by Alan Carr
At the beginning of the week, I used to dread turning up at the venue and seeing how many punters were lining up to come and see me. It was affecting my confidence, especially when I popped to the toilet opposite the Cavern and saw a pile of my flyers in a urinal with someone pissing on my face. It really was the final insult.
It was a pretty grim time for me up there that summer of 2003. That same old feeling came to haunt me, that everyone else was having fun without me, that I’d been left off the all-important guest-list. Even my parents seemed to be enjoying more exciting evenings. My mother had told me that Dad had passed out at the local Chinese restaurant and had had a near-death experience. Initially, I was distraught, but when I learnt the facts, my sympathy started to evaporate.
Ever the prankster, Dad had taken his remote-control fart machine to the restaurant. Unbeknownst to his friend, my father had slipped the sensor into his friend’s pockets, and as his friend had bent over to look at the all-you-can-eat buffet, Dad had pressed the button and a huge fart sounded out across the room – much to the disgust of their fellow diners, but to the huge amusement of my father. Dad couldn’t stop laughing – so much so that he had a whitey and passed out. He slumped forward motionless at the table, and Mum, horrified, started screaming, ‘Graham, Graham!’
Thankfully, it was only for about twenty seconds that Dad was heading towards a bright light. I know it sounds harsh, but a bit of me thinks that it served him right.
* * *
Dad’s near-death experience raised my spirits a little, but it wasn’t enough. Going back to my apartment that night, I rang my agent and said I needed a pick-me-up. He rang round and got me some extra-curricular gigs. If the punters weren’t coming to me, I would go to the punters, and it proved to be just the tonic. Steve and Mary had put my name down for ‘Late N Live’, the dreaded bear-pit I had experienced the previous year. What was I thinking? Underneath all the nerves, I knew I needed this. I needed to prove to myself that I was funny, that my jokes were good enough for people to come to the Cavern and see the show.
I arrived at ‘Late N Live’ at around midnight. I was on at half twelve, and I could hear the roar of the drunken audience already baiting the acts beyond the dressing-room wall. Daniel Kitson was the compere, and I really wanted to do well in front of him. I’d been so impressed with him the year before and didn’t want to look the second-rate chancer that I was back then. The night started. Daniel went on stage and instantly started getting heckles from the pissed-up crowd. I didn’t really know how I would cope with a heckle. At my show in the Cavern, it was like pulling teeth getting a smile out of them, let alone – heaven forbid! – prompting any banter.
Finally it was my turn and, do you know what? I loved it. Yeah, they started shouting abuse, but although I didn’t say anything witty or Wildean, I held my own. Looking back, I think I could only muster, ‘Oh shut up or I’ll fist you,’ which, strangely enough, seemed to settle them down. I deliberately played it cool. Audiences can smell fear at a thousand yards. One sniff and I would be a goner, so I never let my guard down once. I strode nonchalantly about the stage, looking as if I didn’t have a care in the world, working the audience, which numbered in the hundreds rather than the paltry twenty I’d had to endure most nights.
Why shouldn’t I be up there performing? I had every right to. I persevered, shouting over the pessimistic voice whispering in my ear that I wasn’t a proper comedian. I pumped out my best jokes like a well-oiled machine. I was nearly put off my stride when a rough woman to the left of the stage shrieked ‘Faggot’, but I ignored her and glided nicely to my final joke. I had reached the end of my set – alive – and got a huge cheer for my troubles. I’m ashamed to say that all the devil-may-care attitude I had tried to muster on the stage evaporated when I screamed out at the end, ‘I’ve survived Late N Live!’ and skipped off. How uncool is that?
My success at ‘Late N Live’ had whetted my appetite for more late night comedy. The wonderful thing about Edinburgh is that it is a melting pot, where comedians good and bad, famous or infamous get thrown together and are forced to rub shoulders under the grimmest conditions. I turned up all excited to one late night comedy in the bowels of the Pleasance Dome. I at first thought that I’d got the wrong night because I couldn’t hear any laughter from the auditorium. Looking through the glass I could see that the audience were agitated and shouting at the tall skinny man with big hair on stage. I shuffled to the back of the auditorium and said to the organiser:
‘Who is he?’
