Around this time, I met Stacey Simmons, who became a close friend and confidante all through high school, and who also owned a red car, a Pontiac Firebird. I believe our first conversation, after I’d introduced myself to her, was about that car.
Stacey was a tall, leggy blonde. She liked clothes, especially Ralph Lauren. Even better, Stacey was a bit of a petrol head like me. She adored all the stuff a girl wasn’t supposed to be into; and I loved all the things a boy wasn’t supposed to like. We complemented each other perfectly.
Stacey was also a member of our high-school Pom Squad, the Tiger Paws. When I’d hang out at her house, I’d help her with the choreography for her dance routines. This, of course, fuelled the high-school rumour that we were dating, which was rubbish. We were BFFs.6 When she and I went to parties, she was usually the designated driver because I’d be the one who’d like to have a drink.7
Stacey’s mother, Lynn, and her father, Frank, were from a big real-estate family in Joliet, and it was Stacey’s mother who first introduced me to ‘Midwest Caviar’. It’s still one of my favourite snacks. Take a block of Velveeta cheese, pour over a can of Hormel Chili with Beans,8 add a carton of sour cream, and then heat in the microwave for a few minutes. Mix and dip. I’d devour the entire bowl. Loved the stuff!
Stacey’s dad and I got along well, too. He was a really genuine guy, but one day – with absolutely no malice intended on his part – he said something that gutted me. I’ve kept this to myself all these years. But as I think about it now, in the context of these stories, I believe it was another of those small, defining moments that’s stuck in my psyche, and that may have had a bigger impact on me than I first thought.
Frank was typical of the generation of American men that emerged in the sixties, and which the US network AMC’s terrific TV show, Mad Men, has epitomized. Frank came home from the office, tossed his jacket on a chair or table near the front door, loosened his tie, and accepted the cocktail Lynn would have waiting for him. One evening when he arrived home, I was sitting in the living room, waiting for Stacey. He and I chatted for a while.
‘So, John,’ he said, ‘when are you going to stop all this funny stuff and think about getting a real job?’
I loved this family – still do – and I admired Frank very much. I thought he understood me. I laughed off his remark, and reminded him that acting was a real job, but I was hurt. At the time, his statement was one more added to all the others during middle and high school that made me even more determined to make my decision to be an entertainer pay off just as well as any ‘real job’.9
Years later, when I was getting big jobs and well-paid work, my parents ran into Frank and Lynn, and Frank was impressed with my accomplishments. If he reads this, I’m sure he’ll be surprised that his comment has stayed with me all these years afterwards – especially because he may not even remember the conversation. The incident has reminded me, though, that as adults we do have to be vigilant with our offhand comments and asides to the children in our lives because these kinds of remarks, in a child’s head, can carry so much more weight than we intend.
The passion for cars that I shared with Stacey has remained as important in my adult life as it was in my youth and childhood, when I used to load cars into my Matchbox garage or race them on my Hot Wheels electric ‘street speed challenge’ track.10 When I left for college, my dad traded in the VW Scirocco for an Isuzu Impulse with Lotus suspension,11 and I’ve never looked back.
Many of the cars I’ve owned as an adult have associations with my youth. In my childhood head, a symbol of a person’s success as a grown-up was to own a Mercedes. I’ve been lucky enough to afford two; I’m on first-name terms with my local Mercedes dealer, the Sinclair Group. In my garage, I have a slick black Volvo convertible, with champagne leather interior. With one touch, the car’s hardtop frame rises majestically, as if the car was a Transformer – one of my favourite toys as a boy. I recently added a fire-red Cadillac to my stable; my first scarlet car since my youth, and a vehicle whose front makes it look like it should be a character in Disney’s Cars.12 My olive-green Renault Avantime, of which only a limited number were sold in the UK, reminds me of George Jetson’s pod car, with its roof of glass and its sharp angles and futuristic shape, while my mint-green 1982 Mercedes SL is my Pam and Bobby Ewing car.
