I Am What I Am

by John Barrowman

  Obviously, I got the judging gig. My first panel, on How Do You Solve a Problem Like Maria?, included producer David Ian – whose company was co-producing the West End production of The Sound of Music in which the winning Maria would perform – and vocal coach Zoë Tyler.

  David and I got along really well. He is one of those producers who’s been in the business himself.7 He therefore knows actors well, and he knows the audition process intimately. He also appreciates what it takes to sustain your voice and your energy for eight shows a week. Plus, David was a lot like me in his views about the responsibilities of being a judge.

  In all of the talent-search shows I’ve done, I’ve believed strongly that I had a duty not only to the contestants, but also to my peers working in the theatre and to my fellow musical performers. I didn’t want to put a contestant into a leading role and then have that person not be able to hold up under the pressure. I also didn’t want people I’ve worked with going to see The Sound of Music or Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat and saying, ‘What the fuck was Barrowman thinking?’

  Perhaps most importantly, I also participated in these talent shows because I want to help launch careers. I’m not sitting on that lovely chair in my fabulous Neil Marengo suits just to find a performer for a single role. For example, from the beginning of Any Dream Will Do, I knew that Daniel Boys was something special and had a strong, confident voice, but I could sense that Danny wasn’t going to be Joseph. For one thing, he was too mature for the role.

  Whenever I talked with all the boys at Joseph camp, or during rehearsals, I’d tell them that they needed to see this show as a platform to showcase their talent. Danny and a few others listened and they took this advice to heart.

  As a result, Danny has done really well since he was voted off. He recently released a CD and he’s performed in a number of shows, including Avenue Q in the West End. Danny also toured with me on my ‘An Evening with John Barrowman’ tour in the spring of 2009, and our duet of the romantic ballad ‘I Know Him So Well’, from the musical Chess, has received all kinds of accolades. More on that in a later chapter.

  Another Joseph contestant who has found success following the TV show is Ben Ellis. Ben didn’t have the strongest voice in the competition, but he demonstrated week after week that he was an entertainer. He reminded Denise8 and me of a young Robbie Williams – and, let’s face it, he was very pleasing on the eye. Ben, like Daniel, has done well in his career since the show, playing the male lead in Hairspray and doing numerous presenting jobs on TV.

  Helping to launch the careers of such talented individuals has been a real point of pleasure and pride for me – and for many of the other judges.

  So, partly as a consequence of our shared values, David Ian and I had a lot of fun together on that first panel. I learned a lot from him – but he also learned a lot from me during our time together. I once explained to David and his wife what tea-bagging was.9 I’m sure he was forever grateful, and thinks of me every time his wife dunks a Tetley.

  I’d never met Zoë Tyler before, but I liked her immediately. She was outspoken, and wasn’t afraid to challenge the producers if something came up about which she felt strongly. She was ballsy. I like that quality in a woman.10 Zoë was also the vocal coach for the Marias (and later the Josephs, too) and her style of teaching and developing them was fairly similar to mine. She always offered criticism fairly and honestly, and when she issued a challenge to a performer, she tried to help them see ways to meet it. I’ve always felt that, in any situation where you’re trying to teach someone, it isn’t helpful simply to describe and label what you see them doing wrong, without offering any suggestions as to how they can improve.

  On Any Dream Will Do, the panel shuffled, and entertainer Denise Van Outen and producer Bill Kenwright joined Zoë and me. Bill and I had a professional relationship, but we never saw eye to eye about much during the show. As Bill was one of the economic backers and producers of this revival of Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat, I felt he had a considerable financial motive in finding a marketable Joseph for the production. Unlike David Ian or Andrew Lloyd Webber, Bill was a businessman first and foremost, and for him, almost any Joseph would do, as long as he looked the part and could sing the songs.

  From the beginning, Bill had his eye on two particular Josephs, Lewis Bradley and Craig Chalmers. Craig was voted out in week seven, but Lewis survived till the final. Unfortunately, having heard his vocal qualities and his full range, I knew Lewis couldn’t hit the final note in the Joseph song ‘Close Every Door’. The audience loved Lewis throughout most of the series, but I never believed he’d have the stamina or the spunk11 to carry a West End show.

