May I Have Your Attention Please?

by James Corden

  John Keats didn’t just talk about comedy, though. Every lesson he brought something new and even more ground-breaking to the party. For example, he took a scene from Guys and Dolls and made us do it as Nazis. You can only imagine how it was: Sky Masterson and Nicely-Nicely Johnson doing their scenes in stilted German accents. It was definitely different.

  I loved that first term. I would look forward to the bus journey to college. I was learning so much and I was surrounded by so many talented people. Jack and Josh, for example: two brilliant, creative, original performers. I’ve got no clue why they aren’t up there doing it now. I mean, some of the stuff I saw them do was just incredible. I suppose that was the point: everyone who was doing it really wanted to be there. I’d come from Drama classes at school where people were doing it because it was an easy GCSE, and now I was with a group of people who wanted to do nothing else. It was really magical – until John left.

  Around about Easter of that first year, his theatre company just took off. We came back from the holidays and he wasn’t there. It was a major blow and it wasn’t the only one: Julian, another really good teacher, had gone off to study in Russia, and all of a sudden we’d gone from these dynamic young, free-thinking individuals to a guy who reminded me of Mr Hopkins. Stewart was his name and I wish I could remember his surname because as far as I was concerned, he might just be the worst teacher known to man. All we ever seemed to do was sit and read through plays, with him standing at the front giving us choice morsels like ‘The first rule of theatre is you don’t turn your back on the audience.’

  We went from mind-blowing to mind-numbing in a heartbeat. The new classes were painful by comparison. I remember once Julian made us do a whole lesson in the boys’ toilets. The girls got all grossed out because they’d never seen how boys pee while standing at a single urinal. It was smelly, it was dirty, it was totally gross, but his point was that theatre is everywhere. He didn’t have us in there for a laugh; he was making us aware that you don’t need a stage or an interval or red velvet seats to create theatre. You can do it anywhere; you can see it anywhere. Now, with Stewart, we barely got out of our chairs.

  October to Easter had been the best few months of study I’d ever experienced, so I felt doubly angry and let down when it started to go wrong. It affected me pretty badly and, to my shame, I have to admit I stopped going to college altogether.

  I was living at home with Mum and Dad still, but they would be up and out to work before me. Mum was a social worker and Dad was either away working or at the Air Force base. Sometimes at college you wouldn’t have to be in until ten, and being home before anyone else wasn’t unusual. So when Mum and Dad left for work, I’d say goodbye, pretending to get my stuff ready, and then not bother going in. College would go on without me. I’d stay at home and just laze around the house doing absolutely nothing at all.

  This went on for about three weeks before it occurred to me that I probably ought to go back in. Whatever point I was making by staying away – if that’s even what I was doing – had been made, and so I knew I had to face the music. I was in the main corridor looking at the notice board for where my classes were when Stewart came up to me. He looked a little quizzical and then he asked me what I was doing there.

  For a moment I just stared at him. ‘What do you mean?’ I said. ‘I’ve got lessons. Your lesson actually.’

  Arms folded, he shook his head. ‘No you don’t. You’re not coming to my lesson. You can forget it.’

  The corridor was busy and the way the two of us were standing – Stewart with his arms folded across his chest, me more on the defensive – was gathering a little attention.

  ‘What do you mean?’ I asked him.

  ‘What I said. You’ve not been here for three and a half weeks. No one called. Your parents didn’t write in with any kind of explanation. You just haven’t been here. So you’re not coming back to my lesson. We’re working on a show now and you’re not part of it.’

  He was so chillingly matter-of-fact about it that I just went cold. I stood there staring at him. Oh my God, I thought. Oh my God. What have I done?

  But he wasn’t finished. ‘As far as I’m concerned, you’re off the course. You’d better go and see the head of year. I’m sure she wants to talk to you.’

