Peter Kay, thief
Comic admits to light-fingered past
Peter Kay has admitted stealing from a string of dead-end jobs before he became famous.
The comedian has confessed to
- Sealing groceries from a cash and carry
- Nicking ‘my own weight in Duracell batteries’ at a petrol station
- Taking cassettes from a music shop, copying them, then returning them the next day
- And hiring videos from a store called Hollywood Nights without paying
In his new autobiography, The Sound Of Laughter, Kay said: ‘Mum, if you’re reading this, I can only apologise for my actions.’
He said ‘I don’t think I’ve ever witnessed as much pilfering as I did at the cash and carry’ and explained that the staff would hide goods in the bottom of rubbish boxes, dump them outside the building, then return in the night to ‘collect my winnings’.
He wrote that ‘the last thing I want to do is incriminate myself,’ in the scam but later added: ‘Cigarettes and booze were always a popular pilfer, though I always preferred more obscure items like a pack of 15 TDK three-hour blank videotapes or an Alabama chocolate fudge cake with pecan nuts.’
When the cash and carry moved to a bigger building, Kay left saying: ‘We could no longer nick ourselves a fortune. The new depot was like Alcatraz, the security was that tight.’
Kay also stole blank videos from the garage he used to work at, as well as the Duracell batteries, saying: ‘I never had to buy a blank video or cassette for the next five years.’
At video store Hollywood Nights, he used his staff password to give himself free rentals. His boss accused him of hiring videos out to customers and pocketing the cash, but Kay wrote: ‘I confessed to occasionally borrowing a few videos at the end of my shift, but said I’d never once profited from my actions.’
The Sound Of Laughter, which Kay was only prompted to write when he heard a journalist was planning an unauthorised biography, was released on Thursday, and is currently No 2 in the Amazon bestseller list after attracting 250,000 advance orders.
Published: 8 Oct 2006
