled
Lisa.
‘Ach, don’t shoot the messenger.’
‘All those years. For what?’
‘I know. Great start to the New Year.’
‘Doesn’t get better than this.’
Lisa was prowling around me like a furious
cat as I lay prostrate atop the duvet in my faded blue towelling robe and M
& S moccasins. I’d hardly moved all afternoon, emerging from the bedroom
only briefly for a quick shower which, rather than refresh me, had dampened my
spirits still further. If Norman Bates had pitched up in Chiswick for some
reason and found his way into the bathroom with his stiletto, I’d have let him
get on with it.
‘Didn’t you tell him we’re going to struggle
financially?’ said Lisa.
‘He knows that’s not true.’
‘So?’
‘They’re not running a charity, are they?
What do they care?’
‘Well what the hell are you going to do?’
Lisa was already thinking beyond the
emotional impact. Ever the practical one. ‘I don’t know. I’ll have to find
something.’
‘I mean, seriously, we can’t afford to be
smug about it. It’s all very well saying we’re ok, but when you add up the
school fees and the mortgage and the council tax and…all the other stuff we
have to pay for…’
She was right. My salary tipped us into the
warmer climes of comfortable; without
it, there would have to be sacrifices. Maybe the exquisitely tailored Jaeger
suit Lisa was wearing would have to last her a while longer. Just as well there
were another twelve in the wardrobe.
‘Why you?’ she said.
‘I don’t know. I keep asking myself the same
question.’ Even though I knew the answer.
Lisa smiled, her features softening at last,
along with her tone. ‘I kept telling you, though, didn’t I? You were always
vulnerable. You’re not a salesman, Mikey.’ Her first response was always that
of a street fighter in the face of adversity, but she knew when to don the kid
gloves. She draped her jacket neatly over the chair in the corner and sat in
it, crossing her slim, shiny legs with a swish. She wasn’t quite ready to offer
a consoling cuddle.
‘Why didn’t they fire Arnie? He’s useless.’
I shrugged, but he was making the company
some money, useless
or otherwise. What did that
make me? ‘I thought I was doing ok. I
nearly got Virgin.’
‘But…you said they blew you out of the water
after the first submission.’
Oh yeah, of course I did. That’s not what I
told Pete, mind. Sometimes it’s difficult to keep track of which fib you’ve
spun to whom. ‘Yeah. Ok, they did. But if I’d got in to see Branson…’
I’d have had more chance of running Branson
down on my bike in a Wolverhampton cul-de-sac.
‘Don’t want to be...I mean, I did tell you to
go back to hands-on IT maintenance, didn’t I?’ said Lisa. ‘You’re a geek.’
‘That’s a compliment, right?
‘Why didn’t they fire Arnie? He’s useless.’
I shrugged, but he was making the company
some money, useless
or otherwise. What did that
make me? ‘I thought I was doing ok. I
nearly got Virgin.’
‘But…you said they blew you out of the water
after the first submission.’
Oh yeah, of course I did. That’s not what I
told Pete, mind. Sometimes it’s difficult to keep track of which fib you’ve
spun to whom. ‘Yeah. Ok, they did. But if I’d got in to see Branson…’
I’d have had more chance of running Branson
down on my bike in a Wolverhampton cul-de-sac.
‘Don’t want to be...I mean, I did tell you to
go back to hands-on IT maintenance, didn’t I?’ said Lisa. ‘You’re a geek.’
‘That’s a compliment, right?
Lisa arched her perfectly plucked eyebrows
with mild amusement. ‘So, have you been in touch with any recruitment agencies
or looked on the internet…or have you just been lying there feeling sorry for
yourself all afternoon?’
‘Lying here feeling sorry for myself. Ok?
Leese, I’ve just lost my job after 17 years. My career’s in tatters. I have no
income. And I’m forty-two, which makes me…unemployable. Probably need a day to
absorb that little feast of good news?’
Lisa rose regally from the chair, her
lustrous, mid-length black hair swaying like liquid silk around her chiselled
face. She floated to the bed and smiled, then deposited a tender kiss on my
glowing cheek. ‘Tomorrow, then,’ she said.
And then we had sex. Now I recognise that any
neutral observer would identify this as the most blatant pity-fuck in history.
But it wasn’t. Honestly. Lisa occasionally came home from work bristling,
hackles proud and prickly, raw edges sticking out at awkward angles, and the
only way to file them down into soft little bumps was a bout of fierce
intercourse. Great marital sex is usually the first thing sacrificed at the
altar of children, mortgages, pensions, work…life. Or so I’m told. Well not in
our house. Everything else might have been up in the air, my career down the
pan, our relationship on the brink of flat-lining, but sex, when it happened,
was always electric.
We lay there afterwards, Lisa caressing my
chest with her efficient, warm hand while I stroked her damp neck with the back
of a finger. It was perfect but transient, the nagging ulcer of our new
predicament hanging over us like a pall. Downstairs, shirty little voices were
beginning to rise, the familiar genesis of a major row over nothing. Time to
get up and referee. I disentangled myself from Lisa’s luxury limbs and
swivelled, ready to stand. Lisa placed her hand on my back and whispered, ‘I still
love you Mike. Don’t worry, you’ll muddle through.’
Still? It wasn’t the most ringing
endorsement. I stood up with a grunt and started to put on my towelling robe,
but a fierce bang foreshadowed the arrival of the puce-faced Katia who
barrelled through the bedroom door yelling, ‘Mum, she just took all my yellow
paint and chucked it in the sink…’
Millie clattered in behind her. ‘No I didn’t.
I was painting and she just…’
Both of them stopped in their febrile tracks,
eyes wide, horror-stricken, as I hurriedly covered my crotch with the robe. But
the damage had been done, prompting a sudden volte-face. They fled, a fiery
ball of revulsion, their exaggerated screams turning, eventually, to mirthful
mockery and cries of, ‘Yeugh, gross! Oh. My. God!’
Sadly,
it wasn’t the first time my genitals had engendered ridicule.
Bio
Simon Lipson was born in London and took a law degree at the LSE. After a spell as a lawyer, he co-founded legal recruitment company Lipson Lloyd-Jones in 1987. In 1993, Simon took his first tentative steps onto the comedy circuit and has since become an in-demand stand-up and impressionist across the UK, as well as a regular TV and radio performer/writer. His broadcasting credits include Week Ending, Dead Ringers, Loose Ends and Fordham & Lipson (co-wrote and performed own 4 part sketch series) on Radio 4; Interesting...Very Interesting and Simon Lipson's Xmas Box on Radio 5 and And This Is Them on Radio 2. He is also an experienced voice artiste who has voiced hundreds of advertisements as well as cartoons and documentaries. His first novel, Losing It, a thriller, was published by Matador in 2008. Simon is a columnist for Gridlock Magazine (www.gridlockmagazine.com).His next novel, Standing Up, will be published by Lane & Hart in Autumn 2012.
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My show, The Accidental Impressionist, is on at the Camden Fringe 20 – 23 August @ 8pm. Everyone welcome! Details and tickets here: http://j.mp/JDPBnu
