by Alan Carr
The only problem is there is no gay scene in Northampton, no bars, clubs or anything, so you would spend half your time trying to find clues and following camp men around town seeing where they were heading. A lot of the time they were going home and you would end up on a housing estate at ten o’clock at night none the wiser and sober as a judge. I remember thinking with my collars up as I slid from doorway to doorway, ‘This must be what it was like to be in the Resistance.’
After weeks of intense research, I struck gold. There was one bar, Cabanas on Sheep Street, and every Thursday there was a poetry night which I took to be a positive sign. Come on, surely there were some gays at a poetry night. I turned up paralytic. I had been drinking heavily out of sheer terror of meeting a genuine homosexual in captivity. The bouncers refused to let me in because I was so drunk, which probably did me a favour, looking back. But I shuffled home dispirited – so near yet so far.
I returned to Cabanas in the following weeks and saw that it wasn’t exclusively gay, but a mixed crowd. No, it wasn’t Studio 54, I grant you, but it had a lovely relaxed vibe, and after the poetry the tables and chairs would be pulled back and everyone would dance to acid jazz. I felt really at home, it made such a change from the haze of Ben Sherman shirts and tight perms that crammed the pubs and bars on the Wellie Road.
Sadly Cabanas closed down shortly after, but in its place a proper gay club was built and the same crowd would turn up, and the partying would carry on as if nothing had happened. And I started to get lucky. I don’t know whether because they fancied me or because I was fresh meat on the lazy Susan that was Northampton’s gay scene.
At 17 I lost my virginity to a guy who took me back to his house. I was very drunk, so can’t remember much; what I do remember isn’t good. He had a hideous fern display on the wall and rugs on the floor that wouldn’t look out of place in a nursing home. For a split second I thought, ‘Oh my God! He’s blind!’ but alas he wasn’t. Anyway, more to the point he was good looking which I suppose made up for at least some of the vile decor.
We started kissing in the hall and fell into the living room, me trying to unbuckle his trousers, and him trying to shoehorn my Cuban heels off and peel back my sheepskin. He rushed over to pop on some music. He rushed back to me and we carried on kissing, only this time to the soundtrack of Celine Dion and Peabo Bryson’s ‘A Whole New World’. How am I supposed to maintain an erection with that racket banging on? Anyway, it was an experience, not the greatest but an experience nevertheless.
I was aroused from my slumber the next morning, with his arm around me. Then it hit me like a lightning bolt.
My parents are having their carpets laid!
In all the excitement I’d forgotten that my parents were away for the weekend and were having new carpets fitted. I had to let the man in! I jumped out of bed and shook him vigorously. ‘I’ve got to go home. They’re going to kill me.’ He very kindly offered to drive me to my house, but I got the sneaky suspicion he just wanted me off the premises. We pulled up outside my parents’ house.
‘Do you want to see me–’
Before I could finish, I was launched from the car without even so much as a kiss, and in a puff of exhaust fumes he drove off. It was my first taste of the gay scene’s entrenched fickleness – the bastard! Well, at least I wouldn’t have to see those nasty ferns again.
* * *
Phew! I got my GCSE results and they were surprisingly good. I was overjoyed at the B I got for English. I got another B for Drama and Theatre Studies – another of my favourite lessons. One surprise – which was as much of a surprise back then as it is now – was my A for French. I really don’t know how I got that. The oral exam was dreadful. I hadn’t really learnt the chapter on ‘la pharmacie’, and when I was told I had to tell the doctor I had a sore throat, I whispered in a husky voice, ‘J’ai une bouche rouge.’
Somewhere along the line I must have convinced myself that I was a competent French speaker, as for some reason I took that subject along with English and Drama and Theatre Studies for my A-Levels. French at A-level standard is so different to GCSE, and the difference hit me like a truck. All of a sudden we were bombarded with an array of different tenses. Pluperfect? Past historic? Past pluperfect? How many ways can you ask for a croissant? And really, as if anyone is going to hang around France long enough to learn all the different ways! Typical French, making out their language is soooo complex.
