Growing up with Danny Burns…

By Stevie Burns


One of my earliest memories of the Burns’ household was a time that my Mam left a young Daniel in the house for a total of 3 minutes whilst she ran to the shop to get something before the shop shut. Upon her return she found young Daniel sawing his chest of drawers in half with his toy tool set that I bought him for Christmas.


Due to Daniel’s hyperactivity (every time he ate Skittles or Smarties), getting him into trouble was easy. I regularly wrote his name in Biro on the net curtains, or on furniture, using my left hand to simulate baby-writing. The result was usually a smack round the head for young Daniel as my Mam and Dad always blamed him for any trouble before me or Kieran. Even when Kieran messed his pants and hid them behind his bed, Daniel got the blame. You might think that our parents would just identify the messed pants, and blame the person that they belonged too. Well this was difficult as there was a two sets of Y-fronts, one bright red and one cacky brown, that made their way from Steve, to me, to Daniel and then finally to Kieran. So Daniel automatically got the blame.


A strange fact was that Daniel was able to sing the theme tune to ‘The A-Team’ before he could talk. This is in fact 100% true, as I have memories of him literally rocking his own baby chair (tih him in it) whilst recreating the song, pitch perfect.


I suppose I took full advantage of his strange child eccentricity when I challenged him to a WWF ‘Blindfold Match’ on my Mam and Dad’s bed. The bed was already a pile of springs from previous bouts, and I always won (I am 6 years older than him after all). Usually it was with my newly invented move called The Boston Drop, which was like a Boston crab but where I dropped down onto the back, with the intent of breaking the back. Daniel reckons he has a bad back to this day from repeated Boston Drops.

The Blindfold Match was inspired by Jake ‘The Snake’ Roberts V ‘The Model’ Rick Martel at Wrestlemania VII, which came about due to Martel inadvertently blinding Roberts weeks earlier by spraying his colognen named ‘Arrogance’ in Jake The Snake’s eyes, resulting in his temporary blindness. Once we had fitted our blindfolds round our heads (dressing gown belts), I simply removed mine and carefully got off the bed, and watched as Daniel played up to the imaginary crowd (!) by pointing in directions, waiting for the crowd to cheer when he finally pointed in my direction, just like at Wrestlemania. I am not sure exactly how this was working in his simple head, but he decided I was definitely in a certain direction (the imaginary crowd were probably to blame), and then ran full pace in that direction, running straight off the bed, straight over the 3 foot gap at the side of the bed and into the wall. It was like something out of a cartoon. I had never laughed so much since Daniel shouted “Fuck Off Fred” at a painting of a tramp. Needless to say, Daniel knocked himself out, and fell to the ground snoring.


When my Mam and Dad came up to investigate the noise, they found Daniel knocked out, dragged him to his feet, and then smacked him over the head, and told him off for being bad. Job done.


This was not the only time Daniel was knocked unconscious as a result of my doing. I bet him £1 once that I could knock him to the ground with only 2 fingers. He accepted the bet. I promptly put one finger in the base of his spine, the other under his nose and then proceeded to quite easily tip him backwards by pushing his nose up and back, whilst using the finger in his spine as a pivot point. Down he went, and with no hands to break his fall, took the full weight of the fall on back of his head on the floor tiles in the front of ‘Snappy Tomato Pizza’, and yes, you guessed it – started snoring as he again found himself knocked out.


Yes, living with Daniel Burns was certainly interesting.