On the day of the penultimate show, Carole was visiting, and when we arrived at the studios for filming, the place was already buzzing madly.8 No one on the team had seen Simon since the night before. Naturally, everyone was frantic. By the time Carole and I had made it to my dressing room, we had most of the story. Simon had been arrested and charged with assault, and would not be appearing on the programme anymore.
Earlier on that Sunday, Simon and his subsequent ‘accuser’ had had a very loud ‘domestic dispute’. Both men were still in the throes of their Saturday-night partying in one of the more prestigious hotels in Yorkville – the Hazelton Hotel, just down the street from where I was living. The hotel had an outdoor patio restaurant at street level, and it was the kind of place where diners went to see and be seen; a place the likes of the Beckhams would frequent.
According to one report, the ‘domestic dispute’ quickly became more outrageous and brunch diners were taken aback by the sight of a young man in his twenties climbing over the balcony of the hotel before shinning down the side and crashing down onto the restaurant patio.
‘Oh, look, David, darling. A man’s foot just landed in my sashimi.’
‘How nice, Vicky, I have his elbow in my oysters.’
One published report then stated, ‘The man stormed off, leaving the brunchers stunned, before returning without a shirt about ten minutes later and yelling at the restaurant patrons that he had forgotten something.’
Carole and I synthesized and filtered all the details we’d gathered since we’d arrived, and then I went off to a script reading with the two other judges and the show’s producers. We were about twenty minutes into the meeting and still no one had asked the question that was looming like a big fat elephant in the room. I gave them a couple more minutes before I said, ‘Um … did you all hear that Simon’s in jail?’
You’d have thought I’d just announced the Pope was gay or I was having Tom Cruise’s baby. Jaws dropped. Coffee spilled. The producers were then forced to explain to the other judges that Simon had been arrested and he would not be available for either the semi-final or the finale of the show.9
I’m a good guy and my parents raised me well, but, honestly, can you blame me for not biting my tongue? I looked at the producers and at my fellow judges, I shrugged, and then I said (all together now), ‘I told you so.’
The remaining Marias felt terribly let down. Simon had not only disappointed them, but he’d also let the programme down. In the end, his ‘accuser’ did not show up in court to press charges and the Canadian court exonerated Simon of all the charges against him.
‘But where’s John?’
‘He’s being gay, blunt, and gloating a teeny tiny bit in Canadaland.’
TABLE TALK #7
‘Oh No, You Didn’t!’
Oh yes, I did see my life flash before me during an evening performance of Robin Hood at the Birmingham Hippodrome in 2008, and all I kept repeating to myself was, ‘Please don’t let me die in tights.’
I’ve heard all the criticism about pantomimes before, and I hear it all over again from friends or colleagues when the announcement is made that, once more, I’ve agreed to perform in pantomime again at Christmas. I hear all about how panto is theatre at its lowest common denominator; about how panto is cheesy and outdated; and about how it’s beneath a performer of my range; blah, blah, blah. This is usually my response: come see one of mine and I dare you not to have a good time. Can’t be done.
Paul Elliot wrote my panto scripts for Aladdin and Robin Hood. He has a unique gift for appealing to the mums, dads, grans, uncles and aunties in the audience who are nostalgic for the pantos of their youth, but at the same time he’s enough of a student of theatre and a whizz with a one-liner that his scripts also appeal to the wide range of children and young adults sitting next to those mums, dads, grans, uncles and aunties. Let’s not forget that even Shakespeare was not above playing with cross-gender high jinks, mistaken identities and the theatrics of fools and fops.
Ever since I was a kid, I’ve loved to dress up and perform. As you know, that tradition continued when Clare and Turner were children and we would all dress up for our family performances at Christmas and the Barrowman New Year party. I’ve always adored working with children and for children. I enjoy seeing them laugh … and maybe even scaring them a little. On a whim, I did both to a whole crew of kids and their parents last year, when I stopped by the Doctor Who Up Close exhibition in the Red Dragon Centre at Cardiff Bay.
The exhibit is one of the best of its kind in the country. For a small fee, you can walk through the history of the Doctor and his companions – including yours truly as Captain Jack – checking out a lot of the costumes and props from across the series and from a number of recent episodes. You can also meet many of the Doctor’s most famous enemies. On top of all of this, the exhibition has loads of details about how episodes were produced and images created. For any fan of the show, it’s a treat.1
The Red Dragon Centre also houses my local cinema. One evening, when the movie Scott and I planned to see was sold out, we had about an hour to kill before the next showing. Since I didn’t fancy heading home and coming back again, I suggested we take a peek at the Doctor Who attraction.2 Poor Scott. In these situations, he usually rolls his eyes and wanders off to the nearest newspaper stand or bookstore.
As is often the case, a number of families were working their way round the displays when I entered, answering the trivia questions connected to each of the exhibits. No one paid much attention to the man in the baby-blue polo shirt who looked an awful lot like Captain Jack, as he snuck past the display of K9 …
I ducked round a dark corner to one of my favourite parts of the museum, where an evil Dalek was displayed in all its glory – with motion-sensored sound effects. On this day, the Dalek was presented in such a way that when visitors came round the curve from the first section of the exhibit, they’re a bit taken aback, sometimes even freaked out by what confronts them. I figured, why not make this even scarier and more exciting for the unsuspecting families about to turn the corner?
