by Alan Carr
When your dad is manager of the football team of the town you are growing up in and the team are enjoying a particularly good season, even if you don’t have the slightest interest in football, people presume you are good at it simply for sharing a surname. I didn’t expect to jump over buildings and lasso criminals because I had a Carter in the family tree now, did I?
Simply being called Carr meant that I was genetically modified to be a world-class striker. So whenever I joined a new school and word got round that Alan Carr (‘What? The really camp one with glasses and buck teeth?’ – ‘Yes that’s him’) was the son of Graham Carr, all the lads, even the tough ones, started hanging around me, inviting me round their houses for tea, asking if I wanted to share a cigarette, offering me a backie on their Grifters. My diary was fit to burst. For once in my life, I was in the midst of a social whirl. Well, let’s just say, this was before they saw me on the pitch.
It didn’t get me off to a good start. On Monday morning the PE teacher Jenko – he was Mr Jenkinson, but we could call him Jenko, and I would end up calling him a lot worse by the time I’d left that playing field, I can tell you – said, ‘We have a celebrity’s son with us today,’ and then went and appointed me captain.
‘Oh no, please, there’s been a terrible mistake,’ I wailed. ‘I’d rather just be here on the sub bench.’
‘I’m sure we’ll all be pleasantly surprised,’ boomed Jenko. They were surprised all right, just not in the way they intended. I lost it, whenever I did get the ball, I couldn’t control it, I forgot which end I was meant to be shooting at, and instead of an almighty kick all I could muster was a toe-punt.
Dizzy, I turned round to face them, and they looked at me as if to say, ‘This isn’t what I ordered.’ It was true; instead of being this athletic dynamo nutmegging the opposition, weaving with ease and scoring with flair, I was flailing up and down like Goldie Hawn in Bird on a Wire. I lasted five minutes and as punishment was made to collect the ball from the other side of the dual carriageway – which admittedly I had kicked over there, but not all the way over there, to be fair, it had ricocheted off a woman walking her dog.
I admit sometimes I brought the humiliation on myself, but more often than not it was induced by the PE teachers themselves. Jenko was all right, I suppose. I mean, he wasn’t malicious, he just couldn’t understand why some people were good at sports and others weren’t. Jenko was the final one in a long line of unimpressed PE teachers.
I can cope with unimpressed, but it’s the sadistic ones I find repulsive. It was during my years at the Middle School that I encountered the worst one of the lot. She was Mrs O’Flaherty. God, I hated that woman, and I still do. She hated me, too. There was no love lost when I finally left. She covered for Science, and I remember getting one of my first ever migraines during her lesson. She refused to let me out and I had to sit through a lesson on poly-photosynthesis with a paralysed face and what felt like a tsunami of pain flooding around my brain. I hate it when people say migraines are just ‘headaches but a bit worse’, it really is like saying tuberculosis is a chesty cough – they bloody hurt.
Ooh! I detested that Mrs O’Flaherty. I can still remember those piggy eyes and her bowl haircut: she looked like Joan of Arc – after the fire. Every tennis lesson she partnered me with Matthew, who had learning difficulties, yes learning difficulties, so how was I supposed to improve? Oh, and don’t think I didn’t notice that everyone else had proper professional tennis rackets and proper professional tennis balls, while Matthew and I were given these rackets so large that I swear if we waved them about in the air enough we could have landed a Boeing 747.
To add insult to injury, our balls were made of sponge. All the other lads got to play outside, apart from us. Apparently, according to Mrs O’Flaherty, if she let Matthew and me play outside, our balls would blow away. So we had to stand in the school hall watching the other kids outside, listening enviously to the ‘thwock’ of professional rackets hitting professional balls over professional nets.
Poor old Matthew was simple, bless him. I know you can’t say that nowadays but he was simple, he didn’t know what was going on. But I did! That’s what made it so frustrating. I tried to show him the difference between the others’ tennis balls and our sponge balls, mainly by throwing them at his head – which is wrong, I know, but I get frustrated too, you know. How am I supposed to improve my backhand if I’m demoted to home-helping my opponent? It just wasn’t fair.
