May I Have Your Attention Please?

by James Corden

  ‘No,’ I replied. What?! Why did I just say that? I’d been offered a drink and very definitely said no! Ruth looked concerned and pressed her hand down on the intercom next to her telephone. ‘Heloise, can you come in here, please?’

  Oh God, what had I done? This was the only agent in London I wanted to be represented by. I’d been in her office two minutes and I’d already lied to her face.

  Heloise came in and handed Ruth some messages. ‘Heloise,’ Ruth said as she took the notes, ‘why haven’t you offered James a drink?’ I could feel my whole face going red. Damn you, Winslet!

  Heloise turned to look at me. ‘I think I did? Didn’t I?’

  ‘No … no, I don’t think so,’ I said in a way-too-high-pitched voice. Heloise kept on looking at me, through me. She was on to me.

  ‘Would you like a drink?’

  I looked at Ruth. ‘Are you having one?’ I said, hoping Ruth would order an iced mochachino so I could just simply say, ‘Make that two.’

  ‘I’ve actually got a coffee here,’ said Ruth, pointing at the massive oversized mug she was holding that I ridiculously hadn’t noticed.

  And then I looked back at Heloise. ‘No, I’m fine, honestly. I had a drink on the way here. Thanks.’ She gave me one more long, bemused look and left the room.

  Luckily, the meeting only got better from there. I loved Ruth. She spoke so passionately about actors and how she represents them. We seemed to have a similar outlook on things – we both used the phrase ‘in the grand scheme of things’ far too much – and all in all we got on great. Just as the meeting was wrapping up, Ruth told me that she’d love to represent me, that she saw me as a good challenge and that, if I was up for it, then she was. I told her right there and then that she was the only person I wanted to represent me, and that was that – I had a new agent. We celebrated with an awkward half-handshake, half-hug that only got stranger the more it went on, and I left the room feeling as if I could walk on water – until I saw Heloise sitting outside, glaring at me. ‘You sure you don’t want a drink?’ I shook my head, walked speedily over to the lift and got the hell out of there as quickly as I could.

  So far, this whole ‘taking control of my own career’ thing seemed to be working out. There was still one person I had to call, though: Ruth Jones. We’d been swapping texts with little quotes and character ideas for some time, but we hadn’t actually met and written anything down. I was walking back to the Tube from Ruth’s office, about to press call on my phone, when it starting ringing in my hand. It was Ruth (Jones. I’m not going to apologise again).

  ‘I was just about to call you. Literally this second!’ I said, incredibly excited.

  Ruth, though definitely excited, wasn’t quite as moved by that as I was. There were bigger things on her mind. ‘Listen, I really think we need to write this treatment. If we don’t do it soon, we’ll lose the momentum and it’ll just disappear ‘cos we’ll have both moved on.’

  Amazing. She was feeling exactly the same as me. That, coupled with the whole phone-ringing thing, was enough to make me go bananas. I tried to keep it together. ‘But when …?’ I said. ‘When can we meet? I’ve got eight shows a week for the next month before we have a six-day break. I won’t be able to come to Cardiff. Are you going to be in London at all?’ As it turned out, Ruth’s schedule was just as busy as mine, if not busier. She was filming the second series of Nighty Night on the south coast. We then realised we’d both agreed to do an early morning breakfast television show in ten days’ time to promote the fourth series of Fat Friends. (We’d shot another series of Fat Friends shortly after The History Boys play opened. They worked around the play’s dates and we filmed it in Leeds. The reason I didn’t tell you any of this is because it was more of the same. Seemed silly to keep going on about it.) So on this breakfast-TV show, we should be done by 8.30 a.m., and we could go off somewhere and write for a few hours, try to get as much done as we could before Ruth had to leave London. The plan was set.

  Doing breakfast television is always quite strange. It’s not what you think it’s going to be. When you watch it at home with your Coco Pops, the presenters look so relaxed and together; their teeth are ice white and there’s not a hair out of place. But when you’re on the show, you turn up at 5.45 a.m. and they’re shouting for a coffee, brushing their teeth over the sink, looking as though they’ve been pulled backwards through a hedge. Once you’re on the set, what looked on TV to be a palatial lounge filled with comfy sofas and plates of warm croissants and Danishes actually turns out to be quite possibly the smallest room you’ve ever sat in. The sofas aren’t comfy, and the plate of croissants? They’re real, but have been sprayed with a disinfectant to make them glisten under the lights. (I learnt this the hard way, believe me.)

