Look who it is!

by Alan Carr

  It was then that I made up my mind that I was going to quit. So I left them to their tedious financial world, thanking God that at least I was fabulous.

  Although working flat out, driving all over the country to perform comedy in obscure towns and villages, can be very draining, the cheques I received at the end of every month were proving very welcome indeed. For the first time in my life I was doing well, so much so that it was time to fly the nest in Chorlton and get my own house. Somewhere with no mad tenants, no shitting cats and no revealing windows – even though, despite the drama and tension, I would still miss Ruth and all her eccentricities. Admittedly, our relationship had got a bit strained of late. She’d started drinking a little bit too much. She’d broken her ankle falling down a grassy knoll on the way back from the pub and spent that summer flat on her back on the settee with a bottle of painkillers and a glass of Chardonnay. ‘I know you shouldn’t mix them, but it’s the only thing that makes the pain go away.’

  I remember her asking me to do a big shop for her as she couldn’t leave the house. ‘Of course, Ruth,’ I said, taking the shopping list from her.

  I read ‘Two bottles of Sauvignon Blanc, two bottles of Merlot and two bottles of Rosé (any)’. Then she’d grudgingly written as a footnote: ‘Loaf’.

  I ended up moving in with a friend called Hayley, while I got myself together. She had bought a house in Stretford and had invited me to take the back room. I hate moving, it’s such a drag. You never really realise what possessions you’ve got till you have to bubble-wrap them or roll them up in newspaper and put them in a box. Plus, it’s such a waste of money. I hired the van and drove the couple of miles from Ruth’s to Hayley’s. Hayley’s house was an old bargeman’s cottage that was part of a pretty terrace on a narrow lane stretching from the road to the canal.

  I thought that packing up the removal van would be the hardest part of the move, but I was wrong – it was manoeuvring the truck down the lane to the front door. I thought I was doing really well as the truck made its merry way up the lane, but then again I couldn’t hear the sound of my new neighbours’ canopies being ripped from their doors and crashing to the floor. They all came out to see what was going on. I got out, oblivious to the carnage I’d created, and said, ‘Hello, I’m Alan, your new neighbour.’ Unsurprisingly, they weren’t impressed.

  That wasn’t the only time I made an impression. Word soon got round that the man with the squeaky voice who lived at number 22 danced at the other end of the ballroom, and it wasn’t long before a few of the kids would shout out ‘Bender’ and ‘Gay’ whenever I walked back from the Arndale. However, when they saw me on the telly they would knock on the door and ask for my autograph. Homophobes can be so fickle, don’t you think?

  I soon settled in, although Hayley’s obsession with cleaning took a while to get over. She wouldn’t clean, as such, just douse the house in bleach so every room smelt like a public toilet. If you bent down too quickly after Hayley had done her cleaning, you would drift off onto a psychedelic roller-coaster that would put Woodstock to shame.

  Although Stretford lacks the bohemian and cultured ambience of Chorlton, it’s not without its charms. My new home overlooked the Trans-Pennine Way which, if you followed it, would lead you through luscious fields and rivers to the Pennines themselves, if you weren’t killed first crossing the M60. I’d been spoilt living in Chorlton, what with the delicatessens and Italian food specialists on Beech Road; all Stretford had to offer was the Arndale. Many a time I would walk through the Arndale to get my weekly shop. It was a strange place, full of card shops, for some reason. The Arndale marketing team had clearly decided that in Stretford you can never send too many cards. I can’t imagine what anyone would be celebrating in Stretford – it wasn’t ‘Congratulations! You’ve got a job!’ Well, definitely not, judging by the number of waifs and strays inhabiting the coffee shops and Poundlands.

  The Arndale or ‘The Mall’, as it’s now known since it reinvented itself, always had a distinctive aroma. On the upper level there was a butcher’s and the smell would drift down to the shoppers below. The aroma that would drift down wasn’t the usual delicious smell of crisp bacon slowly being grilled or mouth-watering plump sausages ready to pop in your mouth, but the stench of burning animal flesh. You never forget your first whiff, it made you wonder what the butcher was doing up there – cremating livestock? This gag-inducing stench would descend from the heavens and cling to your clothes like an all-in-one body-stocking.

