Obviously, being relatively new faces, we were a gamble. Viewers would have to take a chance on us. We weren’t as established as Jimmy Carr and, as we found out to our displeasure, on that first show we couldn’t fill the seats in the studio – we had to cover up the empty places with a discreet black cover. Employing adept camera-work, the director managed to make the studio look full to the brim and fooled our lovely viewers at home that Thursday night at The Friday Night Project was party night. If you believed what you saw on the screen, we were the hottest ticket in town. Justin and I were obviously connecting with someone, though, because after a few shows we were filling all the seats. Not only that, they were turning people away at the door.
I have never watched The Friday Night Project, or any other programme I’ve been on, for that matter. I can’t stand watching myself, I find it uncomfortable, I start begrudging my camp-ness. The critics had slated the programme – it’s a Friday late-night entertainment show, of course they’re going to hate it! What were they expecting? World in Action? Even so, I could tell the show was going down well because, say what you want about the Great British Public, they’re not backward in coming forward. If they like you, they will tell you they like you.
Shopping, eating, catching a show, attending a funeral, ‘ALAN, WE LOVE YOU!’ will come out of nowhere and pierce the atmosphere like a pin. You will look up and, more often than not, there will be a gaggle of girls wolf-whistling and waving, poking their heads out the back of a Cortina window – a bit like dogs do when they need some air.
We were starting to get audiences who were real fans. The first few shows had been uninspiring audience-wise, plus we had noticed that a handful of the seats in the studio were suspiciously vacant once the ‘Coat of Cash’ had happened. For those of you who don’t know it, the ‘Coat of Cash’ is very simple. A ‘celebrity’, a term used loosely, runs into the audience with a coat covered in fivers and tenners, and the audience has to rip the money off. The audience go wild at this point, and it is pure chaos as people try to get their money’s worth off the poor coat-wearer.
However, when it was over, the penny finally dropped: some cheeky bastards in the audience had grabbed the money off the coat, had got their bags and decided to go home. It seems some of the audience were using us as an ATM, handing out free money to people who didn’t give two hoots about the show. Tight bastards. Thankfully, as the show’s success grew, so did the enthusiasm of the audience, and we got people there who enjoyed the show whether they had grabbed a handful of fivers or not.
Over time the undesirables were ruthlessly rooted out. With this new burst of love from the audience, our confidence grew and so did the studio. We went up to the biggest one at London Studios. We were on hallowed ground. This was where Ant and Dec filmed their Saturday Night Takeaway, this was the pat on the back we needed.
Justin and I were both thrilled. I felt I had finally shaken off the demons that said I wasn’t good enough. I had been so worried at the beginning of the run that I couldn’t do it. Justin was naturally upbeat, enthusiastic and a born conversationalist. He made it look so easy, thriving in what is essentially the pretty stark surroundings of a studio. I doubted whether I could keep up with him, let alone possibly say anything that would make the final cut. Justin can literally talk about anything, plus, amazingly, sound like he gives a shit, which is a fantastic skill to have when you’re faced with a dreary A-Lister intent on plugging their CD, perfume, clothing range, film. Delete where applicable. Whereas Justin can throw himself wholeheartedly into the conversation and chug it along with his cheeky chat and upbeat nature, I tend to switch off and look completely bored shitless which, I admit, isn’t ideal. I bet you can’t wait for the ‘Alan Carr Chat Show’, can you?
But I made a concerted effort to talk more, engage myself with the guest and earn my place upon the sofa. Believe it or not, towards the end of that first run I started to enjoy myself. I actually looked forward to the recording and, as it happens, I wasn’t making a tit of myself. In fact, Justin and I were making quite a good partnership in this thing they call ‘presenting’. We were doing just fine together, we were becoming a right old double act, and my fears that I was the new Syd Little had been unfounded.
Whether it’s performing ‘Doctor Who on Ice’ with Billie Piper, or rapping on a mock R’n’B video with Mariah Carey, or singing a duet with Mel C at an EastEnders pub in Magaluf, it is only when it stops that you can finally take in the bizarreness of what I used to call my life. If I actually took it in whilst I was in the middle of these more surreal moments, I think my head would explode. Maybe after all it’s a good thing that I let myself get swept away by it all. Maybe I’m afraid that if I pinched myself it would bring me round from this dream-like state, and I would wake up and find myself back packing shampoo in Northampton. Even after all I’ve been through, I still worry that it will end tomorrow and I’ll get banished to some industrial estate in the middle of nowhere for having too much fun. So I do what I do best – I pop on my costume and carry on regardless.
So I’m back in the studio, and for the eighth time that day I change into my outfit. Staring at the monstrosity that looks back at me in the mirror, it’s hard to comprehend firstly that the shy little boy from Northampton has come so far, and secondly that I would make such an ugly woman. Not disheartened, I slip on the négligé with no complaints, pop on the black stilettos, let Sue the make-up lady smear my lips with cherry-red lipstick, and I am ready.
With a quick glance in the mirror to see that Justine has pinned the shaggy brown wig to my head, I make my way to the back of the stage reciting the lyrics of ‘Simply the Best’ over and over again. As I pass through the backcloth to the wings, one of the stagehands mutters sarcastically, ‘Look who it is!’
‘Yes,’ I say. ‘It’s Tina!’
I remember running and touching a tree, any tree, and then running back to my father and then running to a tree that was a little bit further away and then back to my father and so on. I seemed to have spent my whole childhood breathless, touching trees. If there weren’t trees available, Dad would bring bollards. There would be no escape from the tree touching.
Whilst I was running I would see all the other kids in the park having a kick-around, taking it in turns to be in goal, playing keepy-uppy, their playful laughter and squeals of joy slowly being drowned out by Dad’s ‘One, two, three, four! Quicker! You fat fairy!’ from the other side of the park. He would shout using the same booming voice with just a hint of Geordie that he used every Saturday on the touchline to his own players. I would see them try to shout back, only to be blasted again with that voice, the fools. It would be like arguing with a hand-dryer.
I first started running to try and dislodge some of the puppy fat. It would be just a leisurely run around the fields, nothing too strenuous. Strangely, although I hated sports, I did enjoy running; bounding along the country lanes seemed to clear my head and sharpen my mind. I remember running after school around a field at the back of my house, and as I approached the winning line, which was in fact an old tree with a dangly branch, who did I spot emerging from behind a bush? Yes, my father, with a stopwatch.
‘That’s 29 minutes, 38 seconds. If you’d pushed yourself a bit harder on that hill, you would have made 28 minutes easy.’
Not only had he been spying on me running, I later found out he had tried to enrol me in the local boys’ running team, the Overstone Phoenixes, without me knowing.
‘What’s the point of running