  He walked off, leaving me staring at his back and wracking my brains as to what the hell I was going to do. What would I tell my dad, who’d fought for my place on the course? Or my mum, who’d always defended me when others had lost faith? I was all over the shop, so I did exactly as he told me and went straight to the head of year’s office. I waited outside with my head against the wall, trying to think of something I could say that would stop her throwing me off the course altogether.

  She came out to fetch me: Karen, the woman whom Dad had persuaded to let me on the course. She was cold and stern, more so even than Stewart.

  ‘Where have you been for the last three and a half weeks?’ she demanded.

  I didn’t know what to say. For a long moment I just looked at her. And then it came to me – I opened my mouth and out it came, one massive, horrible lie.

  ‘I’ve had family problems.’

  Up until this point she had been standing over me and now she sat down. ‘What?’ she said. ‘What do you mean?’

  I’d dug the hole and now I had to fill it: ‘My parents are getting divorced.’

  For a moment she didn’t say anything, but I noticed her expression starting to soften a little and I latched on to it, pushing the lie further and further.

  ‘It’s been going on for some time now,’ I said, ‘arguments, fights in the house. It’s been a nightmare.’ I was gesturing, my eyes glassy and my voice getting smaller. ‘I suppose it blew up over Easter, but it’s been going on a lot longer than that. With everything that’s been happening, I just couldn’t concentrate on my coursework. I’ve been trying to take care of my sisters. I … I … I …’ And with that I burst into tears. I’ve put on some good performances in my life, and that was probably one of the best; it’s definitely the one of which I’m least proud.

  ‘All right, James,’ she said more gently. ‘I’m sorry. I had no idea.’

  ‘I know I should have come in,’ I went on. ‘Three and a half weeks is a long time. I know I should’ve called or written to explain or something, but—’

  ‘It’s all right,’ she said, patting my hand. ‘It’s OK. I understand. Come with me to class and I’ll explain it to Stewart.’

  So we trooped down the corridor to his class and he had to listen while Karen repeated my lies. There was nothing he could do or say.

  That was it. I was back. I’d survived after spouting a bunch of really unpleasant crap about my family. The whole episode nearly came back to bite me, however. About a week later a letter came through the door with the Amersham and Wycombe stamp on it. Luckily, I got to it before my parents did. It was from the head of year, saying that I was really depressed and that she hoped things could be worked out at home as I’d already missed three and a half weeks of my course. To miss any more would have serious repercussions for my future.

  I burnt the letter. Obliterated all trace of it. To this day my mum and dad don’t know about those missing weeks or my lie about their marriage. So here’s my chance to say a massive sorry to them and to Karen and, through gritted teeth, to Stewart.

  Sorry.

  As it turned out, it didn’t really matter. I left that summer anyway. If John and Julian had remained, then perhaps I might have stuck around – actually, there’s no perhaps about it: they were two of the most radical and original teachers I’ve ever come across – but without them there I finished the rest of that year and then packed it in.

  However, John and Julian’s absence wasn’t the only reason for me leaving. Something was on the horizon, something exciting. I was about to get my first big proper job – a musical in the West End.

  CHAPTER 7

  BEST MUSICAL ACCOMPANIMENT:

  ‘Horny
’ by Mousse T.

  BEST FILM TO WATCH ALONGSIDE:

  Risky Business

  BEST ENJOYED WITH:

  oysters

  MARILYN, MY AGENT, rang and told me about an audition for a new musical that was getting a ton of early buzz – Martin Guerre. To save some time, let me break down the story of the play for you.

  It’s about this guy in sixteenth-century France who leaves home without telling his wife and kids. Everyone thinks he’s dead and then out of the blue he shows up again years later with a nice big ‘Hi, honey, I’m home.’

  ‘What? Who the hell are you?’ the wife asks. ‘I’m Martin Guerre, of course, your husband.’ ‘Oh yeah, right. You don’t look like him and you don’t sound like him and, by the way, if you are him, where the hell have you been for the last seven years?’