I climbed up onto the display, and posed myself as if the Dalek was menacing Captain Jack. The first family who turned the corner didn’t even bat an eyelid on seeing Captain Jack dressed in baby blue without his coat, never mind that he was even in this particular exhibit. As the unsuspecting family leaned forward to take a closer look, I reached out and grabbed the mum’s hand. She screamed so loud she scared the hell out of me and I screamed even louder. Her son, who was probably about ten, darted back round the corner, while his dad collapsed in hysterical laughter. I had barely enough time to assure them that, yes, indeed, I really was John Barrowman, before I had to hustle them onwards. I wanted to get back into position before the next victims – um, family – came bounding round the bend.
I could easily have stood next to the Dalek for another hour, but my popcorn and my partner were calling me.3 Problem was, when I turned the corner to leave the exhibit, I had to walk through the gift shop that was, naturally, strategically placed on the way out. All the children and the parents whom I’d leapt out at and terrified had stuck around and bought up all the Captain Jack-related posters and action figures. Before I was able to make my escape, they cornered me for my signature – served me right (I loved it really).
When I’m performing panto, watching the enjoyment on kids’ faces out in the auditorium is the best part of the experience. The biggest challenge is keeping my energy up between the matinee and evening shows. Any audience can tell when a performer is lagging, but in panto there’s no room for even the smallest dip in enthusiasm. A crowd of younger people is very aware when you’re not giving them all you’ve got – or, worse, when you’re not taking seriously the role you’re playing and the magic your character is a part of.
I watch a lot of movies in my dressing room during panto season and I try to pick films with exuberance that pops out through the screen and keeps my energy level peaked. This
last panto season one of my favourite films was Kung Fu Panda. Man, I could do all his moves.
Panto is a blast to do, but it’s also a serious business and it can have its own inherent dangers.4 During my most recent foray to Sherwood Forest as Robin Hood, we staged a diabolical move, where the Sheriff captured Robin and bound his hands and feet in cuffs, and then trapped him inside a deadly torture cage deep within his lair.
This cage was everything it appeared to be. Believe me. The cage had massive spikes, which were meant to make Robin Hood into mashed potatoes. Think that theatre sets are all created with smoke and mirrors? Think again. When the designers of the illusion constructed the cage, they knew they couldn’t use fake spikes because, from the seats in the stalls, fake spikes looked like fake spikes. The result was that during every performance, I had to be spread out under countless very sharp and dangerous knife-like spears.
Obviously, safety was everyone’s concern,5 so the drop lever for the spikes had a number of protective features built into it. Nevertheless, whenever the lever was on notch #1, the spikes had only two notches left until … splat! As a final safety measure, the ensemble actors playing the Sheriff’s evil minions were instructed to pay very careful attention to the man in the cage. If I was in trouble, they were meant to free me immediately.
One matinee performance, I was captured and bound, as usual, under the spikes. The Sheriff had not yet pulled the curtain around the table, which was the cue for me to be released and the effect to play out – as soon as I was freed, the spikes would come crashing down. As I was lying underneath those spears, I glanced up – and I noticed that the latches weren’t connected all the way to their safest range. The lever was on the first safety, which meant that there were only two more left until I’d be a walking sieve.
I was clamped down with handcuffs, so there was no easy way to get me out of my predicament without ruining the effect for the audience. While the scene was playing itself out, I started to signal to the ensemble actors, my backup, that I wanted to get out. Pretty soon, I was really getting agitated … because no one was paying any attention to the cuffed man under the deadly spikes. Only when the Sheriff finally pulled the curtain round the torture table, and I was hidden from the audience, was I released.
A bucketload of adrenalin and fear fuelled my anger. I leapt off the table so fast when the bindings were loosened that I scraped the skin off my wrists. Needless to say, everyone offstage knew at that point what had almost happened.
Clare, who was with me at the time, ran behind me as I charged to my dressing room, where I threw a chair across the room, shattering it against the door. I was so furious I could barely speak.6
Once I’d calmed down, and picked up the chair bits, the entertainer in me took over. I told Clare, ‘Don’t tell Grandma about the spikes. She’ll panic and she’ll never be able to enjoy the show.’
‘What’s John doing now?’
‘Trying not to be Swiss cheese in pantoland.’
CHAPTER ELEVEN
‘ON THE ROAD AGAIN’
★
‘If it has tyres or testicles, it’s going to give you trouble.’
Saying on a decorative tile above my back door
My seven all-time, to-die-for, definitive dream cars
1 Mercedes Gullwing (I’m drooling just writing this).
2 A 1964 Studebaker Super Hawk (a car for Mad Men).
3 A Tucker.
4 Aston Martin DBS (stands for ‘damn brilliant sports car’).
5 AMC Pacer (a seventies icon that reminds me of my childhood).
6 Range Rover.
7 Bentley Continental.
Given my love of driving, and my passion for cars – actually, my adoration of anything with a chassis, an engine, and more than one axle – I’m often asked why I’ve never appeared on BBC’s Top Gear. The truth? I’ve never been asked. Because if I were to be asked, I’d be a guest faster than you could shift from first to third.