I used to own a DeLorean, the Back to the Future car, but because I have limited storage space for my car collection, I had to release this car back into the future. The first time I took the DeLorean out for a drive in Cardiff, I needed to fill up the tank. It took me forty minutes and a desperate phone call to its past owner in Ireland to find the location of the petrol cap.13
When my family returned to Scotland in 1972, after spending a year in the United States14 at the behest of my dad’s firm, Caterpillar Inc., one of the most prized possessions I brought back with me was my Big Wheel bike. Do you know the kind I mean? It was a low-to-the-ground riding tricycle, with a huge front wheel and big handles. The entire thing was made of heavy-duty plastic. My Big Wheel was yellow, with a red-and-black seat and thick black wheels. These particular bikes were popular in America in the sixties and seventies, and when I returned with mine to Mount Vernon in Scotland, I was the talk of the town.15
When I rode my Big Wheel, I could beat any kid on my street riding a bigger bike, plus I could generate the most amazing black skid marks on the pavement with it. I was known on Dornford Avenue as ‘that wee demon driver’. All I needed to do to create these marks was to get myself going at high speed – preferably by beginning on the hill at the top of Dornford – then close to the corner I’d back-pedal really hard and pull the handbrake, and the Big Wheel would skid and spin wildly. Awesome!
One of my last rides as ‘that wee demon driver’ happened when I was racing my friend, Francis, from next door. I lost control of the Big Wheel, went flying over the handlebars, and hit the top edge of a low brick wall with my mouth. As you can imagine, when my mum reached me, I was bleeding badly. I had soaked through my shirt by then, and yet, because I was terrified of seeing blood, all the way to the hospital she kept telling me that it wasn’t so bad and there really was no blood at all.
After that accident, I learned how to control my bike when I was speeding; and I applied the same rules to my driving when I got my licence. I’m a firm believer in the ‘don’t panic and drive’ school of driver’s education; the lesson taught me by my driver’s ed teacher. His idea was that all drivers should know how – if it’s possible – to get out of a dangerous driving situation without panicking and making the problem worse. When Clare and Turner were learning to drive, they practised manoeuvring out of dangerous situations in a neighbourhood cemetery. Why not? Everyone there was already dead.
Admittedly, I can be an impatient driver – a safe one, but most definitely impatient16 – but I’ve never forgotten my driver’s ed teacher’s lesson about not panicking when facing a dangerous situation. It was a lesson that I recently had to put into practice – and it saved my family’s life.
In June 2009, Scott, my parents and I were driving home after we’d eaten out for lunch near my home in Sully. My parents were in the back seat, enjoying the view from the full roof of glass on my Avantime, and Scott was in the front seat, navigating.17 It had been raining, but the downpour had stopped a short while ago.
Suddenly, up ahead, a car careened around a curve so fast that the driver had to swerve out into the other lane to avoid hitting the vehicle directly in front of him. The road was steamy wet and the speeding car lost its grip on the road’s surface. Its abrupt swerve put it into the outside lane, and facing oncoming traffic. I was the oncoming traffic. I remember my mum screaming, ‘Oh dear God, he’s going to hit us,’ and Scott recalled me saying, ‘I’ve got to get off the road.’
Logic told me to slam on my brakes, but given the other car’s complete loss of control, I knew that, if I stopped, the oncoming car would hit us head-on at full speed. More than one of us would die. Instea
d, I listened to my instincts. I accelerated. I swerved quickly round the oncoming car – missing it literally by inches – and crashed off the road into a gully, smashing first into a series of bushes and then a pole, which snapped under us on impact. The airbags deployed and, in a heartbeat,18 the inside of the car filled with powdery smoke. My mum thought the car was on fire, but it turned out that the airbags had released a powdery substance upon impact.19
When I knew my family were fine, my adrenalin dissipated, my anger calmed,20 and, while I waited for the emergency vehicles, I looked closely at the offending car’s tyre marks. Then I examined mine, serpentining off the road to safety. I was so ready for Fifth Gear rally driving.
