He also said, just try, you teeny tiny flucker, when we were ten and I’d said I couldn’t get up in front of a couple of the bigger kids at school and do our version of a Peter Cook and Dudley Moore’s Derek and Clive sketch. But then I tried and even though he did all the hard work and I just fed him the lines we did it. And that was the only time we’d ever been able to make those kids really laugh hard and not just because Jax swore a lot.

The teachers didn’t laugh, though, when they heard. We got detention for a month, but boy it was worth it. Mum even said she was proud of me because it reminded her of something Grandad would have done. So every day for a month when we were sat there in detention doing extra homework I didn’t even care. Because even though it was really, really hard for me, I’d tried and done it. And because who wouldn’t want to be compared to an almost-famous comedian like my grandad?

Anyhow, that’s how I knew that no matter how much I missed Jax I had to try and make our plan come true. Because now he’s not ever going to get to do it himself. I didn’t know how I was going to make a double act work with just me, and I didn’t know how I was going to make a proper audience laugh like a couple of Year 8s laughing at Derek and Clive, Jaxy style. And there’s no way I knew how I was going to be brave enough to meet four guys who’ve never seen me before in their life because there’s a chance they might be my dad. But I knew this teeny tiny flucker was going to try.

20

FIRST RULE OF COMEDY:
Get all your ducks in a row.

LEONARD SHOWED UP on the dot of eight on the first day of our trip, which is exactly when he thought he’d said he’d be there.

“Here I am, Norman! Eight I said and eight I meant. Time to get this show on the road!”

Me and Mum didn’t tell him, but it was definitely the dot of nine he’d said really. But Mum ran off to get out of her pajamas before Leonard saw her and she whispered to me that it was always better to be too early than too late and it just meant our adventure would be starting a whole hour earlier. Which was kind of nice of her to say really, because I knew she was actually pretty worried about the trip.

It was kind of a big deal that Leonard was going to drive us all the way to Edinburgh, Mum said, because he’d even got the sack so he could do it. That part made me feel a bit bad, but Leonard said not to worry because he’d just been waiting for the universe to give him a sign that he should leave Pearl’s car yard anyway.