Hot Press meets Johnny Vegas

“It was like being possessed. I didn’t want to go on. Johnny lifted me out there. I would be reluctant to put one foot in front of the other. I would feel him pushing me forward. I wouldn’t make eye contact with anyone until we got on stage – and the second my hand went on that mic, that was it. As if I’d been sedated, I slumped out of existence and into festival folklore.”

That’s the cover blurb on Becoming Johnny Vegas, a book adorned by a gurning image of the titular stand-up, actor, director and serial panel-show guest that does nothing to suggest that we’re in for anything other than a chucklesome Alan Partridge/Lily Savage/Al Murray Pub Landlord-style faux memoir.
We all know the Vegas conceit; chubby northern lad Michael Pennington overcomes chronic shyness and no little self-loathing by inventing an outrageous comedy alter ego who eventually becomes as real as he is. Except I don’t think it is a conceit.
What indeed starts out as a wickedly funny run-through of Michael – and by extension – Johnny’s childhood suddenly darkens, as aged 13 he goes off to a seminary school, where staff turn a blind eye to older boys sexually preying on the newbies.
Michael gets off lightly compared to some of his pals, but still has to contend with the unwanted attentions of a prefect who he describes now as displaying “the soulless two-faced desperation of somebody who wants to interfere with you.”
It goes a long way to explaining why Johnny decided that, welcome or not, he was going to play an increasingly prominent role in Michael’s life...

It’s Michael Pennington I’m meeting this afternoon, though Johnny being Johnny, he can’t help butting in from time to time. Michael’s just come from the ITV This Morning studio in Manchester, where he was sharing a sofa with Philip Schofield, Gordon The Gopher’s old Broom Cupboard pal and the unwitting object of my 85-year-old mother’s impure thoughts.
“Don’t leave her in the same room as him, Stuart,” Michael warns. “Ooooh, he’s smooth, Philip Schofield. He gives out that false air of harmlessness, but when those eyes pierce you… it’s like he’s rummaging through your soul. You’re putty; you’d do anything for him. So my advice to your Mum is ‘leave well alone’.”
I’ll pass the warning on. In addition to today’s Schofieldian soul-rummage, the past 72 hours have seen Michael/Johnny appear on The Jonathan Ross Show, The Paul O’Grady Show and Never Mind The Buzzcocks where, I’m pleased to report, there was no smashing of defenceless mugs and storming off in high dudgeon.
“I’m quite good friends with Huey and when I heard about him blowing out … Buzzcocks I was shocked because normally when you take the piss out of him he doesn’t bat an eyelid. I hope he’s reverted to that because we had a lot of jokes at his expense!
“It’s been a strange few days going from show to show and talking about yourself,” continues what I’m pretty sure is still Michael. “It’s not a very straightforward book, but then Johnny was never the straightforward comic. I’d sort of conned myself into believing that I’d constructed this character and it was all very clever – but it wasn’t. It was a coping mechanism.”
Writing the book, which is 100% his own work and not even a tiny bit ghosted, did Michael discover anything about himself and Mr. Vegas?
“Yeah, it was a massively cathartic experience,” he ventures. “For instance, Johnny made my Dad out to be a bit of a monster yet I have a fantastic relationship with him. He’s one of my heroes. Johnny thinks he somehow forced me to go to seminary school and took his wry revenge, but I can look back now and acknowledge that the decision was entirely mine.”
Reading the relevant chapter, A Slow Acting Poison Whose Symptoms Won’t Dilute, you’re struck by not only what Michael was forced to endure during his early teens, but also the fact that he can still see some good in the institution that so cruelly betrayed him.
“I have my issues with the Church, but I ain’t no Sinéad O’Connor or Madonna,” he notes in the book. “I’m trying to be honest, not actively goad the Pope into a gloves-off, pay-per-view public slanging match.”
Expanding on that today, he says: “On a parish level, you see the positive side of people feeling that they belong to this special community. I went to seminary school thinking it would be a boot camp for your faith, but what I found were people just hiding in this dogma, petrified of anything that might shake that faith and allowing themselves to be blindly led by people who are even more petrified than they are. Everyone knew what was going on in terms of abuse – you’re all complicit – yet it was inconceivable that you’d discuss it. Even after I’d left, I simply didn’t have the words to explain to my family what was going on in there. I should have broadcast it all round the fucking place, but I couldn’t. I don’t want to land the guilt on my parents because I never said anything at the time.”
Becoming Johnny Vegas is no exercise in misery-lit though, with its writer stressing, “I don’t want to use my unfortunate incident as a marketing device. I’m weary of autobiographies where people – I know this sounds incredibly cynical – almost sell it on some past trauma. It’s something I felt I had to discuss, and which is just one part of the story – albeit a pivotal one.
“I’ve got to say my publishers, Harper Collins, were really supportive. You can imagine ringing your editor up going, ‘Right, there’s going to be two different voices – mine and Johnny’s.’ The guy, Ben Thompson, just said, ‘Right, er, anything else we should know before you continue?’”