Learning those tenses was a real slog; it was a real shock to the system. At GCSE level I was happy saying, ‘J’habite à Northampton,’ and telling Madame Lebran to ‘ouvrer’ her ‘fenêtre’. I didn’t care what tense, just open your window, love, it’s baking in here. If I’d known after all my hard work that I was only going to get a miserable E for the bloody subject at A-level, I wouldn’t have bothered.
I had initially chosen History, but when I got a B for it at GCSE I naturally thought the A for French was Destiny leading me up the path onwards to a job abroad as an interpreter at the United Nations perhaps. My overactive imagination hyperventilating at the thought that there could be a life outside Northampton, other malls to shop at that weren’t the Grosvenor Centre, other people who could be my friends, any little snippet that could offer a way out from this was grabbed with both hands and clutched to my breast. This French thing stimulated my mind; for one moment in my life I thought I might have a special talent for something. So without a second thought I turned my back on History, which in hindsight would have been much more fun, if the Suez Crisis and the Boer War could be classed as fun, and picked French.
A lot of the time it’s the teachers that make the subject bearable. Mr Mulkern was one of those teachers that made it unbearable. He was a good teacher, I’m sure, but it’s just the way he dressed with his drainpipe Farahs and threadbare leather jacket. You couldn’t take him seriously, especially when in a documentary on the Holocaust you could see Goebbels wearing the exact same jacket.
Well, we were in bits, and before you knew it he would be spinning on his winklepickers like Michael Jackson in ‘Billie Jean’ to see where the snigger was coming from. He was so full of nervous energy, you could almost hear him crackle. I saw him on the last day and he asked how I’d done. I told him my results, and he said, ‘Well done,’ and threw his arms around me. I was rigid. I never knew he could be pleased for anyone, let alone give a public display of affection. When he pulled back, he seemed genuinely pleased, and in that moment I saw a connection with the bachelor, nervy teacher. Like me, he’d never had the opportunity to let his guard down and was just getting through it all on his nerves, desperate not to let anything slip, and with a swish of his Gestapo trenchcoat he goose-stepped out of my life.
For Physical Education I got a D, which is probably accurate. But one thing that does add insult to injury is the B I got for effort. So basically what the teachers were saying was, even when I tried really, really hard, I was still shit. Thanks! I should have just stayed at home. Looking down the marks, I see my only other Ds were Science and Art. The irony is I quite like science now. I’ll watch anything about DNA, seismic plates, the moon, forensics, anything. It’s so interesting, and that’s what makes it so hard to associate it with the dreary subject they were teaching me at school. Slumped over a Bunsen burner wearing oversized goggles making sulphur, I’d rather listen to Chris Rea’s ‘Road to Hell’, and if that doesn’t make you drop off, here’s a periodic table to really float your boat.
Probably one of the only lessons that sticks out from the grey mist that was science was the Biology lesson where we had to cut up a bull’s eye and a spreadeagled frog. That was a lesson where I actually came alive – not because of the subject matter, but because Lucy Swann put a frog’s leg down the back of my collar. I let out such a high-pitched shriek that I’m sure I shattered a test-tube somewhere in the lab. She had picked her victim right; you only get the chance to slip a frog’s leg down your enemy’s back once, so you’ve got to pick someone who you know will ma
ke the loudest noise. And I delivered. A giggling Lucy Swann got sent out (rightfully so) by our teacher Ms Dando – a lovely lady who deserved a better class – and was given a real good telling off. Lucy Swann told me later that Ms Dando had berated her for firstly abusing the frog’s leg, and then picking on me, a ‘sensitive boy’, and that she could have done serious damage.
When it comes down to the task of picking what job you want to do when you’re older, it can be very daunting. The perpetual fear that you are going to choose the wrong path and forever live the life of a lollypop lady is never far from your mind. This fear wasn’t allayed much by Mrs Lees, the Careers Officer. In fact, the fear grew as she revealed to us in graphic detail all the joys that were awaiting us at the various depots and industrial estates in Northampton.
