I Am What I Am (15 page)

These surprise hits involved catching up with an unsuspecting person, who – unbeknown to them – had been nominated by a friend or family member to perform on
TTN
. The surprise hits caught on tape the moment when I pulled off a helmet, jumped from behind a screen or – in one young woman’s hit – stopped shampooing her hair, and told them that they’d be entertaining millions on TV on Saturday night.

A typical mid-week afternoon also involved costume fitting for Sunday’s taping of the show. The wardrobe room at the BBC was always lively, with banter flying like bullets and mostly men – and an occasional woman – working sewing machines at top speed. I spent a lot of time considering what I’d wear for the shows because, as you may have noticed when you watched, my suit colour always coordinated with the hue of the stage lights and the sparkle of the set. It’s a variety show. Everything had to pop, including me!

Whenever possible, I travelled to the surprise hits at least a week ahead of the show in which we’d be broadcasting them. When this was not possible, I’d squeeze a trip to North Wales or Ipswich or Brighton into my Wednesday or Thursday of the same week. This meant that some contestants found out about their television debut on the Tuesday or Wednesday, and he or she had to be ready to perform on the following Sunday. In most cases, a family member
or a close friend had been in on the hit, so a lot of the arrangements that the person being surprised would have to make had already been handled.

Each hit required a separate crew with its own producer, Katy Mullan, and director, Marcus Liversedge, who would accompany me to the various locations we visited. This crew created all the videotape segments
¹⁹
for
Tonight’s the Night
, including the wonderful opening sequence with the crazy dancing silhouette in the windows.
²⁰

When I first started working on the surprise hits, the VT crew didn’t realize I was co-producing the show. I’d offer some input on a few of the shots, come up with ideas for how to shoot a hit, or suggest a camera angle or a different way for me to reveal myself to the guest, and they’d look at me as if I was just a meddling control freak,
²¹
even if my suggestion was good one. At one hit, I finally mentioned in passing that I was co-producing, and after that my suggestions were seen in a bit of a different light. We all truly worked well together to produce some great material.

After the first episode of
Tonight’s the Night
aired, on Saturday 18 April 2009, a few on the crew, and the producers from the BBC, started calling me ‘Mr Saturday Night’. I’ve been called a lot of things in my time, but this rates as one of the best.

Following that first broadcast, I read one or two reviews that came across my desk – this is not something I usually do. Honestly, in the words of my friend, Catherine Tate, I can’t ‘be bovvered’. A couple of critics described the show as, and I’m paraphrasing here, schmaltzy and cheesy. My response to those critics: ‘Watch something else.’

I care what critics think – to a certain extent – but sometimes a few of them can be plain old bitchy because they forget (or have never known) what it felt like to sit on the couch on a Saturday night with their favourite family members and a bag of sweets and have a
laugh, or a wee greet.
²²
I don’t do shows for the critics. I do shows for the men, women and families who’re watching together and singing along.

One or two critics compared
Tonight’s the Night
to
Britain’s Got Talent
, but it was never our intention to be like or to compete with Simon Cowell’s juggernaut. From the beginning,
Tonight’s the Night
was different from Cowell’s show because
TTN
was not making performers into stars. Instead, for one shining moment, Sam Horsfield of Ipswich, or someone like her, got the opportunity to perform on the BBC to millions of viewers and to have her dream fulfilled.

When I surprised Sam, who had given up her dream of performing professionally when her twins were diagnosed as autistic, she turned to her husband, who had nominated her, and with tears filling her eyes, she looked into his overflowing ones and whispered, ‘Thank you.’ I lost it too. If those moments don’t move you, then your heart’s made of Swiss cheese and your head’s full of holes.

For Sam’s hit, the crew and I arrived on a Wednesday afternoon at a local working men’s club, where Sam would later meet with her amateur dramatics group. Sam thought she and her fellow am-dram members were auditioning final candidates for their local production of
The Producers
. What she didn’t know was that I was one of the actors auditioning: a ‘Norswedish’ man named Bennie, who was the ‘beegist Abba fan evaar!’

