by Alan Carr
As you’d expect, the night at Granada was pretty uneventful. The audience were those people who scour the Internet for free tickets to any show. I could tell they went to everything because when filming continued for longer than necessary, one woman who was dead behind the eyes shouted out, ‘On Stars in Your Eyes you get biscuits!’
A few people grumbled and nodded. Although the audience were a bit tetchy, Vernon was absolutely lovely. He must have been standing in the wings listening to my material because in the commercial breaks he teased me by calling me ‘Psoriasis Boy’ – something I remind him of whenever our paths cross.
I made my way to BBC Centre for my stint warming up Jonathan Ross’s chat show. I got there dead early as I wanted to make a good impression. I sat in my dressing room and waited. The dressing room was pretty bleak: a tatty old recliner chair, a wardrobe to hang your costumes up in and some torn flowery wallpaper that I swear was giving me hay fever just looking at it. Seriously, my heart would skip a beat if it had a window! As the weeks progressed, I realised that the dressing rooms were based on hierarchy and hierarchy alone. If there was an EastEnders actor on the show, I got the dressing room with a toilet – if it was a Hollywood A-lister, I gave up my dressing room for one of their entourage and was put in a dressing room without a toilet. If there was a proper diva like J-Lo or Puff Daddy with all their entourage and hangers-on, I was actually put in the toilet. There is nothing more humiliating then having your ear jammed up against the toilet wall, hearing bottles of Cristal being decorked from the other side. If the cistern wasn’t in overdrive I could actually hear J-Lo talk. Oh yes, I knew my place, and sadly it was in a toilet.
‘How do the stars put up with staying in these vile dressing rooms?’ I muttered to myself. Of course, the stars never ventured into these dressing rooms. They have the posh ones further up the corridor. I got to experience these dressing rooms for myself when I filmed Alan Carr’s Celebrity Ding Dong. A shower, two settees, rugs, complimentary champagne, bouquets on every table, three plasma screen televisions, even one in the toilet – a whole world away from the broom cupboard I had inhabited three doors down.
Finally, my time came, and I made my way to the studio, nervous but relieved to be out of that room. I went through the doors and saw the Four Poofs and their piano. They were really sweet and said nice things, which put my mind at rest. I just sat in the corner on a chair taking in the madness of it all. Four hours ago, I was a gay computer. Just as I was getting calm, Janet Jackson walked past with her four bodyguards, and my stomach knotted even tighter.
* * *
It’s a really strange experience being a warm-up act. You seem to dwell in a no man’s land. You’re a part of the show, but you’re not. You’re integral to the show’s atmosphere, but you don’t get any credit. You are superfluous, but essential. Being on a well-established, popular show like Jonathan’s is even stranger. I had to do my routine in front of that set that everyone knows and then introduce Jonathan Ross as if I’d known him all my life. ‘Go mad, go crazy! It’s the one and only Jonathan Ross!’
My warm-up went well, really well. The camera guys were laughing, the audience were laughing, the Four Poofs were laughing, but most importantly I could hear Jonathan Ross laughing. I did my thing and introduced Jonathan, who came over and shook my hand and said ‘Bwilliant!’ So for the remainder of the show I stood with my microphone at the edge of the studio floor, just in case there was an unexpected blip in filming or Jonathan needed a wee. I was on call all the time, just in case.
It was only when I got back to Manchester and checked my emails at the local Internet caff that I got a phone call from Danny at Off the Kerb again. ‘You must have done well last night. Jonathan Ross wants you to warm up his shows every week.’
‘Liar!’ I remonstrated.
‘No, it’s true.’
And it was. Every Thursday I would drive down to London from Manchester, and I got to see in the flesh some of the most famous people in the world: Elton John, U2, Cameron Diaz, Jane Fonda, among others. They would all glide past me in the corridor, and I would be literally star-struck, just staring at them, not daring to say anything. After a few months this feeling began to subside as I realised that in fact these stars were disappointingly just like us. I had seen them in the makeup room foundationless, I’d seen them pissed in the Green Room, I’d seen them asking a runner, ‘Where are the toilets?’ I’d seen them desperately nervous, which in some ways was cute but disconcerting for the rest of us. Fear doesn’t go away just because you’re an A-lister. I should know.
