by Alan Carr
‘Oh no!’ he said.
‘What?’ I asked, pretending not to give a shit, suitably abrupt but with enough interest to glean the information from him.
Paul showed me his phone and there it was, an email from Kanye West.
Hey, are you guys in LA yet?
SHHIIIIIIIITTTTT! Oh my God, I didn’t think he was genuine. Why would I think he was genuine? We were on our way to the airport.
‘Shit, Paul, we’ve just snubbed Kanye West, one of the biggest stars in the world.’
When Paul had told me Kanye had put his email address in his phone I’d assumed he was just going through the motions, like you do – I’ll just pop you in my phone – yeah right – under AVOID! We were so gutted. The only positive was that it had at least got me and Paul talking. Well, that would be the last we’d hear from Kanye, I predicted. Wrongly, as it turned out.
Which takes us back to the beginning of the chapter – it wasn’t just Kanye coming on Chatty Man this time, remember, but his wife, Kim Kardashian, too. I was nervous, but a weird kind of nervous. When you’re dealing with an A-list pop singer or Hollywood star you sort of know how to deal with them – you get on to their latest film or album, rave about it and have a bit of a giggle; sometimes if the guest warrants it you have a look at some of their earlier stuff for a bit of sepia-tinged nostalgia – but with Kim, what could I do? ‘Let’s have a clip of you – in your sex tape.’ I can’t see her getting all watery-eyed about that (although the penis was quite big). With Kim it was different, she was from this new breed of superstars, these media manipulators extraordinaire whose change of hairstyle can knock a terrorist attack off the front pages. Everything with Kim is so overblown you can’t quite get your head round it, a bit like her bum.
She and Kanye turned up with hardly any entourage, in fact they were refreshingly low-key – no unicorns on their rider, nothing, they were a real pleasure. Not only was Kim really nice, she was unbelievably attractive; last time I’d seen eyes like that they were on Bambi. She was willing to have the piss taken out of her and she even asked whether I’d like to touch her arse – well, I had to, didn’t I? It was like being asked if I’d like to meet the Dalai Lama. I approached it tentatively, as if a dangerous dog had a child’s toy and wouldn’t let go of it. How can I describe her arse? It was surprisingly firm to the touch, not unlike a Babybel or an Edam. I didn’t probe any further, it was just a slight caress. I felt it would be wrong to finger, particularly when her slightly intense, hot-headed rapper of a husband was no more than ten feet away, sitting in the audience. If he’d got angry and stormed the stage the St John Ambulanceman laden down with barley sugars wouldn’t have stood a chance.
Kim was introduced to the other guests, who included Britain’s Got Talent winners Ashleigh and Pudsey the dog. Ashleigh started showing everyone Pudsey’s tricks, including his most famous one when he stood on his hind legs and walked. We all stood up and then Pudsey gravitated towards Kim’s arse, maybe mistaking it for a couple of juicy hams under a tablecloth – well, Kim grabbed my hips and we participated in a conga. It was fun and the audience just loved it. Little did I know that her people had stormed into the gallery demanding it be stopped. It wasn’t in Kim’s contract that she would be conga-ing with a dog – I mean, who has that written in their contract?
You usually find that these big stars are actually all right with most things and are game for a laugh; it’s the people around them terrified of losing their jobs that implement these guidelines. I remember when we had Justin Bieber on and I was trying to break the Guinness World Record for running in high heels – don’t ask – and we were strictly told that he would NOT wear high heels and we were NOT to ask him under any circumstances. The word stiletto did not pass my lips but once he saw me breaking records with my killer heels, totally ad hoc he said, ‘I want to try,’ and to the delight of the audience he wore them and beat me – the bastard – ha! And it was the same when Kim conga-ed with Pudsey: the audience roared, Kim enjoyed the reaction, I enjoyed watching it and even Pudsey’s lipstick came out, so it has to be said that EVERYONE had a good time.
