Alanatomy Read online

  We really needed a drink after that, so once we peeled off our leopard skin we retired to a bar. Not only was my ego bruised but so was my neck, which was stiff and sore both from the nerves and dodging bread rolls. A woman comes over and sits with me, black thigh-high boots, low-cut top and a miniskirt – okay, okay, yes, yes, prostitute klaxon, prostitute klaxon, but you must remember I was naive back then, and besides, I obviously didn’t live in the sleazy world you inhabit where a scantily clad woman milling around a hotel bar the wrong side of midnight is clearly a prostitute. I thought she’d missed the last bus home and someone had stolen all her clothes. ‘Fancy some fun?’ she said, fingering the complimentary nuts. Well, as soon as I opened my mouth and she heard my dulcet tones, her little face fell – she knew she wasn’t going to be giving any hand jobs any time soon. She dismounted the bar stool like a jockey and strutted off looking for more suitable clients, leaving behind some flyers for a strip bar.

  Now, I’d never ever been to a strip bar in my life (female strip bar, you understand – I’d been to male strip bars but only because it was raining and I needed a radiator to dry out my anorak). Feeling a flush of why not? I said to Justin, ‘Let’s go to this strip bar,’ waving the flyers excitedly in the air like Charlie outside the chocolate factory. Justin thought about this for approximately one second and said ‘yes’. We headed there.

  Me and Justin, possibly two of the least hedonistic people you’d ever meet, never did this kind of thing. We would usually find a nice bar after the show, sit in a snug and just chat and giggle over one or four bottles of red wine. Thinking about it, we sort of lived out our hedonism on screen – there were very few episodes of The Friday Night Project where we weren’t naked, wearing a gimp mask, tied up, cross-dressing, you name it – so I guess when we came off stage we were so sexually depleted that our idea of fantasy was wearing clothes that didn’t chafe and eating a burger.

  As we went into the strip bar off Tottenham Court Road we were instantly pounced upon by a gaggle of girls, like moths to a flame, or like flies around shit depending on your opinion of strip clubs. We must have had twelve young women stuck to us like glue, giggling at every word I uttered and playing with their hair a lot. The waitress came over and asked if we would like a drink. ‘Ooh, I’d love a rosé,’ I said. I was going through my rosé phase at the time, in fact I’m still going through my rosé phase – okay, let’s just call it alcoholism. I wafted the drinks menu away as if it was an annoying wasp. ‘Bring me rosé, bring me rosé,’ I cried petulantly. When the woman returned – with twelve glasses, I hasten to add – the ‘hostesses’ dived in, snatching the glasses from under mine and Justin’s noses. Another bottle was ordered, then another. I was gasping, I’d only had one sip. Every time I leant over to grab a glass a perfectly manicured hand would grab it away from me with a grating giggle. As we were the only people in there on a Tuesday night, these girls saw us as meal tickets. Having your wine stolen from you gets boring after a while. I’m sure it’s quite cheeky and sweet if you are a horny businessman looking for light relief and hoping for sex on a Tuesday night, but all I wanted was a drink.

  ‘Come on, Justin, let’s get out of here,’ I said. We asked for the bill and it came. Oh yes, it came all right – £3,000!! You’re having a laugh. They had brought me Cristal Rosé at five hundred quid a bottle, basically working out at £1,500 a sip. Not only was I dry, I was parched and once my lips had been peeled from my gums I demanded to speak to the manager. The women, once so giggly, slowly disappeared into the background. I kicked off and the manager came over, refused to apologize and said that it was MY fault for not being specific. As you can imagine, I was horrified – I can’t actually remember what I said but it was something along the lines of I’m in a strip bar, I’ve spent three thousand pounds and I haven’t even had a hard-on. I kept it classy. He still would not budge but as a ‘goodwill gesture’ he would give me a complimentary lap dance in a booth. I thought okay, he’s not the most handsome man I’ve met, but hey, in for a penny. He then clarified that it would be ‘with one of the dancers’. My heart, like my semi, sank. Some menacing men had started walking over so I settled for the lap dance – me and Justin in adjacent booths, one of us thoroughly enjoying himself and the other scowling, arms folded, thinking to himself that there was more chance of them raising the Titanic.

