Matt Millz Stands Up! Read online

  For Charles, Henry and George.

  Contents

  Title Page

  Dedication

  1: From a Jack to a King

  2: Return to Bathurst Street

  3: Matt Millz Mania

  4: Meet Team Millz

  5: A Mysterious Stranger

  6: Sunday at Six

  7: Six O’Clock Show Time

  8: He Who Laughs Last

  9: No Ordinary Schoolboy

  10: O2 What Can the Matter Be?

  11: Backstage at the Dome

  12: Kitty’s Master Plan

  13: Bath from the Past

  14: The Road to Sossinghurst

  15: Return to Frittledean

  16: The Bugle Calls

  17: Return to Sossinghurst

  18: Professional Help

  19: New Suits and Teeth

  20: New Beginnings

  21: Comedy Central

  22: Return to the Scene of the Crime

  23: That Pie’s for You

  24: One Good Turn

  25: Bath Time Again

  26: Total Eclipse

  27: Touch and Go

  28: Always Read the Small Print

  29: Hope Springs Eternal

  30: Knock ’Em Dead

  About the Author

  About the Illustrator

  Copyright

  1

  From a Jack to a King

  He’d gone to bed a nobody and woken up a somebody. Matt Millz’s appearance on The T Factor had been the most exciting night of his life. It was etched into his brain in sharp, bright focus and it fizzed and crackled every time he delved back into it, which he had done many, many times since.

  The smell of the crowd as he’d arrived, the jangling of his nerves when he walked on to the stage of the Hammersmith Apollo in front of all those people, the surreal experience of meeting the judges – people he’d only seen in photographs or on TV – and then the mind-blowing thrill of those laughs.

  Stand-up comics had various words for it – he’d smashed it, he’d killed it, he’d stormed it, he’d ridden the gig home. All those people laughing had made him feel powerful, in control of his world for the first time in his young life.

  Then had come the crashing disappointment as his real age – just twelve – had been revealed and he’d been disqualified. Followed by the rebound high as he realised it didn’t diminish what he’d done in the minds of the audience in the theatre and the twelve million people watching at home on their TV sets and laptops. It enhanced it. Twelve million people! A third of the population! No, wait, that wasn’t a third it was – um … hang on … twelves into sixty-five goes … four um … a quarter … no … wait … hang on … four twelves were …

  Maths had never been his strong point. Which was a little unfortunate as at that particular moment Matt Millz happened to be sitting in a double maths lesson at Anglebrook School.

  ‘Perhaps Master Mills could explain what a square root is?’

  ‘Huh?’ said Matt snapping out of his daydream and staring at Anglebrook’s least popular teacher – Miss Stark (universally referred to as ‘Mistake’).

  ‘My apologies, it’s not Mills is it? It’s Millzzzzzz,’ she said sarcastically elongating the Z of his stage name. ‘I hope I’m not keeping you from some television appearance?’

  Matt rolled his eyes and inwardly groaned – he’d had to get used to a lot of that over the last couple of weeks. It seemed that the whole world had an opinion on his career.

  ‘You know what I’d do in your position?’ the postman had suggested. ‘I’d do that jungle show where you have to eat bugs and stuff. I’ve heard you get paid half a million quid for that.’

  ‘You should be playing big places like the O2,’ said a kid in Asda.

  ‘Ever considered panto?’ said an elderly lady on the bus.

  It was either career advice or suggestions for material:

  ‘Here’s one for you …’ they’d say, which would then be followed by some offensive joke.

  ‘Here’s one for you …’ Matt wanted to say. ‘How about “go away!”’ But he didn’t. His manager, eleven-year-old Kitty Hope had said over and over again, ‘You must never be rude to the general public – after all, they’re the ones who put you where you are today.’

  Unfortunately today he was in Mistake’s double maths lesson.

  ‘Well?’ said Mistake, testily drumming her fingers theatrically on the desk, milking every moment of her power over him. ‘I’m waiting …’

  ‘Hmm, a square root?’ said Matt furrowing his brow in mock thought. ‘I guess that would be a parsnip that doesn’t go out much!’

