by Alan Carr
Holidays are funny things – although they are meant to be relaxing they always start in the most stressful place known to man, the airport. I usually end up taking off the wrong item of clothing; sometimes you have to take your shoes off, sometimes your belt, sometimes your trousers – what? I thought that border control officer fancied me. And why, oh why, do I always bleep? Fuck knows why! There are people going through in suits of armour and not a peep, but when I step through you’d think I was a slave to intimate piercings. I just hate airports. I read an article in the paper about how 80 per cent of Brits head straight to the pub once they get through security – too fucking right, your nerves are shot, you’ve gone grey, your luggage has been interfered with – I know it’s only 5.30 a.m. but I’m having a gin and tonic.
Paul, however, is oblivious to this kind of stress; with him, such agitation does not even touch the sides. I found out on the way to Las Vegas that we act completely differently in airports. As soon as that little message on the screen says ‘Go To Gate’ I am tugging at my wheelie and heading in my Birkenstocks to that gate; no, not Paul, oh no, he will amble and meander, I swear just to piss me off. ‘I might just have one more browse around Sunglass Hut,’ he’ll mutter, shuffling off nonchalantly as if the ground under his feet is one long travelator for him to glide along, casting his eye over the shops like some Roman emperor. He won’t even break into a sweat when it goes red and starts flashing ominously ‘FINAL CALL’. It drives me insane – he hasn’t had a good holiday till his name gets a mention over the tannoy. He doesn’t realize that the change from ‘Go To Gate’ to ‘Final Call’ can be sneaky. One minute you’re enjoying an egg and cress sandwich from WH Smith, the next you’ve had to sling it like a grenade in blind panic and leg it to the boarding gate, barging women and children out of the way. Once, on a mini-break to Italy, it changed in the blink of an eye – I remember doing a double-take at the information screen, seeing red and legging it to the boarding gate, noticing out of the corner of my eye that I was being overtaken by a woman in cork wedges. On closer inspection I realized it was Jane McDonald pelting along at – I was about to write seventy miles an hour but with Jane’s nautical past on the The Cruise, which made her the star she is, I feel like I should put it in knots. She can’t half run, and I was in trainers. If Justin had been there egging us on it would have been just like a scene from The Games.
Although at first glance heading off on holiday for your third date sounds flamboyant, spending nearly twenty-four hours a day with a person over a week means you’ve pretty much got the measure of that person in double-quick time – and, look, I wanted this to work. I don’t want and quite frankly don’t have the time to spend six months finding out if someone’s a twat. I have come back from a holiday detesting the person who just seven days ago was my bezzie, so it’s a good test. At Heathrow, though, I was nervous: say we argued, say we hated each other? For once these questions took precedence over ‘Did I pack my passport?’ (despite the fact I’d been patting myself down at two-minute intervals since I left the house). A few fans also holidaying in the City of Sin came over to the gate and asked for selfies or an autograph. An older man queueing behind us after the fans had left said:
‘Who are you?’
‘I’m Alan,’ I replied.
‘What do you do?’ he persisted accusatively.
‘He does porn,’ interjected Paul, annoyed with his tone.
‘Well, I haven’t seen him in anything,’ came the old man’s reply.
Well, we were in bits and I knew then, in a weird way, that it would work out between us – does that make sense?
Needless to say, we hit it off, we had a great time. No arguments – well one, when he felt he needed to check if he had the best ringtone on his mobile phone and started sampling them all whilst I was getting to a really juicy bit in my Agatha Christie. The last time I’d heard such persistent telephone ringing was when I worked in the call centre – I had a flashback and told him in no uncertain terms that soon his phone would be going into a tunnel, and I weren’t talking about the Blackwall if you catch my drift.
