Authors: Alan Carr
* * *
Dad’s star was on the rise again. After keeping Nuneaton top of the League for a couple of seasons, he was spotted by Northampton Town Football club and he decided to leave the non-League and join a club that was actually in a division even if they were at the foot of that division, and basically bankrupt.
When your dad is manager of the football team of the town you are growing up in and the team are enjoying a particularly good season, even if you don’t have the slightest interest in football, people presume you are good at it simply for sharing a surname. I didn’t expect to jump over buildings and lasso criminals because I had a Carter in the family tree now, did I?
Simply being called Carr meant that I was genetically modified to be a world-class striker. So whenever I joined a new school and word got round that Alan Carr (‘What? The really camp one with glasses and buck teeth?’ – ‘Yes that’s him’) was the son of Graham Carr, all the lads, even the tough ones, started hanging around me, inviting me round their houses for tea, asking if I wanted to share a cigarette, offering me a backie on their Grifters. My diary was fit to burst. For once in my life, I was in the midst of a social whirl. Well, let’s just say, this was before they saw me on the pitch.
It didn’t get me off to a good start. On Monday morning the PE teacher Jenko – he was Mr Jenkinson, but we could
call him Jenko, and I would end up calling him a lot worse by the time I’d left that playing field, I can tell you – said, ‘We have a celebrity’s son with us today,’ and then went and appointed me captain.
‘Oh no, please, there’s been a terrible mistake,’ I wailed. ‘I’d rather just be here on the sub bench.’
‘I’m sure we’ll all be pleasantly surprised,’ boomed Jenko. They were surprised all right, just not in the way they intended. I lost it, whenever I did get the ball, I couldn’t control it, I forgot which end I was meant to be shooting at, and instead of an almighty kick all I could muster was a toe-punt.
Dizzy, I turned round to face them, and they looked at me as if to say, ‘This isn’t what I ordered.’ It was true; instead of being this athletic dynamo nutmegging the opposition, weaving with ease and scoring with flair, I was flailing up and down like Goldie Hawn in
Bird on a Wire
. I lasted five minutes and as punishment was made to collect the ball from the other side of the dual carriageway – which admittedly I had kicked over there, but not all the way over there, to be fair, it had ricocheted off a woman walking her dog.
I admit sometimes I brought the humiliation on myself, but more often than not it was induced by the PE teachers themselves. Jenko was all right, I suppose. I mean, he wasn’t malicious, he just couldn’t understand why some people were good at sports and others weren’t. Jenko was the final one in a long line of unimpressed PE teachers.
I can cope with unimpressed, but it’s the sadistic ones I find repulsive. It was during my years at the Middle School that I encountered the worst one of the lot. She was Mrs
O’Flaherty. God, I hated that woman, and I still do. She hated me, too. There was no love lost when I finally left. She covered for Science, and I remember getting one of my first ever migraines during her lesson. She refused to let me out and I had to sit through a lesson on poly-photosynthesis with a paralysed face and what felt like a tsunami of pain flooding around my brain. I hate it when people say migraines are just ‘headaches but a bit worse’, it really is like saying tuberculosis is a chesty cough – they bloody hurt.
Ooh! I detested that Mrs O’Flaherty. I can still remember those piggy eyes and her bowl haircut: she looked like Joan of Arc – after the fire. Every tennis lesson she partnered me with Matthew, who had learning difficulties, yes learning difficulties, so how was I supposed to improve? Oh, and don’t think I didn’t notice that everyone else had proper professional tennis rackets and proper professional tennis balls, while Matthew and I were given these rackets so large that I swear if we waved them about in the air enough we could have landed a Boeing 747.
To add insult to injury, our balls were made of sponge. All the other lads got to play outside, apart from us. Apparently, according to Mrs O’Flaherty, if she let Matthew and me play outside, our balls would blow away. So we had to stand in the school hall watching the other kids outside, listening enviously to the ‘thwock’ of professional rackets hitting professional balls over professional nets.
Poor old Matthew was simple, bless him. I know you can’t say that nowadays but he was simple, he didn’t know what was going on. But I did! That’s what made it so frustrating. I
tried to show him the difference between the others’ tennis balls and our sponge balls, mainly by throwing them at his head – which is wrong, I know, but I get frustrated too, you know. How am I supposed to improve my backhand if I’m demoted to home-helping my opponent? It just wasn’t fair.