  During my time on the talent shows, I particularly loved working behind the scenes at the Joseph and Nancy camps. I enjoyed the teaching part of the job and the chance it afforded me to share some of the nitty-gritty aspects of the business with the performers. I have to say, though, that the boys in the Joseph camp cried way more than the girls in Nancy School. The boys were always weeping!

  Sometimes, the lessons learned on talent shows occur in unexpected ways. It’s not just the performers or even the production staff who gain knowledge – the judges can learn a thing or two, too. I certainly did. Mel Balac, one of the producers, who worked with the judges during all three series and went on to co-produce with Gavin and me on Tonight’s the Night, taught me about the importance of producing myself.12 In the television biz, this means knowing when to speak up and when to shut up,13 knowing when to butt in, and knowing what to say in a brief number of words without going over the top and losing the audience.

  When I first worked with Mel, a pretty, petite, dark-haired woman with lots of savvy and chutzpah,14 all she ever wore on her feet were trainers or flats. Throughout the rehearsals, I kept telling her she had to wear heels on the nights of the actual shows. In my eyes, there’s nothing worse than a woman in a flattering pair of jeans, a lovely top and then a pair of flat, scuffed-up ballet slippers or manky tennis shoes. Talk about what not to wear.15 Anyway, I gave her enough grief about her shoes that she broke down and bought a lovely pair of Marc Jacobs.16

  On one of the first nights on the show, when Mel was wearing her fabulous shoes, Denise was making a point to one of the contestants after her performance when, suddenly, the path down which she was heading with her comment veered off in another direction. Denise was getting so far from the point she was originally trying to make that she had wandered next door to Blue Peter. In my head, I was thinking, ‘Okay. Stop now, Denise. Anytime.’

  Then I looked over to my right. Mel was jumping up and down off camera, waving one of her Marc Jacobs high in the air and then slashing it across her throat. Not because what Denise was saying lacked validity, it had plenty, but time is precious on live TV and Denise’s wanderings would mean that someone else would have to say next to nothing to make up the time. Denise caught the waving shoe out of the corner of her eye and, with grace and poise, she brought her journey to an end.

  One of the biggest challenges of being a talent-show judge is to avoid the temptation of saying something just for the sake of a sound bite. Of course I want to be pithy and say things that have punch to them – I’m an entertainer, for goodness’ sake – but I always attempt to frame my critical bites with evidence from the performance. This is live television, after all, and this makes the entire series a very public casting call for these performers.

  I’m very loyal to the folks I’ve judged, if they’ve wanted to keep in contact. In my family, we call this being on the long road with someone; staying in touch with them for their entire journey, even if it’s only an occasional email that marks the connection. Along with Jodie, Daniel and Ben, the Joseph contestant Keith Jack has kept in touch. After the shows have ended, I’ve helped a number of the performers to get agents. The ones I thought were really good, I recommended Gavin represent, because not only do I think they’ll have long careers, but I also want to work with
them on my albums, my concerts and my future TV shows.

  A good deal of this business depends on networking and forging relationships. Learning how to do this is an important skill. After all, you may not be right for the part of the gay lead in a US sitcom, but a friend of a casting director, who once worked with you on that other show two years ago, thinks you would be perfect for the role of a rakish sci-fi hero.

  One of my favourite staying-in-touch stories from working as a judge is also a lovely romantic one. Denise and Lee Mead began dating after Any Dream was over and Lee had won. In the late spring of 2009, they were married. Immediately after the ceremony, Denise sent me a text from a tropical island to announce that they had tied the knot. I was thrilled for them.

  Back in the spring of 2008, after my concert at the Hammersmith Apollo – which was staged, in part, to promote my album Another Side – Lee and Denise came backstage, having watched my performance. For fun, I gave them both concert T-shirts with my face on them.

