I Am What I Am

by John Barrowman

  However, the more I thought about the details and the planning and the schedules of such a project, the more I realized that, at this point in my career, when there are so many new things I still want to do, I couldn’t devote so much time to one single venture. If I were to return to theatre for a new show, I’d have to be with the production for a full year’s run. That would be fair and reasonable. At that particular time, I couldn’t and didn’t want to commit to a full year of anything.

  While I was negotiating with Cameron, I was also in meetings with the BBC, brainstorming the format for Tonight’s the Night. As that dream was moving closer to reality, I finally had to admit that I’d have to give up Barnum.

  I didn’t relinquish it without a fight, though. At one point, I was so desperate to try to get my schedule to work that I even considered doing a variety show and a West End production at the same time.9 But it would have been completely unreasonable of me to expect that Cameron would give me Saturday nights off from the theatre so that I could spend the time on television. There was no way I could do both.

  To do or not to do Barnum was an emotionally difficult decision for me to make. My life as an entertainer began in the theatre, and being an entertainer has always been more than a career choice for me: my double helix is a treble clef in a belt with sparkles. In the end, I had to say ‘no’ to Barnum. But no matter how heavy this ‘no’ weighed on me, no matter how difficult and disappointing, it was also, in some quiet way, affirming that all the career decisions and choices I’d made to date were paying off – because I was in a position, professionally, where I could say ‘no’ to a West End show, to say nothing of the thrill of being on the verge of launching my very own prime-time variety TV show.

  If you’re single and, say, between eighteen and twenty-five, it’s unlikely that anything on the telly will keep you home on a Saturday night, but if you’re my age,10 you’re married with children, or you’re in my parents’ generation, then sitting down to watch something light and entertaining on a Saturday night is exactly what you want from your licence fee.

  In preparation for our initial meetings with BBC Entertainment, who are just the best at coming up with successful Saturday-night shows, Gav and I spent hours on the web and YouTube, researching the people and programmes we personally might want to watch on a Saturday night. I’d jot down ideas, fragments of ideas, and details of fragments of ideas – anything I liked and thought was worth considering. After six months or so, we realized that – given the success of the BBC’s talent-search shows, and my own background as a performer – whatever the overall format turned out to be, a significant part of my Saturday-night show had to be performance-based.

  My own performing dream came true in 1989, when I debuted in Anything Goes with Elaine Paige in the West End, and I believed this kind of programme was one way for me to give back a little. But you know what else? I think it’s really nice to do good things for good people, and to see them have a chance to experience something that, for whatever reason, hasn’t happened for them.

  Good television is not only about what you see on the screen, it’s also about what you don’t see behind the scenes. The team working on Tonight’s the Night was great and we all worked well together, collaborating with ease and with the purpose of a shared vision. Moira Ross,11 the show’s executive producer and our boss, was very experienced in the entertainment field, having produced Dancing with the Stars for American TV and Last Choir Standing for the BBC, among others. Mel Balac was the series producer and the one who talked into my ear during the Sunday-night recordings of the show,12 and who’d done all three of the Andrew Lloyd Webber programmes with me.13 Funnily enough, Mel also produced the Barrowman family14 when we appeared on All Star Family Fortunes.

  Finally, Martin Scott was the third executive producer on Tonight’s the Night. He represented BBC In-House Entertainment and oversaw the entire production on behalf of the channel. I’d worked with him on all the BBC entertainment shows I’d ever done. Martin’s a veteran of Strictly Come Dancing and the ALW talent searches, as well as lots of others.

  Every series also needs runners and assistants. In fact, television shows couldn’t operate without them. Runners are the young men and women, often interns or recent graduates directly out of university, who scuttle around a set taking care of the small details that hold all the big stuff together. Left your script in the dressing room, your phone in the car, your costume change in the rehearsal room, your sister in the wrong hallway miles from the studio? The runner solves these problems and makes everything okay.