In 2009, after Paul and I had been living together for a couple of years, we decided maybe it was time to try somewhere other than Holloway. Instead of heading up and over the hill to Crouch End we thought it would be exciting to try a whole new area. Paul had some friends in Notting Hill so we’d had drinks and dinner there and it had won me over. It was also round the corner from The Friday Night Project offices where me and Justin used to mooch about getting a sandwich, and we would always see a celebrity. I remember a car screeching dramatically to a halt and Kate Moss jumping out and hot-footing it into a shop – it all felt so glamorous. Justin and I pressed our faces to the shop glass to have a look but we were waved away by the shop assistant – I don’t know if it was because we were intruding on Ms Moss’s shopping or because I had smeared a bit of my egg sandwich on the glass but we shuffled off nevertheless. Notting Hill had a definite allure, posh yet edgy, architecturally conformist yet bohemian in attitude. It’s no wonder that it has been used as a backdrop for numerous films such as Alfie, Performance and, er, Notting Hill.
I really wanted to live there – it had been a dream of mine to live in a townhouse just like the ones in Mary Poppins. We started searching for our future home and after we cut through all the estate agent guff – compact (tiny), traditional (chintzy) interesting (dirty) – we finally found one on Ledbury Road. I was so excited – it was perfect. I loved the house the moment I saw it, what with its columned doorway, high ceilings and glorious sunshine flooding through the huge sash windows; big, chunky Victorian fireplaces only added to the appeal and the cherry on top of the cake was a roof terrace which was so high up that save for a couple of mean-looking pigeons it wasn’t overlooked by anyone – it would be just perfect for my favourite hobby, naked sunbathing. I’m jesting, I obviously don’t sunbathe naked – I strap my privates down and shove them in an empty Calippo tube.
I told the owner I would take it, we exchanged pleasantries, I complimented him on his beautiful abode and asked him what he did. Well, how was I to know it was cricket legend Mike Atherton! Yes, there had been a lot of cricket memorabilia, a smattering of bats and some trophies here and there, but it hadn’t clicked, and as you all know, sport isn’t my forte. Besides, I was house-hunting, not filming an episode of Through the Keyhole. If Mike Atherton’s heyday had been before 1988 then I bet I would have recognized him. When my dad was trying to wean me on to sport in the early days he bought me the ‘Question of Sport’ board game the Christmas of 1988 and my admittedly limited knowledge of sport came solely from the picture round. Evonne Goolagong and Geoff Capes were like old friends, I could spot them a mile off, but anyone after 1988 I would pass in the street without a second glance.
Obviously if you are shallow enough to choose to live somewhere because it’s been in some films and because you might get the chance to bump into supermodels in your local corner shop then the superficial sheen you’ve applied is inevitably going to start peeling off pretty sharpish. I had no regrets about leaving the Upper Holloway area although as we drove the removal van down the street I did see Dr Legg looking despondent, standing at the Crouch End clock tower in the rain outside a closed-down Woolies – it made me feel a bit sad and I wonder now whether it was a sign.
Things took a dramatic turn shortly after we’d actually moved in: we saw a woman get mugged across the road, and then the very next week as I walked home from the shops mid-afternoon, minding my own business, I came upon a woman performing a sex act in a driveway. I don’t know what was more alarming, seeing the act itself or the fact she tried to strike up a conversation with me mid-bob – ‘Isn’t it getting cold?’ Well, I think that’s what she said, but she had a cock in her mouth. Her mother obviously never told her not to talk with her mouth full. I winced, grabbed my pearls and carried on my way. I was beginning to see a seedy underside to this place I’d just moved into. I had tho
ught I’d be rubbing shoulders with Gwyneth Paltrow, not rubbing out one with sex workers, but then again didn’t that just serve me right for being a snob? Evidently Notting Hill was all fur coat and no knickers. I could either embrace the colourful street life or stand there tutting behind my nets. I decided to get out there and take it on the chin, a bit like the kneeling lady I’d had the pleasure of coming across just that afternoon.