Physical Education is the only lesson on the school syllabus where you don’t get any help if you’re no good at it. Physical it is, Education it ain’t. No arm around your shoulder, no comforting word from a teacher, just a great big dollop of contempt and sarcasm. Can you imagine the headlines if little Susie in English couldn’t spell scissors, and so was forced to do an extra lap of the library in her vest and pants and then have her arse whipped with a wet towel? The Daily Mail would have a field day. You can see why kids today don’t want to do exercise and would rather sit at home playing martial arts games on their Nintendo. I wish I’d done that, too – not because I like martial arts, but because the next time Mrs O’Flaherty tried to humiliate me, in one swift Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon style I’d do a body slam, with a nipple twist, and finish it off with a scissor kick – that would show her! I’d be a hero, and all the fat kids would pick me up and carry me around on their morbidly obese shoulders.
My heart goes out to any kids who are, shall we say, athletically challenged. I understand ‘Sport’ now that I’m older; it’s not so much to do with skill and finesse, it’s about Fear. Sliding tackles, scrums, tobogganing, it’s all about being fearless. I definitely wasn’t fearless – no, I had Fear aplenty, Fear and Worry in abundance. One of the reasons for my Fear was the fact that I would read everything, read and read and read – it’s true, ‘Ignorance is bliss’. So when it finally came to starting a game of rugby, all the other boys were imagining running down the field (what’s a rugby pitch called?) and scoring a magnificent try. Meanwhile, I would be remembering that article I read about the bloke who’s a paraplegic due to a hooker falling on his neck. Oh no, not for me, thanks, you go on, boys, you knock yourselves out – how the hell are my glasses going to stay on with a cauliflower ear?
Whether it was me being a chicken-shit or some deeper Darwinian self-preservation thing kicking in, I feared the scrum and all it entailed. I remember Mum pulling my immaculate rugby kit from my bag and accusing me of playing truant. How dare she? I had played rugby. I’d run my little socks off up and down the field. I’d just avoided the muddy bits.
* * *
Overall, though, it takes more than a few isolated moments to dim a wonderful childhood. Yes, we had our ups and downs, but if you’re expecting Alan’s Ashes you’re going to be bitterly disappointed. I haven’t really had much scandal in my life either. Seriously, at one point I was thinking of getting an uncle to interfere with me just so I could add a bit of pathos.
And I grew up in one of the most boring towns in England.
Northampton is famous for shoes and, apart from the Express Lift Tower, a listed building that in certain lights looks like a concrete dildo, its main landmark is the Northampton Boot and Shoe Museum, which we’d get dragged around every other year on a school trip. The museum contains a plaster copy of the shoe of one of the elephants that Hannibal used to climb over the Alps. Need I say more? Just imagine getting a guided tour of a massive Freeman, Hardy & Willis, only shitter.
‘Excuse me,’ I said, taking a replica of one of Marie Antoinette’s shoes off the display and holding it out to the curator, ‘do you have this in a six?’
‘Alan Carr!’ shouted the teacher. ‘Put that back at once!’
With a weary sigh, I replaced the replica. I just wanted to add a bit of sparkle. Was that a crime?
Chapter Two
‘YOU COULDN’T SCORE IN A BROTHEL!’
I’m not making excuses for my sporting failures, but a lot of the time my body let me
down. Puberty had been unkind. Whereas it had come in the night and left the other boys with chiselled, stubbly chins and deep masculine voices, I’d been left with a huge pair of knockers and the voice of a pensioner – a female pensioner, at that. Breasts that I’d been constantly told were ‘puppy fat’ were becoming embarrassing. They were getting quite pendulous, and I was starting to get amorous looks from some of the older men when I was country dancing. It made me feel very self-conscious and it didn’t help that our sports kit was red shorts, red socks and a white T-shirt that became see-through when sweaty. This, to me, was the worst-case scenario and if I ever had to run I would run with my arms across my chest, which was silly really as it only served to make my cleavage even more impressive.
