Look who it is! (24 page)

I had stopped walking up the Royal Mile towards the Castle in fear of getting flyered to death. The turning point for me was when I had ventured up there, ironically to clear my head. Costumed performers just seemed to come out of the woodwork begging you to go to their shows. ‘Five Stars,
Observer
’, ‘Unmissable,
The Times
’ echoing from every corner of the old town. I politely declined and turned the corner only to get nearly knocked down by a tank being driven down the street with Drama students clinging to it singing ‘Oh, What a Lovely War!’ Sometimes it gets too much.

My friends came up at regular intervals, and they were a comfort. We would picnic up at Arthur’s Seat or we would leave the city and visit some of the pretty towns and villages along the coast. We would do anything and everything, as long as it had nothing to do with the bloody Festival or stand-up comedy. Spending time with them proved to be a real tonic. They were the constant in my world, helping me deal with the loneliness and isolation of living alone above a graveyard or the frenetic, chaotic social whirl of the Pleasance Courtyard.

Y
ou would think that, being in a city gripped by an artistic frenzy for a whole month, I would have at least have got lucky at some point – but oh no, I couldn’t even get a shag in a city full to the brim of Drama students, actors and theatre types. I had pulled one man but it hadn’t lasted even to the morning. He was a Pole called Vladimir. I invited him back to my apartment, and over a cheeky glass of Merlot he asked me in broken Polish, ‘What would you do for love?’

‘I don’t know,’ I replied.

‘Would you steal for love?’

‘Yes, if I was really in love.’

‘Would you give someone a thousand pounds for love?’

‘Of course. Money means nothing when you’re in love.’

Then something changed, and his eyes became all serious and steely. ‘Would you kill someone for love?’

‘I don’t, er, really, er …’

‘Forget it,’ he said seriously and changed the subject. Was he expecting me to murder someone? Well, if he did, he can forget it, no chance – I had to think of my career. I’ve been talked into some things before, but never homicide. It was like something out of an Alfred Hitchcock movie. He sensed my discomfort and said, ‘I will leave.’

To be honest, I was pleased and lied, ‘Maybe we can meet again sometime.’

He turned and said, ‘Yes,’ with those piercing eyes. I closed the door behind him and without a second thought popped on the latch and turned the Chubb. Let the weirdo try and get through that lot.

Thankfully, it wasn’t just psychopathic serial killers that visited my humble abode on the Royal Mile. I had comedy legends, too. A mutual friend was good friends with Peter Kay who’d heard about me from the Manchester comedy scene and wanted to meet me. I gave my friend the key to the flat and said I would meet him once my show was over. I was a bag of nervy excitement, and throughout my performance that night I couldn’t take my mind off the fact that afterwards I would be meeting
the
Peter Kay. I walked up the stairs and opened the door, went in and instantly got tangled up in my wet washing that was hanging from the ceiling on a pulley-operated wooden clothes horse. I freed myself and in the process knocked a painting off the wall.

For some reason, I couldn’t stop making a twat of myself. Peter probably thought that I was trying to get a part in
Phoenix Nights
or something. He was sitting on the settee quietly with his tour manager Gordon, and it was a real honour finally to meet him. Although I had never met him, I had felt his presence on the Manchester comedy scene for the past five years – whether it was Manc comics trying to do Peter Kay-style material or working with the cast of comedians from
Phoenix Nights
, like Toby Foster and Steve Edge, whom he had cherry-picked from the scene itself.

He sat there taking it all in, quietly listening to what I was saying, absorbing everything. I could see the cogs going and couldn’t help thinking that he was taking notes on me, sculpting a character out of my mannerisms or storing up a saying or a comment to be used in a sketch. Peter Kay, as we all know, is the ultimate people-watcher. Well, if he could make any comedy out of the nervous mumbo-jumbo I was muttering, then he was welcome to it. Needless to say, meeting Peter was the highlight of my Festival.

The Festival rattled along nicely, and before long we had reached the end of August, and it was time to go home. It’s surprising when you return home from living in this artistic bubble – living in fear of the reviews, praying you have an audience – that no one actually gives a shit. No, they don’t. Up there, it was so ridiculously intense, you felt that you were the centre of the earth and that the whole world’s eyes were pointing towards Edinburgh. I returned to Manchester with a loud ‘I’m back!’ – only to get a ‘Where’ve you been?’