The crew and I commandeered two of the club’s private function rooms, one for make-up and costume – as moustached Bennie had to look as if he’d drifted in from the seventies in two-foot-high, glittery, platform-heeled boots that would have broken most men
²³
– and the other room for the monitors, equipment and VT crew. Inside the rehearsal hall, cameras were hidden, and Sam’s friends prepped for the hit.

The rehearsal took twice as long as usual because I was having too much fun. I insisted on singing Bennie’s audition number twice
through, while adding to the routine what I’d decided were Bennie’s own, pretty slick moves. Bennie’s deep, deep lunges and knee-high kicks had all the fluidity of a three-year-old trying to skip.

After Sam arrived and was seated with her friends and fellow judges, the hit began. We’d recruited two people to play actors interested in auditioning and they performed first. I could tell by Sam’s responses to them that she had no clue she was being set up.

Then Bennie stepped out to centre stage. Man, I was so bad that I was really good. I’d hardly opened my mouth and I’d only completed one of my groovy moves, but I could already see Sam struggling desperately not to laugh. After all, this was some poor man trying his very best to get a part in her local production. Bless his heart. When I’d finished, the applause was polite. Then Sam did her best to let me know gently that ‘she’d be in touch’. I interrupted her.

‘Do you think you can do this any better?’ I asked, in an accent that sounded a lot like the Swedish Chef from
The Muppet Show
.

She was a bit taken aback, even more so when Bennie stepped off the stage – not very gracefully, given his really tight trousers and his towering boots – and he … I walked right up to the audition table. She started to look back and forth among her colleagues for some assistance. None was forthcoming. At that moment, while she was blustering an answer to Bennie, I tore off the moustache, beard and wig,
²⁴
and revealed myself.

Her facial expression was a mix of about twenty-two competing emotions that ended in sheer delight. ‘Oh! Oh! I can’t believe it’s you … It’s John Barrowman.’

But what Sam said next has remained one of the funnier lines of any of the hits I participated in. I asked her if she knew why I was at her am-dram auditions.

Without missing a beat, she replied, ‘Because you’ve finally decided you can’t live without me.’

These surprise hits were one of the best parts of the show to film – not only because of meeting and doing something special for people
like Sam, but also because the hits gave me the opportunity to get out of the studio, to improvise, and to dress up. Most of all, though, I loved the drama and the emotion of the reveal.

There was no irony involved, no mocking, and no parody in
Tonight’s the Night
. I wanted the show to be Sam’s special night, or whoever else’s dream we made come true. The rest of us were simply sharing the spotlight.

When Sam joined us in London to prepare to sing with the cast of
Mamma Mia!
, she met the cast at the Prince of Wales Theatre, she was given rehearsal time with them and with Paul, our choreographer, and she was given some of the best vocal training in the West End from Claire Moore, who was in
Miss Saigon
with me in the early nineties. I trust Claire’s ear and her heart, and it was her job to work with all the performers and help them to sound the best that they possibly could.

My call time to the BBC studios on Saturday mornings was early, because the day before we taped in front of a live audience, we had what’s called a ‘camera rehearsal’. These camera rehearsals were more complicated than the ones I described in an earlier table talk, but they essentially served the same function: to make sure everyone knew their positions and had rehearsed the flow of the show.
²⁵
On
TTN
, the camera rehearsal was a full dress rehearsal for all of us, as well as a chance for the director and his crew to figure out camera positions. Perhaps most importantly, for the performers whose wishes were being fulfilled, it was a chance for them to get comfortable on the set and to rehearse on the stage with lights, music … and me.

The camera rehearsal can take all day and well into the evening. The most difficult part of this day was keeping focused when there was so much chatter and commotion, and while the crew were constantly moving around. Given the chaos, I tried to keep the mood light and to have some fun.
²⁶

While I was rehearsing ‘Boogie Wonderland’ for one of the shows’ opening numbers, I did my signature turn and then sang the first part
of the song while doing my impression of Shakira – which wasn’t half bad and cracked everyone up. When I shifted into Patti LuPone for the last half of the number, however, the laughter dropped to polite tittering because only Gav, Carole and Claire, our vocal coach, actually knew who I was mimicking. Oh, those television people.