  One night a few weeks later, when Den and I were judging on I’d Do Anything, Den came into my dressing room before the show. She was giggling even before she’d sat down. She told me she’d put on the JB concert T-shirt before going to bed. In a moment of, um, passion, Lee had looked up and seen my face smiling down on him.

  ‘Fantastic, fantastic, fantastic!’ exclaimed Denise. ‘Get it off! Off! Off!’ cried Lee.

  TABLE TALK #2

  ‘We Have a Hostage Situation – Send in the Clowns’

  I could hear my mum and sister laughing when I put my ear to the bathroom door. Refrain from going ‘Ewww!’ You know as well as I do that it’s a fact of life that women travel like wildebeests and go to the bathroom in herds, especially when they’re in restaurants and clubs, but when they’re at home they rarely pee in pairs. I had to check. It was getting close to midnight on a Saturday night and my mum, my dad, Carole, Scott and I were getting ready for bed. The main bathroom in my house in Sully was certainly big enough to accommodate two people brushing their teeth, but for my plan to work I really needed to be sure that Carole and Mum had gone in there together.

  They had. Check.

  I reached above the bathroom door and found the spare bathroom key. Don’t ask me why there’s an extra key. I think it may have something to do with making sure children don’t get themselves locked inside, but I did not build this house. Scott and I only bought it in the autumn of 2008, and although we love it, we do have plans to renovate in the future and add features that will make it even more our own. Until then, many of the quirks of the house remain. Like the fact that the bathroom can be locked from the inside and from the outside.

  I locked the door. Check.

  My dad and Scott were my fellow conspirators in this midnight game to terrify my sister and my mother. Insert Dick Dastardly laughter here. While I locked the bathroom door, my allies moved silently into position. Scott headed to the sliding doors at the rear of the house with the broom, a flashlight and my black hooded North Face ski jacket. My dad was a decoy in this plan, so he ducked into the bedroom that has become my parents’ room whenever they visit, and he quickly got his pyjamas on. He found his book and sat on top of the bed, looking as if he’d been reading for hours.

  Positions. Check.

  The five of us had just watched the movie Paul Blart: Mall Cop, a silly, laugh-out-loud comedy in which Kevin James plays a slightly hopeless mall cop who tries to foil a gang of crooks from robbing the mall. Watching the film had made us all a bit squirrelly. Not that my family needed an excuse.1 Add to this collective state of mind that we are a very competitive family, we love to play games, and no one likes to lose. The words ‘surrender’ or ‘I give up’ rarely feature in my family’s vocabulary.

  Our house in Sully is laid out a bit like an ‘I’, with two courtyards on either side of the main artery of the house, the entrance and a few other rooms along the top, and the widest living space running across the bottom, facing the lawn, the pool and the sea. The three bedrooms are on the side of the house with the smaller, more closed-in courtyard, and the bigger of the two courtyards has become the dogs’ area, because it’s the safe space that Jack, Charlie and Harris have access to via their doggy door in the laundry room when no one is home.

  I’ve always loved it when my family can come and visit me, and now that I have a house and so much space to share, over the past year it’s been a busy abode. During the spring and summer of 2009, for about three-plus months, my parents lived with me. The main reason for their extended visit was so they could be part of my concert tour that spring, but they also decided that because they’re both in their later seventies, the trip across the Atlantic was only going to get more difficult in the coming years. They might as well travel while they still can. I seconded that.

  Scott and I have always enjoyed my family’s visits and we never feel as if we have company when any of them are staying with us. In fact, sometimes we can forget we have company – or, should I say, for a few hours the company can occasionally think that we’ve forgotten about them.

  A recent case in point: when Carole visits, she usually stays in the guest room directly next to our master suite. One night, she was startled awake by some very aggressive moaning, loud sighing and what sounded to her like chests being beaten and wild animals being skinned alive in our room. I was making the noises: I admit it. Of course, you can imagine what Carole was thinking …

  She proceeded to scramble for her Bose headphones and switched on the noise reduction. She claimed it didn’t help. She cranked up the tunes on her iPod. The clamour persisted for about twenty-five minutes. Early the next morning, when our paths crossed in the hallway, she gave me this weird, eye-crinkling look.