  The show was fine. Ruth and I got wheeled on, talked about Fat Friends, made sure we mentioned at least twice what time it was on and then were promptly wheeled off again. Once out of the studio, it was a short walk to the hotel where Ruth had stayed the night before. This would be the first of many, many hotels we would write in, but we didn’t know that at the time. The truth is, we had no idea what we were about to do. How would this work? Could this work? Sitting in a hotel bar talking about a great idea is one thing; sitting in a room and actually writing it down is another thing altogether.

  We got into the room and Ruth pulled out her laptop. Stephen Fry once said that in all good writing partnerships, there is someone who sits and types while the other tends to pace around, shouting his or her thoughts aloud, occasionally looking over the shoulder of the person who’s typing. Guess which one I was? I’ll give you a clue – not the typing one.

  We talked about the idea we’d had back in Leeds. I think one of the biggest strengths we had in the writing process was that we never specifically talked about jokes. As both of us were actors, I think it was easier for us to focus on the characters – what they’d be wearing and how they’d speak, their backgrounds. The jokes, we thought, would arrive naturally once we’d got the personalities nailed down.

  First off, we needed to think of a reason why the majority of the guests at the wedding hadn’t met before. Lots of the scenes we’d worked out back in Leeds relied on people meeting each other for the first time, like Mondeo man and Mr Runcorn had back at the wedding in Barry. I told Ruth a story about my best mate, Gavin, and how he met his wife, Sara, on the phone at work. She was working in accounts and he was a buyer, or it may have been the other way round but, either way, they flirted on the phone, a lot, until one day they decided to meet. It was a complete whirlwind: they fell in love immediately. Gavin proposed soon after, and they got married straight away after that. They’ve now been happily married for six years and have a beautiful daughter called Ava.

  Ruth agreed it could make a good back story for our characters. We knew that we weren’t ever going to use it, because, at that time, we were convinced the show would only deal with the wedding day itself. It was just an exercise to help us plot out who was going to be there. At this point, Ruth was going to be the bride, and I was going to play the best man. We decided that we’d call the bride Stacey, and, in honour of my mate Gav, we’d keep the groom’s name as Gavin. My cousin Lee lives in Bedford and one of his best mates was a builder called Smithy. I told Ruth about him, his mannerisms, the way he pronounced words, how he was always up for it, whatever ‘it’ was. We thought he’d make for the perfect best man. Then we talked about their families and friends and fleshed out the back stories so it felt as if all these characters had real lives, that they actually existed.

  As we sat there, I kept thinking back to working with Mike Leigh and how it was his attention to detail that made his characters so real. It was vital to get to the point where we felt we could answer any question that the characters might throw up once we started improvising. So, we had Gavin and Stacey, we had Smithy, and now we started to sketch out the bride’s best friend, who we called Vanessa. We worked everything a few more times through and began
writing it properly.

  It all came so quickly. As this was still just a pitch, we wanted any TV executives who were reading to get the style of the show straight away so, right at the top, we explained how we envisaged the style and pacing of the show being like The Royle Family meets Marion and Geoff. We wrote small snippets of dialogue to show the sort of tone we envisaged and, right in the centre of the page, we wrote in bold italics:

  This is a wedding where nothing happens.

  We were trying to get across what we believed to be the show’s greatest asset – the fact that nothing obviously dramatic happened: it would simply hold a mirror up to show real people with real lives.

  Before we knew it, we’d finished the treatment. It came in at about ten pages. We hoped it was good, that we’d done enough and that the TV people would understand what we were trying to do. It was in the envelope, ready to be sealed, when Ruth suggested something. Neither of us had any idea at the time what a massive impact it would have on every aspect of our lives. If we had, I think we would both have fallen over. ‘Shall we put the back story in?’ she said breezily. ‘You know, just to give them a feel of how Gavin and Stacey met?’