And as for swimming, I didn’t even have the security of a flimsy cotton white T-shirt to cover my bosom. I had to do it naked, except for a pair of dark green woollen swimming trunks, which ironically when they came in contact with water would weigh like lead and make you drop like a stone to the swimming-pool floor.
When you tell people that you had a swimming pool at your school, they raise an eyebrow and naturally assume you went to an idyllic Etonian establishment where it was pony riding, croquet and water polo before tea and scones on the lawn. Don’t be fooled by the swimming pool; it was basically a concrete bunker attached to the school that was filled with so many chemicals your eyes would weep as you entered the building. The chemicals were so strong I swear that if you did more than two lengths you’d end up changing sex. All the boys including myself would stand there in their trunks, and even though it was a mixed group none of the girls would be in their bathing suits at all because – quelle surprise – they were due on. Every week, they would turn up and hand over a note which their ‘mums’ had written. ‘Sharon, Kelly, Rachel, Caroline, Jenny cannot do swimming as it’s their time of the month.’ What? Every week?
The older boys would smirk, but I was none the wiser. I knew it had something to do with periods, but the woman on the telly went rollerskating, dog-walking and potholing, and she had a ‘period’. All I knew was, I was standing there half naked trying to learn the butterfly and being giggled at by a group of allegedly menstruating young ladies.
People naturally assume I was the class clown – I was and I wasn’t. The typical class clown is the lad that tells the jokes and the tough lads laugh and he doesn’t get punched. That wasn’t me, unless my jokes were really bad, because they used to punch me anyway. I was the one always playing the goat, mucking around. In Science when discussing the planets I was always the one asking the teacher, ‘How big’s Uranus?’ Not particularly witty, I agree, but at twelve it would have the room in stitches, and the other children would look to me as if I were Dorothy Parker.
Even though I used comedy to make friends, I never really felt that I fitted in. I felt like an outsider, looking in, making jokes and comments that turned things on their head, which, writing this, strangely enough sounds like the job description of a stand-up comic. I never seemed to find anyone at school that I felt I had anything in common with, not just hobby-wise (Hey, lads, do you want to come behind the bike sheds and read an Agatha Christie?) but in everything. To me, they could have been another species, let alone another class. Plus, my best friend at the time, Jason, had come into school and took me to one side. ‘My dad says I can’t hang around with you any more.’
‘Why not?’
‘Because you’re turning me gay!’
‘I’m not gay,’ I protested convincingly, I thought.
But Jason was adamant, our friendship was over. Apparently after hanging about with me all day at school, he had been coming home talking in an affected, camp manner, decorating sentences with over-pronounced ‘ooh’s’ and raising his eyebrow at anything remotely worthy of innuendo. His dad definitely had nothing to worry about. Jason was very laddy, and I’m sure he must be married now with lots of kids. It goes without saying that you can’t ‘catch’ homosexuality, but I’m afraid to say from personal experience ‘camp’ can spread quicker than bird flu if not kept at bay. I’ve reduced builders to simpering Danny La Rues in my time. It’s all in the wrist, I guess.
Losing Jason as a friend was a real blow. We’d had a lot of fun times. Every weekend we would go into Northampton Town Centre and wander aimlessly around the Grosvenor Centre or Abington Park, generally mucking about, popping on the wigs in Debenhams or shouting out ‘shoplifter’ and pointing at an old person in BHS. I’m not proud of what we did, but it killed time.
We would usually end up at the ABC Cinema, this gigantic art-deco building that dominates the top of Abington Street. It’s not a cinema any more – it’s now the headquarters for the Jesus Army and, quite frankly, it’s seen better days – but back then in the late Eighties it was the centrepiece of our Saturday afternoons. I saw everything there, ET, Batman, Turner and Hooch. It was during Tango and Cash that one audience member climbed up the curtains and swung daringly in front of Sylvester Stallone’s face and had to be told to get down by the cinema manager.
With Jason doing his own thing, I started to dread the bell ringing for breaktimes and lunchtimes because it would normally mean walking around on my own. In class, you feel a bit like you belong, but time out of those lessons tended to make me feel a bit empty, with the breaks seeming to drag more than the actual lessons.