  ‘Ummm, yeah. Well, there’s two ways to answer that question …’

  You get the gist.

  The story was based on real life (so Martin Guerre was actually a real guy – though the guy saying he was Martin Guerre wasn’t really Martin Guerre because the real Martin Guerre turns out not to be dead and then he comes back and … oh, forget it) and the musical had been written by Claude-Michel Schönberg and Alain Boublil, the guys responsible for Les Misérables and Miss Saigon, two absolutely humongous hits that ran and ran and ran. Just the thought of being in a show written by those two guys blew my mind.

  I’d never been so excited going for an audition. I was going for the part of one of two young boys in the chorus. I had one line – just the one: ‘Roast the meats.’ That was all. ‘Roast the meats.’ If you ever need a singing BBQ master, I’m your man.

  But I wasn’t singing that at the audition. For that I chose a song from the musical Chess called ‘Anthem’. It’s a standard song for West End musical auditions and I gave it all I’d got. It went well enough that the director asked me back for a dance call, along with twenty other boys of various shapes and sizes. You can imagine them wondering, can’t you? Can a guy who looks like that cope with a dance routine?

  Please. We all know that I’d been practising for years in the living room, studying and recreating every move Take That ever laid down; they were imprinted on my soul. So I breezed through the dancing and then later that day I got a call to tell me that I’d made it to the third stage. I was getting so close I could almost touch it. Sitting here scribbling this to you now, I can still remember that last audition as if it were yesterday.

  The third call then: it was at the Criterion Theatre just off Piccadilly Circus, and I had to wait in this corridor along with a group of other actors who were there to audition for various other parts. When my turn came, I stepped onto the stage and boom, my head exploded. The size of it! It was huge, I mean colossal, monumental, enormous, really, really big. The theatre was more or less empty so there was this very noticeable echo. All I could see was this makeshift desk set up in the middle of the stalls at which Cameron Mackintosh, the biggest theatre producer in the country, was sitting. And next to him were the writers of the show, Claude-Michel Schönberg and Alain Boublil, two of the most successful musical writers in history. Then there was Declan Donnellan, the director, who ran his own theatre company called Cheek By Jowl and was – and still is – one of the best around. The choreographer, a guy called Bob Avian, was sitting next to Alain with his assistant, Craig Revel Horwood alongside him. Yup, Craig from Strictly Come Dancing. No pressure then.

  I remember thinking that if a bomb went off at this moment, theatreland would have been in serious trouble.

  So I’d made it past the first two challenges, but this, right here, was the end-of-level boss. My nerves were jangling, my palms were sweating and my legs were wobbling. I’m sure it wasn’t a pretty sight. I’d prepared ‘Stony Ground’, a really upbeat song from a Christian musical, but the musical director had other ideas, which didn’t help the nerves. He suggested I sing ‘Anthem’ again, as I’d done a good job on it last time around and he thought that Claude and Alain would really appreciate my vocal range. I wasn’t about to argue with him, especially as he’d been nice about my performance. ‘Anthem’ it was.

  It seemed to go down well and, when I finished, Declan came up on the stage and told me he wanted me to sing the song again, only this time belt it out as if there was an army of people in the theatre all looking to me to lead them.

  ‘James,’ he said, ‘I want you to walk around this stage in a circle. I want you to imagine that this army is standing all around you. They’re waiting for orders and, when you decide the time is right, I want you to send them out to war. Send them through the stalls. Send them up to the dress circle and to the upper circle. Send them out until the whole place is full of people and they’re all listening to you. It’s an army, James. Send them out to war!’

  Right, I thought, right. OK, then. OK. I’ve got that, yeah – that’s what you do at auditions: no matter how weird the directions seem to you, you don’t question them. An army, going out to war, while I sing ‘Anthem’; no worries, no problem. I can do that.