  You could always tell the true Stretfordians because they would walk around oblivious to the pork smog that enveloped them. Years and years of pushing a trolley around the Arndale had rendered them strangely immune. I am glad to say I became one of those people because in fact that year I spent a hell of a lot of time in that Arndale, mainly shopping for bargains, but partly slyly looking for comedy material for my routine. I’ve always said Manchester is ripe for comedy. You can take a journey on a night bus through Whalley Range and have enough comedy gold for two Edinburgh shows – let alone one. So, yes, I would idly spend a good couple of hours wandering the aisles, oblivious to the fact that, two hundred and eleven miles away in London, cogs were turning and wheels were being set in motion, and soon I would be swapping the stench of animal carcass for the smell of sweet success.

  Chapter Twelve

  THE FINAL WHISTLE

  Fortunately, the opportunities to shop at the Arndale were few and far between because my workload was so immense. With stand-up comedy, the more gigs you do, the more confident you get, and with more confidence comes more material. I was starting to get a name for myself and, for once in my life, it was a good one. I was even venturing tentatively into radio. I was a regular guest on Michelle Mullane’s late-night BBC radio show and on BBC6 Music. I even got invited onto Woman’s Hour to talk about my comedy, which was an experience, to say the least. I was lucky because it was recorded at BBC Manchester on Oxford Road, so was only a short bus ride away. I turned up at the studio nice and early and sat in the Green Room waiting to go in. As you’d expect, I was sitting with a selection of women, and we all waited, listening to the show’s introduction over the speakers.

  ‘Coming up on Woman’s Hour, we’ve got Deborah Harvey, a new up-and-coming singer-songwriter.’ We all smiled at the girl with the guitar. ‘Jane Brooks, the Mancunian author, will be discussing her new novel.’ We all smiled at the bookish woman with the glasses. ‘Plus, I’ll be talking to a convicted rapist on why he’s found God.’

  They all looked at me, and I looked at them: ‘That … that’s not me!’ I spluttered to the women, before hearing, ‘Plus, Manc funnyman Alan Carr will be popping in for a chat about having a sports-mad father.’

  ‘That’s me! Alan.’ Instantly the atmosphere defrosted. As it happens, the convicted rapist had wisely decided to appear on Woman’s Hour via the phone.

  Even in the realm of stand-up, I was getting fans, people asking for me specifically to play their clubs, and a few odd autograph hunters waiting outside the club doors – sadly they were few and odd. I could often be found compering at the Glee comedy clubs, both in Birmingham and in Cardiff, and my walk-on music, unknown to me, would often be adapted by the manager to suit my persona, shall we say? I would make my entrance and then the music would start: ‘Killer Queen’ by Queen, ‘She’s a Lady’ by Tom Jones or ‘W.O.M.A.N.’ by Peggy Lee. Every time something suitably camp would blast from the speakers just as I placed my foot upon the stage, I would give the sound booth an icy stare. Then I would begin my act, secretly thrilled to have my own music and flattered that they recognised, unlike some comedians, that I never took myself too seriously.

  The spectre of the Edinburgh Fringe started to loom again. My year off from it had been wonderful. Mykonos had been a delight, and I had raked in the cash whilst everyone had been slaving away in Edinburgh. I had ventured up and visited Karen, who was doing her show up there that year. I took a perverse satisfaction in watching Karen and the other ac
ts flyering madly, trying to lure punters in or, worse, sobbing in the Pleasance Courtyard after some critic had given them a one-star review. This year was their turn. Thankfully, I was immune from this madness and sauntered round the different venues enjoying rather than enduring the chaos for once, just me and my schadenfreude.

  In my new-found confidence I had started talking about my relationship with Dad, and it had been going down well with the audience. It seemed to strike a chord with people. I would get people approaching me after gigs, saying, ‘My dad was like that,’ or ‘I felt like you as a teenager.’ I was onto something, and it wasn’t just confined to sports-mad dads either, as I discovered. It was dads in the police force, the army, plumbing, the navy. This revelation made me see Dad in a new light. It wasn’t just my dad, it was all dads. Well, anyway, this reaction set up a spark, and when Off the Kerb asked if I’d like to go to Edinburgh again I heard myself saying ‘Yes’. Here we go again, I thought.