  I thought about it for a moment: ‘Erm … I dunno,’ I said. ‘It’ll make it too long, won’t it? Won’t it be confusing?’

  ‘Not if we do it as two separate documents. Then if they want to read it, they can. And if they don’t, they don’t. I think we should, don’t you?’ Ruth then looked at me. I wish I could make this seem more dramatic, like one of those red-wire or blue-wire scenes in thrillers, but the truth is, it wasn’t. I just sort of shrugged my shoulders and went, ‘OK, yeah. Let’s put it in the envelope.’

  And that was that. We sent it off to ITV and waited. Ruth got on a train to the south coast to carry on filming Nighty Night, and I walked the few hundred yards back to the National Theatre. Nothing blew up.

  I don’t know why but I used to love getting to the theatre before anyone else. It probably has something to do with my constant need to feel in some way dramatic. I liked being the first in the dressing room; I liked being the one to turn on all the spotlights round the mirrors; I liked walking down to the stage and looking over the empty wings, which in a few short hours would be full of people bustling, whispering and running around; I liked walking out onto the stage, seeing the empty seats, taking in the silence. I liked all the anticipation.

  That morning I followed my normal routine and ended up sitting down on the empty stage at the National. I remember thinking how much I’d enjoyed the morning with Ruth – more than I ever thought I would. Even if, as we expected, no one went for our idea, I thought that we should definitely try to do something else. However much I was enjoying the play, I knew that I was going to have to create things for myself because the good TV and film roles just weren’t happening.

  I sat on the edge of the stage and, as fun and positive as that morning had been, I started to feel quite down. For as long as I can remember, I’ve always had an inability to see the bigger picture. Rather than focusing on the good, I seek out and find the bad in me, or my career. Now, I was sitting on an empty stage in one of London’s greatest theatres, having appeared on breakfast television that morning to publicise a BAFTA-nominated drama I was starring in, and having just spent a great morning writing something new and exciting with an actress and friend I really loved and admired. And yet, all I could see was a fat boy who was never going to amount to anything. It’s my worst trait, the thing I can’t stand in myself – the inability to see any positives. Looking back, I can see I was the luckiest guy in the world.

  Something I used to do a lot back then, and still do now from time to time, is judge my success against other people’s. So, for example, just the other day someone was being incredibly kind and encouraging about my career, telling me how well they thought I was doing, and all I could think inside was, Andrew Garfield is at the Golden Globes. He’s a success. If I was that good, I’d be there too. It’s a ridiculous way to behave and I’m embarrassed that I’m even telling you. I wish I didn’t feel like that, but I also wonder where I’d be without it. Would I have bothered to write Gavin & Stacey? Would I have bothered to do anything at all if I didn’t feel so driven to be the biggest and best?

  I’m happy to say that the jealousy and constant comparison happens less frequently these days. I hope this is because I’ve grown up, not because I’m more successful. The truth is, I doubt whether all the success in the world would change how I feel at certain times. It’s a part of my personality that I’ve struggled long and hard to change. It doesn’t help anyone to judge their happiness or career by looking at where others may or may not be. Dad said it best: ‘All the time you’re looking left and right at other people, you’re neglecting what’s in front of you. If you focus on looking straight ahead, you can take the odd glance at the future.’ He’s got a way of saying things sometimes that just puts everything into perspective.

  Even with all my self-doubt, things were still going really well on The History Boys – so well in fact that Nick had called a meeting with the whole cast to put to bed various rumours about what was going to happen after our run at the National ended. The play had been so successful that people were already talking about transfers to the West End, nationwide tours and all sorts of other crazy things. That all sounded good to us. We loved working together so much and were having such a laugh that we were up for anything that would extend the run.

  We were sitting in the theatre stalls when Nick and Alan came in. ‘All right, A.B.!’ came the cry from the boys. A.B. was now Alan’s nickname. Yep, we gave Alan Bennett a nickname. Actually, by this point in the run, pretty much everyone in the play had a nickname: Richard Griffiths was ‘Rizzo’. I came up with that one, though I’m not sure he ever really warmed to it as much as we wanted him to.

