by Alan Carr
Once back from Blackpool we had a change at Radio 2 – we had to lose Emma Forbes, which was a shame, and she was eventually replaced by Melanie Sykes. Like with Justin before, there is always that slight worry about whether or not you are going to get on with your on-air partner – is that chemistry going to materialize there and then, creating entertainment gold? You meet up with potential co-presenters usually for a spot of lunch or a cup of tea at the production company’s office in full gaze of the bosses and producers who are scrutinizing you, a bit like zoologists do with pandas on a mating exercise. Well, what can I say, we not only mated, we multiple-orgasmed together. She was great. If you’ve ever heard the show you will know that we are both down to earth and turned out to have the same sense of humour – double entendres, single entendres, we would be in bits. After a rather unsuccessful juice diet I once pronounced live on air that ‘I was just gagging for something solid in my mouth’; this was enough to propel Mel into a fit of uncontrollable giggles, while I realized how rude it sounded and gesticulated wildly to the producer to put a bloody song on pretty bloody quickly before we got taken off the air by Ofcom. It was strange to think that I had made my first ever TV appearance with Melanie on Des and Mel on ITV years ago. She had seen how nervous I was and made me feel so welcome and I will always be grateful to her for that. So although ‘Alan and Mel’ did feel a bit weird, it also felt right.
Working with a partner evens the workload – no, scrap that, working with a GOOD partner evens the workload, it gives you companionship and a shared experience. It’s not for nothing that people equate good conversation with a game of tennis – with a good partner you always get the ball back. When you’re on the radio by yourself it can be like a really hard game of Swingball. I did a Radio 2 Christmas show single-handedly a few years before and can I just say I have so much respect for those radio DJs who do their shows alone, especially the ones on the night shift. It is so difficult to just talk, to let the words fall out of your mouth and disappear into the ether hoping that some of them will make a connection with a listener. I hated doing it by myself. Everyone goes, ‘Oh, Alan, you’re so chatty, you can talk to anyone you can,’ but they should have heard that Christmas special. ‘Yes, it’s Alan Carr and you’re listening to my Christmas Day Radio 2 special. How are you doing?’ No reply – obvs (to be fair, if I’d had a reply that would have been schizophrenia and that would have been worrying). Wishing I’d got an imaginary friend to talk to, I started flailing; seeing my ashen face, the quick-thinking producer thankfully popped on Mariah’s ‘All I Want for Christmas is You’.
I blundered through what was essentially a two-hour monologue, saying anything that came into my head, and I mean anything, anything to kill the dead air. I was pleading with the producer not only to keep cramming the airways with Christmas songs but to pop on the twelve-inch versions, anything so I didn’t have to talk. Finally the two hours came to an end and I had survived – just. I had talked about everything; every minute detail of my life had been revealed at length. The only thing I hadn’t revealed was my PIN number, I think, although there had been that awkward link before ‘Rudolf the Red-nosed Reindeer’ … anyway, like a lonely precursor to Twitter, I had an opinion on everything and didn’t hold back. As I left, the sound engineer said to me he’d never heard Myra Hindley mentioned in a Christmas broadcast before; I got my coat.
So to share the studio with Melanie was a godsend and a real treat, and although our shift was 6 to 8.00 p.m. on Saturday evenings, what we lost in social life we more than made up for in giggles and friendship. I think the reason it worked was our attitude and honesty. Unlike other partnerships on radio, we weren’t always ‘up’ and effervescent, we would often tell the listeners what we were going through and how we felt; if we were in a bad mood, hungover or quite simply didn’t want to be there we didn’t hide it. It was always inclusive, it was never snide, and the ‘banter’ (God, I hate that word) I hope never felt forced. We often got criticized for giggling but in our defence it was genuine giggling – we did get along and enjoy each other’s company, and besides, that was the Radio 2 remit: a fun, upbeat, humorous show, crammed with ABBA and other disco faves that people would listen to as they got ready to go out clubbing. That was the idea, though in reality it was listened to by people like myself, sitting at home, uncorking a bottle of red, wearing a slanket, waiting for the cottage pie to cook. Hailing a cab and getting off their heads in some club was probably the last thing on their mind.