Visiting her was possibly one of the most disenchanting moments of my life. If you had no idea what you wanted to be, you would just fill in the multiple-choice form, and she would then feed it through the computer, and lo and behold, in ten minutes your ideal job would appear on a printout. The computer told me my ideal job was ‘prison warden’. My heart sank. In the ‘Likes’ box, I must have ticked ‘men’ and ‘confined spaces’ a few too many times. Can you really see me pacing up and down a corridor shouting menacingly at lifers and serial killers, ‘SHUT IT!’ ‘YEAH YOU ’EARD’. ‘YOUR GOIN’ DAHN’? No, neither could I. I was terrified – is that all life had to offer me? A big dangly set of keys and a grey polyester uniform.
I wasn’t alone. The cleverest boy in the class got ‘van driver’. At least in Broadmoor I would get to stretch my legs. Looking back, I don’t know whether the computer was a deliberate ploy to get you to buck your ideas up before your A-levels or if it had been put on a Northampton default setting and was giving us an honest appraisal of the shite jobs available to us in the Rose of the Shires. Look, I didn’t want to be an astronaut, but a data entry operative? Over my dead body! Little did I know that I would be doing data entry for Mr Dog Petfoods in a matter of years. It seems Mrs Lees would put Nostradamus to shame with her career predictions.
* * *
I’d performed a few plays and Christmas revues and although the terrible nerves that paralysed me before I went on marred the experience somewhat, it was the only thing I seemed to enjoy, apart from reading out loud, which is ‘acting’ really I suppose. My first ever play was Animal Farm, the George Orwell classic, not the one where the woman fucks a horse. Squealer was my name and my costume was a pink tracksuit, pink sticks for legs and a prosthetic pink snout, for an amateur production. The sets were stunning. My co-star, Napoleon, was Michael Underwood, who like me is also on the telly; he’s a presenter on GMTV in the mornings and famously broke his ankle in Dancing on Ice. The wuss.
When it came to casting between him and me, he was always given the best roles, and rightfully so: he had the enthusiasm, the energy and, more importantly, a range. I was so excited about getting my first role in a play, I tried my pig costume on in the kitchen. Slipping on the tracksuit and then the pig’s face, I was going to surprise my family in the front room. I burst through the door with a massive snort. It was a triumph! The whole family clapped at my transformation, commenting on my interpretation. Then I began to smell something. Minstral had shat himself in fear. On the beige carpet there was a foot-long skid mark where Minstral had yelped and followed through. I suppose just sitting there dozing off in his basket only to be awoken by a giant camp pig bursting through the door would be alarming to a human, let alone a mongrel. I made my mind up I would never surprise anyone ever again by dressing up as an animal and bursting into their lounge.
Animal Farm went well, and it was there that I got the bug for performing big time. I soon sniffed out any other productions that I could join or help out in. When you’re at that level, no one cares that you haven’t got a range, they’re just pleased a boy wants to join the cast. Later that year I auditioned and got the part of Bottom in A Midsummer Night’s Dream. I was excited and terrified in equal measures. I wouldn’t be performing in front of parents, who were happy if you didn’t walk into the furniture, but at a proper theatre, the Royal Theatre.
To my surprise, the show got rave reviews, and the Chronicle and Echo loved my Julian Claryesque portrayal of Bottom. Obviously, I didn’t have the heart to tell them that I had no choice; believe me, my Macbeth would have been Julian Claryesque. Admittedly, some of the luvvies involved in am-dram can do your head in with their affected mannerisms and teak performances, but underneath it all their hearts were in the right place and I enjoyed the camaraderie of putting on a show.
It’s the same feeling I get when I work with Justin Lee Collins on The Friday Night Project, that feeling of mucking in, rehearsing, everyone bringing something to the table so we can put the best show on. As with most things, it’s always the bits that go wrong that unite people. When you’re doing an amateur production especially, the technical mishaps are plentiful.
We were midway through the play, up to the part when Bottom gets turned into an ass and Titania falls in love with him and kisses him, transforming him back into a man. So picture me, there in a trance lying in Titania’s lap. She kisses me and goes to take my papier mâché donkey head off. Well, what we didn’t know was that the costume woman had done the donkey’s head elastic in a double bow so it wouldn’t fall off. So as she was pulling it off it was pinging back on my face. The more she was tugging, the harder it pinged back. It didn’t help that I was face down in her lap. From the back row it must have looked like the donkey was going down on her. ‘What would Dame Maggie Smith do?’ I thought. I had to snap the elastic myself. But theatre buffs needn’t worry; I was only out of my Julian Claryesque character for a split second, you’ll be pleased to know.
