Before we left Cape Town for the wineries, I rented a helicopter to take all of us on an aerial tour of the Western Cape, including viewing the wildlife on the beaches and the marshes along the Atlantic coastline.
Those of you who know me well know I have a deep and enduring love/hate relationship with flying, but I have a passion for planes and anything that defies gravity. The helicopter, however, is not my favourite flying machine.16 Nevertheless, the aerial tour came highly recommended and I thought it would be something we’d all enjoy.
Initially, the helicopter cruised at a very low height, and the panorama of the miles and miles of Cape coastline was stunning. For a quick detour, the pilot took us inland a little, over the townships that are, in fact, man-made slums and shanty towns. This part of the tour broke my heart to see, and I didn’t feel right flying above people’s homes and gawking into them. We asked the pilot to go back over the water, which he did, sometimes only by a matter of a few feet as he swooped in and out of the wake, sending flocks of birds into a frenzy ahead of us.
Before we had to head back to the airport, the pilot asked us if we’d like to experience a torque turn. Now, if you’ve ever flown in a helicopter, you’ll know it’s a very noisy machine and, even with headphones on, it can be difficult to hear clearly. I thought he’d asked if we’d like to see the ‘stork run’; I thought it was another bird swoop, so I said with great enthusiasm, ‘Absolutely!’
I discovered when I looked into it later that a ‘torque turn’ is actually one of the most dangerous tricks you can do in a helicopter. Although it was commonplace during the Vietnam War, most armed forces have since discouraged the manoeuvre because, well, it’s an easy way to crash.17
The pilot pulled the helicopter into a steep, high climb with the nose right up in the air. Then he cut the tail rotor and, for a beat, we were hanging in mid-air, spinning on our axis. The pilot flipped the tail back up, and we dropped forward so fast it felt like we were free-falling on the world’s wildest roller coaster, the ocean rushing towards us with full force and my stomach in my mouth. All of us inside the helicopter did what I think it is fair to say most men would have done in a similar situation: we screamed like little girls.
Our most recent holiday in Barbados was much more tranquil and much less risky.18 In the mornings, I’d get out of bed at around 7 a.m. and park myself in a deckchair at the lagoon pool, which looked out across the beach and the ocean. After that, I’d rouse myself for only the most necessary of physical functions. And as much as I love the active trips Scott and I take, where we explore new places and shop and visit historic sights and shop, I cherished the fact that when I roused myself from my deckchair one afternoon, I realized that I hadn’t been on my phone or checked my email for three whole days.19
Every evening at 5 p.m., a number of families we’d met since we’d arrived at the resort joined Scott and me at the pool bar. The adults ordered mudslides,20 but mine was kept on ice. Instead of drinking right away, I’d take all the kids into the pool and we’d play Marco Polo, or go to the beach and body surf, while all the mums and dads21 got an hour to themselves to sip in the sun. A couple of the children were big Doctor Who fans, and young enough that they truly thought they were playing Marco Polo every night at 5 p.m. with Captain Jack, which, if you think about it, might well be exactly what Jack would want to play. He probably even knew Marco Polo.
Spending this time in Barbados and sharing some of our holiday with these other families made me understand another reason why my parents may have shifted our family vacation from the caravan to the resort at Eastbourne. A resort, especially one that you return to every year, allows families to connect with other families from walks of life that, in your home environment, you’d likely never have contact with. Plus, vacationing at a resort community usually means more friends for the children to play with and more eyes to watch them when they do.
There is also another, very important bonus. I don’t care if you’re at Butlins in Minehead or at Crystal Cove in the West Indies, every resort has a karaoke night – and they’re a hoot.
For the Crystal Cove karaoke evening, I played DJ. I insisted that all of the guests in the bar and main room, adults and children alike, get up and sing, and everyone did. The management told me the next day that my karaoke night was the best and most popular one they’d had since they opened.