  My runner for the term of TTN was a terrific, hard-working young man named Alex Bender. I knew we’d work well together and the production was off to a great beginning when I saw the call sheet for show one. My runner’s name was listed next to mine. The sheet read: ‘John Barrowman – A. Bender.’

  Even though I was a production virgin,15 Gavin and I had lots of input into the production side of the show, and we worked very closely with Mo, Mel and Paul Domaine, the show’s choreographer, to make the whole ensemble pop.

  Paul was brilliant. He could take any show tune or pop song and choreograph it into something hip and flashy and breathtaking. With the talents of the show’s eight dancers, the J8s, the dancing was always fresh, fluid and, well, pretty fabulous, I thought.

  I was excited about the entire team. Plus, because I was one of the producers as well as the host, I was in a position to solve problems when they arose, in an efficient manner that didn’t hurt our shared creative vision.

  For example, the BBC producers, Gav and I wanted to do a big Bollywood number for one of the last shows of the series, to the track ‘Rhythm of the Night’. The dancers and Paul were up for this kind of lavishly choreographed number. The problem was the budget. No money left. The budget couldn’t cover our chocolate biscuits, never mind the eight additional dancers we required to make the number a true Bollywood piece with its array of colourful costumes and mix of dance styles.

  As we sat around the production table, reviewing the past week’s show and planning for the upcoming one (this meeting was a weekly one, and essential to the overall flow and ongoing success of each episode), Gavin and I decided that the Bollywood number had to happen. If the BBC didn’t have the budget, then Barrowman Barker Productions would pay for the extra dancers. BBP coughed up the cash. In the end, the number was worth every extra penny. I think this kind of synergy made for better production values overall and was also great telly for our viewers.

  When production started for the show, my schedule took on a pattern that was exhausting and invigorating – and as full of variety as Tonight’s the Night itself. Since each show was taped in front of a live studio audience on a Sunday evening, the Saturday before was a full dress rehearsal for everyone. My work for each episode began early on the Monday at the Dance Attic on the Fulham Road, where I’d rehearse with Paul, ‘Jennie Fabulous’, his assistant, and all the J8s. They would dance through the opening and closing numbers with me, and I’d rehearse my moves in relation to theirs.

  Sometimes, these rehearsals took longer than expected. One morning, I couldn’t get my left hand to coordinate a parallel move with my right foot while moving forward in a chorus line using a complicated cross-step. At another session, the dancers were having a difficult time with a complex series of lifts and turns in their routine. I grabbed Jennie and moved to the front, next to the room’s long wall of mirrors. I worked with her to simplify the lift routine – because if there’s one thing a musical-theatre leading man knows how to do really well, it’s how to lift his dance partner. I can’t think of any musicals that don’t expect a lift or two. One of the first dance lessons I had in college at the start of my theatre training was how to lift and turn my partner above my shoulders with ease.16

  During these rehearsals early in the week, I would often try out one or two moves of my own to connect my routine with the choreography of the dancers around me. I always appreciated that Paul w
ould let me work through my own innovations at least a couple of times before he would affirm them, critique them or, if necessary, ask me to cut them out.

  On one of those busy mornings, rehearsals ran even later than usual – because a children’s ballet troupe was rehearsing in the next room and the children spotted Captain Jack on the stairs. Their dance mistress popped in to ask me if I’d come and say a few words, because maybe then she could settle her dancers down. 17

  After rehearsing the choreography for a couple of hours on those Monday mornings, I’d sprint upstairs to another room, where Matt Brind, TTN’s musical director, and I would run through my songs and I’d learn any new arrangements he’d created. I’d repeat this same process the next day at the BBC studios, to make sure everything sounded good, and once again on Friday, the day before the show’s dress rehearsal.

  At some point during the morning, usually in time for a cup of tea and a biscuit, Gav would arrive to review my other work and to discuss commitments I’d already made or that had to be made. We’d dash upstairs to a smaller rehearsal room for privacy. As an example of the sort of things on our agenda, during a two-day period one week in April, I was offered a Broadway show, asked to make a number of guest appearances on UK television, finalized a few things for my concert tour, and arranged interviews and photo shoots for a handful of press requests.

