I Am What I Am

by John Barrowman

  My response – which is the one that everyone loves to remind her about – was yelled across the bar in pure brilliant Scottish, so practise rolling your ‘r’s before you say it. ‘Carole, you’re not my mother!’

  My nicknames for Scott are Scottie – used mostly at home when I want him to fold the washing, empty the dishwasher or bring me some crisps – and Tottie, when I want … never mind.

  The family member with whom I share the most nicknames, though, is Clare.11 She and I, in fact, have a kind of secret language with each other.12 All our nicknames have something to do with what we’re currently listening to, or are watching on television, or have seen at the theatre.

  The most recent names that have lasted the longest with us are Elphaba, which we use to address each other, and which started minutes after seeing Wicked together in the West End; and, for me, Tracy Turnblad (from Hairspray, which Clare and I both love; we know the lyrics to every song).

  One of the performance wishes that I granted on Tonight’s the Night belonged to a young woman – a hairdresser whose mum had died of cancer when she was quite little – who wanted to sing ‘Good Morning Baltimore’ with the cast of Hairspray. On the Sunday night when we taped the performance, it was all I could do to keep myself from jumping onstage with them.

  Finally, the newest additions to my personal nickname repertoire are ‘Zaza’ and ‘Crystal’13. These relate to the persona of my latest role, Albin, and were created when I stepped into his stilettos in La Cage aux Folles in the West End in September 2009 (check out the last page of the picture section to see a photo of me in costume).

  Zaza is a red-headed Ann-Margret lookalike with a set of gams that could stop traffic … and they did. When Zaza was introduced to the public at a press photo shoot at the Menier Chocolate Factory in London in July 2009, she felt restricted by the photographer’s forties-style calendar-girl poses. Zaza was not to be contained. She strutted the whole entourage outside, took her ‘bootay’ onto the streets of London, and proceeded not so much to hail a couple of cabs as seduce them to stop.

  Crystal, on the other hand, resembles her Dynasty namesake with her chic blonde looks and her restrained demeanour. Crystal is poised and pretty to Zaza’s sassy and sexy: both represent two of the drag characters that make up Albin’s repertoire at the nightclub La Cage aux Folles.

  I know you all would have a fabulous time with either gal. If you’re planning high tea at Harrods, Crystal will be entertaining company, but if you’re looking for a high time at The Shadow Lounge in Soho, you’ll need Zaza, dahling!

  Jinny Baza, over and out.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  ‘DESTINATION ANYWHERE’

  ★

  ‘Here’s to you … Mrs Barrowman.’

  (With my apologies to Simon and Garfunkel.)

  Six things I love to do on holiday

  1 Not much of anything (even that’s too much).

  2 Avoid sitting too close to Scott on the plane.

  3 Participate in local customs (unless they involve bloodletting or sautéed crocodile).

  4 Shop for souvenirs (beads a requirement; bartering optional).

  5 Send cheesy postcards (with added ‘X’s to show my location).

  6 Play Marco Polo (mudslides included).

  I love to go on trips with Scott, but he is not my favourite person to travel with. Once I get myself situated on a plane, I like to be left alone. On international flights, I take a black Louis Vuitton carry-on bag on board with me. My LV has everything in it I may need to occupy me during the journey: my computer, a couple of movies or a TV series on DVD that I want to catch up with,1 a book,2 a change of clothes, every charger for every portable electronic device I own, contact lenses and solution, my toothbrush … and its charger, throat lozenges, Polysporin, a sleeping pill, chewable vitamin C, chewing gum, allergy nasal spray for Scott, my iPod, my BlackBerry, my Bose headphones, and my pillow.

  When Scott travels, he carries a backpack. Inside, he tucks three or four clean hankies, two or three books, his iPhone, and the daily newspapers that he grabbed when we left the house, which, when we get settled, he spreads across his lap, the table, and usually well into my space.

  Move over!

  Scott is a travel fidget. He’s the person you hate sitting behind, in front of or next to you, and when I write ‘you’, I really mean me. He stretches, adjusts, pokes, prods, stretches and adjusts, again and again. The annoyance of travelling with Scott is one of the reasons that, as soon as I could afford the extra expense, I paid for us to travel British Airways business class or Virgin upper class: that way, I get my own little pod, with walls and space to spread out, and Scott can’t get too close.

