Free Life and Laughing: My Story by Michael McIntyre Page B

readers who had been summoned. ‘He will be world-famous, everybody will know his name, he will do wonderful things. He is special.’
    The rest of her reading contained equally far-fetched information about her future. ‘You will have many children. You will live in an old house for five years, and then you and your husband will be separated by the seas and by death. That will be £6.50, please.’
    My mother left the bookshop in a trance and went immediately to Boots the chemist just around the corner. It briefly crossed her mind that maybe the Tarot readers have a deal with Boots whereby they predict certain things that send people immediately to the chemist – ‘You are pregnant’, ‘You have a cold sore coming’, ‘Your hair will go grey’ – to boost sales of Clear Blue, Zovirax and Just For Men. My mum purchased the pregnancy test and rushed home. It was positive.
    She was overcome with the romance of what had just occurred and clutched her stomach. She felt like the Virgin Mary. ‘I am carrying a special son,’ she thought to herself. If she gave birth to a baby girl, the whole thing would have been off. But I was born a boy (although slightly camp).
    As more and more of the Tarot card reader’s predictions came true, my mother became convinced I was some special chosen child. It impacted a bit on my relationship with her when I was a child. Once at dinner I jokingly replaced my glass of water with a glass of Blue Nun, and she crossed herself, fell to the floor and started kissing my feet. At parent–teacher evenings when she was told that I wasn’t fulfilling my potential and that I was lazy, she wouldn’t really care, remembering Jesus was a carpenter until his thirties. As long as I was achieving in Woodwork, she wasn’t bothered about English and Maths. The Tarot card revelations certainly affected me. I was about five or six years old and was learning about the world around me. She had only recently delivered the Tooth Fairy/Easter Bunny/Father Christmas triple blow, when she told me I would grow up to be famous.
    It gave me confidence when I was young. I felt that I had a magical secret and that I was special. My mother recently told me that she often thought of the mystical bookshop, which spookily closed down soon after her visit, and wondered as I grew up what path to fame I would take. When I became a successful comedian, I said to her, ‘I’m famous now, Mum, just like you said I would be. Are you proud?’
    To which she said: ‘I was hoping you’d make some kind of medical breakthrough, a cure for a disease or something.’
    It’s a shame the Tarot card reader couldn’t have been a bit more specific: ‘You are carrying a child, a son. He will become an observational comedian. I see great importance in the words “Man” and “Drawer’’.’
    Whereas my mother is a believer, I am a sceptic. Every once in a while these psychics are going to get lucky. It’s statistics. Maybe the person who visited the bookshop immediately after my mother was also predicted fame and fortune and then got hit by a bus on Kensington High Street moments later. If I’m honest, I’d rather it wasn’t true anyway – I’m not a fan of destiny. What’s the point of living your life if it’s all mapped out ahead of you? And if these Tarot card readers were so accurate, why couldn’t they foresee their bookshop closing down? Anyway, if the Tarot reader’s prophecies were to come true, there was to be strife before my glittering future. If we were to ‘live in an old house for five years’, our time was nearly up, and the ‘separated by seas and death’ prediction was a bit of a worry.
    It certainly didn’t seem like we were about to move from Hampstead. We were in the process of developing our three flats into one big house. I remember living with builders for some time. Our lives were dominated by workmen shouting, sledgehammers smashing, skips loading, wheelbarrows wheeling and dust billowing.