I do like a good karaoke or a cabaret night. Always have. Years ago, when my friend from university, Marilyn, and my mum, dad and I were driving from Glasgow to London for my second audition for what was to be my debut in Anything Goes, we stayed at a hotel outside London the night before. The hotel had a piano bar and Marilyn, my mum and I commandeered it and entertained everyone for a couple of hours. We even made a few quid in tips. The next day, as my dad was checking out, the hotel manager asked if he could book the three of us for the following weekend.
The day after the Crystal Cove karaoke, Scott and I rented jet skis. In the mornings, the beach would swarm with entrepreneurial Rastafarians hawking such wares. For a tenner each, Scott and I got the run of our machines for the day. Barbados had very few rules, but the Rasta guy did suggest, for our own safety, that we didn’t venture too far down the coastline … man. Scott and I headed out into open water, and thought, ‘Hell – it’s Barbados!’ and we made a run for it. We drove the jet skis all the way down the coast, taking in the sights and sounds of the beaches and the other resorts as we cruised.
When we crossed back into the harbour, where a number of cruise ships had docked, we started waving to the tourists standing on the decks. Pretty soon, our waving turned to doing doughnuts and figure-of-eights and putting on a little show for the people waving back to us, and then pretty soon after that, a hulking, flashing coastguard boat headed towards us at quite a clip. The cruise-ship captains had notified the coastguard of a possible terrorist threat from two erratic jet-ski drivers in the harbour. Scott and I drove up next to the boat, apologized profusely, and got the hell out of there.
Before Scott and I left Barbados, we heard from our new friends that the place to dine was a restaurant called The Cliff. The problem was that in order to get a table, you usually had to book months in advance; to land the best table (called, naturally, Table #1), a table that appeared to float out over the water, was nigh-on impossible at short notice. This was the kind of restaurant where there are no prices on the menu and they happily accept a second mortgage or your first-born in order to secure a reservation.
However, while we were mudsliding one evening, one of the couples told me that they’d had to cancel their booking at The Cliff because they couldn’t get a babysitter. Since my babysitting services were only available in the evenings at 5 p.m., and figuring that there was a chance other couples had had the same problem, I immediately rang the restaurant – and I got a slot for the following evening.
When Scott and I arrived, the manager greeted us at the door. He said he was so happy to see my name22 on his list for the evening, and that he was a huge fan of Doctor Who and Torchwood. He escorted us to – drum roll – Table #1. We ate an amazing meal, sitting out over the ocean in the soft glow of black coral candelabra and my own contentment.
Have I mentioned how much I love being Captain Jack?
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
‘I AM WHAT I AM’
★
‘I believe in doing what I can, in crying when I must, in laughing when I choose.’
Noël Coward, ‘If Love Were All’
Eleven things you may not know about me
1 I shop at Costco (sometimes daily).
2 I have an obsession with flossing my teeth (sometimes ten times daily).
3 I love kitchen gadgets (size doesn’t matter).
4 I love ‘Swedish Fish’ (a delicious gummy candy my family brings me by the ton).
5 I’m allergic to shellfish (everything swells).
6 I’d love to own my own hotel and spa some day.
7 I have a room full of shoes
(organized in plastic containers from … Costco).
8 I put on a massive fireworks display for my friends in July.
9 I get bored quickly.
10 I love a scary read and a frightening film.
11 I’ll watch anything about a crash, cyclone, tornado or hurricane (can’t help myself).
‘Mornin’, dear!’
‘Lovely day.’
‘Hmm, yes.’
‘What’ll you have for your brekkie?’
‘Toast, strawberry jam and black coffee, please, love. Oh, and today, I think I’ll be gay!’