  Like many British families, Scott and I plan a trip together every year. Granted, it’s not the only time we may travel together, but once a year we do organize a proper family vacation.

  In 2008 and 2009, I made a number of trips to America for work, including to Comic-Con in San Diego. If Scott is available, he’ll join me on these sorts of jaunts. When we’re together in LA, we stay at Le Montrose in West Hollywood. The hotel is in the neighbourhood where I used to live when I was filming Aaron Spelling’s Titans in 2000. West Hollywood is on the edge of Beverly Hills and is home to a number of celebrities, but, more importantly, it has some of the best places for breakfast in the city. Scott and I love to eat a full American breakfast.

  Another favourite hotel of ours is the Royalton in midtown Manhattan because that’s where Scott and I began our tradition with the Easter Cat: a small, Beanie Baby-sized black cat with whiskers, white paws and a white face. The Easter Cat landed on Scott’s pillow on Easter Sunday 1996. I was in New York filming Central Park West, and I wanted to create an Easter tradition that would be uniquely ours – so instead of an Easter Bunny, the Easter Cat brought Scott chocolate and a pair of Rollerblades. 3

  Scott was much more enamoured of the Easter Cat and the chocolate than the Rollerblades; Scott is decidedly non-athletic, but he’s always a good sport. I’d been living in New York for the better part of a year, and was enjoying tearing round the Big Apple on blades. I’d been raving about them to Scott. So, while I was filming the following week, Scott decided to use his free time to learn how to Rollerblade.

  In retrospect, I don’t know what I was thinking, encouraging this behaviour. I think I somehow imagined that he and I could have these romantic rolls4 around the park, weaving hand in hand along the paths, watching the other lovers stroll across the grass and cuddle on the benches. It’d be like our own version of Barefoot in the Park.5 Instead, after three days of practice, Scott turned my Neil Simon romantic-comedy fantasy into a Dino De Laurentiis disaster film.

  Scott spent two days going round and round and round the park and falling and falling and falling again. I’d come back to our room at the end of the day and Scott would be draped across the couch or the bed in complete agony, his body looking like he’d gone three rounds with a welterweight.6 I’ve already shared with you how much he can moan when his body hurts. It was a painful experience all round.

  On the third day … well, that was the end of his Rollerblading career. Scott came shooting down a hill in the park, completely out of control. His options were limited. He couldn’t figure out how to apply his brake without completely wiping out on the gravel path. There was no open grass to roll onto and drop to a stop, and he was heading at ever-increasing speed into a line of people – innocent women and children, no less.

  Scott did the only thing he could. He swerved to his left and careened into a New York hot-dog vendor. The vendor’s cart crashed over, hot dogs spilled out onto the ground, and Scott put both his hands on the hot plate to break his fall, resulting in a series of small burns across his palms. Despite all the stereotypes you may hold about people in NYC, the vendor was very nice about the entire incident. Scott dumped his Rollerblades – along with the forty-two hot dogs he’d spilled (and bought) – in a garbage can on the way out of the park.


  Easter Cat, on the other hand, now travels with us everywhere. Scott remembers that there might once have been an Easter Dog, too, and that he always stayed at home, but he says he’s lost track of him.7 The Easter Cat was always more adventurous.

  When Scott and I travel together, whoever remembers packs the Easter Cat; and when we travel individually, the Easter Cat is secretly hidden in the other person’s suitcase. When we arrive at our destination, the cat is placed ceremoniously next to the bed.8 The Easter Cat has been to Canada, Cambodia, Turkey, Lebanon, Mexico, Syria, Switzerland, Scotland, the US numerous times, and, most recently, to Barbados.

  When I lived in Scotland, my family always took its vacation during the fortnight in July known as the Glasgow Fair, when Glasgow pretty much emptied out for those two weeks and families went south in search of sunshine and sand. For years, my mum and dad pulled a caravan, and for a couple of holidays that I remember during that time, we headed to the Isle of Wight.