The first time I saw Johnny Vegas in the flesh was at a gig in the small downstairs venue in Vicar St., which started off well, got rather drunken in the middle – he managed to down at least half-a-dozen pints in an hour – and ended with audience members being invited to pelt him with coins while he danced for their amusement. It was and remains the most unsettling experience I’ve had at a supposed comedy gig.
“I had an even worse meltdown one night in the Temple Bar Music Centre,” Michael winces. “I arrived there thinking, ‘I don’t want to be on stage and I don’t want to tell gags’. It was dreadful because the organisers had brought us over as the hot new thing and it was the ticket to see. I remember going out and saying, ‘My brothers used to beat me when I was younger… find the punchline in that’.
“At first I was like Johnny’s writer and PA. Then he kind of killed Michael off and took over himself. Suddenly that support network wasn’t there and Johnny started to unravel at gigs. Fortunately, Johnny had a lot more successful gigs than he did unsuccessful ones. And that was what was so odd about that night – Johnny always has a genuine desire to go out and give the audience the show of their lives. When it works you’re a hero, when it doesn’t you’re an unprepared, arrogant prick who just came out and shouted. Johnny had no ambition to pal around with other comics or be part of the in-crowd. I did, I loved it. To me it was a backstage pass to the famous and sometimes rich, but Johnny was like, ‘Fuck ‘em!’ The only people he ever had any faith in was the audience, the trouble being the audience can turn on a sixpence.
“By the end (of him doing stand-up) I wasn’t in a good place. What Johnny was trying to do had run its course. I just felt he was going out and burning bridges. As Michael, I had to get him off the stage before he undid all the goodwill that was there for him. I also felt he was being diluted because of his TV presence. It’s like bands – when they start out it’s a proper music audience coming to see them, then they get the exposure and it’s people turning up because they’re famous. You’d do gigs that weren’t very good, but afterwards everyone wanted a picture on their camera-phone. That wasn’t for Johnny. The trouble afterwards being that Johnny thought I’d sold him out and was trading on his name.”
I told you at the start of the interview that the relationship between Michael Pennington and Johnny Vegas is both very real and very complicated. Those nightmare gigs aside, the 42-year-old is a massive fan of our capital city.
“I’m good friends with the Double Z lads who are responsible for Zig and Zag and Podge & Rodge and all that lot,” Michael resumes. “You know the Monkey adverts I did for ITV Digital? Well, after ITV Digital went bust, we wanted to use that in a more subversive way. One of the notions was that puppets had been given their freedom but were like second-class citizens. Basically, we were turning the idea of immigrants on its head. The now deceased Monkey had left me a house, which I moved into with these social pariah puppets. There was a malicious brother, Angry Baboon, who turned up… I know it sounds shit but if someone had given us the money to make it, it would’ve been brilliant! Then there was a slightly different idea, Dead Puppets’ Society, that me and Double Z had in with CBBC. It got the green light, but ended up not happening because there wasn’t the budget.”