A month later, I joined the Fifth Gear crew at a rally track near Llangurig, Wales. Gavin and Rhys, my PA, came with me for company, and also because I wanted Rhys to film my circuit for me. I got suited up in a red fireproof jumpsuit, after which the show’s host, Timothy ‘Tiff’ Needell, sat me in the Prodrive Impreza and gave me a quick lesson on rally driving.
I’m a regular viewer of Fifth Gear. Although I’d never met Tiff before, I knew of him by reputation and skill. For the first half-hour or so, Tiff tutored me on the car and the circuit while the cameras set up for my practice lap. I felt like that sixteen-year-old boy again, waiting to take his driving test. Inside the gloves, my hands were clammy and I could feel my adrenalin pumping.21
It was a familiar sensation. On Torchwood, especially during series two, I did most of the driving for shots that didn’t require a stunt driver. This meant I was in control of the Torchwood SUV quite a lot. Burn didn’t like to drive the SUV, as he thought it too difficult to handle; and Evie didn’t like to drive fast, which was usually a prerequisite. Gareth didn’t have any interest at all in getting behind the wheel, and neither did Naoko, so I – willingly, excitedly and possibly a touch too enthusiastically – always stepped up to the plate … wheel.
My favourite drive time in the Torchwood SUV was a scene in the ‘Meat’ episode. The entire crew was set up in a stretch of abandoned road that used to provide truck access for a company based near the docks in Cardiff. There was no traffic for the entire stretch of road. This meant that the opening truck accident, where the ‘meat’ is first discovered, could be set up across the full two lanes.
The four of us piled into the SUV. Burn was riding shotgun, holding the radio that cued me to drive into the scene, and Gareth and Eve climbed in the back.22 I loved reversing quickly down the stretch of road to get into position and then – wait for it … ‘Action!’ – hitting the gas and racing from 0 to 50 mph in a short distance, before screeching to a stop on the director’s mark. It was like drag racing with my dad’s really expensive car.
The driving scenes ended up being the most fun I had that day because what no one had realized was that directly next to the abandoned road was a field of pollinating ragweed. By early afternoon, most of the crew and a number of us in the cast were lined up under the make-up tents with red, itchy eyes and runny noses. The whole scene looked as if it was a set-up for an episode.
Whenever I drove for a scene, if a crew person could be spared, he or she would hide in the rear of the SUV and give me directions from inside the car. Late one night, when Clare and I were driving to Sully from Birmingham after a week of pantos, I wished we’d had someone giving directions from the back seat.
The M5 was completely shut down because of an accident. I did not want to spend the night stranded in traffic, so I pulled off the motorway and headed into the country. I told Clare to call Scott, who was already at home in Sully, and I asked him via Clare to guide us home. Scott loves globes and maps and anything with a legend, so he decided to navigate us home using Google Earth. I would have been faster having Clare use the stars to guide us.
Suddenly, in my Range Rover, I was careening through country lanes and winding roads originally designed for sheep.23 I was tired, crabby and my Range Rover was getting its paint scratched. Needless to say, I started shouting at Scott via Clare while Scott returned the shouting back to me via Clare, who then started to shout at both of us for shouting at her. God, we needed a director in the back seat; if we’d been driving in the Torchwood SUV, alien technology might well have got us home with a lot less yelling involved.
I loved the Torchwood SUV, and, before it went to wherever discarded BBC cars go after they’ve disappeared from a series,24 I was asked if I’d like to buy it. Given my passion for cars, I guess that wasn’t too surprising. I did think about it for a few minutes, but decided, in the end, that a Dalek at my house was enough.
Here’s another trivia fact for you for when you’re playing ‘I’ve Wasted My Life Watching TV, But I’m Happy’: the Porsche that Jack steals and drives during Day Three of ‘Children of Earth’ was my own car, used just for that episode.
While I turned down the purchase of the Torchwood SUV, I never forgot how to make many of the sudden stops and quick starts that filming in it had taught me. It was just as well – because I needed all my skills and wits about me the day I went rally driving.
During the filming of my practice rally run and my official timed ones on Fifth Gear, Tiff rode next to me in the car. After each run, I’m proud to share that he said I was a natural. When we drove to the open area near the course to practise stopping, skidding, turning and jumping, I actually forgot I was being filmed for a television show and I soaked up all of Tiff’s insights and advice as if my life depended on it. As it turned out, it did.
