Look who it is!

by Alan Carr

  Don’t get me wrong, I’m not knocking Torbay or the neighbouring beauty spots of Paignton or Babbacombe. I have a lot of fond memories of those places, and I for one am over the moon that they are enjoying a revival of fortunes at present, it’s just that we’d holidayed there at the same caravan park for the last five years.

  My parents weren’t the sort of people who waited for the designated school holidays, oh no, the Cobblers had their last game and then we were off – ‘Cornwall here we come, lock up your pasties!’ It was even known for Dad to take us out of school to go to the races. We were all in on it. I would not go to school, Dad would drive us to the race track and Mum would write the sick note. Due to her own experiences at school, my mother’s inherent contempt for teachers would often surface in these sick notes. Sometimes she would just write ‘Alan was ill’, leaving me to do the dirty work and choose an appropriate illness, which would be hard for one day. One day off is too long for a headache, yet too short for ringworm.

  Once there, the races were so exciting, especially if you got near the front, and the horses would thunder past you, leaving you windswept and breathless. I enjoyed visiting all the different racetracks. I loved the buzz of the winners’ enclosures, and the flurry of the tic-tacking, but most exhilarating of all was being naughty and missing a whole day of school. Newmarket, Leicester, Ripon – by the age of 13, I’d visited them all. I couldn’t read, but I’d visited them all.

  I remember being at York races on a school day, studying the form, binoculars around my neck, and bumping into Mr Knott, a teacher at my school. I don’t know who was more embarrassed, he or I. To be fair, he didn’t have a leg to stand on. I was only jeopardising my education by being at the races – he was putting his whole class at risk. Tut tut. We soon got over our awkwardness, especially after I told him about a dead cert in the 2.15, ‘Dancing Lady’, odds-on favourite. He’d be a fool not to bet on it.

  * * *

  In the summer of 1990, Northampton Town Football Club had fallen out of love with my father and he got the sack. Northampton Town had been relegated back down to the Fourth Division. My father’s battle to keep them up in the Third Division, struggling with no money to buy new players, ended unsurprisingly in disappointment.

  The problem with having a job in the public eye, as I am learning now, is that everyone knows your business and wants to let you know their opinion on your business whether you want to hear it or not. When Dad’s sacking was on the front page of the Chronicle and Echo, the taunts of ‘Your dad’s shit’ were replaced with ‘Your dad’s been sacked’ – which is more of a statement than a put-down really, but each to their own. In fact they used to shout ‘Your dad’s shit’ even when he was top of the Fourth Division, so in the end these insults proved more exasperating than anything.

  One neighbour knocked on our door saying that she thought it was a shame that we would be moving so suddenly. She had mistakenly assumed that our house in Overstone had been bought by the club and that we would be evicted now Dad was unemployed. This woman hadn’t said a word to us all through Dad’s years of success but somehow Dad’s sacking had awoken some kind of malice in her and she had come round to gloat. Cheeky bint.

  However, much to our neighbour’s disappointment, my father wasn’t out of a job for long. Within days he was being wooed by Blackpool City Football Club and in a matter of weeks he was the new manager. Dad informed the family that we would be relocating up north to Blackpool. I would finish my schooling in seagull-shitting distance of the Golden Mile. I really had mixed feelings about this move. The excitement of living by the seaside, the Pleasure Beach just down the road, the dodgems, the Illuminations was undermined by a sense of ‘Here we go again!’ At least in Northampton it was better the devil you know. It was only the diehard bullies who still shouted ‘Faggot!’ and ‘Poof!’ – all the others had given up, bored that I never fought back. All they would get in retaliation was a ‘tut’ or at the most I’d twat them with my copy of Murder on the Orient Express.

  The thought of joining a whole new school, friendless, looking as I did with this voice was simply terrifying. But Dad was unemployed, and so we had to go where the work was and that just happened to be the Vegas of the North – Blackpool.

  Chapter Three

  ‘WHO ARE YA? WHO ARE YA?’