‘Russell Brand,’ he replied.
‘Never heard of him.’
To be fair, Russell was at a bad place in his life that night as he will tell you himself. Back then he hadn’t morphed into the hifaluting, huge-barnetted Victorian persona he is today. At the time you would probably call him ‘late Georgian’.
Probably annoyed with the lack of audience interest, he announced:
‘Do you want to see my cock?’
No one replied but he still got it out and waggled it at the audience. Sadly his penis fell on deaf ears, but who’d have thought that on that very night I would get to see such a celebrated willy? OK, I know I hadn’t joined the most exclusive club in the world, but nevertheless it provided me with a bit of light relief and an Edinburgh anecdote. I can think of worse things to dine out on than Russell’s willy.
Chapter Eleven
FIGHTING RELEGATION
I went back to Manchester knackered, swearing that I would never go up to Edinburgh again. That was it. Finished. Kaput. Over. On returning, my agents dropped a bombshell – they would be leaving Manchester to go to Ireland, but they would still like to represent me. They reassured me that everything would still be the same as it was, it’s just they’d now be in Ireland.
OK, I thought, everything’s done over the phone and Internet, you can be anywhere in the world these days, and anyway Dublin is a vibrant, funky city with its own comedy scene. So what was I worrying about? The problem was it wasn’t Dublin they were moving to – it was Roonagh Quay in County Mayo, on the other side of Ireland.
I know, I hadn’t heard of it either. Basically they had moved to the last house in Ireland before you get to America. The nearest shop was half an hour away and even that was a Londis.
When I finally visited them in this Roonagh Quay place they spoke of, it was so barren and rugged that, bathed in the late afternoon sun, it looked like the surface of Mars. It was a lovely house, with a beach at the end of the road and fields that seemed to roll on and on for eternity, but it was hardly the epicentre of the showbiz world. There weren’t any power lunches happening in Roonagh Quay, let me tell you. But I was happy for them, and their son Cormac seemed excited by the surrounding fields and deserted beaches ripe for exploring.
I wasn’t going to complain and spoil their move by moaning. Moving house is stressful enough, and besides, they had got me a job compering a nationwide tour. Although it would drag me all over Britain – not ideal, so close to Edinburgh – it was a godsend financially.
The tour was sponsored by Durex condoms. We wouldn’t be performing in theatres and art centres; we would be performing in a giant big top, pitched in various towns across Britain with ‘Durex’ written in massive letters across the canvas. The tent was a dubious shape to say the least, not helped by the pelmet that at certain angles resembled a bell-end. Yes, it seemed that for the next few months I would be performing inside a giant inflatable phallus. God, I needed this, didn’t I? To add insult to injury, the rain would penetrate the canvas and we would have to dodge the puddles to get on to the stage. If this was in fact a Durex condom, I would have been inseminated on the first night. Someone had obviously thought about the image Durex wanted to promote – willies. If only they’d thought about the marketing and locations as well. No one seemed to know that we even existed, and when you’ve got such great-quality acts as Daniel Kitson, Jo Caulfield, Milton Jones and Rob Newman on the bill and no one is turning up, it’s
a travesty.
The locations didn’t help. I had naturally assumed that these big tops would be erected in the actual town centre to lure people at least out of curiosity, but no, our first date in Newcastle was in a car park outside Byker, the arsehole of Newcastle. Winter was drawing in, and before we went onstage we would be sitting huddled around a gas heater in this freezing tent, with the sound of boy racers circling the big top in their Vauxhall Gulfs. At least the fumes that seeped under the canvas were keeping us warm. Despite the cold, I did enjoy these gigs in a perverse way. I felt like I was in a circus. Once we’d performed and the audience had left, we would all pack everything up and head to the next city.