  I’ve done a lot of auditions now and I’ve been asked to do some strange stuff. Auditioning for adverts is the strangest. I remember when I was about sixteen doing an advert for a Danish yoghurt company. The director – also Danish – had some interesting ideas of how to market the product. ‘All right,’ he said. ‘Now listen to me, James, I want you to really think about this. I want you to imagine you’re sitting down now, you understand. OK?’

  ‘Yeah, sitting down. Got that, yeah.’

  ‘OK, good. Sitting down, but not on a chair, James, not on a chair. I want you to imagine you’re naked, you understand – you have no clothes on at all.’

  ‘Naked, yeah. OK, I can do that. No clothes on. Right. No problem.’

  ‘OK, but this is the important bit, this is where the shoot will stand or fall. I want you to imagine you’re sitting on a block of ice.’

  ‘With no clothes on?’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘So it’s pretty chilly then.’

  ‘Of course. But listen, James …’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Here’s the thing. It cannot be funny. You understand. The way you sit on the ice with no clothes. It cannot be comical, all right?’ And with that, he patted me on the shoulder. I didn’t get the part.

  Clearly Declan had his reasons for the army, so I sang the song again, only this time I was in charge: I was in uniform, ordering an army out to war. I was Mel Gibson in Braveheart, Aragorn in The Return of the King – OK, they hadn’t made that film yet but you get the picture. I went for it, singing with every bit of guts, gusto and passion I could muster. Ten days later I got the job.

  Oh. My. God. Martin Guerre, Claude and Alain, Cameron Mackintosh – it was just the most incredible news. I’d dropped out of college and right into a West End show. And I was going to get paid.

  I did get paid, £260 a week, so by the time I’d paid my agent, my rail fare and the tax and everything, I was barely breaking even. But I couldn’t care less. I was so happy to be doing what I’d always dreamt of.

  The first day of rehearsals came around and I was a bag of nerves. Into the toilet, out of the toilet, into the toilet again – and that was just on the train. The other young guy who’d been picked was Paul Bailey, and we hung out together quite a lot: he and I and this whole company of incredible actors, pretty much all of whom had been in other West End shows.

  Ironically, we rehearsed at Sadler’s Wells, in one of the rooms where I’d auditioned for The Sound of Music while Dad waited in the car. And now, here I was, after all those years of getting knocked back, a real-life, paid actor on the West End stage. Wow.

  It’s strange how things seem to come full circle. You know what I mean? I’m sure you do. The way your life seems to drift along with no set path, then something good happens to you and you can trace the line that brought you there back to a specific disappointment or rejection you suffered in the past. It’s nice that
things can level out that way.

  My first day at work, I was so keen that I was up early, on the train early, in the loo early and, of course, I was one of the first to arrive at the theatre. I just sat in a corner as the minutes ticked by, growing more and more nervous. I had no idea what to expect. I’d signed up for a year and I just sat there thinking, Oh my God. This is it. I’m actually doing it. I thought back to that day at school when Mr Graham had told me I could forget about doing Music as a GCSE option. I thought of Mrs Roberts and her disappointment. I thought of all those times my dad had driven me up to London for auditions I never got. All I’d ever wanted was to be in a West End Show and there I was, waiting for the cast to arrive.

  I want to tell you it was amazing, and that it was everything I’d hoped it would be. But if I’m honest, it wasn’t. I didn’t enjoy that first day at all. Usually the only useful thing about nerves is that eventually they go away, but that first day I couldn’t get rid of the churning in my stomach. I was a total wreck.

  At the beginning of the day, as a bit of a loosener, Declan had got everyone singing the trolley song. You know how it goes. A one, a two, a one, two, three:

  Clang, clang, clang went the trolley.

  Ding, ding, ding went the bell.

  Zing, zing, zing went my heartstrings

  From the moment I saw him I fell …

  We had to sing it jigging around as if we were on a tram. The girls would sing a bit and then the boys would sing a bit and, when we were finished, Declan told us to take five and then talked to us in depth about a thing he called targets.