My family tree is a long and ancient one, with branches stretching from the north-eastern coast of Northern Ireland to the midlands of Scotland. The Barrowman name, as with many of all our names, is a derivation of a medieval profession – just like Carpenter, Cooper, Miller, Potter, Reeve, or my personal favourite, Rimmer.1 The Barrowmans were highly skilled and very spiritual workers. I kid you not. Barrow men were paid to guard ancient burial mounds, called barrows, and their duty was to make sure the grave mound wasn’t robbed or desecrated before, I’m guessing, the soul had a chance to ascend to the afterlife. Of course, it’s possible that my ancestors just spent a lot of time in the fields shovelling shit and pushing a wheelbarrow, but I prefer my first version.
When I was asked to participate in the BBC documentary series The Making of Me, one of the things that attracted me to the project was that the documentary would trace my roots in a different way from a traditional family history. Instead of genealogy and lineage, the show explored biology and genetics to help me understand one of my most defining characteristics – being gay.
Since my career began, I’ve always been open about my sexuality, but that doesn’t mean I don’t have questions about it. I was lucky enough to be raised in a family where sex was not a four-letter word. I’m a very curious person. I love the kind of television show where things or events or even people are taken apart to see what makes them tick. Whether it’s a brand-new car or a plane crash,2 I’m intrigued about how and why things work the way they do, myself included.
The producers of the series explained to me that this documentary was going to explore current medical facts, scientific knowledge and psychological tests, many of which they’d apply to me, all with a mind to answer the question: what shapes a person’s sexuality? Or, in my mind, what makes me gay?
Although I think the numbers are shrinking, there are still people who believe that being gay is a lifestyle choice, and that one morning I woke up and decided to be gay. I knew that participating in The Making of Me was a risk because, from the beginning, I agreed that I would go wherever the science, the tests and their conclusions took me. This meant that I had to be open to discovering things about myself that I didn’t already know. The big question the show was exploring through my journey was one of the most interesting questions human beings ask: is our sexuality a product of our nature, or the result of how we’ve been nurtured?
My answer before the show? I was born gay. Homosexuality is part of my nature; it’s as much a part of who I am as the colour of my eyes, the size of my feet and the fact that I can roll my tongue. But my agreement with the producers was that, no matter what happened, I would take the risk of learning something I might not want or like to know.
The journey to answer the key question was an incredible one, and it started with a series of phone calls to my immediate family, who would have to be involved in the process, and who the producers needed to interview extensively. With Carole and my parents, they wanted to explore through stories and photographs the possibilities of relatives, distant and immediate, who might also have been gay; and as part of the investigation, they needed DNA samples from my mum and Andrew. Carole and my parents spent hours with the producers, narrowing down images and telling tales that would become part of a filmed family dinner at my parents’ house in Brookfield, Wisconsin.
In typical Barrowman fashion, the major drama of this dinner was not whether we wanted to reveal that one of my mum’s great-uncles, a particularly dapper bachelor who always had lots of young, good-looking male friends surrounding him, was gay, or – and I love this one – that my dad’s great-uncle, also another lifelong bachelor, had frequent ‘hunting’ weekends ‘up north’ but, according to my parents, never seemed to come home with any game.3 Oh, so gay. No. None of that was the least bit controversial. The family drama involved food – as it so often does with us. How much and what should we have? What about dessert? Do we eat before we film? Should we use the good china? Who’s sitting where? We’re not using paper plates. We’re using my good dishes.4 Can we have a drink when this is going on?5
I’d arrived in Chicago from London the day before, and I’d driven up that morning to Brookfield, a suburb of Milwaukee, to film the family gathering. Because a number of the tests I’d be participating in were to be conducted at Northwestern Memorial Hospital in Chicago, I was staying at a hotel in Chicago. The crew and producers for the documentary had already been in the States for a couple of days and they’d met with and interviewed my family beforehand.
Like many of our family dinners, this one started out relatively subdued – until I asked my mum a question that related to an avenue of enquiry the documentary was exploring: the role of a mother in shaping the sexual orientation of her children.6 I asked my mum if she thought she’d been a domineering mother, and, if so, might she have influenced my being gay?