After two months away, I finally made it back home to Manchester, and nothing much had changed. A few of my flatmates had left and been replaced, sadly with even weirder ones. Eva had gone back to Germany and been replaced by Sue, an Irish woman in her forties studying Ancient Greek Language, one of those useless degrees that you can buy in the back of a Sunday magazine for five pounds a month. She had come to the house and starting kicking off. She said Mortimer had given her fleas, and not only that, they had bitten her on the nipples. Ruth had called her a ‘liar’. Sue had then approached Ruth in the pantry, lifted up her tie-dyed T-shirt and asked, ‘Would you like to see my nipples?’ At which point, Ruth had called her a lesbian.
As a fitting footnote, whilst the drama was unfurling, Mortimer had gone upstairs and shat on Sue’s pillow. I realised how much I’d missed being in that house, the drama, the weir-does and my lengthy chats with Ruth over a glass of wine.
The chaos and madness that encompassed my home life was now in stark contrast to the vacuum that was my love life. To say I was unlucky in love would give the impression that I’d actually had some loving to be unlucky about. Of course, the usual drunken one-night stands had continued unabated. The Sunday bus ride home from some unfortunate-looking council estate was becoming a regular occurrence. However, one Saturday morning sticks in my mind. I was roughly shaken from my sleep and, naturally disgruntled, I looked up to see a traffic warden staring down at me. ‘Oh no, Alan, you’ve slept rough!’ I daren’t look down, just in case I’d been clamped. Once I’d found my glasses I could see I hadn’t slept rough, I was in a bedroom – thank God for small mercies. Apparently, I’d pulled a traffic warden and he was just starting his morning shift and wanted me off the premises. Once I’d focused on the traffic warden’s face I decided to take my glasses off, not so I looked more attractive, but more because my myopia took the edge off his face. He was sweet enough and very kindly walked me to the train station, enthusiastically writing out tickets and plonking them on window screens as we went.
In fact these one-night stand shenanigans were taking their toll on my health – it was beginning to hurt when I urinated. I thought: ‘Typical, I’ve spent the last month in a condom and now I get an STD. Great.’ So sheepishly I arranged an appointment to visit a doctor at a clinic and deliberately chose an early morning appointment where I could slip in and out before too many people could see me.
I went in and saw the nurse, a lovely, plump woman who had such a big smily welcoming face that it came as a complete shock when she started quizzing me on my sexual habits. Well, some of the things she asked I’d never even heard of! I thought Nongonococcal Urethritis was a fishing village off the Canaries. She then told me to take off my pants and as I lay there quivering, she stuck the swab right up my urethra. My scream pierced the whole clinic – I swear it nearly cracked my glasses.
I had to wait a week for all the tests to come back. What would it be? Syphilis, chlamydia, gonorrhoea – the excitement was killing me. So the next week I turned up, only to be told that I didn’t have anything. I was disease-free, clear, my penis was as clean as a whistle. Although I was relieved, this really pissed me off. I was still in pain. Why did it still hurt when I urinated? I confronted her: her tests must be wrong.
‘Look, it really hurts, can you double-check? I’m concerned.’
‘No, Mr Carr, I am happy with the results,’ she insisted, quite smugly if you ask me.
‘Well, can you explain why it still hurts when I wee?’
‘There is only one thing that it can be.’
‘What is it?’ I demanded.
And then without looking up from her papers, she delivered her killer blow. ‘Excessive masturbation.’
I got my coat and decided to take what little dignity I had left. I mean, who’s going to hang around and question the point? I left with not only my victimised willy firmly between my legs, but my tail too.
As the year progressed my work diary sadly started to mirror my love life. Empty, minimal excitement with long journeys for little rewards, although at least I had never been heckled out of bed yet.
Scarily, I didn’t have anything in for the month of December, and December in the comedy world offers rich pickings. The run-up to Christmas is full of tempting lucrative corporate dos, Christmas parties, extended comedy nights. They hang like shiny baubles from a Christmas tree – all you have to decide is how many you want to scoop up for yourself, and you’re laughing all the way to the bank.
I asked my agent to get me some work. I mean, that is what I paid him for, and he said he would. A week later, I rang him again.