  The class let out a big laugh. Matt smiled – he loved that sound.

  ‘Sorry, no,’ he said correcting himself. ‘My mistake – I mean Miss Stark!’

  Another, even bigger laugh filled the room, piggybacking the first. Matt turned and looked at his best mate Rob Brown six rows behind him and grinned. Rob flashed him a surreptitious thumbs up. Matt’s smile didn’t last long though.

  ‘Go and stand outside!’ bellowed the maths teacher, her face red and her eyes nearly popping out off her head, like she was choking on a gobstopper.

  ‘Yes, miss,’ said Matt gathering up his exercise book and pencil case, and stuffing them into his sports bag.

  ‘See you in first break,’ he whispered to Rob as he passed him on his way to the door.

  ‘What’s this all about?’ Matt said to himself as he stood outside the classroom peering in through the window in the door, watching the lesson continue without him. ‘They want you to learn, but if you’re not up to speed they send you out of the room so you can’t learn anything! Where’s the sense in that? I’m standing here, I can see what she’s saying but I can’t hear it! It’s like being taught in semaphore!’

  Hey! That was an idea for a joke. He reached into his blazer pocket for his little black book and sat down on the floor and scribbled ‘Stupid punishments’. He was off again to the world he loved – comedy – and he cast his mind back to the aftermath of his night of fame on The T Factor.

  2

  Return to Bathurst Street

  He’d travelled back that night from the Hammersmith Apollo with his mum and stepdad Ian, and during the hour and a half it took to get home things had almost returned to normal. His mum had regaled him with tales of the exploits of her troupe of dachshunds – The Dachshund Five – at the dog show, Crufts.

  ‘This year I had five dogs dancing to Justin Timblerlake’s “Magic”, finishing in a dachshund pyramid! Yes, one on top of the other – well, it brought the house down!’

  Ian – an estate agent by trade – was beside himself, having made contact with T Factor judge Simon Bewell. He had started to get really carried away with thoughts of reforming his teenage punk band. ‘Now we’ve got a contact with Simon, Dead Toys could really go places,’ he gushed.

  Matt felt the crumpled business card in his pocket. It was true, he did have Simon Bewell’s mobile phone number, as well as that of his hero Eddie Odillo, host of the top comedy show on TV – Stand-up at the Apollo, but he just couldn’t imagine ever being able to call either of them out of the blue.

  ‘Hi, Eddie, it’s Matt here. Fancy going down Nando’s?’

  ‘Hi, Simon. Listen, I’ve got two tickets to the school play and wondered whether you are busy tomorrow night?’

  It just wasn’t going to happen. Maybe his moment in the sun had already been and gone? After all he hadn’t actually won his heat – he’d been disqualified for being underage – and now he was heading back from London, not coming to it.

  The answer to that question became all too apparent as Ian steered the family’s Vauxhall Astra into their road.
Number 77 Bathurst Street was bathed in a stark white light which shone from lamps perched high on poles erected in the front garden, and arrayed around them was a huge crowd of people consisting largely of teenage girls and a whole horde of photographers.

  Parked in the street were two large vans with satellite dishes on their roofs, which appeared to be linked to a couple of TV crews. The sight took the whole family completely by surprise.

  ‘Blimey!’ said Ian. ‘There must have been a burglary! You did put the alarm on before we left didn’t you, Jenny?’

  Before Matt’s mum could answer, a cry came up from the crowd.

  ‘There he is!’ The throng turned as one and as it spotted Matt peering through the car window, it let out a huge cheer, then stampeded towards him.

  ‘Stone me!’ said Ian. ‘There’s no burglary, it’s you they’re here for, Matt!’

  ‘Yes, and they’ve got their hands all over your paintwork,’ chipped in Matt’s mum.

  She was right, and it wasn’t just hands – young faces were pushed up against the windows. A girl screamed his name: ‘Matt, we love yooooou!’ Grubby fingers tried to get the car doors open, blinding flashes zapped at Matt’s face as fat camera lenses probed the windows, shutters whirred and clicked, trying to capture a little bit of him because, suddenly, a little bit of Matt Millz was worth something!