The look on my mum’s face was a fierce combination of ‘how dare you’ and ‘he so came out that way’. It was also hilarious. Clare’s drink shot out her nose, Kevin choked a bit on his beer, Carole had to leave the table, and my dad and I completely cracked up – and I mean side-splitting, wee-your-pants cracking up. After that, all professionalism, poise, and most of the script went right out the condo window.
Turner arrived late at the family dinner because of his work schedule. I greeted him at the door with the cameraman in tow. Like a typical Barrowman, Turner paid the camera no mind, sat down at the table, and, with very little prompting, gave his opinion on what he thought made his uncle gay.
‘I don’t care.’
Which, hurrah, is probably the answer you’d get from many in Turner and Clare’s generation.
Along with the Barrowman anecdotes from our family tree, this journey of discovery also involved a number of very intriguing scientific tests, including, at one point, a severe anxiety-causing one. The first assessment I was put through took place on the day following the family dinner, and was carried out at a lab at Northwestern University Hospital. These initial tests were designed to monitor my arousal response to a variety of erotic images.7
The room was like thousands of doctors’ offices around the world. I stripped to my skin, sat on the chair, and electrodes were placed around the tip, base and head of my penis, which was then draped with a towel. First, via a computer screen, the researchers showed me images of monkeys8 and lots of pretty landscapes. Then they transitioned to male nudes, female nudes, male-on-male sex, male-on-female sex, and female-on-female sex.
So there I was: completely naked in this sterile office, with a towel over my crotch, my willy completely covered in wires, watching all variety of porn known to man … and woman, while researchers outside were watching me watching all this stuff inside. I knew exactly what would happen. Nothing. No erection happening here. As it turned out, it didn’t matter. The test was all about blood flow.
The researchers told me that this was a test the US Army had used in the fifties – on men who refused to go into the military because they claimed they were gay. When I thought about it later, those test results must have been a bit of a double-edged sword for the person being examined. On the one hand, you’d get out of the army, but on the other, you’d be out of the closet … at a recruiting station in Alabama in the fifties.9
The researchers explained that they could see when blood started pumping into my penis before anything under the towel noticeably changed. I
sat there concentrating on all those images and didn’t get an erection, but, according to the researchers, I reacted exactly the way a normal gay man should have reacted. The blood flow increased to my penis when I was shown the male-on-female erotica. Well, it would, wouldn’t it? There was a boy involved. Absolutely nothing stirred for the female-on-female images, but when I’d viewed the male-on-male porn, I was off the scale. Overall, I got an A+ in that exam.
Guess what? I’m Supergay!10
The test that caused me some distress was one that had to be done in an enclosed MRI machine. I’m claustrophobic when I’m in confined spaces – which is probably why I had to get out of the closet as soon as possible. This time, the electrodes were connected to my brain and my reaction was scanned while I watched similar pornographic images as before, only this time on a screen above my face. Same subject, different positions; plus this time they showed me pictures of male athletes and female athletes in their standard running, jumping and kicking poses. After I’d viewed each image, I had to press a button from one to four, with one being a turn-on and four being not so much.
I was fine inside the machine for the first couple of minutes, until I suddenly felt a panic attack coming on: dry mouth, pulse racing, stomach rolling, tingling in my arms. Most of the time when an attack like this happens, I use what I call ‘distraction therapy’, which means I force my brain to disconnect from the panic by reciting a song, or imagining my happy place,11 or telling myself a very linear story in my head. If that doesn’t work, I do my best to let the attack run its course, reminding myself, as it does, that panic attacks are not fatal.
Panic attacks are not fatal. Panic attacks are not fatal.
Over the years, I’ve been onstage in the middle of a number and suffered a panic attack, been in the TARDIS with the Doctor and kept one at bay, and, most recently, during my show in Oxford on my concert tour, I let one charge through my system while I sang on.
I Am What I Am Page 20