Our holiday in Vegas rolled on and our romance was like the weather: sunny and bright with no chance of rain. It was becoming evident that we were falling for one another and, scary as it was, it was worryingly clear that there would soon be a time when we would have to embark on the pilgrimage to Sunderland and Northampton to meet the parents. This thought actually made me feel nauseous. I had never ever introduced any potential partners to my mum and dad before, basically because I’d never had any I wanted to shout about, but I was so loved up now that a bit of me didn’t care – if they threw me out on the streets and told me never to darken their door again, so what? I was in love, plus there’s something quite showbizzy about having estranged parents, isn’t there? You always see them in the papers looking forlorn in their sitting room, fingering a photo album and telling embarrassing family secrets about how their showbiz offspring don’t talk to them any more – ‘I don’t know why.’ Because you keep selling embarrassing family secrets to a newspaper! Have a word! Sort it out!
Well, the great day finally came and I invited my mum down to Holloway. I would introduce her first. I told Paul to be on his best behaviour – no outlandish clothes, no naughty anecdotes – ‘and if you could please just for today be the personification of a perfect gentleman then we can all have an easy ride’. Me and mum were anxiously waiting in the lounge as Paul came in, all sweetness and light, a bouquet of flowers in one hand and a little gift bag in the other. Oh good, he’s on the charm offensive, I told myself. My mum, who to be fair was probably as nervous as me, opened the bag as Paul chirped, ‘Sexy and patriotic – perfect for you, Chris’ – it was a Union Jack thong, one of the cheap (is there any other kind?) synthetic ones that you find on the market next to Kevin Kline pants and Fred Baker T-shirts. Thankfully my mum has a sense of humour so we all laughed and once I’d defused the situation with a bottle of white wine we all had a good time. My mum was naturally charmed by Paul and it wasn’t long before she was modelling the thong – that’s a joke, it went in the bin, and I only put that in because I know my mum will be reading this.
Next, it was time to introduce him to my dad. I had really worked this one up in my head. Stupid things, pointless things came into the equation: Paul’s from Sunderland and my dad’s from Newcastle and I was worried they might start having a fight because one’s a Mackam and one’s a Geordie. I had images of them brawling in the living room, my dad being thrown on the coffee table, Paul hitting my dad over the head with a vase, my mum just standing there in a Union Jack thong – okay, enough with the thong now, Alan. This didn’t actually happen, of course it didn’t – nothing like this happened because not everyone is insane and I have an overactive imagination when it comes to conjuring up unlikely scenarios.
We travelled up the M1 to Northampton and I had taken the trouble of booking a lovely restaurant just outside the town. When we arrived at the house everyone politely introduced themselves to each other. Paul was wearing his usual shorts, green socks and Crocs combo. Sometimes he can look so nice and handsome but other times he looks like Timmy Mallett. I could see my mum’s face darken as she ran her eyes up and down Paul’s garish outfit. Diplomatically, she said, ‘The restaurant’s quite nice, Paul, maybe you should go and change, put a nice shirt on or some trousers – Alan’s still got some clothes upstairs.’ Paul disappeared upstairs and I chatted to my dad as usual about what roads I’d taken to get up here, traffic, flyovers, A-roads, you get the gist. Then we hear, ‘What about this, Christine?’ We look up and see Paul wearing my mum’s blouse and denim skirt, holding her handbag. My brand-new boyfriend is standing in front of my father wearing his wife’s clothes – this is NOT how I envisaged their first meeting. All of a sudden that fight in the living room would have been an improvement. He seemed to be standing at the top of the stairs for ages – my dad was now shaking his head like the Churchill dog, ‘No, no no.’ B
ut then everyone erupted into laughter and praise the Lord for that.
Do you know what, in a really perverse way it was the best thing that could have happened because my Paul is a character and he does things like that – my toes have curled over so many times in so many social situations that I’ve been left with a hoof. I’m immune to it now. The time he came out of the plane toilet wrapped head to toe in toilet paper like a mummy? Water off a duck’s back. Meeting me at the airport, naked with just a mac on and an Afro wig? Not bothered. The list is endless but there’s not a lot he can do to embarrass me – and believe me, he keeps on coming up with new and exciting ways. Only recently I had to endure this when Paul had some discomfort downstairs – no, not down the front but round the back. You get the gist. With me not being a proctologist I didn’t have a clue what it was – it looked like a lump. I asked him whether he wanted me to book him an appointment and did my usual partner-trying-to-give-a-shit spiel: ‘You should get it checked, darling’ – I threw in a ‘darling’ for good measure because I could see he was worried about it. He said he would see what happened and give it a few more days. Well, I never heard anything more from him and it was only when I was chopping up some baby beets for a salad that I remembered his embarrassing ailment.