  ‘What in the name of heck is going on?’ said Matt, trying to keep a lid on his rapidly rising feeling of panic.

  Ian was out first and trying to shoo them away, but without much luck. ‘Come on, guys, it’s late, well past his bedtime and he’s had a long night.’

  ‘That’s his fault for being famous,’ came the gruff response from the paparazzi, along with various insults too rude to print here.

  ‘Famous?’ thought Matt. ‘Me? But I’ve only been on TV once!’

  The car started rocking as the photographers and journalists started to get impatient. Then it happened – one of the photographers stepped back into one of Matt’s mum’s prize rose bushes and with a shriek she was out of the door and addressing the crowd.

  ‘HOW DARE YOU TRESPASS ON OUR LAND!’ she screamed in a low baritone. Suddenly everyone stopped what they were doing and turned to stare at this vision in a fur coat. ‘Get away from my front door or I’ll set these on you!’ she bellowed, producing five miniature dachshunds from deep inside her coat. On cue the little dogs bared their teeth and snarled at the motley bunch of assorted lunatics in front of them.

  This prompted ninety per cent of the crowd to disperse back out into the night, but the core of the professional photographers – the paparazzi and the film crews – weren’t budging.

  ‘Just give us a couple of snaps of the kid then we’ll sling our hook,’ said one, lowering his lens like a big-game hunter stowing his rifle.

  A woman in a business suit stepped forward clutching a microphone and took Matt’s mum to one side.

  ‘A word of advice,’ she said. ‘This bunch won’t take no for an answer. If you don’t give them what they want they’ll be camped out on your doorstep all night. They’ll grab what they can by any means available – even if that means shinning up a drainpipe and poking a camera through your bathroom window. If you’re not careful you’ll be looking at yourself in tomorrow’s paper in your underwear – or worse.’

  ‘Eugh! What a disgusting thought!’ said Matt’s mum, turning her nose up and curling her lip, but she could see the sense in what the woman was saying. ‘Very well!’ she said forcefully. ‘My son will be available for photographs for just five minutes. Matt! Get out here, darling.’

  Matt tentatively emerged from the back seat of the car, looking nervously around for any crazed girls who mistakenly thought they were fans.

  There was a series of blinding flashes as the hunters got their quarry.

  ‘Over here, son!’ shouted one.

  ‘To me, Matt!’

  ‘Straight down the lens, mate!’

  ‘How ’bout a smile?’

  After the initial shock, Matt started to kind of enjoy it. Every different face he pulled stimulated another round of clicks and flashes. He started almost playing the photographers like they were an audience.

  But the fun was short-lived. He started to feel a bit like one of his mum’s performing dachshunds.

  ‘That’s enough now. That’s your five minutes,’ snapped his mum, standing between Matt and the paps. ‘He needs a bath!’

  ‘Mum,’ moaned an embarrassed Matt. The photographers all drifted off to their various vehicles with mumbled ‘Cheers, luv!’ and ‘Comin’ down the pub?’

  ‘A quick quote for us?’ It was the woman reporter in the suit again.

  ‘Very well,’ said Matt’s mum. ‘But then that’s it! Finito!’

  The two camera crews lined up their lights and microphones.

  ‘How do you feel, Matt?’ asked the woman reporter.

  ‘Um … a bit confused,’ said Matt blinking into the lights. ‘I mean, I’m nothing special, just a schoolboy!’

  ‘Not any more!’ she said. ‘How does it feel being the youngest stand-up comic to raise the roof at the Apollo?’

  ‘Er … pretty fantastic!’ said Matt with a grin, remembering why there was this sudden interest in him.

  ‘You must have been gutted when Simon disqualified you though …?’

  ‘Um … yes, well, for a bit, but my manager Kitty says it did the job so …’

  ‘What’s the plan?’

  ‘Not sure. I guess I’ll have to wait to see what she recommends.’