  The Friday Night Project was quite a huge show to produce each week. There was a lot going on: there were hidden camera skits, a quiz, musical performances, sketches, days out, you name it, and all these things need to be thought up and produced. This of course takes time, so me and Justin would spend ages with whoever the guest host was that week, just sitting around chatting, waiting. Not surprisingly, you find out more about the guest host from these moments of relaxed off-camera chit-chat then you ever do on a chat show or anything filmed in front of the cameras.

  We’d been with Mariah all day at the studios. She was at the height of her fame then and had just found out that she had surpassed Elvis in America for number ones as ‘Touch My Body’ became her eighteenth chart-topper. She was in a good mood, I really liked her, and although her diva reputation went before her we often found that the demands weren’t coming from her at all but from her entourage/hangers-on, depending on how you viewed the huge whispering throng who seemed to hover aimlessly in corridors. I remember one show we did, we had a star on who will remain nameless because I don’t want to ridicule her, but she had a huge entourage and before she came on she did a twirl and said, ‘How do I look, guys?’ The entourage cooed their enthusiasm and clapped encouragingly and then when she disappeared back into her dressing room I saw them pulling faces, sniggering and muttering conspiratorially, ‘She is a hot mess,’ ‘Ugh, did you see that dress – disgusting.’ It struck me as so sad – I suspect we’ve all got frenemies, friends that probably haven’t got your best interests at heart, coming along for the ride, but to be surrounded by these people all the time when you’re away from home – and more importantly paying for them – has surely got to be bad for you!! You do wonder psychologically what effect that can have on your morale and self-esteem. I never saw any of that with Mariah’s entourage, thankfully. I liked Mariah too much and it would have got right on my tits if I’d noticed any backbiting. They just tended to order things for Mariah, doughnuts, pizza, candy bars, and I began to wonder whether she was actually getting them or if she had worms.

  ‘Did you enjoy your doughnuts, Mariah?’ I asked mischievously like I was some kind of food detective.

  ‘What doughnuts?’ came the reply.

  ‘Did you enjoy your Harrods speciality teabags flown all the way from China?’

  ‘What Harrods speciality teabags flown all the way from China?’ Okay, okay, you get the gist. Anyway, we had bigger things to worry about. The props lady had been pulling her hair out at the spoof video we had done because Mariah had asked for an ostrich feather to fan herself down as she was hot. Where were we supposed to find a fucking ostrich feather at that time of night? And on Regent Street. Apparently ‘Ostrich Feathers R Us’ had just shut down and been replaced by a trendy wine bar. Mariah has a few more curves now but I remember back then her body was smoking. Whilst we were waiting for the cameras to be set up Justin offered her a bit of his Scotch egg and she declined, saying that her personal trainer would ‘kill her’. I look back with sadness sometimes and think Mariah would have loved to have had that Scotch egg.

  On set she was fun and often sent her diva antics up, which made us all warm to her. When her stylist brought her clothes down for her to peruse she filled me with delight when she broke into the Faye Dunaway ‘Wire hangers, Christina, wire hangers’ line from Mommie Dearest, tongue firmly in cheek. It’s one of my favourite films so I couldn’t believe it. Saying that though, she did request that she only be filmed from the left side as that was her best side and that The Friday Night Project set would have to be rotated 180 degrees to accommodate this. We all laughed – I did my ‘what are you
like’ face but her face remained the same. We didn’t rotate it (I don’t think we actually could rotate it) and to this day I still don’t know if she was joking but she looked beautiful whichever side. And, unlike me, at least she’s got a good side.

  We all got along so well during the recording that she very sweetly invited us to Cipriani to celebrate with her. This kind of thing never ever happens to me. We were whisked to the restaurant after the show and escorted through the throng of fans who had already found out she was there. No scowly door attendant with a clipboard for me that night, no ‘Alan who?’ – I was straight in there like a rat up a drainpipe. We had champagne with Mariah and she was really chatty and funny. The champagne soon went to my head and before long awestruck Alan was replaced by overconfident Alan. As we sat round the table, someone tapped their glass with a teaspoon, calling, ‘Speech, speech!’ Mariah stood up and said what an amazing day it was, and how truly blessed she was to have had eighteen number ones. We all cooed and smiled amiably. ‘But there is one person who I owe it all to …’ she went on. Everyone looked to Benny, her then manager, who stood there with a smile. And that’s when I stood up and went, ‘Oh, don’t, it was nothing.’ There was a pause – not just a pause, but an awful pause, a pause filled with white noise. One of the entourage’s mouths fell open, more pause, fear, more pause, more fear and then Mariah laughed. ‘You’re crazy!’ she said, and then everyone laughed. ‘Of course I’m talking about my manager, Benny.’ Everyone cheered and air-kissed and I went to the toilet to rinse my pants under a cold tap.