On my first timed lap, I came in at 1:33. Tiff threw down the gauntlet and asked if I ‘wanted to try to beat my own time’. Them are fighting words to me. Of course I did.
With Tiff reading aloud my pace notes from the initial timed run, I took the first two turns well, but I was coming into the third too fast. I skidded round the final curve too tightly and I lost control of the car. There was nothing I could do. As you can see on camera if you watch the show, I released the wheel and left the fate of Tiff and myself in the hands of the car god.25
We flipped three full rotations over the edge of the hill and slid down an embankment. For a fleeting moment, I did think I was in trouble, and that this jaunt in the countryside wasn’t going to end well, but then I looked at Tiff and he was grinning, and when we landed, I started laughing, too.26 We bounced hard on our wheels, and the car came to a really forceful stop. Tiff and I unbuckled quickly.
As I climbed from the wrecked car, I could see the crew rushing down the hill towards us, including Gav and Rhys, who was still filming. Gavin told me later that his heart stopped when he saw the car flip, and Rhys said his legs had felt like all the bones had been removed.
When I got home that evening, that was pretty much what my mum threatened to do to me if I ever did something like this rally drive again. She gave me hell for about twenty minutes – after she’d checked me out herself and was reassured that I really was fine.27
After the crash, emergency personnel surrounded us almost immediately. As a precaution, I insisted a paramedic wash out my eyes. The camera inside the car had bounced loose a bit as we flipped, and the arm it was attached to had shattered the windscreen into tiny pieces, many of which ended up on Tiff and me.
After twenty-six years behind the wheel and twenty-three years in the entertainment business, I had finally made it onto a car show, but I went from first to Fifth and skipped Top Gear.
Oh, and don’t tell my mum, but this Speed Racer may well do the whole rally race driving thing again.
TABLE TALK #8
‘Two Men and Their Dogs’
There’s an old gay saying1 that not much comes between a gay man and his dog. This distinct bond has been written about a lot, and it’s not difficult to see why. In a society that has not always condoned gay men having children, our dog, or in my case dogs, can be akin to having kids. And because many gay men, sadly, still find themselves ostracized from their families, a dog can be the one companion who loves unconditionally and wholeheartedly. I’m
not saying that gay men love their dogs more deeply than other dog lovers, but dogs do play a role in our lives that is remarkable if not unique.
Scott and I pamper our dogs, we buy them toys2 and, when we can, we travel with them. A few days before Harris joined our family, I was so excited I dashed into the Louis Vuitton store on Bond Street and bought an outrageously expensive doggy carrier. Oh my God, it was so fabulous I wanted to crawl inside and take a nap. When we brought Harris home, I set the carrier out on the floor and presented it to him. Ta da!
He stared at it. Sniffed at it. Tentatively, he stepped inside. I was already planning where I’d go with the LV on my arm and Harris snuggling inside. He sniffed around for a few minutes inside the carrier, and then he quickly backed himself out. He stared up at me with an expression that can only be described as saying, ‘Well, that was a big waste of your money.’ In the entire course of his puppyhood, I was able to get him inside the LV only one other time, and that was after pulling a Hansel-and-Gretel move and lining the interior with treats.
Our dogs not only have the run of our homes, but also of our lives, and when we lose them, we grieve deeply because we know in our hearts we’ve lost much more than just a pet. Between 14 March 2007 and 6 May 2008, Scott and I had to say goodbye to three dear family members: Penny, Tiger and Lewis.
Miss Moneypenny was the first dog I owned as a grown-up person living independently, without needing the permission of a parent to have, and when she died, her loss was devastating. Penny’s health had been failing for quite a while before she died. She was nineteen and she was getting a bit leaky and pretty senile.3 Her eyesight was severely diminished, and she moved only when necessary. But the vet always told me that as long as she was wagging her tail and she was eating well, then she was not in distress. And I clung on to that wisdom for as long as I could.
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