‘Oh, how’s your lump? Are you still in pain?’
‘It’s fine,’ came the reply, ‘it’s just a boil – nothing serious. They’re quite common.’
I laughed. ‘Oh, are you a doctor now, in your spare time?’ I said as I carried on chopping.
‘No, Dr Christian said.’
I stopped chopping. ‘What? How does he know?’
‘I sent him a photo.’
‘You sent Dr Christian a photo of your anus?’
‘Yeah.’
He had taken the number off my phone and taken a photo of his bum boil – God knows how, he hasn’t got the longest of arms, but anyway – and then sent it to Dr Christian.
I was horrified – poor old Dr Christian Jesson, already forced to see some of THE most embarrassing bodies in his professional life and now having to endure them while he’s having his tea.
Paul is good for me, and although we are very alike in many ways, he is pragmatic, while I am completely impractical; he’s a doer, while I’m a dreamer; he does while I just talk about it. He’s just a great sorter-outerer. He has cupboards of stuff, just stuff, for any eventuality. In one of our early meals together my dental bridge became dislodged and fell out mid-curry. I looked down – my bhuna was smiling at me. Oh, fantastic! I thought. It’s Saturday night, the dentist is going to be shut tomorrow, so I guess I’m just going to have to spend Sunday in a little bit of pain, drinking soup all bloody day. But this was before I knew about Paul and his cabinet of wonders. Lo and behold, he delves inside the cabinet and pulls out some dental paste to apply to bridges; this stuff is professional, you can’t just get it in Superdrug, it has to come from a dentist. How the hell he had got hold of it I did not know, but I didn’t care anyway – I just wanted my smile back. He pulled out some surgical gloves (always prepared) and pestle and mortar from his cabinet and started mixing up some dental paste for my bridge. Once he’d got the right consistency he started applying it like he’d been a dentist for years. Well, knock me down with a feather – it worked and it stuck and I am wearing that very bridge now as I write this. Spices, sanitary towels, high-vis jackets, visas – you name it, he has it in that cabinet. I never see him buy the stuff and I never pry in there because I don’t want to spoil the magic – I know sadly one day I’ll ask for something and it won’t be there but until then I will keep on marvelling at his amazing cupboard of curiosities.
Don’t get me wrong, we have our arguments and fights like all couples and his OCD can be infuriating. We had a row just the other day about a wonky National Trust car sticker. I had just slapped it to the windscreen willy-nilly so he had to pull over and, as if performing keyhole surgery, squinting, placed it exactly two inches above the tax disc – yes, because we wouldn’t want the car park attendant at a stately home to start slagging us off would we?! Plus, alcohol, once the fossil fuel that spurred us on at parties, was in fact spoiling the parties and more often than not we would end up arguing and on some occasions fighting. It was damaging our relationship and we didn’t even know it; worse still, it was affecting our health. The party really needed to stop but could we stop it?
There aren’t many streets in London I can travel down where I don’t get a gentle nudge from Nostalgia. Photo shoots, parties, outside broadcasts and sketches have taken place all over the capital and as these memories filter slowly back into the foreground I am left (sometimes) with a smile on my face. Many of them took place in studios but others were in rather more impressive venues. Walking along the South Bank one day as I passed the London Aquarium, Nostalgia didn’t so much give me a gentle nudge but more of a Chinese burn, for it was here that we had done some filming with David Hasselhoff.