  Being a huge fan of West Wing, I got a double whammy when both Rob Lowe and Martin Sheen appeared on The Friday Night Project. I had had a man crush on Rob Lowe since St Elmo’s Fire. I thought I was over him until the sound guy tried to fit a microphone pack unsuccessfully on to Rob and Rob assisted by lifting up his crisp white box-fresh Ralph Lauren shirt to reveal a perfect set of bronzed abs – I had a funny turn and was whisked back to the eighties with my hands rummaging frantically under the duvet covers, ‘Man in Motion’ blaring in my ears from my portable television.

  Rob was such a nice guy and Justin, whose forte was cult films of the eighties, was constantly surprising Rob with his obscure film trivia, so those two were in their element. We had a fun day out with him courtesy of The Friday Night Project – the brief was to show him a quintessentially British Day Out – but instead of going to Ikea or sitting in a traffic jam we decided to helicopter to Cambridge, where we went punting on the river Cam and even had a cream tea in a field. Throughout the day I was trying to block out Justin and the camera crew and pretend that it was just me and Rob on a date. He was so charming and I was smitten. He was a real sweetheart in the studio – though now I’m thinking back, was he a real sweetheart? Or was I just loved up? So intense was my desire for him that I think even if he’d spat scalding tea in my face or stubbed a fag out on my hand I would still have gazed at him, hand resting on chin, and whispered, ‘Dreamboat!’

  I remember him being really professional and worrying a bit too much about the David Beckham sketch, asking the producer to come down and see if he was doing it the best way, could it be done differently maybe to get more laughs – he just wanted it to be perfect (for me, probably, I gushed inside). Even through my love-filled eyes I thought he was giving too much of a shit – chill out, love, it’s only a Friday Night Project sketch and I’m going to come on in a minute with massive tits and a wig, there’ll be the sound of a swanee whistle and that’s your punchline.

  It was sweet, though, when these stars came over and put some effort in because it was one of those shows where the more you put in the more you got out of it. For every Rob Lowe or Kim Cattrall enquiring about which wig should be used or how you wanted the punchline delivered, there was a Lily Allen lying on a mattress in the corner of the studio recovering from a hangover. When Christian Slater guest-hosted The Friday Night Project he really didn’t want to do it. He kept looking at me and Justin with a perplexed expression and you could see him thinking, I wonder if the money’s gone into my account yet. The writers had written a Brokeback Mountain sketch and Christian didn’t want to be in it. He refused to dress up as a cowboy, not because he didn’t want to be cast as a homosexual but because the sketch was shit. Justin and I had no qualms about quality control and with or without Christian we soldiered through the sketch, me dressed as a lonesome cowboy and Justin dressed as a saloon wench – like I said, we had NO quality control.

  After Rob left to go back to Hollywood, I said to Justin, ‘Do you think he’s had any work done?’

  Justin looked at me disbelievingly. ‘He’s forty-six and he looks younger than us, of course he’s had bloody work done.’