‘Look, Steve, I’m skint. I’ve got my rent to pay. Have you got me any work?’
‘Alan, have you tried temping?’
Did he just say what I thought he said? For a minute I thought he’d said, ‘Have you tried temping?’ He was serious, and it cut me to the quick. No way on earth was I going to go back there, to that gloomy grey place of clocking in and clocking out. My whole comedy act was about the dreary world of office politics and call centres. Oh what delicious irony; stand-up comedy had been my ticket out of that crappy existence, and now it was my ticket back. Great.
Steve could sense I wasn’t happy. ‘It’s not permanent. Why don’t you have a month off and a month on?’
What kind of comedian says, ‘It’s all right, I’ll take December off and come back in January’? January is diabolical for work. Everyone’s skint, and all the comedians worth their salt are staying at home counting all the money they’d made in December. Oh brilliant! I had an agent who thought my next career move should be envelope stuffing. It was hard to get angry with Steve and Mary because they are lovely people and they were there for me from the beginning. However, if they’re honest, the move to the other side of Ireland had isolated them both from me and from the British comedy circuit. This was my career. How could they ring up promoters and say they had a hot new comedian called Alan Carr when you could distinctly hear the sound of a cow mooing in the background?
So I left. No way was I temping. My days of wearing a headset were officially over. I had to look for representation – and fast. During the Durex tour I had made friends with Matt who worked for the promoter, Karushi. I found Karushi’s number in my phone and asked them if they would be interested in representing me. The lovely Lisa Thomas at Karushi said ‘Yes’, and my diary started filling up nicely. I was funny after all. Phew!
Now comedy is a cut-throat business. If anyone thinks comedy is a laughing matter, they’re wrong. Behind the scenes, it’s ruthless, vicious and every man for himself. Typically with me, nothing is simple. One day I had no agent, the next I’ve got three after me. But Lisa Thomas had saved my bacon. She was there when I needed a knight in shining armour, and I am a loyal chap through and through, and I will stand by my word. Well, that’s what I thought anyway.
I had been doing some work for the comedy agency Off the Kerb. Judging by the amount of work I was getting off them, I must have been doing a good job. It was coming in thick and fast; in fact, they were giving me more work than Karushi. With Karushi, I was in the middle of doing a pilot for a new show on E4. It was called The Gay Computer – wait, hear me out here. Yes, it did involve me being inside a cardboard box, painted metallic and making barbed comments at a celebrity through a
slat in the side, but don’t let that cloud your judgement. Yes, we put gay rights back twenty years, but it was absolutely hilarious. Because the celebrity couldn’t see me and I was a computer I could say the most outrageous, near-the-knuckle things. It was a bit like what I do on The Friday Night Project, but in a cardboard box.
The pilot went really well. Once I’d come out of the box, I had a glass of wine with the controllers at E4 and talked about how promising it all looked. When I finally stepped outside into the street, I popped my phone on and found I had a message to phone Danny at Off the Kerb. Still a little tipsy from the wine, I called him.
‘Alan,’ he said, ‘we’ve had someone pull out. Could you do the warm-up tonight for the Jonathan Ross chat show?’
Well, that sobered me up. ‘Yeah, of course,’ came out my mouth, whilst the voices in my head screamed, ‘Jonathan Ross – AHHHHHHHHHHHH!’
‘We need you to be at the BBC Studios in Wood Lane for half six tonight. Is that all right?’
‘AAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!’ the voices in my head screamed. ‘Fine,’ came out my mouth. ‘Thanks, Danny.’ I closed my mobile.
It wasn’t the actual warm-up that scared me, it was doing it for Jonathan Ross. He’s a national treasure, he’s television royalty, plus it’s a cool show. I’d done warm-up before. I’d gone down the road to Granada in Manchester to entertain the audience for Vernon Kay’s Celebrities under Pressure. How hard could it be? If these people had ventured out on a Monday night to watch Liberty X try to beat a family from York at a game of ping-pong, let’s face it, their standards weren’t particularly high in the first place.
