Look who it is! (30 page)

‘You did a really good job there, Alan,’ he said, which was lovely of him. He didn’t have to do that and it really meant a lot to me. It stayed in my voicemail for ages. Richard must have meant what he said because soon after I started getting offers of more work to do outside broadcasts for
Richard and
Judy
, this time, thankfully, not live. They were fun to start off with but then they started getting more and more surreal. I
don’t know who was coming up with the ideas but I think they must have been on drugs.

I was asked to dress up as a potato for National Chip Week, and also to have dinner at a man’s house who made meals out of roadkill. Seriously. Mercifully I couldn’t find a window in my busy schedule, so I missed out on those delights, but some I did do were delivering a giant birthday card to Buckingham Palace for Prince Harry and finding someone with a third nipple in Liverpool City Centre. That was fun to begin with but there’s only so many times you can be told to ‘Fuck off!’ and put on a brave face. When I told them that it was for
Richard and Judy
some scouse wit would end up shouting out, ‘Nick us a bottle of wine, Richard!’ which wasn’t just tedious but totally untopical and we’d have to stop filming and try and find another three-nippled scouse shopper to interrogate.

* * *

It seems that it wasn’t just Channel 4 aficionados and Gordon Strachan in the audience at Edinburgh. I had received an invitation to perform at the Royal Variety Performance. It had come through the post, but I couldn’t believe it. How had Liz found out where I lived? I rang up my agent, and apparently it was true. Well I never! I double-checked the invite to see that it was in fact Her Majesty Elizabeth II attending and not someone shit like Princess Michael of Kent or that bloody Edward. If I’m performing, I want the real deal, I want A-list royalty, I want ermine, I want crown, I want orbs. I mean,
Dame Shirley Bassey was headlining – Liz had a lot to live up to when it came to making an entrance.

The venue wasn’t the Palladium, which was probably the only disappointment, but it was at Cardiff’s Millennium Centre. I would be performing alongside Sir Cliff Richard, Dame Shirley Bassey, Charlotte Church and Will Young, so not camp at all then really … The only way it could have been gayer would have been if Dale Winton, Lulu and Christopher Biggins joined the Village People for YMCA as the finale. Thinking about it, wasn’t that the year before?

By that time, I was still warming up the Jonathan Ross chat show and had mentioned – well, came screaming into the Green Room waving my invitation in the air – that I would be performing at the Royal Variety Performance. Everyone was so pleased for me, and Jonathan said I could have one of his suits to perform in. I graciously accepted, and the wardrobe mistress took them up for me. It was a very generous offer, but looking at the footage you can see my stubby frame inside a suit for a lanky six foot two person and it looks very unforgiving. The jacket hung down so low I nearly tripped myself up by putting my foot in one of the pockets, but it was a lovely gesture and I am forever thankful.

When the day came, understandably I was nervous. Rubbing shoulders with all these legends at sound check, I realised I was almost the only one who hadn’t had extensive reconstructive plastic surgery. I was 28, and I looked the oldest there. Also the Royal Variety Performance is renowned for having a tough crowd. Hen parties, stag dos, yes, I can deal with them; but the prospect of a whole room of snooty
Welsh people and the reigning monarch slow-hand-clapping terrified me. At least if Sir Cliff Richard dies on his arse, he can wheel out ‘Devil Woman’.

As it happened, I was sharing a dressing-room with McFly. They are lovely boys, but in their skinny-fit jeans and spiky hair they made me feel very old. My hair was beginning to recede around that time in November 2005 – I noticed it in the reflection of Sir Cliff’s veneers. It had started slipping back down my head like a rug on a highly polished floor, but thankfully with a bit of hair wax I could still fool people into thinking I had a fringe. Just as I was feeling really old, watching McFly coolly strum their guitars without a care, their manager came in and told the boys off for eating too many jellybeans.

‘If you have too many E numbers, you’ll be bouncing off the walls.’

Who says rock ’n’ roll is dead?

There wasn’t much camaraderie that night. All the big stars stayed in their rooms. Charlotte Church was lovely to me, as she always is. I passed Cliff on the stairs and said, ‘Good luck!’

He replied sharply, ‘I’ve already been on,’ which was a bit embarrassing, but to be fair, I’d had the runs and had locked myself in a toilet. I can’t be everywhere.

There were rumours Dame Shirley had demanded more sequins for her dress, so they had sent it back to India to have more sewn on and it was in the process of being flown back first class to Heathrow just in time for the show. Oh the drama! Can you imagine getting them to fly a dress from another continent just for you?

I wouldn’t mind, but they looked pissed off when I asked them to get me a cheese baguette and can of Tango, and that was only downstairs.

Before long, it was show time, and it was a huge success. All my worries were for nothing, I never fluffed my lines, I never fell off the stage. More importantly, I never mentioned Diana. I’d had the worst anxiety dream where I’d ended my set that night with the words, ‘You’ve been lovely, I’ve been Diana the Princess of Wales.’