Rewinding to what Michael was saying about him not wanting Johnny to go the cuddly TV personality route – is it possible for a stand-up to be successful without being assimilated into the mainstream?
“The final nail in the stand-up coffin for Johnny was Danny Kitson. I did three gigs with him. The first one was like, ‘This bloke’s amazing, roll your sleeves up and give him a run for his money’. Second gig, it was, ‘Christ, I just can’t keep pace with him’ and third gig I just felt like a prat comedically going into the ring with Mike Tyson and getting my arse kicked. This was the next evolutionary step of stand-up and I couldn’t keep up with him.
“When he’s at Edinburgh, Danny won’t play Friday or Saturday nights because he says that’s just a drunken audience coming out. He wants to play to comedy crowds. After doing Peter Kay’s Phoenix Nights, he decided, ‘This isn’t what I want’ and has refused all TV offers since whilst selling-out every venue he plays.”
The decision not to be on the telly was kind of made for him, but Frankie Boyle’s another stand-up who refuses to play by light entertainment rules.
“I gigged with Frankie years ago and really like him. I understand the fine line of, ‘Are you saying this to break down barriers or just to get a laugh from the misfortunes of others?’ Frankie being a sound bloke in himself, I think it’s the former but if you’re going that route you’ve got to be prepared to have the tabloids baying for your blood and not apologising for the cause of their considerable outrage. It’s really bad when you get comics who backtrack and start allowing themselves to be edited, which Frankie to his credit hasn’t done.”
Michael’s wish to do something radically different was granted in 2004 when he landed a role alongside Johnny Depp, Samantha Morton, John Malkovich, Rosamund Pike and Shane MacGowan in rollicking period drama, The Libertine. How did he find his co-stars?
“I just went to work in the morning and there they were… sorry, that was ill-becoming of me,” he apologises. “It was pretty daunting, but they turned out to be the most down to earth funny blokes. There were these incredible trained actors who were just so open to the idea of a stand-up. I was never treated like some part-timer who was taking the bread out of their mate’s mouth. First day knowing how nervous I was, Malkovich stopped during this scene – I was a couple of hundred yards away in the background – and shouted, ‘Johnny, Johnny Vegas, how do you think I’m doing?’ I shouted back, ‘A bit forced, just let it happen. Find your centre.’ He did it as an icebreaker on my behalf, which was a kind stroke of genius from him.
“It was really weird at the time because the press were trying to build it up that myself and Johnny Depp had become fast friends. There was a mad piece in one of the redtops making out he’d been to St. Helens and I’d took him to the Glass Museum and then to a local boozer where all the women went mad over him. No offence to St. Helens, but do you honestly think I’d take the most A-List of Hollywood actors to the Glass Museum?”
How did Shane measure up as a thespian?
“Without wanting to stir it – says he stirring it – Shane turned up not knowing the 17th century song he was supposed to have learned and insisted on singing a Pogues number. They said, ‘We can’t really have that’. When he left the set he wouldn’t take his costume off, and for the next week kept popping up in the press still dressed as a King Charles II-era busker. It was like MacGowanwatch!”
Now, that bit berating Shane was pure Johnny!

