So Me

by Graham Norton

The next morning, poorer but sadly not wiser, we headed out to do a quick bit of sightseeing before we headed on. Scott had very specific tourist’s demands. If it had something to do with a dead celebrity then it was on the itinerary. Las Vegas had the Liberace museum. Whatever you think it is going to be like, that’s not the way it is. The collection is housed in a little shopping centre in the suburbs. The other businesses in the centre hint at the different kinds of visitors the museum gets – there’s a shop selling religious artefacts and a gay bar called Good Times. I’m sure Liberace would have enjoyed the irony. On the day we went, most other people seemed to have missed a few newspaper stories. A talcum powder cloud of old ladies gathered around the till in the gift shop. ‘Tell me, dear, how did he die?’ They trundled back towards their bus muttering about how dangerous a bad cold can be.

  Back on the road stretching endlessly into the distance, splitting the empty world into two, we stopped to see a large asteroid crater: we stood behind a small rail with other dead-eyed travellers staring into what appeared to be a large hole in the ground. We followed signs to see a petrified forest. If you haven’t been in a petrified forest, let me tell you that the most common wildlife to be found in one is the bored tourist. Then we took a sharp right, drove for two hours, saw Billy the Kid’s grave, and then drove two hours back to where we’d turned off.

  Most nights were spent in low-price motels watching TV, but there were a few evenings where the end of our driving day coincided with our arrival in a big town. Amarillo in northern Texas was one of them. We had a shower and then checked out our gay guide to America. Sure enough there was a gay bar. We probably should have guessed that it wasn’t going to be very busy, given that we were able to park our massive truck-and-car combo right outside. Inside it was a typical provincial gay crowd, which is to say that the place wasn’t a gay bar at all. It was just a place for all the people in town who didn’t fit in anywhere else.

  We sat at the bar and ordered our beers. The woman next to us started to talk. I guessed the drink she was spilling over my jeans wasn’t the first one that she had enjoyed that evening.

  ‘Where are you from?’

  I told her.

  ‘I’m going to visit there soon,’ she said.

  ‘Really? When?’

  ‘Not sure. Just got a few things to sort out.’

  She then went on to tell us what those few things were: her mother had disowned her when she ran off and married the local drug dealer. He turned out to be abusive so she left him and was now trying to piece her life back together. Things, however, were now going great. She had finally reconciled with her sister, in fact tonight was really special because her sister had asked her to watch her kids.

  ‘Oh, and weren’t you able to?’ I asked.

  She looked at me with a puzzled face, then glanced at her unsteady drink.

  ‘Oh, I see. No, no, they’re out in the car.’

  ‘The car?’

  ‘Yeah, just outside. Do you want to come out there and share a joint?’

  We politely declined. One of life’s great mysteries had been solved: I now knew where they found the guests for the Jerry Springer show.

  Oklahoma was memorable, but again not for any good reason. The bomb in the federal building had blown the heart out of the city. Although not directly related to a celebrity, death on that scale meant that the site was on Scott’s ‘to see’ list. A high chain-link fence covered in dead flowers, rain-soaked teddies and curl-cornered photos marked out the enormous death plot. In another time and place it could have been an eclectic art installation, but here it was just an enormous improvised monument to what stupidity and fear can achieve. I don’t know how I expected to feel, but it made me horribly uncomfortable and awkward, as if I had intruded upon a moment of private grief. Scott took his photos while I hovered by the truck. We drove on.

  Finally the mammoth trek was over, the things in storage and Scott finally parted with his car, which he gave to a friend. It was time for our new life together in London.

  During our trip we had addressed all the pitfalls, dangers and risks of living together and talked endlessly about them. Moving somewhere just to be with someone was never a good idea. One person supporting the other often causes problems. Scott wasn’t going to be able to work and I was really his only friend in the UK. I reassured him and stroked his arm. This was going to be different. Our love would be enough.