  * * *

  But before Edinburgh, more amazing opportunities arose, even some abroad. That summer of 2005 was just filled with wonderful experiences I will never forget. In some respects they paved the way to where I am now. I was invited to perform at the Montreal Showcase at the Comedy Store. The two stand-ups who got picked from the showcase would go and represent Britain at the world-famous Just for Laughs comedy festival in Montreal in Canada. To my complete surprise, I ended up being picked alongside Rhod Gilbert – a very funny man with some great one-liners.

  Considering I was up against some of the best acts on the circuit, some of whom had been going a lot longer than my pathetic five years, I was overjoyed. Looking back, they must have hated me. Performing at the Just for Laughs Festival is career-defining stuff, and I found out they would pay my travel and for a hotel once I got there! Of course, I now know this is commonplace, but back then I was thrilled. I’d always had to pay to go abroad – well, apart from the time I collected those tokens in the Sun – but now someone wanted to pay for me to fly and stay in their city just so I can tell a few jokes? I couldn’t believe it.

  Montreal is a bit of a disappointment really. I had heard how wonderfully picturesque and mountainous Canada was, so to roll up in a place that had the look of Milton Keynes about it was anticlimactic to say the least. There was no discernible architectural style or any landmarks that were worth using up a pixel for. Karen (she was fast becoming my travelling partner) and I had our photo taken down by the harbour on the cobbles in front of an old Victorian tavern. We were later informed that it was built in 1982, so we had in fact been photographed in front of the Canadian equivalent of an Eighties’ Wetherspoon’s. In disgust, I immediately deleted the picture from my digital camera.

  We had been told that Montreal was perfect for whale-watching, so we had to endure the embarrassment of asking at the tourist information booth where we could see some whales.

  ‘Can you see any blue on here?’ shouted the information officer menacingly, shaking a map of Montreal two inches away from my face. For all his rudeness we had to admit he was right – we were landlocked. I had assumed the harbour led to something like the sea, but I was wrong. But then, knowing Montreal, the harbour was probably built in 1987 and the ‘sea’ was a piece of tarpaulin painted blue to look like water. Was anything real in Canada?

  As a comedian, you always wonder whether your jokes travel. Is my routine universal? Say they don’t get me. These thoughts had been plaguing my mind for the entirety of the days leading up to my first gig in Montreal. I had done all I could do, taking out all the British household names and chat shows. I doubt if a Canadian would really appreciate the joys of ‘Trisha’. I kept in all my father material – even people in Montreal must have pushy dads, surely.

  Just for Laughs grips the whole city, just as the Edinburgh Festival does. It is everywhere, and the venues can range from huge theatres to a tiny room above a pub. My first gig of the Festival was in a trendy bar next door to a cinema. I was on the same bill as a couple of Americans, a couple of French people, a Canadian and Rhod Gilbert – at last, a friendly face from Britain, someone to worry with and share such a bizarre experience. Everyone was doing really well, the audience seemed to be really friendly. So I relaxed and with a large gulp of air strode confidently on stage.

  Said my first joke. Nothing. Said my second. Nothing. I was dying on my arse. This hadn’t happened since Cabot Hall. It was painful, and because I’m like an over-protective father with my jokes and treat them like my own children who can do no wrong, I blamed the audience. I shouted angrily, ‘Thanks a bunch, Canada! I’ve come all the way from Manchester, and you can’t be bothered to laugh!’ and walked off stage, furious.

  The atmosphere in the dressing-room was horrible. Everyone looked at me pitifully, all the international acts thinking, ‘If this is the best that Britain can come up with …’ To make it worse, Rhod went on and stormed it. I was depressed. Don’t tell me, I’ve got a whole week of tumbleweed ahead of me. It was only when I looked at the programme that it all became clear. The night had been a Christian fundraiser for a new church roof. I was livid, not with them, they can’t help it, but with the organisers for putting a blatant homosexual onto the bill. They should have known it would go down like a bacon sandwich at a bar mitzvah, the miserable bastards. I hope the roof caves in on their miserable heads!