The Royal Theatre is a very atmospheric place, and probably one of the few places in Northampton that you could honestly say had an atmosphere. I was excited to perform there and also a little bit intrigued, as a few years before on a school trip I had seen my one and only ghost. I saw a grey lady in the Royal Theatre foyer, and it was a ghost. She was hovering and everything; for about three seconds this grey, smoky apparition just wafted past me. It was a strange feeling really; I thought I would be scared, but I wasn’t. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t want to see another one. Apparently many performers have seen this woman, and some have reportedly heard her wail, but then that’s understandable, trapped between life and death and forced to walk the streets of Northampton for all of eternity. At least if you’re a poltergeist you get to throw things.
The ‘grey lady’ wasn’t my only run in with the paranormal. I’d started mucking around with an ouija board. My friend Michelle had found it in her attic and eerily it had had wax on it where obviously the previous residents had sat around playing it by candlelight. Well, let’s just say that they were a lot braver than I was.
We started playing it, joking at first, then it started moving by itself. Of course, we thought the other one was pushing it, but we weren’t. It freaked us out. However, when Mum called to pick me up from Michelle’s house we told her what we were doing. Now, Mum’s pretty cool with this; she used to play on the ouija when she was a kid and had had some really weird experiences. Mum popped down her handbag and put her finger on the glass. Jesus, it started whizzing around the board, spelling out names, places, telling us about themselves. Mum definitely wasn’t pushing the glass. This was confirmed when one spirit called Lee refused to say goodbye and called Mum ‘a slut’. Mum said, ‘Maybe we should put the board away and go home.’ I agreed. Neither Michelle nor my mother nor I ever played the board again. If we wanted to hear those kind of words, we’d shop at Aldi.
When it came to me taking my A-levels, I don’t know what I was more excited about – taking French, English or Drama or not having to take PE or Home Economics, because believe me that had been a real pain in the arse. Some bright spark had put Home Economics and PE on the same day, Monday. So every Monday I’d turn up at Weston Favell Upper
School with more bags than Mariah Carey; one a Tupperware box full of ingredients and the other my PE kit. Sometimes I’d wedge the two in the same bag and after a whole day of trundling from one class to the next, something would have fallen out of its pot and I’d have the humiliation of doing star jumps in shorts laced with a runny egg and bicarbonate of soda.
At the time my A-levels dragged, but in retrospect they seem to have gone in the blink of an eye. But in that blink a lot of things had changed. I had made progress and smoothed out a lot of my creases. I was starting to fit into my skin more; the sight and sound of me on film wasn’t making me feel so nauseous and, once the hormones that had hijacked my body at adolescence had calmed down, I actually started to like myself.
Choosing a university wasn’t the hardship I thought it would be. I had had so many rejections, there wasn’t an actual choice as such. I was stuck in a ‘like it or lump it’ situation. The only university to offer me a place was Middlesex. It wasn’t ideal, to be honest. I was a bit pissed off that Oxford and Cambridge hadn’t come knocking. In my head I had pictured myself riding a pushbike side-saddle across the cobbles, debating with my fellow students or punting on the river with people called Jemima and Crispin. Alas, I accepted Middlesex University’s offer mainly because of its geography – the campus was based in North London. At last this was my escape. I would see life there, I could feel part of something, and at least it wasn’t Northampton.
As with everyone else, there were still things that needed work: my sexuality still hung around my neck like an albatross; in fact, it was not only hanging there, it had started to smell. Frustratingly, the longer it hung there, the more it dawned on me that perhaps it wasn’t a phase that I would simply grow out of. I also noticed that some of the boys in their transition to men were becoming quite handsome. Whether it was more definition in their cheekbones or that few inches taller, it was like I’d had a bottle of wine – people seemed to be getting better looking. I hoped one day that my cheekbones would emerge triumphant from my puppy fat.