I also found out pretty quickly that my wonderfully full sash windows on every floor not only let the sunshine in, they let prying eyes in too, and of course when you are new in the area, let alone – dare I say it – ‘a celebrity’, those eyes tend to pry a little bit deeper. I came down the stairs one morning to find someone shouting through the letterbox, ‘Celebrity Juice man, Celebrity Juice man – lend me a tenner.’ I turned on my slipper and decided to have a few more minutes in bed. If you’re trying to goad a celebrity, at least have the good grace to get the right celebrity.
Sometimes it wasn’t me that was the object of fascination; a good-looking female friend of Paul’s who happens to be a personal trainer was taking a shower in our bathroom when we suddenly heard a woman’s voice over the back fence shouting out to her son, ‘Stop it now, I know what you’re doing.’ I rushed to the window, saw the slats on the blind in the house opposite slam shut and a boy run up the stairs doing up his trousers being chased by his mother. Whether the mother would watch me showering, caressing my soapy body with a shower mitt, I never found out, but my heart sank. And let’s hope she didn’t own a periscope once the news of my naked rooftop sunbathing got out! But seriously, was it always going to be this weird?
Don’t get me wrong, there were fun times there too and for the two and a half years we lived there it was a party house. As my good friend Scott says, ‘It was the best free nightclub in West London.’ I once found my friend Julie behind the settee under a tea towel two days after a party ended, lying there like when cats go away to die. Due to its location our house was perfect for a late-night drop-in and seven days a week the doorbell would ring and drunken waifs and strays would pop round. We had everyone in that house, singers, fashion designers, actors, Spice Girls, you name it – people of all walks of life popped in for a bevvy, and subsequently my social life (but not my liver) had never looked so healthy. I remember at one party Julien Macdonald the fashion designer pulled down my curtains, cut holes in them and made ponchos – oh, how funny it was, mincing paralytic up and down my hallway like a catwalk model, showing off my new Julien Macdonald poncho, in sharp contrast to the next morning when I was weeping and wondering why there was so much light being let into my lounge. It was a lot of fun and I do smile when I look back on those days – as always, remembering the corks popping and the wine glugging rather than the head throbbing and the self-loathing.
It was in the upstairs bedroom that Adele stayed when she was at her lowest ebb. The album 21 had just taken the world by storm although you would never have thought it with how miserable she was. Although she had purged her feelings in 21 she was still really cut up about her ex and she was completely inconsolable. She turned up at the house all upset and I think what with the promotion of the album she was just exhausted, physically and mentally. We told her to go upstairs and get some rest in our spare room. We would gingerly go up the stairs and leave her a fresh cup of tea or a sandwich outside the door and then tiptoe back downstairs. She was quiet as a mouse, so quiet in fact we forgot she was up there, and it was only after a couple of days that I realized we hadn’t seen her or heard a peep out of her.
Paul said, ‘Adele is upstairs, we better go and see if she’s okay.’
‘I daren’t!’ I said. ‘What if she’s dead?’
We looked at each other. Just out of interest, if the world’s biggest star dies in your house, does your house price go up or down? I’m asking for a friend. I’m not going to lie, my brain went into overdrive. Would we get a plaque? Could we turn it into a museum? Would we have busloads of Adele fans tying wreaths to our knocker? Who knew, but all these questions flooded my head. First things first, we had to check whether she was dead after all. Paul and I walked up the two flights of stairs and there she was, sound asleep and thankfully alive (yay!), but you probably knew that already unless Adele’s record label has been doing a Weekend at Bernie’s for the past five years.
It was a weird time for me while she was staying with us, I was living this dual existence of complete uber-fan and yet friend too. She was hurting, and ironically ‘Someone Like You’, the song about that hurt, had become THE single of the year, played over and over on the radio – an instant classic, both sob-inducing and catchy in equal measure. I’d be happily wiping down a surface and suddenly break into ‘NEVER MIND, I’LL FIND …’ Then seeing Adele scowl at me from across the table, thinking I was taking the piss, I would quickly change my tune to the Eurythmics and take out the bins.