  As it happens, I had nothing to worry about as the rest of the gigs at the Festival went really well. In fact, there was so little to do in Montreal, I started looking forward to them. My last gig there was a gay night of comedy, and it deserves a mention just because it was so crazy and kitsch. It was hosted by a drag queen dressed as Peggy Lee – not Peggy in her heyday, but Peggy in her 80s when she had the shakes and a drink problem. The stage was set up like her front room: a settee, a minibar, pictures on the walls. Peggy would be in this ridiculous Purdy-style bob, slurring her way through ‘Fever’ or ‘Woman’, and then a doorbell would ring. She would answer the door (after crashing into a bookcase), I would have to come on and do my fifteen minutes of stand-up in her lounge, and then she would stagger back and finish her song. It was an absolute scream, and the perfect end to a week that, if I’m honest, hadn’t started out as the best.

  * * *

  Once back in Great Britain, it was work as usual. I had to get my Edinburgh show ready, and it was looking quite good. As always, you go to these out-of-the-way places to try out the show, and I was turning up all over the country, the Aldeburgh Festival on the east coast, pubs on the outskirts of Manchester, art centres in Devon, anywhere I could run through the show without some snotty critic mauling it and ripping it to shreds. The constant driving and eating Ginsters pasties at service stations at two in the morning with a surly trucker is not only bad for your diet, but also dangerous. The number of times I’ve nearly fallen asleep on the way home – I have to put the blower on full force directed at my crotch just to keep my eyes open. It’s a bit drastic, I know, but it can be quite erotic at the right temperature.

  Ask any comedian and they will tell you that it’s a lonely business. Travelling around by yourself in a car can be very isolating, and if you’re feeling a bit down or low, being on the actual stage can be lonely, too – even if there are a hundred people watching. You can sometimes feel a fraud telling these jokes on stage and acting out all these comic scenarios when on the inside you’re thinking, ‘God, I wish I was on my holidays.’ The audience can be bent double with laughter and I’m saying to myself, ‘I must pick those trousers up from the dry cleaners.’

  I remember sitting with my family in a Chinese restaurant in Northampton when a man came in and said, ‘Table for one, please.’

  Mum, being a mum, went, ‘Ahh! What a shame!’

  ‘Mum, that’s me!’ I said. ‘That’s me! Most weekends.’

  I swear she nearly welled up. But it’s true. It was me asking for ‘a table for one, please’, quickly followed by ‘nowhere near the window’. It’s especially bad, if you are doing a we
ekend in Bristol or Glasgow or Birmingham, and you’ve got nothing to do in the day and you have to kill twelve hours, but still at the end of it be sober enough to get on stage and perform.

  I’ve been known to pop into the Jorvic Centre in York, Louis Tussaud’s Waxworks in Blackpool or Stockport’s Hat Museum, just to make the time pass that little bit more quickly. God knows what kind of loser I looked like, as I walked around on my own, reading the little information cards to myself, or idly thumbing through the oversized pencils in the gift shop. I must have got some pitying looks, I can tell you.

  Various distractions came along whilst I was writing my show, but I was soldiering on with rewriting it, so I turned most of them down. One show I just had to do, though, was The World Stands Up – not for the programme, but for the chance to go to Melbourne where it was being filmed. I had spent so much time in Sydney, but weirdly had always missed out going to Melbourne, which is, in Australian terms, relatively close by. As at Just for Laughs, the best comedians from the UK were asked to do a routine and ‘battle’ against the stand-ups from the other countries.

  If I were offered it now, I wouldn’t take it, because it nearly killed me. Travelling to Melbourne on a twenty-four hour flight, only to turn round and come back again three days later once filming had finished, is devastating. But I was so desperate to go on what I thought was a free holiday that I foolishly stuck two fingers up to my body clock and went ahead with it. My body clock retaliated by making me fall asleep and also get impossibly drunk on the smallest amount of alcohol.

  After filming had been completed, I was enjoying a little tipple with the comedian Lee Mack, who was also battling against the world for Britain. I seemed to be getting louder and more flamboyant. I like to think that I am like Dorothy Parker when I’m pissed, keeping my audience captive with my witty epigrams. But it’s more like Danny La Rue on poppers – believe me, I’ve seen the photos.