  The first thing we had to do was get Scott a work permit. I’m sure if we had been clever or if I had thrown money at the right sort of lawyer this wouldn’t have been too difficult, but being naïve, full of love and badly advised we joined the Stonewall Immigration Group. I don’t mean to suggest that there is anything wrong with Stonewall, which is a political organisation that lobbies Parliament for equal rights for gay men and lesbians, but when we joined there was no legislation in place that recognised same-sex partners so we became just another test case trying to change the law.

  We went to a meeting to get some advice and the name of a lawyer who would take our case. When we walked into the room I was struck by the number of older men sitting beside very beautiful Brazilian and Asian men. Bastards! I glanced at Scott and, much as I loved him, I admit that for a split second I did feel slightly short-changed.

  We were told that we would have to put together a lengthy application to the Home Office. This was not simply a matter of filling out forms, it also required a folder of evidence of our relationship, photographs, airplane tickets, that sort of thing; and also, most embarrassingly, letters from mutual friends bearing testament to our love. The thought of asking people like Nicola, Helen and Maria to describe what a lovely couple we made made me feel slightly sick.

  Scott immediately contacted his family and the letters started to pour in. I couldn’t ask mine because unbelievably the subject of my sexuality had still not been raised. The way I thought about it was that if I had been my parents’ neighbours’ son they would have known, so if they really didn’t want to know that I was gay by now, it was their choice.

  I was doing a TV show in Dublin so I thought I would take the opportunity to bring Scott over to Ireland to meet my parents. This wasn’t intended to be some gay rite of passage; I just thought it would be nice for him to meet them and see where I had grown up. As we stepped from the train in Cork I was surprised to see my sister Paula, rather than my father, waiting for us. Sure enough, on the drive back to Bandon my obviously embarrassed sister tried as casually as she could to drop into conversation a message from my mother. ‘She told me to tell you that you’re not to upset your father.’ Now I’m not sure what my mother thought was going to happen – did she think Scott was going to turn up in an A-line dress and some size twelve high heels? – but the message was clear.

  In any event, the meeting was fine. Then a few months later I made my usual weekly phone call to my mother. She answered, sounding a bit distant.

  ‘Are you all right?’ I asked.

  ‘Well, no, no, I’m not,’ she replied.

  ‘What’s wrong?’

  ‘I just think it would have been nice if you had told your family certain things before you announced them on television,’ she said curtly.

  ‘What?’

  It turned out that as part of some show I had made with Rapido for Channel 4 I had done some joke about being Irish and gay. I had made similar jokes before on other shows, but this was obviously the first one that that she had seen.

  ‘But you told me not to tell you!’

  ‘I did not!’

  ‘You said I wasn’t to upset my father.’

  ‘Well, I didn’t want you to.’

  ‘And was he?’

  ‘Well, no. It turns out he had guessed.’

  ‘And you knew?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘So what’s upsetting you?’

  ‘I just think it’s such a lonely life.’

  This was of course the parental cliché, but it goes to the very heart of why parents ar
e upset to find out their child is gay. It’s not about homophobia, it’s just their worry that you won’t be happy. I assured her that I wasn’t lonely and that I was very happy, and that was the end of the only conversation I have ever had with my mother about my sexuality.

  I don’t really know how Scott filled his time, but I seemed to be away a great deal, either at gigs or sitting on a minibus coming back from Norwich in the middle of the night. The good thing was that yet again I was earning even more than I had been and the extra expense of the new flat and my live-in lover weren’t causing any financial strain. Given that Scott hadn’t grown up in a wealthy family and hadn’t been earning very much in LA, he took to money like a duck to bottled water. It wasn’t long before he was filling his time by looking for a bigger place for us to live. Of course I didn’t say anything – God forbid I should rock the boat – but I did feel that the love nest I had spent so much time finding and working for in order to pay the rent had been rejected.

  A phone call out of the blue. I hardly needed to pick up the receiver Melanie was so excited. I had been nominated for a comedy award. How thrilling! What for?