  I’m not sure what happened exactly to change this, but in the two years before we emigrated to the US, the caravan went by the wayside – literally – and our holiday shifted to an all-inclusive resort in Eastbourne. My guess? My mum finally figured out that caravanning essentially meant she was dragging her kitchen behind her. Plus, as Carole, Andrew and I got older, a holiday with five of us crushed in one room on wheels wore pretty thin.

  Despite having lots of good fun on those early caravanning vacations, I would no sooner pitch a tent or hitch a caravan for my holiday now than I would hunt for my own food. My idea of roughing it on a trip is not having Grey Goose available in the minibar.

  In my family, I’m not alone in this sentiment. Neither of my siblings has ended up being a very happy camper. And one year, when Scott and I took Clare and Turner on a trip out to California, Turner was so paranoid about staying in a motel that was ‘close to the ground’ that he made Scott and me shove the chest of drawers up against the door at night – so that no wild animals could break in.9

  When I was young, I did love to sleep outside, as did Carole and Andrew. My dad, whom I’ve always thought secretly wanted to be Bob the Builder, came home one Saturday with enough plywood for an ark, and, in a single long weekend, proceeded to build a hut onto the back of our garage in Mount Vernon for the three of us to use as a playhouse. He didn’t only make a sturdy wooden structure with a roof, windows and a door that would lock, but he also built two sets of bunk beds inside the hut, for us to use when we wanted to have sleepovers with our pals. Since I shared a bedroom with Andrew, whenever he and his friends were using our room, I would transform the playhouse into my theatre, where I would practise my Jimmy Osmond and Lena Zavaroni impressions.10

  In January 2009, when Scott and I were organizing our vacation for the year, I knew I wanted sunshine, soft sand, tropical drinks, scuba diving and a place that would force me to disconnect from the world of stage and television. Although Scott has travelled a lot and is more than capable of arranging all the planning involved in our holidays, I take a lot of pleasure in this part of the process.11 We decided we’d take our proper vacation in Barbados, one of the coral islands that make up the string of islands in the West Indies. Given the emotional and physical demands of the months before this trip – with the whole ‘Ballgate’ debacle, a month-plus of panto in Birmingham, and all the preparations and planning for Tonight’s the Night – I was ready for a break.

  The plane banked and swooped over the tiny island airport, and my first vision of my holiday was stretched out in front of me in a long strip of white sand and sea the colour of cobalt. When we arrived at the Crystal Cove Hotel, I was so excited to be there I’m sure I skipped to the check-in desk.

  ‘Good evening, sir, and welcome to Barbados. Your name?’

  ‘Mr Barrowman and –’

  ‘Ah, yes, sir,’ he interrupted. ‘The honeymoon suite for Mr Barrowman and Miss Gill.’

  And then he looked up – and he slowly registered two men standing in front of him. He said nothing for a beat. Then lots of furtive glances passed back and forth between him and the staff, and then some throat clearing, and then came the clerk’s profound apology.

  Scott and I thought it was really funny and for most of the rest of the vacation, I’d call him Miss Gill or even Mrs Barrowman every now and then, although the latter reminded me too much of my mum when I said it, so that didn’t stick.

  An embarrassed bellhop led Scott and I to our room: the honeymoon suite, where the bed was beautifully strewn with red rose petals, and towels had been decoratively shaped into two kissing swans and placed in the middle of the bed. The effect was very lovely, but not as lovely as the chilled bottle of champagne and the chocolates on the bedside table.

  Later, I called down to the restaurant to make arrangements for dinner. I gave the maître d’ my name, and he said, ‘Oh dear, Mr Barrowman and, um, Mr Gill. Oh yes, we’ve all heard about what happened. We’re so very sorry.’ Word about Miss Gill had travelled fast.

  We laughed when we saw the room, and, after taking a few pics of Miss Gill posing among the swans, we stepped outside and took in the beach views. I was glad we’d made the decision to head to the West Indies for this holiday. The tranquillity and the beauty of the setting was in stark contrast to our last holiday together in South Africa, where, at times, I’d felt like a prisoner inside the resort compound; we’d had to engage so many locks and alarms when we stepped outside that it had felt like Prison Break. And, during the night, those alarms kept going off because bands of youths would regularly try to break into the compound.