  Everyone has a place that seems to draw them back to it, whatever life choices they make, whatever they do. After a few years they can bet their bottom dollar they end up back there. My place is Blackpool. Like a piece of foil to a filling, I end up attached to it, which inevitably turns out to be a painful experience. Our move to Blackpool wasn’t my first time up there: Gary, Mum, Nan and I had gone on a weekend break with Dad’s friend Ted who, with some of his friends, drove us up in a minibus. The weekend was pretty uneventful. It was only a few years later, when Ted got arrested for running an unlicensed brothel in the next village and we recalled that all our fellow holidaymakers had been ropy women, that it dawned on us we’d had a weekend break with a minibus full of hookers.

  It was a great weekend, to be fair. We had gone up to see the Christmas Illuminations. We had a fantastic view of them at the front of our hotel, and it was a real novelty to have the lights flashing outside our window. I suppose some of the girls would have been used to that.

  The one thing that does spoil the whole Blackpool experience – apart from the architecture, food, cleanliness and quality of entertainment – is the weather. The wind is so merciless and bitter, it’s almost frightening. We had a jolly Santa swinging outside our window one night; he was shaking so violently in the wind that I thought his sack was going to come through the window and electrocute Nan.

  The other time I’d been there was with my mates, and they’d booked us all into Thompsons Hotel. While most Blackpool hotels have a selection of pamphlets on the front desk advertising the Winter Gardens or the Tower Ballroom, Thompsons has the latest North West STD figures and a sachet of complimentary lubricant. Apparently in the summer of 2004 gonorrhoea was more popular than Bobby Davro. The place was basically a knocking shop, with no locks on the door and the smell of sex permeating every nook and cranny and, believe me, there are a lot of crannies. At least we didn’t have to be disturbed by the chambermaid in the morning asking if we needed teas or coffees; no, she could just refill the basket through the custom-made glory holes in the wall.

  Of course, I was disgusted and outraged, but it’s funny, isn’t it, how after three bottles of wine and copious gins and tonics you get used to the minor design flaws and out-of-date curtains. That Sunday morning I woke up in Thompsons with the worst hangover I’d ever had. I didn’t have my glasses on, but even through my myopic haze I could see that the man lying next to me had special needs. Then I felt someone turn over on my other side, a man who looked relatively ‘normal’. Oh no! Please, dear God, please don’t tell me I’ve had an orgy on a Sunshine Coach.

  The helper reassured me that it had been only him and that the special needs man had his own room, but sometimes he couldn’t sleep so he gets into bed with him. Although I couldn’t remember anything at all, I was happyish with his story and didn’t really want to pick it to pieces too much – yes, ignorance can be bliss. I thanked everyone involved, picked up my clothes and left Thompsons, got on a tram and went somewhere to have a wash.

  * * *

  Blackpool for me just throws up drama after drama, a bit like the sea does with sanitary products. It’s a place that I just can’t visit without ‘something’ happening to me. That ‘something’ happened again, recently. I was there filming a pilot for Channel 4, The End of the Pier Show, with the lovely Lionel Blair as my stooge. Working with Lionel Blair was an absolute scream – he is such a lovely man with a wicked sense of humour. I can honestly say I have never laughed so much on a show; if only the audience could have said the same.

  Anyway, we persevered with the show, which was basically a music-hall/cabaret show at the end of Blackpool pier, and to be fair it
went all right. So Lionel and I decided to have a celebratory glass of red wine in the bar at the end of the pier. Our drink was disturbed by a hunchbacked man advancing to our table saying, ‘There’s a man trying to kill himself. You’ve got to help him.’ Why, when we were surrounded by lifeguards and first-aiders, he came to the two campest men in Blackpool (and that’s saying something) I will never know.

  We followed the hunchback, and he was right. There was a man, shirtless, hanging off the end of the pier in a godawful blustery gale, wailing, ‘I want to die! I want to die!’ I instinctively thought the show wasn’t that bad, but we decided to help nevertheless. I ran straight over; Lionel tap-danced. The man hadn’t been in the audience (thank God, I thought – I might look confident, but my ego is as fragile as a porcelain figurine), he was mentally ill (hooray!).