  When Gav and I had finished, I’d dart back down to the main rehearsal room and run through the opening and closing numbers with the dancers one more time. If my schedule permitted, I’d eat lunch with the J8s, Paul and Matt in the Dance Attic’s cafe;18 otherwise, I’d grab something to eat from M&S, while on my way back to the BBC studios to do a voiceover for one of the surprise hits I’d already filmed.

  These surprise hits involved catching up with an unsuspecting person, who – unbeknown to them – had been nominated by a friend or family member to perform on TTN. The surprise hits caught on tape the moment when I pulled off a helmet, jumped from behind a screen or – in one young woman’s hit – stopped shampooing her hair, and told them that they’d be entertaining millions on TV on Saturday night.

  A typical mid-week afternoon also involved costume fitting for Sunday’s taping of the show. The wardrobe room at the BBC was always lively, with banter flying like bullets and mostly men – and an occasional woman – working sewing machines at top speed. I spent a lot of time considering what I’d wear for the shows because, as you may have noticed when you watched, my suit colour always coordinated with the hue of the stage lights and the sparkle of the set. It’s a variety show. Everything had to pop, including me!

  Whenever possible, I travelled to the surprise hits at least a week ahead of the show in which we’d be broadcasting them. When this was not possible, I’d squeeze a trip to North Wales or Ipswich or Brighton into my Wednesday or Thursday of the same week. This meant that some contestants found out about their television debut on the Tuesday or Wednesday, and he or she had to be ready to perform on the following Sunday. In most cases, a family member or a close friend had been in on the hit, so a lot of the arrangements that the person being surprised would have to make had already been handled.

  Each hit required a separate crew with its own producer, Katy Mullan, and director, Marcus Liversedge, who would accompany me to the various locations we visited. This crew created all the videotape segments19 for Tonight’s the Night, including the wonderful opening sequence with the crazy dancing silhouette in the windows.20

  When I first started working on the surprise hits, the VT crew didn’t realize I was co-producing the show. I’d offer some input on a few of the shots, come up with ideas for how to shoot a hit, or suggest a camera angle or a different way for me to reveal myself to the guest, and they’d look at me as if I was just a meddling control freak,21 even if my suggestion was good one. At one hit, I finally mentioned in passing that I was co-producing, and after that my suggestions were seen in a bit of a different light. We all truly worked well together to produce some great material.

  After the first episode of Tonight’s the Night aired, on Saturday 18 April 2009, a few on the crew, and the producers from the BBC, started calling me ‘Mr Saturday Night’. I’ve been called a lot of things in my time, but this rates as one of the best.

  Following that first broadcast, I read one or two reviews that came across my desk – this is not something I usually do. Honestly, in the words of my friend, Catherine Tate, I can’t ‘be bovvered’. A couple of critics described the show as, and I’m paraphrasing here, schmaltzy and cheesy. My response to those critics: ‘Watch something else.’

  I care what critics think – to a certain extent – but sometimes a few of them can be plain old bitchy because they forget (or have never known) what it felt like to sit on the couch on a Saturday night with their favourite family members and a bag of sweets and have a laugh, or a wee greet.22 I don’t do shows for the critics. I do shows for the men, women and families who’re watching together and singing along.

  One or two critics compared Tonight’s the Night to Britain’s Got Talent, but it was never our intention to be like or to compete with Simon Cowell’s juggernaut. From the beginning, Tonight’s the Night was different from Cowell’s show because TTN was not making performers into stars. Instead, for one shining moment, Sam Horsfield of Ipswich, or someone like her, got the opportunity to perform on the BBC to millions of viewers and to have her dream fulfilled.

  When I surprised Sam, who had given up her dream of performing professionally when her twins were diagnosed as autistic, she turned to her husband, who had nominated her, and with tears filling her eyes, she looked into his overflowing ones and whispered, ‘Thank you.’ I lost it too. If those moments don’t move you, then your heart’s made of Swiss cheese and your head’s full of holes.