Then you get the other side of the coin: the demands, the strops, the tantrums, which can really turn you off a celebrity, especially when they seem so nice on the telly. One star asked a bamboozled runner whether he could get him some coke. I usually take a Rapid Remedy to pep me up, but each to his own. Fans of the stars appearing on the show would usually pack the audience out, and this would often mean it would be a lively show. Weirdly, they would mirror the stars they had come to support. Marilyn Manson’s would be all gothed out. Aero-smith’s would be long-haired rockers, and with Janet Jackson, it would be a middle-aged woman with her tit hanging out.
Jonathan Ross would always close his show by telling the viewers who was coming on the show the following week. I would always wait with bated breath to hear the next batch of stars. When he said ‘Paul Newman’ one week, I nearly jumped for joy. I loved him. He was a proper, bona fide Hollywood star, and where else would you ever get the chance to be in the same room as Paul Newman? I couldn’t wait.
Thursday came round, and I drove down in anticipation, as I did every week. But when they say ‘Don’t meet your idols’, they’re not joking. I knew something was wrong when they put the show forward a couple of hours so Paul could have an early night. The image of the chiselled, bronzed matinée idol I had in my head was shattered when this old man in carpet slippers, trackie bottoms and glasses on a chain shuffled in. Yes, I know he’s old, but that doesn’t mean you have to dress like an old person. Madonna’s 50 and she still dresses like a twenty-something – a twenty-something streetwalker, but a twenty-something nevertheless. Maybe Paul didn’t know what he was wearing, perhaps those beautiful blue eyes had become misted over with cataracts. Even when he got on the settee, his chat was a bit of a disappointment. He didn’t want to talk about Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, he just wanted to talk about his new flavour of mayonnaise. I could do that.
Over those months and eventually years of doing the warm-up, I started to dread seeing my idols because I didn’t want the illusion to be spoilt. When the late great James Brown came onto the sofa, he started talking about his prostate problems. No one wants to hear that, do they? The man Carolyn and I had got on the good foot to at Carwash all those years ago was now sitting in front of me telling the world he had problems ‘downstairs’. If the Godfather of Soul can’t get it up, what hope is there for me?
* * *
I’d changed agents by this time. I’d left Karushi and joined Off the Kerb. It was horrible having to phone up Lisa and say that I was jumping ship, but in the end it had to be done. I felt awful because they had been there when I was at my lowest and had thrown me a lifeline. But that horrible feeling of betrayal eased when I got a round-robin email from Karushi saying that they were having to ‘let go’ two of their other acts. Everyone, it seems, is dispensable, even agents. Let’s face it, we all have to be ruthless sometimes, and I bet they would have got rid of me if I wasn’t funny. Anyway, I don’t feel bad now because joining Off the Kerb was the best career move I’d ever made.
Meeting the team in the office was definitely an experience. It was like auditioning for Oliver! These cockney wide boys with their dropped aitches, Cockney rhyming slang and Blitz spirit nearly had me doing the Lambeth Walk over to the old Joanna and starting up a chorus of ‘Knees Up, Mother Brown’. But for all their ‘Gawd Blimey’, East End swagger, they meant business. Sitting with them having a cup of tea in the b
ack room, I was eyeing up all the tour posters and awards they’d won over the years for such people as Lee Evans, Jack Dee, Jo Brand and, of course, Jonathan Ross. There was no doubt that I was in very good company. Although I was born in Weymouth, Off the Kerb made me feel so welcome that I mistakenly thought I heard the sound of the Bow Bells tingling in my earholes as I left their office.