Physical Education is the only lesson on the school syllabus where you don’t get any help if you’re no good at it. Physical it is, Education it ain’t. No arm around your shoulder, no comforting word from a teacher, just a great big dollop of contempt and sarcasm. Can you imagine the headlines if little Susie in English couldn’t spell scissors, and so was forced to do an extra lap of the library in her vest and pants and then have her arse whipped with a wet towel? The
Daily Mail
would have a field day. You can see why kids today don’t want to do exercise and would rather sit at home playing martial arts games on their Nintendo. I wish I’d done that, too – not because I like martial arts, but because the next time Mrs O’Flaherty tried to humiliate me, in one swift
Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon
style I’d do a body slam, with a nipple twist, and finish it off with a scissor kick – that would show her! I’d be a hero, and all the fat kids would pick me up and carry me around on their morbidly obese shoulders.
My heart goes out to any kids who are, shall we say, athletically challenged. I understand ‘Sport’ now that I’m older; it’s not so much to do with skill and finesse, it’s about Fear. Sliding tackles, scrums, tobogganing, it’s all about being fearless. I definitely wasn’t fearless – no, I had Fear aplenty, Fear and Worry in abundance. One of the reasons for my Fear
was the fact that I would read everything, read and read and read – it’s true, ‘Ignorance is bliss’. So when it finally came to starting a game of rugby, all the other boys were imagining running down the field (what’s a rugby pitch called?) and scoring a magnificent try. Meanwhile, I would be remembering that article I read about the bloke who’s a paraplegic due to a hooker falling on his neck. Oh no, not for me, thanks, you go on, boys, you knock yourselves out – how the hell are my glasses going to stay on with a cauliflower ear?
Whether it was me being a chicken-shit or some deeper Darwinian self-preservation thing kicking in, I feared the scrum and all it entailed. I remember Mum pulling my immaculate rugby kit from my bag and accusing me of playing truant. How dare she? I had played rugby. I’d run my little socks off up and down the field. I’d just avoided the muddy bits.
* * *
Overall, though, it takes more than a few isolated moments to dim a wonderful childhood. Yes, we had our ups and downs, but if you’re expecting
Alan’s
Ashes
you’re going to be bitterly disappointed. I haven’t really had much scandal in my life either. Seriously, at one point I was thinking of getting an uncle to interfere with me just so I could add a bit of pathos.
And I grew up in one of the most boring towns in England.
Northampton is famous for shoes and, apart from the Express Lift Tower, a listed building that in certain lights looks like a concrete dildo, its main landmark is the Northampton
Boot and Shoe Museum, which we’d get dragged around every other year on a school trip. The museum contains a plaster copy of the shoe of one of the elephants that Hannibal used to climb over the Alps. Need I say more? Just imagine getting a guided tour of a massive Freeman, Hardy & Willis, only shitter.
‘Excuse me,’ I said, taking a replica of one of Marie Antoinette’s shoes off the display and holding it out to the curator, ‘do you have this in a six?’
‘Alan Carr!’ shouted the teacher. ‘Put that back at once!’
With a weary sigh, I replaced the replica. I just wanted to add a bit of sparkle. Was that a crime?
I
’m not making excuses for my sporting failures, but a lot of the time my body let me down. Puberty had been unkind. Whereas it had come in the night and left the other boys with chiselled, stubbly chins and deep masculine voices, I’d been left with a huge pair of knockers and the voice of a pensioner – a female pensioner, at that. Breasts that I’d been constantly told were ‘puppy fat’ were becoming embarrassing. They were getting quite pendulous, and I was starting to get amorous looks from some of the older men when I was country dancing. It made me feel very self-conscious and it didn’t help that our sports kit was red shorts, red socks and a white T-shirt that became see-through when sweaty. This, to me, was the worst-case scenario and if I ever had to run I would run with my arms across my chest, which was silly really as it only served to make my cleavage even more impressive.
And as for swimming, I didn’t even have the security of a flimsy cotton white T-shirt to cover my bosom. I had to do it naked, except for a pair of dark green woollen swimming trunks, which ironically when they came in contact with water would weigh like lead and make you drop like a stone to the swimming-pool floor.