  ‘That was great,’ said the reporter lowering her microphone. ‘Good luck, Matt, it’s a brilliant story. Just be careful over the next few days – there are some in this business who will try to trip you up.’ The lights snapped off and the camera operators loaded their equipment into their vans and departed.

  Suddenly Matt, his mum and Ian were standing alone in the dark and their street took back its usual tranquil atmosphere. Now the only light was from a street lamp, the only sound from a distant owl.

  *

  ‘Blimey! That was pretty mad,’ said Ian closing the front door behind them.

  ‘You can say that again,’ said Matt.

  ‘Yes, Ian, and I’m not sure we’ve heard the last of them,’ replied his mum with a sigh.

  3

  Matt Millz Mania

  It was half past five the next morning when the doorbell rang first. It was the paperboy clutching a copy of the Daily Mail and a marker pen.

  ‘Is Matt Millz there?’ he said to a rather groggy Ian standing in just his vest and pants.

  ‘Er … you know he is, Josh,’ said Ian to the boy. ‘You go to the same school, remember?’

  ‘Hmm,’ said the boy proffering the pen and paper. ‘Any chance of an autograph?’

  Ian unfolded the paper and glanced at the front page. There, looking back at him, was his stepson under the headline ‘MATT MILLZ MANIA’.

  ‘It’s a Sunday, Josh! I only get one lie-in a week! Did you have to?’ he said, scratching his head.

  ‘Please?’ said Josh pulling his most appealing, puppy-like face.

  ‘Leave it with me.’

  Ten minutes later the doorbell rang again. This time it was a workman in a fluorescent jacket.

  ‘Oh, hello,’ he said. ‘We’re working on the gas main down the road. Any chance of an autograph for me daughter? She’s such a fan of the boy!’

  ‘Leave it with me,’ said Ian.

  Another ten minutes passed and the doorbell rang again. This time it was a bloke in an anorak with a face full of bum fluff who looked like he hadn’t washed for a week.

  ‘My name’s Gary,’ he gushed. ‘Is Matt there? I’d like a selfie please and can you get him to sign these cards?’

  ‘Leave them with me, Gary,’ said Ian, a little testily this time.

  Ten minutes later the doorbell rang again.

  ‘GO AWAY!’ shouted Ian through the letter box, then noticed what looked like a poli
ceman’s uniform.

  ‘Oh,’ he said apologetically, opening the door to a policeman and a policewoman. ‘Sorry, officer, I didn’t realise it was … um … that is I thought … can I help you?’

  ‘Well, that remains to be seen, Mr Mills,’ said the policewoman, ‘but I thought you should know that it looks very much like your car’s been broken into!’

  Ian looked past the policeman and could see the Astra parked outside the house. The driver’s window had been smashed.

  *

  ‘So you think the only thing missing is young Matt’s coat?’ said the policewoman, having finished her report.

  ‘There was such a commotion when we got back, I left it in the car by accident,’ said Matt.

  ‘Hang on,’ said Ian looking at the front door. ‘Where’s the door knocker gone?’

  ‘It’s on the front of the door where it’s always been isn’t it?’ said Matt’s mum, bringing in a tray of teas for the group. But Ian was right – where the door knocker usually resided there were just two small holes for the screws that held it on.

  ‘That’s why I used the bell,’ said the policewoman.

  ‘Don’t tell me someone’s nicked that as well!’ said Ian.

  ‘Souvenir hunters, Mr Mills. Your young boy here is something of a celebrity now and, well, young girls and some young men no doubt will stop at nothing to get some part of his life, something he’s touched – if not an autograph or a self-portrait photograph …’

  ‘That’s a selfie, Sarge,’ chipped in the policeman.

  ‘Eh?’

  ‘Selfies, they call them selfies for short …’

  ‘Ahem, indeed, well, I’m afraid they’ve had your door knocker away and I doubt very much whether you will see it again.’

  ‘Aren’t you going to do a house-to-house search?’ said Matt taking a slurp of hot tea.

  ‘A what?’

  ‘A house-to-house search?’ repeated Matt, feigning a look of concern.