  Lionel dashed straight over and said, ‘I’m Lionel Blair off the telly.’ The man stopped mid-wail and looked up, totally bewildered. Then I popped my head over and said, ‘Oh hello.’ He looked dumbstruck, so while his brain tried to compute what Lionel Blair and Alan Carr were doing at 10 p.m. on the end of Blackpool Pier, we both pulled him off (not like that) and the police turned up and took him off our hands.

  Did they give us a Community Action Trust Reward? No. Did we get any thanks off the man? No, all that Lionel and I were left with was a wonderful anecdote that we could hawk about at parties like the whores we are. We were even more buoyed up now; not only had we finished our pilot, we’d saved a man’s life, so we went to Funny Girls and celebrated. We told the Drag Queen and asked for a dedication – Blondie’s ‘The Tide is High’ – but the drag queen didn’t get it. Ahh!

  We spent the summer of 1990 up in Blackpool; we were totally supportive of our father and really wanted this move to work. But even he would admit the excitement at living by the seaside began to ebb away slowly, especially when we ended up living above a launderette. I don’t think it ever stopped raining. The stacks of rain-soaked deckchairs looked a sorry sight, framed by the Golden Mile which through the rain looked the colour of baby poo. Plus the view outside thewindow of a flickering pelican crossing wasn’t the illuminations that we’d been promised. The Chairman, Owen Oyston, sensed our disappointment and soon had us installed in a room at the Imperial Hotel, which sounds fabulous, but when you’re 14 do you want to sleep with your family in the same room? It’s Blackpool, not the fucking Blitz. However, we persevered with the weather, the cramped conditions, and everyone keeping schtum about the fact they weren’t really enjoying this experience; this was Dad’s job, and the family that sleeps together sticks together, if you see what I mean.

  The job wasn’t really going as Dad had expected either. The Blackpool fans, unlike the loyal Cobblers ones, didn’t really take to him and he’d started receiving abuse. Abuse from people who’ve chosen to live in Blackpool – now I’ve heard everything. Sometimes it takes something totally unrelated to snap people out of a situation. Ours happened one morning with Dad coming through the hotel door, dripping wet, white as a sheet, holding Minstral in his arms like Superman did to Lois Lane.

  ‘Why are you wet?’ asked Mum. Minstral had fallen off the end of Blackpool pier and thankfully the tide had been in. Minstral in a panic was doing the doggie paddle (what else?) to get back to the shore, but instead due to the waves was getting pummelled against the sea defences. Dad dived in. Just like those people in the paper that you tut at for being so stupid who dive in to save their beloved pets and they end up dying whilst the pet swims quite happily to the other side thinking it’s a game.

  Yes, in a split second Dad turned into one of those have-a-go heroes. Minstral was saved and spent the rest of the day in shock lying meekly in his basket, although Mum was certain he was ‘just being dramatic’. Surely the dog was too fatigued to be giving my mother dirty looks. This dramatic moment brought it all home to us, and we all agreed that none of us was enjoying this at all, and now even the dog agreed with us. We all decided that this was shit.

  In November we were put out of our misery; Dad lost his job, and so we went back to Northampton. I’d never been so happy to see the place. We could tell we were getting close – we could see the Express Lifts Tower erect in the distance dominating the landscape like an extended middle finger.

  * * *

  After all the worry and the stress and ups and downs of Dad’s career, the summer of 1992 was all about me. My GCSEs had finished and it was now time to choose where I wanted to take this sorry excuse of a life onwards. The different subjects floated around my head. Science and Football were automatically no-nos. One of the languages, perhaps, Religious Studies, Home Economics, I just couldn’t decide. Maths had got so difficult with all the Pythagoras theorems and Pi signs; if I took it at A-level, I swear I’d have a stroke. I was none the wiser. I always think it’s a shame that you get to do your A-levels at that age just when you’re discovering the delightful distractions of going out, alcohol and partying. Believe me, when you’re 16 and desperate to experience ‘having a drink’, even the dodgy nightlife of Northampton has a strange allure. I’d experienced being the other side of the bar when I was a glass collector at a singles night at Sywell Motel. It wasn’t me. Being groped by menopausal women and answering crank calls from your own father asking if the ‘Grab a Fanny/Dig up a Date’ night was still on can get quite wearing, believe me.