‘Edinburgh!’

‘On holiday?’

‘No, the Festival!’

‘Oh …’

Lay people don’t really care about the Fringe. They think that it’s full of affected thespians, attention-grabbing comedians and tourists – and, come to think of it, they’re probably right. As any performer who’s been to Edinburgh will tell you, you come back totally drained, needing a serious detox, and just as you’re finally getting your mind and body round to recovering, a big fat bill from the Fringe pops on your
doormat. The bill amounts to what you owe the Festival after they’ve taken the money for ticket sales off the price of hiring the venue. Added to that is the cost of flyering, accommodation, the list truly is endless. If you’re really lucky, you break even. If you don’t, you could be left with a bill of up to
£
10,000. I was lucky, I just had to pay
£
3,000. I don’t know why I used the word ‘just’, but hearing what some performers had to pay I felt incredibly lucky to get away with three grand.

* * *

My stand-up work carried on regardless. Although financially I was down, my confidence had improved from performing each and every night. But after saying nearly the same thing most nights for weeks, I was desperate to get writing and come up with some new jokes. My agent must have thought I was confident enough because he had put me forward for a corporate do for Abbey National Building Society on the outskirts of Birmingham. I saw how much they were going to pay me, and my heart skipped a beat. It was what I would earn at Barclaycard in a month. Of course, being the corporate whore that I am, I accepted.

I started thinking of what I would buy with my money. Some new shoes, perhaps, a holiday – my imagination went into overdrive. Not once did I wonder why they would pay such an obscene amount of money for what was basically performing twenty minutes of stand-up comedy. I’ll tell you why, because they’re soul destroying, self-esteem-crushing, degrading, vile experiences that in all my years have left me
considering quitting stand-up comedy for good. Like Princess Lea chained to Jabba the Hut, you have to dance and perform every time they tug your chain, and, boy, do they tug it!

I was oblivious to this as I turned up at the conference centre and was taken to my dressing room. It was only once I’d stepped on stage that I realised I had signed a pact with the devil. But that was later.

The branch manager of Abbey National met me and took me to the large hall in the conference centre to do my sound check. ‘We’re looking for twenty minutes of clean stand-up. No swearing or sexual jokes. We don’t like smut at the Abbey National. Our staff are here for a good time and are like one big happy family.’ Sounded really nice people. This is going to be easy.

The time arrived for me to go on stage. The branch manager came on and introduced me.

‘Our host for the evening used to work in a call centre, and now he’s a comedian, so you could say he’s gone from sit-down to stand-up!’

SILENCE. Which I’m not really surprised about really, but anyway.

‘It’s Alan Carr!’

The lighting change happened, but not as promised. I was plunged into darkness, and the spotlight lit up a man in a wheelchair at the edge of the dancefloor. Then we had to wait while they repositioned the spotlight on me. A few people started to talk – I was losing them before I had begun. Finally I started my routine, but by then everyone had started to chat, and I was facing a wall of sound. I couldn’t hear myself speak,
but I persevered nevertheless, hoping that someone, somewhere in the room might be enjoying my act.

I was halfway through, getting nowhere, when I felt something tap the front of my glasses, and then another tap. I looked down. It was a Cadbury’s Mini Egg! They were throwing Cadbury’s Mini Eggs at me! It was hard enough remembering my jokes without having to dodge the confectionary friendly fire that was staccato-ing off my spectacles.

They were animals. I could see the branch manager’s horrified look on the top table. This one big happy family he’d described was now resembling the Mansons! Alcohol was turning people who I’m sure were decent human beings when sober into monsters. I’m not blaming them for drinking – if I worked for a bank, I would, too. These workers who probably rarely left the house were being plied with free drink, and they were making the most of it, which is fine. The unforgivable thing was leaving on the tables massive pots of M & Ms and Cadbury’s Mini Eggs – a chocolate treat in the hands of a sober person, but a silver bullet in the hands of a premenstrual, paralytic bank clerk with a bubble perm.