  I didn’t think anything of it. I was completely unaware of her annoyance.

  ‘I had the worst heartburn I have ever had last night,’ I told her over my shoulder, continuing on my way to the kitchen. ‘I seriously thought I was having a heart attack. I thought I was dying. Scott thought I was dying. At one point, I even had Scott punch my chest ’cause I thought my heart was stopping.’

  ‘Oh, thank God,’ she said, ‘I am so glad to hear you say that. I thought you’d forgotten I was next door and that racket was you two having rowdy sex.’

  ‘What do you mean, “thank God”?!’ I exclaimed. ‘You’re okay with the idea that I might have been dying – just as long as I wasn’t having loud sex?’

  ‘Well … yeah,’ she said.

  Luckily, that experience hasn’t put her off staying with us in Wales – nor the rest of my family. And it’s easy to see why. Along with more space in our Sully house than our London maisonette, there’s easy access to golf courses and shops, so my mum and dad, especially, have been visiting more often and staying longer. They are capable of entertaining themselves when I’m off working in London, and as long as my mum has her glass of sherry at 5 p.m. and my dad has his single malt, they are quite content to sit by the sea and enjoy my hospitality.2

  They still have a good sense of humour, they still know how to have fun, and each of them takes on a couple of chores around the house when they’re here. As long as my dad was around, garbage never lingered and the dogs’ poo never sat for too long in the courtyard, which was a very good thing given my plan that Saturday night.

  No shite in the courtyard. Check.

  As soon as my mum and Carole tried in vain to get out of the bathroom, I knew and they knew that a game was in play.

  ‘The buggers have locked us in here,’ said my mum.

  ‘They’ll be hiding somewhere,’ answered Carole. ‘I’m not going out there. We need a plan.’

  But I knew they would come out – because not to come out would be to admit defeat. That never happened in our games.

  Quickly, I unlocked their door, dropped the key, dashed out through the patio doors and took my position with Scott in the smaller courtyard outside my parents’ bedroom, where I put together my home-made Scarecrow Man with the broom an
d my North Face jacket.

  Meanwhile, inside the house, I could hear my sister and my mum come out of the bathroom and quickly dart into my parents’ bedroom, where they were surprised to see my dad.

  Remember, I was hiding in the courtyard directly outside my mum and dad’s bedroom.

  ‘Where is he?’ asked my mum.

  ‘He’s not in here,’ answered my dad, who is the master of deception and the king of hide-and-seek in our family, and lies through his teeth in these situations. Last Christmas – yes, last Christmas, when he was seventy-six – he fell behind the washer and the dryer during a game. Also, when I was home on a break from filming Titans for CBS, and I was visiting Clare and Turner in Milwaukee, I was playing hide-and-seek outside with them and their friends. My dad encouraged me to climb onto their low-hanging garage roof and stay flat and still. The kids, he said, would never find me. He was right. The kids eventually gave up and went inside to bed – and my dad had to come out and help get me down.

  Needless to say, my sister and my mum were sceptical of my dad.

  ‘Get up, so we can check,’ Carole insisted. ‘You’re in on this with them.’

  They then made my dad stand in front of them while they whipped open the closet doors, pulled back the duvet and checked underneath the bed for me. Once they’d decided I was not in the room, they figured there was a good chance I’d be in the other bedroom. The two of them then proceeded to march my dad into the next room, where they forced him to carry out a similar search.

  I was, of course, watching all of this from outside in the dark courtyard, waiting for as long as it would take until my mum and Carole would give up and get into their beds. My dad was our inside man to ensure that Scarecrow Man could exact his wrath as soon as they went to bed.3

  But things did not go according to my best-laid plans. First of all, I forgot that the jacket I’d grabbed had a fluorescent tag on the zipper, and, second of all, I completely underestimated my opponents.