Moving to Off the Kerb was just the shot in the arm I needed; the live work flooded in and even, on the odd occasion, a bit of telly. Most of it was dire and not worthy of note and was banished to the cable channels that you find the other side of God TV on your Sky box. A lot of my first-ever television appearances were in those dreadful talking heads programmes where you have to sit there in front of a fish tank or lava lamp and wax lyrical about some subject or other. They are awful shows but when you’re starting out the money can be so tempting for what looks like very little work indeed. Five hundred pounds to talk about Duran Duran, count me in. It’s money for old rope. The trouble is these shows never die, they are circulated forever and ever on the satellite channels, they have become the television equivalent of rats – you are never more than six channels away from a shitty talking heads programme. They don’t go away – they’re like Cher. The amount of times I have switched on at half past midnight only to see a younger, more enthusiastic version of myself slagging off Mick Hucknall, I’ve lost count.
The worst culprit was the I Love … series which in essence was a good idea, a nostalgic look back at trends and attitudes, but when they ring your agent up and ask you to do I Love 1976 you do wonder who’s running the show. When I told the researcher that I wasn’t born then and that I was in fact a foetus, worryingly it didn’t seem to phase her. ‘You can still talk about space-hoppers though, can’t you?’
A few of my first television appearances were all right, I suppose. Flipside is worth mentioning because it was the first time I worked with Justin Lee Collins. The show was a bit ropy, to be honest, three guests flicking through TV channels commenting on what they were watching. For legal reasons, we couldn’t watch channels that showed sports, anything rude or any advertisements. Easy, you might say, but at midnight when the channels are filled with American football, porn and infomercials, it suddenly becomes harder than it looks.
For some reason, the show attracted the most unhinged viewers who would be invited to send us their comments through the website. The comments ranged from the weird to the downright offensive. One that sticks in my mind is ‘I want to get a gun and shoot it up Alan Carr’s anus’ – I hadn’t heard the like since Barclaycard. One poor female presenter was informed that they wanted to cut her breasts off. If the weirdo losers hated us so much, why did they bother watching the show then? At least I was getting paid to watch this shit.
A slightly better programme, but only just, was FAQ U, a show that yet again paired me up with Justin Lee Collins. This time, however, it wasn’t on after the national anthem. It was on at ten o’clock on terrestrial television, on Channel 4 in fact. This was where new, up-and-coming stand-up comedians chewed the fat about various topics and news items. I had always liked Justin when he was on the telly, and I was pleased to see that he was full of enthusiastic, upbeat loveliness off camera, too. His wife was expecting at the time and I remember him talking all excitedly about becoming a dad, which to me is a bit surreal because those two strangers mentioned in a conversation then I now know personally as Karen and little Archie.
But it was on Channel 4’s Law of the Playground that we actually became mates. I remember it clearly. We were in a school sports hall reminiscing about our schooldays with comedian Kerri Godliman and Peep Show’s David Mitchell. We were all in hysterics, enjoying each other’s company, bonding over the fact that we were all horrifically bad at physical education. Had they, like me, been waiting all these years to get the humiliation off their chests?
I left that hall with a headache from laughing so much, little knowing that the exchanges between Justin and me had planted the seed in Channel 4’s head for something bigger. My slight foray into late-night telly started to produce a fanbase, albeit a very meagre one, full of insomniacs and people who wanted to stick a gun up my arse. People in the audience for Jonathan Ross started knowing who I was and, sadly, knowing the punchlines to my jokes, which isn’t so good. I even got some of the actual stars coming over to say lovely things.
Standing in the wings with my microphone as usual, I felt a tap on my shoulder. I turned around, and Robbie Williams was standing there saying, ‘Hi, Alan. I was just wondering if you had a comedy DVD out in the shops?’ At first I thought it was a wind-up, but it turned out to be a genuine request, proving that meeting the rich and famous can be an uplifting experience after all. The following week Charlotte Church came over and said, ‘Hello, you’re so funny!’ which was really sweet and unexpected. Another complete surprise was when Nicole Kidman waved as she left and blew me a kiss, but looking back, she’d probably mistaken me for one of the Poofs.
Inevitably with praise comes criticism, and lo and behold nasty comments started appearing on the Internet, which I suppose is part of the remit of being a comedian. But still, considering that all I’m doing is trying to make people laugh, some of the comments seemed disproportionately harsh. I know my comedy is an acquired taste, but really – a fatwa!