  I loved a lot of things about South Africa – its intriguing geography, the fabulous wineries, and the local people I met at markets and out in the countryside – but I found the hypocrisy that came across from a number of white South Africans we had dinner with, and who talked about their society as if apartheid no longer existed, to be very disturbing. I know we were tourists and operating in a limited social milieu, but still.

  In our entire two weeks there, neither Scott, Gav, Stu, or our friend, Ian ‘Shirley’ Temple, who joined us, ever saw a black South African in any service or retail position of power, and certainly not one that would put him or her in direct contact with a white customer or client. In every restaurant we ate in, the only black South Africans we saw were serving in the kitchen or cleaning up tables, and no one of any colour was eating with us or shopping with us as customers. Legal apartheid may be gone, but, in my opinion, financial and social apartheid has a chokehold on the country.

  One morning, when the cleaning crew came into our condo and we were heading out, I told them that we had lots of extra fruit that I didn’t want to go to waste and please to help themselves. The next day, their supervisor pulled me aside and chastised me quite severely, saying, ‘If you give them extra food, they’ll come to expect it.’

  Once our trip took us out of Cape Town itself and into the hills and the countryside, the racial divide didn’t seem as wide – or maybe the best that I can say is that the racial gulf wasn’t so visible. I loved wandering in the markets and bartering for souvenirs. Scott might tell you I was lousy at bartering, but that would only be because he doesn’t understand its nuances.

  I swerved the car off the road one morning when we were heading to Table Mountain, a shiny beaded basket tempting me from a stall at the side of the road. The woman wanted $30 for it.12 I paid her $20. Did I mention it was beaded? I could afford the $20 and she might otherwise have had to stand in the heat and the dust all day for another customer13 like me to come along.

  I also loved all the knick-knacks made from tin cans that the African children would sell. I bartered similarly for them. I bought a cool-looking Citroën car from a young boy made out of recycled Glade aerosol cans. It’s one of my favourite souvenirs, and sits on a side table in the dining room in Sully.

  Later that week, Gav, Stu, Scott and I decided to book a day trip to swim with the sharks.14 The boat and its small group of passengers zipped out int
o the ocean, where anyone who wanted to could be lowered into a heavy, steel protective cage and then dropped underwater, where he or she came face-to-face with Jaws.

  We all decided to sit up on the top deck of the boat and see how this whole thing played out, with a few other passengers going first, before we committed ourselves either way. I wanted to see how safe the ‘cage keeps the sharks out’ theory really was.

  It didn’t take long for us to realize that there was no way we were going down into the ocean in that cage. Not because the sharks came up really, really close, but because in order to get the sharks to come up really, really close, the tour operator and his buddy had to drop pounds of thick, raw chunks o’ chum on top of the cage. Everyone who came up after the experience was covered in bloody bits of fish flesh and looked like rejects from Brian De Palma’s Carrie. We all stayed put and we had much better views sitting on the boat deck, watching the sharks have a nibble at the other passengers. One poor woman freaked out so much when the chum hit her head and the sharks started to dive-bomb the cage that she had to be hauled out of the water, screaming hysterically. After an hour of this shark snacking, we were all hungry and bored. The movie was way more exciting.

  We spent a much less messy day when we took the cable car up to the flat top of Table Mountain, which frames the city of Cape Town. The trip was fairly uneventful and the views stunning – until we had to be evacuated back down the mountain at top speed when the winds changed dramatically, the temperatures dropped from balmy to bloody freezing in a matter of minutes, and a huge band of heavy clouds cut right through the middle of the mountain.

  The final leg of this holiday was our tour of the Stellenbosch wineries, where I fell in love with blended wines of every concoction: Cabernet Sauvignon and Merlot; and their Pinotage … to name two favourites. When we returned to London, Scott and I had wine packed in every nook and cranny of our luggage – but absolutely no more than our maximum customs allotment each.15