  Andrew Knott ended up being known as ‘Moon’ and this came about organically – his first nickname was ‘Anders’, which then became ‘Andeye’, which then became ‘Andeye Moon’, and then simply ‘Moon’. Makes sense.

  Jamie Parker was known as ‘Scripps’, which was his character name in the play. Unoriginal, maybe, but we kept it because it just fitted him.

  Sacha was ‘Sachgelia’. I’ve no idea why.

  Russell was ‘Rusty’, except to me. To me he was ‘My Russ’, and to him I became ‘My Jim’. Beautiful.

  Sam Barnett was, I think, ‘Sam’. That’s disappointing.

  Sam Anderson was, and always will be, ‘Zammo’.

  Frances de la Tour was either ‘Frankie’ or ‘J-Lo’, on account of her occasionally wearing velour tracksuits similar to, um, J-Lo.

  Clive Merrison, who played the head teacher in the play, was ‘Clive-O’.

  Stephen Campbell-Moore became known to all as ‘Steve-Ex’.

  Dominic Cooper became lovingly known as ‘Dirtbox’. I wish I could tell you why, but I’m worried about how young some of you reading this may be.

  And my nickname, which has stuck better than any nickname I’ve ever been given, was, and very much still is, ‘Levine’. Or, to give it its correct parlance, ‘Jimmy Levine’. I picked it up halfway through the run. Here’s how it happened: I was at home one day and I called up Dominic. As he picked up the phone he simply said, ‘Jimmy Levine! How’s it going?’ Granted, it’s not the most exciting nickname-giving story. Apparently Dominic had seen some post in his house from someone by the name of ‘Jimmy Levine’ and then, because he’s a strange and wonderful man, decided to call me that. The name stuck. Actually, it stuck so well that we have both, over time, become ‘Levine’.

  If my telling you about our nicknames was rather dull for you, I’m sorry. It was the simplest and most straightforward way of getting across how together we were as a company. We were strong together. There was no boy-teacher dividing line. From top to bottom, from the first show to the last, everyone was equal. It’s so rare for that to happen, especially with eight young actors of similar age with similar amb
itions. One older, very thespy actor in a different play at the National said we’d turned the building into something resembling a borstal. I’m not sure he meant us to take it as a compliment.

  In the theatre, Nick stood up in front of us all. The first thing he did was read a lovely, handwritten note he’d been sent by Baz Luhrmann, the director of some of my favourite films: Moulin Rouge, Strictly Ballroom and, of course, that incredible adaptation of Romeo and Juliet. The note said how much he’d enjoyed the play and to send his congratulations to the whole cast. Of course, that was totally amazing, but I was a little worried that it might be part of a ploy to butter us up for bad news; that the rumours about the play had all been false and we’d simply be ending our run in three months’ time. I so didn’t want it to be over. I loved these people and I loved this play.

  My worries couldn’t have been more misplaced. Far from closing, Nick told us that the play was about to go on a world tour! The play would travel to the Hong Kong Arts Festival, then to New Zealand, then spend six weeks in Sydney, Australia, before embarking on a possible six-month run on Broadway in New York.

  We were absolutely gobsmacked. No one knew what to say. Dominic was smiling. Sam Barnett looked at me and we both stared at each other, our eyes sparkling with excitement. Then, just as it was beginning to sink in, Alan Bennett jumped in, ‘But before all that, we need to shoot the movie.’

  CHAPTER 16

  BEST MUSICAL ACCOMPANIMENT:

  ‘One Day Like This’ by Elbow

  BEST FILM TO WATCH ALONGSIDE:

  Dead Poets’ Society

  BEST ENJOYED WITH:

  a club sandwich

  WHAT? WHAT MOVIE? A movie of The History Boys? Nahhhhh. But, as it turned out, yeahhhhh. Nick told us there had been several offers to turn the play into a film – some big, some small – and that Alan was working on the screenplay. He’d only agreed to write it on the proviso that everyone from the play would be in it. It was a very touching and very classy stance that Alan took. He’d done the same some years before with The Madness of King George (which Nick had also directed), saying he would only consider the proposal if the film people agreed to have Nigel Hawthorne playing the title role. It’s that sort of loyalty that makes both Nick and Alan loved by everyone they work with.