  I would often go drinking with my friend Carolyn. We had known each other since lower school, she being just another girl in my ever-expanding gang of ladies. Well, Carolyn and I would head down Bridge Street and drink ‘K’ cider. Just typing that letter makes me shiver. I don’t know what was worse: the taste on the way down, or the taste on the way back up. Thankfully ‘K’ cider is no more. They used to cost a pound at 40’s, the bar of choice for illegal underage drinkers, and looking back I still feel robbed.

  Why do first-time drinkers always choose cider as their gateway drink? Is it because they think that the apples in the cider make up one of their five a day? I don’t know, but I always drank cider. K, Strongbow, Woodpecker, anything. I can remember shitting myself in the Saddlers Arms after having three pints of Scrumpy. I was well pissed off because they were new flares. I use the word ‘new’ very loosely. Carolyn and I were going through that well-worn phase of becoming obsessed with the Seventies, the music, the fashion, the attitude, everything about it. So after getting high on the sounds of Chic, Parliament and Candi Staton in Carolyn’s bedroom, we would scour the charity shops for funky clothes to emulate our soul sisters and brothers whilst doing the ‘Wellie Road’.

  The ‘Wellie Road’ – or to give it its full name, the Welling-borough Road – is basically a long road with pubs and bars on either side that leads into the town centre. It can get quite rough at the weekend, so why Carolyn and I chose to walk down it dressed as Shaft and Cleopatra Jones is beyond me. Of course, we thought we looked funky and superfly and that’s why people were staring and pointing and shouting abuse. I realise now there’s nothing superfly about smelling of musty piss or wearing clothes that have names like ‘Elsie’ and ‘Wilf’ sewn into the back of them. We were meant to look like we were from the Seventies, not in our seventies. Carolyn was and is a really pretty blonde girl, with these sparkling blue eyes and a curvaceous figure, and we would always play the same trick in all the pubs. She would go up to a man and say, ‘Do you want to buy me and my friend a drink?’ Of course he would buy two drinks waiting expectantly for another pretty blonde young lady to return from the toilet, but no, it would be me, in a sheepskin, smelling like a dead Alsatian. ‘Thanks, mate,’ I would smile cheesily as I took my first slurp of free scrumpy.

  How I didn’t get my head kicked in, I don’t know – but then again, some of the men Carolyn picked were so paralytic, they thought I was a woman anyway. They probably thought I was a member of Boney M, popped in for a cider and black on the way to a Memphis recording session. Often we would end up at the Roadmender, which had only recently been revamped and reopened
– by Roger Daltrey, no less. As you can imagine, we absolutely adored the monthly ‘Carwash’ nights. A whole night dedicated to the Sounds of the Seventies; we had the look, and now we had the music. It would always be worth hanging around to the end because more often than not a fight would break out and you would see grown men punching and kicking in Seventies’ clothes, afros would go flying in the air, blood-spattered afghans littered the floor … It was like Sister Sledge had trod on a landmine. It was one of the funniest things you’d ever seen.

  We thought naively that it was where we belonged, and we became quite protective about it; the Roadmender was for people like us. Those nights were pure madness, always ending up having an adventure, or waking up at some dodgy person’s house. We’d each tell our parents that we were staying around the other one’s house, so that gave us a free rein to make mischief and see where our Cuban heels took us.

  Once I remember waking up one morning in a strange house with a Jack Russell sitting on my face. I know this sounds perverse but the house was so cold I let her sit on it for a bit longer; you can’t beat a warm face. Worryingly, if the dog had sat a few inches down, I would have suffocated to death. Thankfully, the stench of K cider repelled her from my lips.

  * * *

  Although I loved the dressing up, the disco and the kebabs and chilli sauce that I would inevitably find plastered to the hem of my flares the next morning, I was itching to find people who danced my end of the ballroom, if you see what I mean. I wanted to see if there were any people in Northampton like me, so on a few weekends I would go out by myself, lie to my parents about staying at Carolyn’s house and venture out, hungry to taste Northampton’s gay scene myself, alone.