Top Gear is one of my favourite shows. I never miss watching the programme when I’m home and I record every episode when I’m not. I enjoy the entire team, their banter, and the show’s overall format.
A few years ago, I got in a bit of trouble because, after an interview, when I thought my comments were being made ‘off the record’, I gave an impulsive answer to explain why I’d never been on Top Gear.
In my defence, a while before I made the remark, Top Gear had received a small number of complaints following Jeremy Clarkson’s use of the term ‘ginger beer’. However, a London free paper published my comment, which I’d thought was ‘off the record’, and as a result people at the BBC thought that Clarkson and I were having a public fight. I’m not sure that we ever really were, and I’ve consistently remained a fan of the show.
In the summer of 2009, my absence from prime-time car shows was remedied. I was asked to be a guest on Fifth Gear on Five. The programme had heard I was a petrol head beginning my own car collection, and their producers read in a Motor Trend magazine interview that one of my childhood dreams was to race a rally car, and that as an adult I’d like to buy my own some day and drive in off-road rally races. It seemed the perfect fit. And, I have to say, although I ended up destroying a £120,000 rally car in a death-defying crash on the show (and my mum yelled at me for days about my risk-taking1), it was a truly brilliant experience.
My spectacular crash on Fifth Gear was, unfortunately, not my only crash of this summer – but my quick responses and fast thinking during a car accident in Bridgend proved to me that driving off-road might be a sport at which I’d excel. After all, it was in my genes. Driving off-road (and into snow banks and under snowploughs) were driving skills we practised as a family when we first moved to America.
In the early eighties, after our first few years in the US, our neighbours had a name for the Barrowmans.2 We were labelled the family with the disposable cars because the drivers in the house at that time – my parents, Carole and Andrew – wrecked seven cars in a short period of time.
In their defence, not all of the accidents were the fault of their skills or lack thereof. During the first year that we lived in Prestbury, Illinois, my mum was driving her VW Rabbit on Hankes Road, the road that led into our neighbourhood, after a light snowfall, with my gran, Murn, sitting in her favourite seat in the car: the back seat. (Murn also liked travelling backwards in the extra seat at the very back of a Volvo station wagon we once owned. She and I would often ride back there when we took trips. Together we would wave,3 pull silly faces and pick our noses at anyone who got less than two chevrons behind us.)
That wintry day, my mum’s car skidded at a turn, the wheels caught on the lip of the road, the car flipped … and crashed down on its wheels in a nearby field. No one was hurt, but poor Murn was pinned in place, essentially caught in the space behind the seats, until my mum freed herself and then manoeuvred Murn out of her seatbelt.4 When I came home in the school bus that day, I recognized my mum’s car in the field, which sent me into a panic until I got home and saw my mum sitting safely on the couch – albeit sipping whisky rather than her usual sherry.
The family car at that time was a Caprice Classic with rear-wheel drive, and for many winters after that accident, the car had big bags of salt weighing down its rear to stop it fishtailing on the ice or snow. Driving in the Midwest, where winters sometimes brought 8–12 inches of snow in one storm a couple of times a month, meant that learning how to drive out of an icy skid and how to avoid sliding into ditches were must-have skills. I still pride myself on them to this day.
A few weeks after my mum’s accident, Carole was waiting at the corner of Hankes Road for a city snowplough to pass – when the massive machine turned left and directly into her car. The plough’s blade scraped up across the hood and kept coming. Carole was so stunned that this was actually happening, it took her a few beats to register that the blade was moving closer to the windshield – and to her head. She decided she’d better get the hell out of there.5
She clambered out the passenger side of the car, screaming at the driver, who’d finally stopped, but not before he’d sheared a chunk off the front of the car.
Then it was Andrew and my dad’s turn. Andrew’s car had been sideswiped on the left while he crossed an Aurora intersection on his way home from school. A week or so later, when the car was repaired, my dad went to pick it up. As he pulled out of the body shop’s parking lot, he was blindsided on the right side of the car. After swearing loudly (in Glaswegian) and freaking out the other driver, my dad reversed the car directly back into the repair bay. He climbed out to the stunned looks of the mechanics.
He said, ‘You fixed the wrong side.’
The Barrowmans disposed of seven cars in those first years as American drivers. When my turn came to get my first car, I had learned from the entire family how to drive defensively. In America in the eighties, driver’s education was sponsored by your local high school and so, as soon as I was eligible, I signed up for the driving classes and passed with chequered flags. On the day of my sixteenth birthday, the age when you’re able to get a driver’s licence in the US, I was first in line at the local Department of Motor Vehicles. I passed the road test at my first attempt.
Later that week, my dad took me to Bill Jacobs VW showroom in Joliet. (Despite the fact that the Barrowmans had wrecked a number of VWs in the past, we kept going back for another one.) My first car was a fire-red Scirocco. I adored it, and I think when I sat behind the wheel for the first time, at that moment I knew that, whenever I could afford it, I wanted to collect cars.
I Am What I Am Page 15