The Royal Variety crowd are notoriously difficult, and looking out at the OAP crowd with their furs and opera glasses, I couldn’t really see what we’d have in common. I had deliberately picked my most universal material and hoped they would get it, and thankfully they did. Not only that, but on the televised programme there is footage of Her Majesty laughing at my Tesco Clubcard joke. How does she know about Tesco Clubcard points? I don’t care; I’m just glad she laughed in the right places.

The night was a triumph, and little did I know that it would open so many doors for me. My performance wasn’t finished there, however. I had to return with the rest of the performers who had graced the stage that night to wave arms aloft as Shirley Bassey brought the show to a fitting climax. In rehearsals, the plan was that Dame Shirley would emerge from below the stage via a trapdoor. It had gone smoothly in rehearsal, but standing there on the night waving, Catherine Tate and I noticed that the trapdoor had jammed. We could clearly see Dame Shirley shouting to the stage hand, ‘Get this fuc–’

‘Music is my first love,’ she bellowed, as the trapdoor propelled her up mid-rant. Of course, Dame Shirley was amazing and sang beautifully, and by the end she had the whole of the Cardiff audience on their feet. Tearfully, she cried, ‘It’s great to be home,’ before striding off stage to get in a private jet to take her to Monte Carlo.

The only person who could possibly upstage the Dame was the Queen, and I finally met her at the end for the curtain call. Although I’m not the biggest royalist, there is something about her. I bowed when she shook my hand and said, ‘Hello Ma’am.’ That’s what Will Young had done, and he’s posh, so I followed suit.

Then she said, ‘You were very entertaining!’

Oh my God, can I have that on my posters for my next tour? By Royal Approval, I am entertaining. Somebody pinch me.

Then, I heard her say it to Il Divo, then to McFly, then to Charlotte Church, then to Ozzy Osbourne, then to these two acrobatic dwarves from Croatia whose act was to spin half-naked on what looked like a silver wheelie bin. Christ, if she thinks they’re entertaining, she needs her head testing. When she started saying it to the woman who sold the ice creams, I realised I’d been duped. She says it to everyone; it’s a line she dishes out to every Tom, Dick and Harry. Damn it!

Anyway, for that tiny moment I felt very special indeed. I felt proud and warm inside, and I wasn’t going to let Her Majesty’s cheeky white lies spoil one of the highlights of 2005. I received a lovely photo of when I met the Queen. The only problem is that one of the members of Il Divo, who was
standing next to me, had such an orange face that your eyes are drawn away from me and onto him. His tangerine-hued face looked like a sun setting behind my head, and it totally upstaged my first encounter with our sovereign.

Like everyone in Britain, I had grown up with the Royal Variety Performance and to be on it was a dream come true. But it was also a personal highlight because it was the first piece of comedy that my parents had seen me do. I’d always kept my comedy world secret from them because I didn’t want them to be disappointed or not to get the jokes. Plus, half the stuff was about them anyway, and I didn’t want to be sued or get my head kicked in. The night it was on the telly, I was working (of course), doing stand-up in Liverpool. I came off stage and saw I had missed a call from my parents. I hesitantly phoned home. Mum picked up.

‘So, what do you think?’ I said, trying my best to sound confident.

‘We loved it.’

‘Really? What about Dad?’

‘Oh, he thought you were funny. Really funny.’

‘What about that bit where he calls me a poof?’

‘Oh, he couldn’t stop laughing. It was really good. We don’t know how you do it. So brave.’

She’d liked it and, more importantly, Dad had liked it. The more I thought about it, the more I realised that of course he would like it. Why wouldn’t he like it? What was there not to like? Screw the FA Cup, you try and entertain that lot on the other side of that curtain. Tonight the Millennium Centre had been my Wembley and the audience had been the away fans.
Yes, I’d had nerves, I needed to be brave, I had to be match-fit, I had to perform. So what if I was stepping out onto a stage rather than a pitch, feeling the polished floor under my feet and not turf under my studs? What’s the difference?

But then I think that Dad always knew there was no difference and that it was me who didn’t get it. For once in my life, I’d missed the joke – and I was supposed to be the comedian. At last I understood he’d always been proud of me. He didn’t give two hoots about my sexuality, or the fact that I was shit at sport – no, he just didn’t want me to be a loser.

Heading home that night, I was on top of the world. Well, it couldn’t get better than that, could it? I thought I’d reached the pinnacle of my comedy career. Where would I go from here? It was only when I got back up to Manchester that I received DVDs of all the
Friday Night Projects
, but to be honest I couldn’t be bothered to watch them. My agent rang and said, ‘What about this
Friday Night Project
show? Do you fancy it?’

‘Oh, go on then,’ I said. ‘What’s the worst that can happen?’