Some of the criticism was more subtle and slipped below the radar. I turned up at one gig in Leicester to see on the poster under my name ‘The New Ernie Wise’. I explained to the promoter that this was in fact an insult, and I wouldn’t really want that on the poster. He apologised and popped some gaffer tape over the offending article.
‘I got it off the Internet,’ he explained – of course. It never fails to make me smile when the media says that the Great British Public are apathetic – believe me, stand-up comedians are living proof that they are not. Islamic fundamentalism, global warming, gun crime, not a flicker of passion or interest, but get on stage and tell jokes, you think you’d pushed a shit through their letterbox. For some obscure reason comedy seems to rub some people up the wrong way, which is silly really, because it’s only words. The amount of times I’ve muttered under my breath, ‘Calm down, dear, it’s only a punchline.’
So despite the odd bit of vitriol, 2004 was proving to be a good year. Deciding not to go to Edinburgh had had a real calming effect on me. I could just enjoy myself and would not have to keep an eye on my finances. In fact, being free around the month of August meant I could go on my first holiday since I had arrived back from Bangkok. My friends were going to Mykonos, and I decided to tag along. It was wonderful, like an Alton Towers for gays. There was nothing to do there, the brochures told you that, but who would need distractions when you’ve got some of the most beautiful Europeans in skimpy swimwear as eye candy?
The place was a revelation to me. On the first day we headed to Superparadise, the gay nudist beach – don’t worry, I had my windbreaker – and found ourselves a good spot, within whistling distance of a gin and tonic. It wasn’t essentially a nudist beach; there were lots of people in their trunks bathing and swimming. It was just the odd few exhibitionists who took all their clothes off and, boy, did they make up for the rest of us! I wondered whether I should join them and eat my egg sandwiches al fresco, but I decided not to.
I love to read. Especially books with a historical twist – if there’s a woman wearing a ruff on the front cover it’s straight in my basket. One of my favourite times to catch up on all the books I’ve missed through the year is when I’m on a beach. There’s nothing more relaxing than lying there covered in Piz Buin enjoying a good old yarn. But lying there with Inside Stalin’s Gulags in my hand, it became infuriating because every time my eyes fell upon the opening line they were distracted by a beautiful, bronzed, naked man sauntering past. I must have read that opening sentence a million times: ‘Seven million died in the “forgotten” holocaust …’ I couldn’t stop staring – it was getting embarrassing. At one point I was going to as
k one of the sunkissed hunks if I could use his penis as a bookmark, but alas the opportunity never arose.
Mykonos is one of my favourite locations ever. We did have some fun on that holiday, a lot of naughty fun. In fact, I’d never got so much sex in my life. It was amazing. What I didn’t realise then was that Mykonos would be the last time I would be able to be naughty on holiday and throw caution to the wind without the fear of a well-positioned camera phone or some loser selling their story. Anyway, the holiday was just what I needed, and every time I think of gulags it makes me horny.
* * *
Off the Kerb, in their wisdom, had decided to make me the resident compere at one of their regular comedy nights. Being a regular compere is a great way of getting to try out new material and create a bond between you and your loyal audience. They see you every month and look forward to you coming on stage and having a bit of good-hearted banter with them – well, that’s if they don’t hate you. My residency was at Cabot Hall at the foot of Canary Wharf. Cabot Hall was, and is, a vast hall, hollow and soulless. It actually reminds me of the hall in the scene from The Poseidon Adventure where they have to climb up the Christmas tree to escape the rising water.
What was more dispiriting than the Hall itself was the fact that it would be full of suits. I was dreading it, and I was right to dread it – they despised me. They would groan when I came on, and I would groan when I saw them all in their cheap Matalan suits. There was enough static in that room to power a tram. I swear to God, if wet-look gel was flammable we’d have had an inferno on our hands. The night would chug along, and I would start to think: why don’t you fuck off to Spearmint Rhino, like you do every other night? And so the pantomime continued, with boring financial types scowling from their tables every month while I tried to find a joke that would incorporate the FTSE index. One night Reginald D. Hunter, a wonderfully supportive comedian who was headlining, said, ‘Give it up for your compere, Alan Carr.’ Instead of a cheer, all I got was one suit shouting out ‘Faggot!’ Charming.