  For Sam’s hit, the crew and I arrived on a Wednesday afternoon at a local working men’s club, where Sam would later meet with her amateur dramatics group. Sam thought she and her fellow am-dram members were auditioning final candidates for their local production of The Producers. What she didn’t know was that I was one of the actors auditioning: a ‘Norswedish’ man named Bennie, who was the ‘beegist Abba fan evaar!’

  The crew and I commandeered two of the club’s private function rooms, one for make-up and costume – as moustached Bennie had to look as if he’d drifted in from the seventies in two-foot-high, glittery, platform-heeled boots that would have broken most men23 – and the other room for the monitors, equipment and VT crew. Inside the rehearsal hall, cameras were hidden, and Sam’s friends prepped for the hit.

  The rehearsal took twice as long as usual because I was having too much fun. I insisted on singing Bennie’s audition number twice through, while adding to the routine what I’d decided were Bennie’s own, pretty slick moves. Bennie’s deep, deep lunges and knee-high kicks had all the fluidity of a three-year-old trying to skip.

  After Sam arrived and was seated with her friends and fellow judges, the hit began. We’d recruited two people to play actors interested in auditioning and they performed first. I could tell by Sam’s responses to them that she had no clue she was being set up.

  Then Bennie stepped out to centre stage. Man, I was so bad that I was really good. I’d hardly opened my mouth and I’d only completed one of my groovy moves, but I could already see Sam struggling desperately not to laugh. After all, this was some poor man trying his very best to get a part in her local production. Bless his heart. When I’d finished, the applause was polite. Then Sam did her best to let me know gently that ‘she’d be in touch’. I interrupted her.

  ‘Do you think you can do this any better?’ I asked, in an accent that sounded a lot like the Swedish Chef from The Muppet Show.

  She was a bit taken aback, even more so when Bennie stepped off the stage – not very gracefully, given his really tight trousers and his towering boots – and he … I walked right up to the audition table. She started to look back and forth among her colleagues for some assistan
ce. None was forthcoming. At that moment, while she was blustering an answer to Bennie, I tore off the moustache, beard and wig,24 and revealed myself.

  Her facial expression was a mix of about twenty-two competing emotions that ended in sheer delight. ‘Oh! Oh! I can’t believe it’s you … It’s John Barrowman.’

  But what Sam said next has remained one of the funnier lines of any of the hits I participated in. I asked her if she knew why I was at her am-dram auditions.

  Without missing a beat, she replied, ‘Because you’ve finally decided you can’t live without me.’

  These surprise hits were one of the best parts of the show to film – not only because of meeting and doing something special for people like Sam, but also because the hits gave me the opportunity to get out of the studio, to improvise, and to dress up. Most of all, though, I loved the drama and the emotion of the reveal.

  There was no irony involved, no mocking, and no parody in Tonight’s the Night. I wanted the show to be Sam’s special night, or whoever else’s dream we made come true. The rest of us were simply sharing the spotlight.

  When Sam joined us in London to prepare to sing with the cast of Mamma Mia!, she met the cast at the Prince of Wales Theatre, she was given rehearsal time with them and with Paul, our choreographer, and she was given some of the best vocal training in the West End from Claire Moore, who was in Miss Saigon with me in the early nineties. I trust Claire’s ear and her heart, and it was her job to work with all the performers and help them to sound the best that they possibly could.

  My call time to the BBC studios on Saturday mornings was early, because the day before we taped in front of a live audience, we had what’s called a ‘camera rehearsal’. These camera rehearsals were more complicated than the ones I described in an earlier table talk, but they essentially served the same function: to make sure everyone knew their positions and had rehearsed the flow of the show.25 On TTN, the camera rehearsal was a full dress rehearsal for all of us, as well as a chance for the director and his crew to figure out camera positions. Perhaps most importantly, for the performers whose wishes were being fulfilled, it was a chance for them to get comfortable on the set and to rehearse on the stage with lights, music … and me.