As always, it’s the regular listeners who make the show. Reoccurring themes kept popping up, the listeners kept us informed about what they were up to, and it felt like one big family. Me and Mel seriously had a ball and on the odd occasion we would go out afterwards for a drink, the giggles would continue. One morning I remember waking up with a sore head and seeing Melanie’s moon boots at the end of the bed (it was that winter when London finally got snow). I thought, oh no, I haven’t – have I? I was so relieved to find out that the lump under the covers next to me was my red setter Bev and not Ms Sykes. She was asleep in my spare room. Sometimes we didn’t wait until the show finished to have a drink. There was one evening when – for some unknown reason –Radio 2 had decided to plop the BBC New Comedy Awards nominations slap bang in the middle of our show, so we had to vacate the studio from 7 to 8.00 p.m. and return to the studio at 8.00 to continue our last hour and announce the winner of the New Comedian of the Year. Well, most professional broadcasters would relax for an hour and go through the script, prepare various talking points and potential music choices – oh no, not us, we went across the road to a taverna for a bite to eat and a carafe of wine. Why does carafe sound so much posher than a bottle? Whatever receptacle you drink it from, you’re still going to get pissed. We were fine and dandy in the tavern, necking our wine and chowing down on our calamari and meatballs, it was only when the cold air hit me that I turned into Oliver Reed on After Dark – I couldn’t speak properly and I’d acquired a limp. This could only mean one thing: someone had spiked my calamari. It was a nightmare, it would have been better if me and Mel had just come clean and said that we were tiddly; it’s when you try to hide your drunkenness that you start acting weird, your speech gets slower and you over-enunciate everything in a valiant attempt to show everyone that you are so sober you can pronounce everything amazingly. My ears were deceiving me though, I was slurring, and in my panic to appear sober had gone blind and could not even pronounce the name of the winner of the BBC New Comedian of the Year.
I must apologize to the winner, it was unbelievably unprofessional and I wish you all the best – you deserved better that day. If it’s any consolation, I won the BBC New Comedian of the Year in 2001 and look at me – just think, in fourteen years’ time you too could be on the radio, pissing on some other young comedian’s dreams, forgetting their name and drowning out their finest hour with slurred speech and drunken waffle.
Amazingly, we didn’t get fired and our show carried on; they still gave us things to do and unbelievably trusted us. One show we had to go to live was the Last Night of the Proms where Dame Kiri Te Kanawa was performing in London’s Hyde Park. I was to introduce her over the tannoy to thousands of her fans who were waiting for the wonderful dame to grace the stage. Even though we had been doing the radio show for a year by this point, I was so nervous – it was the thought of talking to such an elitist crowd in such a public place. When the producer pointed at me to start the introduction I could actually hear the hubbub of the Hyde Park crowd in my headphones. I took a big gulp of air. ‘Now, ladies and gentlemen, it’s the Last Night of the Proms, please welcome to the stage Dame Kiri Teknackerwacker.’ What? Shit! Teknackerwhacker? Oh no, no, no, no! Stop, stop! Block, block! Everyone’s going to think I’m a moron. Maybe I was, after that display, maybe I was. I was told later, thank God, that due to a few minutes delay they had shaved off my Dame Kiri Teknackerwacker and had just left it as ‘Now, ladies and gentlemen, it’s the Last Night of the Proms.’ I don
’t know if that’s true or not, I daren’t listen to it again. Hopefully, she didn’t hear about it.
I could kick myself sometimes. It’s not the ‘live’ thing that bothers me – I do stand-up comedy most nights – it’s the ‘Live – NOW!!!!’ thing that freaks me out. I remember I was the guest announcer on Ant & Dec’s Saturday Night Takeaway a few years back and I swear I nearly fainted in terror, what with my legs shaking and the ringing in my ears, and all I had to say then was ‘It’s Ant and Dec.’ I can go on stage and do stand-up for two hours at a time, no problem, but as I said, it’s the ‘Live – NOW’ scenario which ups the ante to unbearable levels.
Doing radio has in recent years been spoilt by the totally unnecessary addition of webcams to the studio. I believe that radio is aural and should remain aural. What is this fascination with watching every going-on, every sip of tea, every shrug, in my opinion the drab nuts and bolts of making a radio broadcast? To me the joy of radio is to join the dots with your imagination, to conjure up your own scenarios. I love doing Grimmy’s breakfast show, and his predecessor Chris Moyles’s, but those webcams take no prisoners, especially when your call time is 6.30 a.m. The great thing about radio is not giving a monkey’s fashion-wise, turning up in your trackie bs and Uggs – now, thanks to the all-seeing eye, you end up getting called out like it’s Fashion Police. On Radio 2 we had a webcam installed and for the whole two years Mel and I could not get our heads round the idea that we were being watched – all the time. On one occasion Mel had come in, sat down and said, ‘What do you think of my new bra?’ lifting her top up triumphantly.
‘Mel!’ I screamed, pointing at the webcam. With a squeal, she yanked her top down – yes, it was a lovely bra but this wasn’t the time or the place. Listeners would phone in to the show and on one occasion the caller had gone on for far too long and we needed to play some music pronto; I drew my finger across my throat to the producer indicating that the call should end soon and it bloody frightened the life out of me when the caller said, ‘I saw that!’ Damn you, webcam!
I loved doing the radio show but eventually I had to admit that I had taken on too much, as I always do. I found that having to sacrifice every Saturday was a bridge too far, all work and no play and all that. I was missing out on so many things, and I don’t care what you say, everything important happens on a Saturday: birthdays, weddings, christenings, you name it. My friends would ring up, trying to organize a cheeky little weekend city break, and before they’d even finished ‘Barcelo—’ I’d interrupt with ‘NO! I’m working.’ Also, my parents are getting older now and I don’t want to be skyping them at their birthday parties because I’m too busy working – again, there is more to life than work, right?