Although a lot of my Notting Hill neighbours decided to leave town that last weekend in August we always stayed for the Carnival – to have such an iconic festival literally on your doorstep and then choose to leave when it’s on doesn’t really make sense to me. So every year we would get our drinks in, invite our friends over and watch all the colourful chaos ensue from the window – we had a little balcony and we would go out and dance on it to the soca music, looking exactly like the people I would see when I used to go before I was on telly and say to my mates, ‘Look at those posh wankers.’
Our friend the interior designer Kelly Hoppen had gone away for the weekend and as she lived down the street she had asked us to keep an eye on her house. We told her that the house was fine but there was a man standing in her garden next to her taupe (what else?) pots holding a sign saying ‘URINALS 50p’. She believed it for a millisecond and then knowing what piss-taking bastards we were told us to piss off! But the reality was that people did literally take the piss in your gardens or worse. I’m all for let’s have a party but no one wants to find a human poo on their welcome mat. Once bored of their boggling, people would relieve themselves in my bush. Well, we started filling up buckets of water and drenching the dirty bastards before they’d even unzipped – I mean they were so off their heads they probably thought they’d been caught in a freak downpour but I was ready for them.
Once the noise had subsided and most of the party people had gone back to their homes I would take my dogs out for a well-earned walk. No lie, the street would be knee-deep in chicken – you could not see the tarmac for chicken wings and goujons. Well, my Bev, a greedy bitch at the best of times, nearly gave me whiplash as she dashed out of the gate. I swear I saw her look up to the sky and say ‘Thank you, God.’ She must have thought she’d died and gone to heaven. Usually when I walk her I will pull her away from such things but we were just wading through bones – it was like I was stuck in a chicken graveyard – and she was going mad, hoovering up chicken like a Dyson.
Like the Carnival, all good things sadly must come to an end and whereas many a night we’d had a riot inside the house, it was the night of the riots that occurred outside the house that made our minds up about leaving. It was in August and I was coming to the end of the warm-ups for my Spexy Beast arena tour that would scarily be happening that coming autumn and winter. I was doing my thing in the seaside town of Great Yarmouth, being blown off (and not in a good way) at the end of the seafront by a very blustery east wind. It was sad that the weather was so miserable because I had spent so many summer holidays on that east coast. It was the closest place to anywhere beachy if you lived somewhere as landlocked as Northampton and each summer we would drive the 140 miles or so. Nostalgia played her mischievous part as I drove there – of course it was glorious sunshine every day in Great Yarmouth, of course all I ever did was laugh and skip along the beach, of course I never trod in dog shit – so, I can’t lie, it was a bit of a disappointment as we drove round the coastal road only to be greeted by torrential rain and a very sad storm-battered theatre.
There had also been
a storm a-brewing back in London and like the rest of Britain I’d been watching on telly what had at first been a disgruntled community in Tottenham simmering with anger slowly metamorphose into a violent seething mob. This anger would overflow from Tottenham and eventually bleed into the neighbouring boroughs until it became a free for all. Something had been in the air for a couple of days now. I had come off stage buzzing, they had been such a great crowd, and got a phone call from Paul, who was back in London.
‘They’re outside,’ he whispered.
‘Oh, piss off,’ I said, wanting to get back to watching the news – assuming he was on the wind-up I dismissed it with ‘Don’t even joke.’
‘They’re outside,’ he said again and suddenly I could hear tension in his voice. ‘They’re going up and down the street.’
He held the phone to the window. I could hear shouting, smashes and very loud noises that I couldn’t identify – we would later find out they were cars being turned over and bins being shoved about and set on fire.
Shit! This was actually happening. They had broken into the restaurant across the road and smashed their way into my local pub, the Walmer Castle, and nicked the till.
I didn’t know what to do and neither did Paul. Would turning off the lights attract attention, would making the house look empty be a good thing or would that signal a house ripe for burgling. What to do? What to do?