  ‘Best Newcomer for The Jack Docherty Show.’

  ‘Who am I up against?’

  ‘Phil Kay and, well, this is the slightly awkward bit . . . Jack Docherty.’

  It took a moment or two for the news and its significance to sink in. Melanie went on to explain that I should have been nominated for Bring Me the Head of Light Entertainment but someone at Channel Five had ticked the wrong box. Oh well, it was thrilling to be nominated, even if there was no way I could win.

  The big night arrived and tragically I can still remember what I was wearing. Although shiny, it was almost tasteful for me – a sort of glittering Nehru jacket affair and some trousers that were so tight my legs looked like satin sausages. Scott and I got to our table in Studio One of London Studios and joined Jack Docherty and his wife, various other producers from his show and Graham Stuart. All night people were trying to tip-toe around me and the very obvious fact that Jack was going to win, but every now and again someone would come up to the table and just see Jack. ‘It’s in the bag, mate, it’s in the—’ Then they caught sight of me smiling in my shiny blouse. I really didn’t care. It was the Perrier award all over again: I was genuinely thrilled to be nominated and required nothing more.

  Finally it was time for the award for Best Newcomer. Jack and I laughed and wished each other luck. Jonathan Ross introduced Kathy Burke, and the two of them cracked a few jokes before she opened the envelope. My back was to Jack as I looked at the stage. Cameras were trained on us both, and just before Kathy announced the name I heard one cameraman whisper to the other, ‘I’ll cover Jack to the stage.’ Of course I knew I hadn’t won, but I couldn’t help but be disappointed to find out in such an offhand way even before it was official. I fixed my grin and refocused on the stage.

  ‘Oh!’ cried Kathy. ‘It’s my favourite Irish homosexual!’

  What? But I’m the only . . . and then I heard it – my name. The rest was a blur. I think I kissed Scott, maybe shook hands with Graham, but mostly stumbled to the stage as quickly as I could before someone changed their mind or Kathy revealed that she was only joking. I blurted out a few thank yous – the people at TalkBack, David Johnson and Mark Goucher, probably my parents – but then I just dried up, clutched my award and walked off.

  I was no more than a couple of seconds backstage when it dawned on me. I had forgotten to thank anyone who worked on the show, Jack himself or my great supporters at Channel Five. I felt like such a complete selfish bastard, but, but . . . there is no but. It was unforgivable. I was taken backstage to the press room for photographs with Kathy and the award. In between the flashes I just kept telling everyone, ‘I forgot to thank all the people I worked with.’ ‘They’ll be all right, don’t worry,’ I was told repeatedly.

  One of the production assistants led me around the back of the set and, in a commercial break, ushered me back to the table. Jack was full of smiles and shook my hand. The others weren’t quite so good at hiding their displeasure – there were a few ‘well done’s through rigid smiles. I apologised again for my sin of omission, but everyone assured me that it was all right and of course they understood.

  In terms of my professional life, this was the best thing that had ever happened to me and in lots of personal ways I suppose it was too. I might not have been bred for disappointment exactly, but nor had I ever won anything before – not even a raffle. But sitting at a table with Jack and all the people who worked with him day after day slightly put a lid on my euphoria. Even then, however, I was so full of a Good Thing happening to me that somehow I hadn’t fully taken on board that mostly what had happened that night was a Bad Thing. It was only later that Scott told me what it had been like at the table after I had been whisked backstage. Apparently everyone around the table had gone very quiet. I’m sure certain things were left unsaid about me at the time to save Scott’s feelings, but he said it was a fairly horrendous experience. The only bright spots had been when Dale Winton and Barbara Windsor (and I will always appreciate them for doing this) came over to congratulate Scott.

  The party afterwards didn’t feel very festive. I had a prize, but the awkwardness of how I had won it married to how badly I had handled my acceptance of it meant that the usual air punching and champagne popping just felt very out of place. I couldn’t help but feel like the bad guy. Scott and I slipped away fairly early. Just as I was saying goodnight to Graham Stuart, a man came up and congratulated me. After he walked off I asked Graham, ‘Who was that?’ A beaming Graham replied, ‘Kevin Lygo, Head of Entertainment at Channel 4.’