When you tell people that you had a swimming pool at your school, they raise an eyebrow and naturally assume you went to an idyllic Etonian establishment where it was pony riding, croquet and water polo before tea and scones on the lawn. Don’t be fooled by the swimming pool; it was basically a concrete bunker attached to the school that was filled with so many chemicals your eyes would weep as you entered the building. The chemicals were so strong I swear that if you did more than two lengths you’d end up changing sex. All the boys including myself would stand there in their trunks, and even though it was a mixed group none of the girls would be in their bathing suits at all because –
quelle surprise
– they were due on. Every week, they would turn up and hand over a note which their ‘mums’ had written. ‘Sharon, Kelly, Rachel, Caroline, Jenny cannot do swimming as it’s their time of the month.’ What? Every week?
The older boys would smirk, but I was none the wiser. I knew it had something to do with periods, but the woman on the telly went rollerskating, dog-walking and potholing, and she had a ‘period’. All I knew was, I was standing there half naked trying to learn the butterfly and being giggled at by a group of allegedly menstruating young ladies.
People naturally assume I was the class clown – I was and I wasn’t. The typical class clown is the lad that tells the jokes and the tough lads laugh and he doesn’t get punched. That wasn’t me, unless my jokes were really bad, because they used to punch me anyway. I was the one always playing the goat, mucking around. In Science when discussing the planets I was always the one asking the teacher, ‘How big’s Uranus?’ Not
particularly witty, I agree, but at twelve it would have the room in stitches, and the other children would look to me as if I were Dorothy Parker.
Even though I used comedy to make friends, I never really felt that I fitted in. I felt like an outsider, looking in, making jokes and comments that turned things on their head, which, writing this, strangely enough sounds like the job description of a stand-up comic. I never seemed to find anyone at school that I felt I had anything in common with, not just hobby-wise (Hey, lads, do you want to come behind the bike sheds and read an Agatha Christie?) but in everything. To me, they could have been another species, let alone another class. Plus, my best friend at the time, Jason, had come into school and took me to one side. ‘My dad says I can’t hang around with you any more.’
‘Why not?’
‘Because you’re turning me gay!’
‘I’m not gay,’ I protested convincingly, I thought.
But Jason was adamant, our friendship was over. Apparently after hanging about with me all day at school, he had been coming home talking in an affected, camp manner, decorating sentences with over-pronounced ‘ooh’s’ and raising his eyebrow at anything remotely worthy of innuendo. His dad definitely had nothing to worry about. Jason was very laddy, and I’m sure he must be married now with lots of kids. It goes without saying that you can’t ‘catch’ homosexuality, but I’m afraid to say from personal experience ‘camp’ can spread quicker than bird flu if not kept at bay. I’ve reduced builders to simpering Danny La Rues in my time. It’s all in the wrist, I guess.
Losing Jason as a friend was a real blow. We’d had a lot of fun times. Every weekend we would go into Northampton Town Centre and wander aimlessly around the Grosvenor Centre or Abington Park, generally mucking about, popping on the wigs in Debenhams or shouting out ‘shoplifter’ and pointing at an old person in BHS. I’m not proud of what we did, but it killed time.
We would usually end up at the ABC Cinema, this gigantic art-deco building that dominates the top of Abington Street. It’s not a cinema any more – it’s now the headquarters for the Jesus Army and, quite frankly, it’s seen better days – but back then in the late Eighties it was the centrepiece of our Saturday afternoons. I saw everything there,
ET, Batman, Turner and Hooch
. It was during
Tango and Cash
that one audience member climbed up the curtains and swung daringly in front of Sylvester Stallone’s face and had to be told to get down by the cinema manager.
With Jason doing his own thing, I started to dread the bell ringing for breaktimes and lunchtimes because it would normally mean walking around on my own. In class, you feel a bit like you belong, but time out of those lessons tended to make me feel a bit empty, with the breaks seeming to drag more than the actual lessons.
In my moping, I must be thankful for one blessing: I never went down the ‘goth’ route. Yes, I had been known to write poems expressing my angst, but I had never popped on some mascara and a black leather trench coat and hung around the library looking wistful. I might have been feeling sorry for myself, but I wasn’t tacky.