  Martin Sheen was in the same freewheeling frame of mind as me and Justin – he wasn’t phased by much and just got on with it, even when some of the stuff we got him to do was sailing close to the wind. Like you, I watch these nostalgia shows that seem to be back in vogue on television at the moment – the ones where opinionated, ‘right on’, youthful punters gasp and splutter outrage at those shows from the seventies, rolling their eyes at what passed as ‘entertainment’ back then. They are quietly smug, implying ‘Haven’t we come a long way?’ (We haven’t – but it’s nice to think we have.) I watch these shows and laugh along too, shaking my head, muttering ‘unbelievable’, and then it dawns on me that we did things like that on The Friday Night Project and this wasn’t even the seventies, this was ten years ago, and then it sinks in: I just know The Friday Night Project is going to end up on one of THOSE TV shows. It’s a show ripe for ripping apart come 2050 – though thinking about it, people were ripping it apart in 2006! And when they do stick the knife in we’ll be taking Martin Sheen with us. What an intelligent, articulate, wonderful man – I could have listened to him all day, and I did. He talked about politics, the environment, West Wing and his rough ride on the film Apocalypse Now – he had me and Justin mesmerized with his anecdotes about working with Marlon Brando. He was so progressive and enlightened in his views, which made it all the harder when we came to filming the sketches – they were so beneath him. I remember one sketch that still makes me squirm, where he was dressed in leather shorts, leather hat and a whip and turned up at the White House looking for Obumma (me). Not only was it a very cheap gay gag, I was also blacked up as Obama. Channel 4’s stance on blacking-up would change weekly depending on which Channel 4 person had popped along to oversee the show – one week it would be perfectly acceptable and the next it would draw gasps of shock and I would dash off to the toilet with a wet wipe, it was a minefield. Anyway, just for the record, we never meant it to be offensive. But we are in an era of re-evaluation, where goodies become baddies, and social media has unleashed an army of Smug Sallys who are horrified at everything. Who knows, maybe history will be kind – more likely we’ll end up being forgotten, but if not, when they’re slagging us off in 2056 on They Did What in the Noughties!!!?, remember, we weren’t being malicious, we were only trying to be funny!

  Sometimes I had such a good time with the guest host that I ended up reciprocating and turning up on their show for shits and giggles. This was the case with Carol Vorderman – she was such a laugh and a good sport with a surprisingly naughty sense of humour. Carol has the best gossip ever, I swear half of London’s ears are burning when we get together. Justin really fancied her – she is his ideal woman. I swear, when she said that she was up for ‘Rear of the Year’, Justin nearly shot his load. Carol and I hit it off so well that when she asked if I would consider being the celebrity guest in Dictionary Corner on Countdown I just had to say yes. I had been on it before but only in the audience as part of The Friday Night Project sketch. Sitting in the audience was like sitting in a sea of cotton wool with all those pensioners so you can imagine the shock I got when the floor manager came on the set and enquired of the audience, ‘Has anyone here got AIDS …?’ I looked around at the grey-haired, anoraked geriatric crowd – AIDS? They didn’t look like
they’d had sex for half a century, let alone caught a sexually transmitted disease. ‘If you have got AIDS,’ she then gestured to her ears, ‘please turn them off.’ Phew, hearing aids!

  I was naturally worried about being in Dictionary Corner – I really didn’t want to be exposed as a charlatan, so I watched the show religiously, thesaurus in hand, to try and expand my knowledge of the English language. I didn’t really need to, as I later found out that they would tell you via an earpiece during the thirty-second countdown clock some longer words that maybe you hadn’t got round to thinking of, ultimately saving you the embarrassment of looking like a knob. All the guests have this help and are not as intelligent as they like to make out – apparently Giles Brandreth is a borderline cretin in real life and speaks like Nell in that Jodie Foster film. (That last sentence is a lie – I don’t want to end up on Judge Rinder.) It was terrifying each time the clock started its iconic countdown – being naturally apprehensive anyway I couldn’t help thinking that if the people in my ear couldn’t find a long word I’d be hung out to dry. For the first twenty-five seconds I would be in a blind panic staring down at the OR, ON, AS and AT scribbled on my notepad, then on the twenty-sixth second I would hear ‘ABSORBATE’ out of the blue. Wow, I thought, this must be what it’s like to be clever.

  I’m still friends with Carol and every Christmas without fail, me, my partner Paul, Carol, Gok, Paul O’Grady, Sally Lindsay and her husband, the drummer Steve White, meet up for a very boozy Christmas lunch that more often than not spills over into the early evening and then turns into a pub crawl and at least one of us falling over and ending up in the Daily Mail’s sidebar of shame. It is the high point of my Christmas. Our diaries are always so chocka that it’s a real treat when each of us finds a free day so that we can meet up. Whenever that evergreen question is put to me, ‘Who would be your dream dinner-party guests?’ I don’t even have to think as I already know the answer – I have that dream dinner party every Christmas.