In my moping, I must be thankful for one blessing: I never went down the ‘goth’ route. Yes, I had been known to write poems expressing my angst, but I had never popped on some mascara and a black leather trench coat and hung around the library looking wistful. I might have been feeling sorry for myself, but I wasn’t tacky.
* * *
It was only when I was on the cusp of adolescence that things started to happen. An identity started to manifest before my eyes, an identity that I wasn’t particularly happy with.
Almost overnight words like blowjob, wank and cum were on everyone’s lips, if you see what I mean. In the corridors you could almost smell the sex, which made a change from the toilets. All of sudden, no one was interested what Liam Gill did in Home Ec, we wanted to know what Tracey did with Darren after school in her back bedroom. Carnal lust swept through breaktime like a tropical breeze. I remember the controversy when one girl, Sharon Bell, had got a boyfriend who didn’t go to school. He had a proper job at Homebase and would turn up in his tight white T-shirt revving his motorbike – how cool was that?
To the girls and me, he was the epitome of cool, but technically he was a paedophile. Soon every girl wanted a man with a proper job – sixteen-year-old boys weren’t good enough any more. They wanted real men, and in that sense, not only were the lads in my class defunct, so was I. Suddenly girly talk and a boy who liked me for me was as cool as New Kids on the Block. As for the boys, they’d be talking about what they did with whom, where, when and how many times.
They’d all laugh with bravado, and I’d laugh along, but on the inside thinking ‘Ugh!’
Then it dawned on me, my role had changed. I wasn’t the class clown any more; no, I was head eunuch in the middle of a debauched orgy. Stop, stop, I want to get off. This wasn’t meant to happen; even Paul Simmons was telling people he’d kissed a girl. I mean, he had a long way to catch up with Steve Templeton. He had been wanked off on the back of the bus on a school trip to the Northampton Boot and Shoe Museum, and Donna Dalton had said it was the biggest one she’d ever seen – she was only fifteen so hopefully she hadn’t seen too many.
Panic gripped my body. I needed to act now, and my body went into what can only be described as a hormonal trolley dash. I needed to fuck a woman now, now, now, or at least to look like I was getting some kind of action, but sadly like the proverbial trolley dash my trolley wheels were buckled and I kept steering it towards the willy aisle. It just wasn’t fair. It riles me when people say being gay is a choice. It really isn’t. Why would anyone choose that? Your pants on the Science block roof – where can I sign up for that? You cannot describe to anyo
ne the sheer terror and isolation you feel when adolescence finally dawns on you, and the path of girlfriend, wife, babies is as distant as Narnia. There is a definite feeling of uselessness and for me a sense of injustice. I remember thinking that it was like a curse, and asking what I had done to deserve this. I really didn’t take it well at all.
I had had my moments. I had at one stage started fancying Maria from the board game ‘Guess Who?’ That long hair, that green beret, that sexy smile – yes, she was a fox. One night in Panache I had kissed a girl called Ruth. A short girl with green eye shadow, yum! It was a retro night and she had drunkenly come up to me during ‘Come on Eileen’. I must admit I was tempted. Girls back then were like those big dippers you get at Alton Towers, terrifying but strangely alluring. The worrying thing was that once you actually got on the bloody ride you didn’t know whether you’d like it or not, all you knew was you were stuck on it for the next five minutes. Ruth approached me drunkenly across the dance-floor, and my body slipped into fight or flight mode. I fought, but with my tongue. Her tongue tasted of Woodpecker Cider, which wasn’t entirely unsatisfying. I lasted about twenty seconds, heard ‘Baggy Trousers’, made my excuses and left the dance-floor. I’d had a go, and you can’t say fairer than that.
I think I was a let-down to my brother in that respect. I remember him asking me conspiratorially in his bedroom, ‘How do you get a girl’s bra off?’
‘How would I know?’ I retorted imperiously. ‘Stanley knife?’
I think he realised there and then that we weren’t going to have one of those laddish relationships, talking about birds and fast cars. So whilst I felt like I was cursed, I wasn’t so self-centred as not to notice it affecting others in my family.