I was sick of this unnecessary abuse, so I told them all to fuck off. I added that they were in my opinion ‘a load of ungrateful wankers!’ and left the stage to go to my dressing room. Karen, who lived down the road from the corporate in Sutton Coldfield, had come to give me some moral support, and together we just sat there shaking our heads. My brain was trying to compute what had just happened. I was downhearted, muttering to myself ‘Wankers’. The branch manager came in to apologise for his staff’s behaviour.

‘I’ve never ever experienced such a bunch of rude wankers in my life,’ I said, slipping on my coat. ‘I’m off.’

‘Where you going?’ he asked.

‘I’m off. I’ve never been so embarrassed.’

‘But you’ve got to present the raffle.’

‘What?’

He was right. I had only scanned the contract briefly. A raffle was part of the deal. The most embarrassing moment of my life was about to be surpassed ten minutes later by giving prizes to people I had just called ‘a fucking bunch of wankers’. Hmm! Nice.

‘This isn’t going to be awkward at all, is it?’ I thought. So I took off my coat and returned to the stage where they had positioned a tombola. My reintroduction – ‘It’s Alan Carr!’ – didn’t even get the half-hearted ripple of applause that my first introduction had received. Silence greeted my ears, but at least they weren’t pebble-dashing me with M & Ms.

So for the next twenty minutes I read out the raffle numbers and had my picture taken with the ‘wankers’ smiling cheesily. As I handed over the DVD player with a bow wrapped around it, I was hoping in my heart that when the winner plugged it in it would short-circuit and electrocute him. They were probably the most forced photos you would ever see this side of David Gest and Liza Minnelli’s wedding. Mercifully, the raffle didn’t take too long, mainly due to the fact that neither of us wanted to speak to each other, so pleasantries were kept to a blessed minimum.

* * *

I got to see Peter Kay again, this time not in my sitting room, but in action at the Lowry in Salford. He very kindly invited me along. As it was sold out, he had got me a seat in the back of the auditorium, basically next to a St John’s Ambulance man with a comb-over and a bag of Murray Mints. The show was highly entertaining from the moment he stepped on stage to the finale – a rendition of ‘Danny Boy’. For ‘Danny Boy’, he got everyone standing up, waving their arms in the air. I was so far back, I didn’t bother and continued to sit, until I heard, ‘Alan Carr! Get your bloody hands in the air!’

I told you Peter was a people-watcher. Of course, I jumped up and joined in, surprisingly not embarrassed but dead chuffed that he had remembered my name.

Post-Edinburgh, my gigs were proving successful. Obviously, there were a few awful ones, although admittedly some weren’t my fault. One time I was gigging in Manchester above a pub on a busy crossroads, and my hand-held microphone had started picking up the frequency of a local taxi-rank. It’s hard enough dealing with a heckle from within the room, let alone ‘Foxtrot Alpha Bravo, we need a pick-up outside Morrisons’ stamping all over your punchlines.

Taxi-rank heckles aside, I was making progress, and my life in Chorlton was getting more settled, although my flatmates’ lives were anything but. Pauline had been arrested for drug smuggling in Munich. Terrified, she’d phoned us from the airport, asking if we could all club together and stump up
£
1,000 for a bond to have her released. We were all skint in that house and, after a group chat in the sitting room, we soon realised we couldn’t get our hands on that kind of cash. Plus,
it became apparent that even if we did have the money, she’d been so sharp and aggressive with us over the previous months that we wouldn’t give it to her anyway. Also, who chose Pauline to be a drugs mule anyway? She was hardly the most discreet mule in the world. With her pierced face, pink hair, big thick leather boots and a leather trench coat, she looked like she must have been off her face when she got dressed that morning. Sad to say, we never saw Pauline again.

A lot of the time, I would have the run of the house. Ruth had started donating her body to science to get money. She would go to Medival for weeks on end and have drugs tested on her for such ailments as Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s and angina, and then come back and go on holiday, leaving me to look after the ever-expanding Mortimer, who was still frustratingly not litter-trained. Foolishly, I had assumed that going to the Edinburgh Festival would transform my career and that I would immediately be spotted by some television bigwig and get my own show. But obviously, it never materialised. Everyone else had the same idea. Worse still, people more talented than me had the same idea. Damn!