I even had to shoehorn my brother’s stag do around the radio show – now that was a weird day. Being a good brother, it was my job to organize his stag do and as most of his mates lived in Northampton and rarely came down to London I thought I’d give them the whole London experience: open-top bus around London, beers on the bus, see all the sights, big old boozy lunch in a London pub, a whizz round the London Eye, panoramic photos of London, bish bash bop. I would then do my two-hour radio show, and join them afterwards for a slap-up dinner followed by a nightclub, boom, day complete, everyone has fun, I’m the best brother in the world.
I met them all at their Holiday Inn, and even though it was only midday I could tell they were already pissed. Nevertheless, they all piled on to the open-top double-decker, me responsibly counting everyone on like I was a supply teacher on a school trip. The chanting started as soon as the bus set off; every turn of the bus warranted a manly roar and every traffic light stop got a ‘BOO!’ Although they were told specifically not to bring alcohol on to the bus they had somehow smuggled it on and they would swig it when I wasn’t looking – it seemed I had taken on the role of humourless, law-abiding team leader. The more they drank, the rowdier they became. We made our way through Notting Hill, stopping for a drink (or three) at the Cock and Bottle (I had water, thank you very much), then we went up through Bayswater, along Hyde Park and past Buckingham Palace (which got a big cheer – who knew all my brother’s friends were such huge royalists?). It was only when we approached Big Ben and Parliament Square that things started to get really vocal and, dare I say it, political. Protestors have always chosen to camp on Parliament Square due to its proximity to the Houses of Parliament and the chance to flex their democratic muscles in full view of the MPs and, with any luck, the prime minister. Well, once the busload clocked the tents and the white people with dreadlocks, their hessian clothes, sandals and dogs on strings, a chorus of ‘have a wash, have a wash, have a wash’ was suddenly struck up. I hit the floor quicker than Madonna at the Brits. The protestors must have shouted something back because one of the lads on the bus replied, ‘Yeah, you! You soap-dodging twat.’ I crawled along the bus floor, trying to get my brother’s attention, yanking the hem of his trouser leg violently: ‘You have to stop this – I’m on the telly.’
The traffic is always shite near Parliament Square so we had to spend an excruciating fifteen minutes in a traffic jam as the protestors and my brother’s friends exchanged insults, the protestors a few minutes ago so angry about the Middle East, now so angry about a stag do from Northampton. Thankfully, we left the world of politics behind as we crossed Westminster Bridge, and we were all set to go on the London Eye. It was a confined glass box that rotated on a giant axle so the chance for mayhem or confrontation was surely limited. I looked at my watch – it was approaching 2.30 p.m. My radio show was on at 6.00 p.m. and I liked to get there for 5.30 at the latest to prepare with Mel what we were going to talk about, the music we were going to play and have a good old gossip before we went on air.
So we had three hours to go round the London Eye, that was more than enough time, easy-peasy. We could have thrown in a matinee performance of Cats to boot and still had oodles of time, plus I’d already bought the tickets so no annoying waiting at the box office for us, oh no – when big brother Al sorts out a stag do, it’s queue-jump tickets all the way, baby!!
The double-decker pulled over once we got to the South Bank, we all disembarked and the bus driver probably took some tranquillizers and wondered why he hadn’t taken the day off. We headed straight to the London Eye. With one eye on the clock, I was relieved to see that the queue wasn’t too big, and before long we were tantalizingly close to the turnstile where we would board our pod. As you can imagine, security at the London Eye is paramount what with it being such an obvious landmark and as we were queuing I was aware of a smattering of security guards keeping a watchful eye on the proceedings. Just as we were about to step into our pod, a security guard spotted one of the lad’s bags.
‘What have you got in the bag there?’
‘A bomb,’ came the reply.
As me and all my brother’s friends were yanked out of the queue and walked to a holding pen by two security guards, I couldn’t help thinking how easy my life would have been if I’d been an only child. After forty-five minutes in the pen persuading the security guards that we weren’t from Islamic State but were in fact from Northampton, Rose of the Shires, they let us back in the queue. Time was seeping away due to the detention, but as long as the pod didn’t break down I could still make it.
By the time we eventually got into our pod, the mood in the group had moved from tipsy rowdiness through to hysteria and confrontation, culminating now in lethargy and an urgent need to use the loo. As the pod door closed and we started our ascent, one of the lads said, ‘Is there a toilet on here?’ Unbelievable! What do you fucking think? I thought, looking around at the pod – unless that seat is a commode, then no, I’m afraid there is no toilet on here. The boys, now desperate for a wee – thank God it was only a wee – started relieving themselves in some paper cups they had found on the floor. May I remind you all that the pods on the London Eye are completely see-through – I could see tourists in other pods pointing and taking photos. I didn’t
just want the ground to open up and swallow me, I wanted the pod to snap off, plummet into the Thames and get washed away to somewhere, anywhere, away from here.