Midway through taping the series of shows, Gav, Mel, Mo and I made a decision to cut a segment that the audience enjoyed and I really liked participating in, but which was taking up far too much of my time during the week. The segment was called ‘Stage Fright’, and it involved me competing against a celebrity in a performance smackdown during the live taping. One week, I learned how to fire-toss – and managed to singe most of the hair off my lower arm in practice. Another week, I trained to be a freestyle footballer. I was rubbish at dribbling the ball, but I did master a couple of tricks, including taking my shirt off while keeping a ball
²⁷
balanced between my shoulder blades.

On Sunday, the studio audience is seated between 5.30 and 6 p.m. (which usually meant Scott dashed into his seat at 6.15 p.m.). This became one of my favourite moments on a Sunday: standing in the wings having my mic adjusted, my make-up touched up, and watching yesterday’s craziness morph into … maybe not calm, but certainly a cool professionalism. The studio felt electric and alive with the energy from the band, the crew, the other performers and the audience, and when I stepped onstage, the energy ratcheted up two more notches.
²⁸

When I sensed the same passion and excitement I had for the show from the crew, the cast, and even the viewers I met in Costco when I was picking up dog food, it made me want to push myself even more – not just onstage, but also creatively. I loved co-producing television for the first time, and in the future I’d like to add to my résumé and produce a show in the West End. I love that Barrowman Barker Productions could have a hand in bringing TV recognition to all the terrific theatre performers who don’t get much exposure. This was one of the reasons why so many of the dreams we fulfilled on
TTN
were
related to musical theatre. The casts of
Mamma Mia!
,
Hairspray
and
High School Musical
were all part of
Tonight’s the Night
.

Over the years, I’ve tried to learn something from every project I’ve ever been a part of. From this experience on
Tonight’s the Night
, I’ve noted that when a show has a good team of producers and they are all in sync with the talent, they feed off each other’s ideas and take the show to heights that may not have been planned for.

Murn and my Auntie Jeannie would have loved
Tonight’s the Night
, and I thought of them often when I was watching the programme from my couch in Sully on Saturday nights.
²⁹
The first time I saw the show’s closing credits, and the Barrowman Barker logo came up right next to the big BBC one, I couldn’t stop grinning. Seeing those images side by side made my night and fulfilled one of my longest-held career dreams.

★

‘Those who wish to sing, always find a song.’

A favourite sign I saw in a theatre dressing room years ago

1 The fans, the fans, the fans (you’re all too good to be true).

2 Ripping my trousers in Glasgow (this may be a regular occurrence in the lives of some, but for me it was a first).

3 Performing at the Royal Albert Hall (Vegas, here I come!).

4 The standing ovations (never got old).

5 Having a catering service at my beck and call (for food, for food).

I
’m proud to confess that I’ve done something that I’m pretty sure the Rolling Stones, in all their years of touring, have not. Wait for it. To date, I’ve been on two concert tours: one in 2008 to promote my album
Another Side
; and another in the spring of 2009, for ‘An Evening with John Barrowman’ (also known as my
Music Music Music
tour). On each occasion – here it is – my parents were part of my entourage.
¹

My ‘grey groupies’ took their position in my tour so seriously that they went into training a month ahead of time to get ready for tour life. Their training regime consisted of sleeping at odd hours of the day and night for inconsistent lengths of time, eating catered dinners with big yummy desserts, dressing straight from a single suitcase and, finally, practising doing ‘The Slosh’ in their bedroom.
²
In truth, they really did get in shape for this tour, increasing their mileage on the treadmill at their home in Brookfield, Wisconsin, because they knew they’d need all the energy possible to keep up with their baby boy. When they stepped off the plane at Glasgow Airport to join me at the Glasgow Royal Concert Hall on 14 May 2009, they were ready for their marathon of music, music, music.
³