It was our first day of meeting him and the team had had the great idea of us spending time with David at one of London’s top tourist attractions – the London Aquarium. I foolishly thought that the water in the aquarium would be like a hot tub. There were tropical fish in there, so why wouldn’t the water be warm, clear and tropical? I genuinely thought I would be breast-stroking in my own little puddle of Seychelles, slap-bang in the middle of London. I was wrong, so wrong. Once I’d decanted my body fat into the waiting wetsuit – I looked like a hot-water bottle that needed to be winded – we met the Hoff, a really nice guy, upbeat and one of those people you couldn’t help liking. We went on to the side of the water and instantly the stench of fish and salt hit me – this wasn’t the Maldives, this was Billingsgate Fish Market! The attendant at the aquarium asked if I had brought contact lenses – I hadn’t, so I removed my glasses and popped on the goggles. Then, basically blind, I waded gingerly into the water, foolishly thinking, look, if anything happens we’ve got the Hoff. He is a hero in every sense of the word. He played a lifeguard on telly for God knows how many years, he single-handedly brought down the Berlin Wall – we are in such good hands.
The water was surprisingly freezing. I thought, these are tropical fish, aren’t they supposed to love warmer climes? Isn’t that why you never see a swordfish in a balaclava? Even through the wetsuit I could feel the waters swirling around my nether regions. I’ve never been a comfortable swimmer but you cannot believe how unnerving it is to see fish, some huge, whizzing past your face. I couldn’t tell you what they were as I didn’t have my glasses on but the shadows of bigger fish would pass over my face eerily and each time I let out a feeble yelp my mouth would become filled with brine. Basically, I wasn’t having a great time, and when I heard a West Country scream and saw wild flailing I knew I wasn’t the only one. Even with my myopia I could see that Justin was in trouble. As I doggy-paddled over to assist him, I could not believe my goggled eyes – a stingray had got caught in his hair.
‘Get it out, get it out,’ he screamed. How was I supposed to ‘get it out’?! I’d never manhandled a stingray before – I’d opened a tin of tuna, but never this. I said, ‘Come here, come here,’ making that sort of puss puss puss noise you make to try and coax a stray cat off a fence. Of course, if this had been one of David’s television programmes he would have swum over, probably in slow motion, ripped the stingray out of Justin’s hair, scooped us both out of the water and saved us from the evil predator fish and an early grave, but sadly, David did not come to the rescue. In fact he didn’t even notice, he was too busy doing somersaults and goofing about for a host of Japanese tourists who were peeking through one of the portholes, clicking their cameras and waving, ecstatic that they had caught David Hasselhoff in captivity. The stingray eventually loosened its grip on Justin, as I had on life itself, and we exited the aquarium on all fours like two flatfish that had been given an evolutionary kick up the arse and turned into newts – we crawled out, relieved and distraught all in one.
David was more use
in the studio, really game for a laugh and ready to take the piss out of himself at a moment’s notice. He loved incorporating a sentence with his nickname the Hoff – he was always popping Hoff here and nipping Hoff there. He told us straight-faced that he was bringing out a book of photos from his illustrious career, a Hoffie-table book. Please. However, there was one bone of contention on the day – we did a sketch and the premise was that Justin loved David Hasselhoff but the love was unrequited because David didn’t even notice Justin because he was so in love with me – d’you get it? Good – eh? We would do a pastiche of all the greatest love scenes from rom-coms, quick little comedy snippets hopefully with a high gag rate. The first one was Dirty Dancing, where Jennifer Grey is held aloft in the swimming pool by Patrick Swayze. I come into the studio Jennifer-Greyed up to the max (I was the woman – of course) and what was I greeted with?
‘Whoa, whoa – I can’t lift THAT!’ David pointed. ‘C’mon, guys, c’mon, I’ve got a bad back here. No, no, no!’ He mimed lifting me up, pulling a face. All right, all right, I got it. Well, in television you don’t have bullying in the workplace so I took myself off the studio floor and ran back to the dressing room where I broke down in tears and ate a whole box of Celebrations – of course I didn’t! I took it on the chin. Or chins, if you’re looking through David Hasselhoff’s eyes.
Then we moved on to the Lady and the Tramp scene where I had to share a bowl of spaghetti with the Hoff – we were each to take the end of the same piece of spaghetti and slowly we would chew along, culminating in a kiss. I’m sure you have seen it, it’s classic Disney. I come round the corner all lady-ed up again and then I hear it.