Mum, Dad, brothers and sister aside, the one constant love of Michael Pennington’s life has been St. Helens Rugby Football Club, who he once briefly togged out for in a testimonial game against Hull. To do the moment full comedic justice you’ll have to check it out on the YouTube clip currently residing at hotpress.com.
“What was funny about that was the producer filming it for my show had never seen a Rugby League match before,” he reminisces. “I got so scared. On the day I was in the pub in full-kit with a pint and a double vodka just going, ‘This is fucking madness. Why don’t we change it so I chicken out?’ and he was like, ‘No, no, no, you’re fine’. Then he watched the first-half and was thinking, ‘How are we going to do the series with Vegas in a full body-cast?’ It didn’t help, me mate ringing up and saying, ‘The players are having a bet to see who can nobble you first. Stay away from number 11, he’s really got it in for you’. Any, somehow I managed to summon up the courage/stupidity to come on for the last few minutes of the game. I really thought I was moving at some pace on the pitch, which is even sadder when you watch it back and you look like one of them wind-up toys in the bath. I don’t know what I was doing with my arms. There was just nothing athletic about it. Nevertheless, it was one of the proudest moments of my life.”
Having been in the romantic wilderness for several years after his first marriage to Catherine Donnelly – they sold their wedding photos to Viz for the princely sum of £1 – ended in 2008 in divorce, Michael plucked up the courage to ask former Double Z staffer Maia Dunphy out. The date obviously went well because in March 2011 the two of them got hitched in Seville, from whence Trinity College graduate Maia’s mum hails. With her TV presenting career taking off – the 37-year-old’s What Women Want series is one of the better things we’ve seen on RTÉ recently – the couple maintain separate homes in Dublin and St. Helens which enables Pennington to regularly see his 10-year-old son, Michael Jr. Indeed, as soon as our interview’s over he’s heading to a PTA meeting. Did Johnny ever think he’d find love again?
“The thing is, you see, it was Michael. Johnny never wanted love. Johnny was a tart. He had no desire for emotional attachment beyond the audience. That was his one and only real relationship, although any fringe sexual benefits from that were fine with him. But I wanted the sort of normality that I’d enjoyed before going away to the seminary.”
I was involved in a long-distance relationship myself once – well, Dublin and Limerick (nope, dear readers, it wasn’t with Willie O’Dea) – and enjoyed having my own headspace during the week, and then come Friday night getting coupled-up again.
“I don’t,” he says with a rueful look. “When you’ve so much going on – both physically and, like you say, in your head – it’s easy to convince yourself you’re not meant to be with somebody else. I know I certainly had. Meeting Maia though I was like, ‘Here’s somebody I can be around all the time without having to put on some sort of act. Finally, I can be myself. I’m not craving that time away and my own headspace’. So, it’s actually a massive pain having my life split into two.
“That said, a day doesn’t pass where I don’t count my blessings. I’m married to this wonderful woman, my soul mate, and also have the opportunity to be a proper dad to Michael Jr. and do the school run and everything. It’s amazing how all the stuff that seems dull to every day parents is fun when you’ve had to earn it. I don’t talk about the access thing publicly because I don’t want him reading stuff about himself in the paper. It’s just something that over time has got better and I’m grateful for it. Between being happily married and a very hands-on dad, it’s all the incentive I’ve needed to claw Michael Sr. back from Johnny: ‘I run the show, pal, not you!’”

Book out and charging up the bestsellers list, what’s Pennington got lined up for the next 12 months?
“I’ve another TV abstract, pitch, whatever you want to call it out there, which I’m hoping will get green-lighted,” he reveals.
“There’s a third series of Moone Boy in the can for Sky – I love getting to act alongside Chris O’Dowd – and I’ve directed another Moving On, the daytime BBC thing, with Jimmy McGovern.”
Who, in case the name isn’t ringing bells, is the BAFTA Award-winning creator of such successful series as Brookside, Cracker and Accused, but whose finest hour is probably 1996’s Hillsborough, which harrowingly reconstructed the previous decade’s footballing tragedy that left 96 Liverpool supporters dead.
“He’s brilliant, absolutely brilliant,” Michael says. “If anyone knows their onions with writing and editing and stuff it’s Jimmy. Even if he’s in the room telling you how shit your writing is, it’s still a bit of a buzz. Although he does have a nice way of saying it’s fucking awful: ‘You know what I’d be tempted to do if I were you?’ Nobody sugars the ‘you’re shit’ pill quite like Jimmy!
“I’ll be honest, in the New Year I’m just dead set on getting some new directing projects up and running. That’s my centre. I’ve never been confident in front of the camera. Johnny was born to the stage but I wasn’t – it’s just something I’ve done and now being on the other side of the camera I relish the responsibility of it. I feel as proud of what I’m doing directorially as I do of Johnny and what he achieved in stand-up.”
With that PTA meeting looming large, it’s “good bye” to both Messrs. Pennington and Vegas. I’m not sure which of them I’m going to miss the most!

Becoming Johnny Vegas is published by Harper