  We didn’t go straight home. Instead we stopped for a last couple of drinks at the White Swan, the East End gay bar that gained a certain notoriety when Michael Barrymore used the stage there for coming out. We stood at the bar in our finery drinking pints, and a few people who had been watching the award show on TV came over to offer their congratulations. It was like taking off a tight pair of shoes. The stress of the award show melted away and we were just another couple getting drunk.

  11

  So Time

  CHANNEL 4’S OFFICES ON HORSEFERRY Road in London make you feel important. I strode through the revolving doors and announced myself to the bright-eyed receptionist sitting in her tower of glass and televisions. ‘I have an appointment.’ It felt as if the very least the meeting could be about was the merger of huge international companies or peace in the Middle East. I signed in, was issued a security pass and was then whisked away in a glass pod lift to a higher floor. Then I started talking about a show that had a few celebrity guests and maybe a member of the audience telling a story about wanking.

  Graham and I had meetings with a commissioning editor called Graham K. Smith. All three of us had grown up not knowing anyone else called Graham, so we all found a childish pleasure in being in an All Graham Gang. We talked about the show in very vague terms. Essentially it would be a chat show and maybe I would do some talking with the audience or make a phone call. It was my stand-up show from Edinburgh with a few celebrities thrown in to make it seem like a television programme.

  Eventually we met with Kevin Lygo, the man who had shaken my hand at the Comedy Awards. Kevin is very rare amongst television executives in that he is both funny and genuinely seems to know what he is talking about. I know that doesn’t sound like much to ask from someone who has risen to the top of their profession, but you would be surprised. Most people who are in control of the programmes we watch seem to take great intellectual pride in not actually watching any television. Kevin and Lorraine Heggessy, who runs BBC 1, are happy exceptions to that rule.

  All these meetings at 4 went very well, but Graham and I always left feeling slightly frustrated because no one was actually telling us that the show was definitely going to be commissioned. We kept playing around with the format, and I remember the day when Graham Stuart came up with the idea of u
sing the Internet as well as the phone. I had never turned on a computer at the time, and although I smiled and nodded (boat be still!), I was thinking that it sounded really dull. I decided not to worry because it was beginning to look like the programme would never see the light of day.

  In the middle of all this media cock-teasing, Scott had found us a new house to rent. It was further east in Bow and it was enormous. Arranged over four floors it meant we could have a study each. Scott was desperate to get a computer and try out the World Wide Web. God, what did everyone see in this Internet thing? Didn’t they realise it was going to be like laser discs all over again? I reluctantly agreed to his demands and a computer arrived and was installed in his study. Almost instantly I became an Internet widow. Scott spent more and more time in his study with the computer and less and less time with me. I can’t blame him, because I was so rarely there and when I was, all I wanted to do was drink wine and watch TV. I had brought this man to Britain with promises of endless love and attention, but once he’d arrived I was always out. It must have been hell for him because thanks to our application to the Home Office for his residency he had had to give up his passport. He was in effect trapped in Britain, unable to work. Of course it’s relatively easy to be sympathetic in retrospect. At the time, knowing all the extenuating circumstances didn’t make it any easier to live in a house with a big grumpy American sitting at his computer all day. Occasionally we still had fun and I told myself that we were just going through a bad phase, but sometimes as I sat alone flicking through the channels I wondered if the good times had been the phase.

  Scott desperately wanted to get involved in the show we were planning, but although I was more than happy to discuss it with him at home, it just seemed eggy to bring him into an office full of television professionals. I suppose this was partly because I felt like such a fraud myself, and also because I was aware that it just wasn’t the done thing. I told myself that I was protecting Scott and our relationship from the stresses of working together, and besides, why would he want to be my Debbie Magee?