I Am What I Am (20 page)

I ducked round a dark corner to one of my favourite parts of the museum, where an evil Dalek was displayed in all its glory – with motion-sensored sound effects. On this day, the Dalek was presented in such a way that when visitors came round the curve from the first section of the exhibit, they’re a bit taken aback, sometimes even freaked out by what confronts them. I figured, why not make this even scarier and more exciting for the unsuspecting families about to turn the corner?

I climbed up onto the display, and posed myself as if the Dalek was menacing Captain Jack. The first family who turned the corner didn’t even bat an eyelid on seeing Captain Jack dressed in baby blue without
his coat, never mind that he was even in this particular exhibit. As the unsuspecting family leaned forward to take a closer look, I reached out and grabbed the mum’s hand. She screamed so loud she scared the hell out of me and I screamed even louder. Her son, who was probably about ten, darted back round the corner, while his dad collapsed in hysterical laughter. I had barely enough time to assure them that, yes, indeed, I really was John Barrowman, before I had to hustle them onwards. I wanted to get back into position before the next victims – um, family – came bounding round the bend.

I could easily have stood next to the Dalek for another hour, but my popcorn and my partner were calling me.
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Problem was, when I turned the corner to leave the exhibit, I had to walk through the gift shop that was, naturally, strategically placed on the way out. All the children and the parents whom I’d leapt out at and terrified had stuck around and bought up all the Captain Jack-related posters and action figures. Before I was able to make my escape, they cornered me for my signature – served me right (I loved it really).

When I’m performing panto, watching the enjoyment on kids’ faces out in the auditorium is the best part of the experience. The biggest challenge is keeping my energy up between the matinee and evening shows. Any audience can tell when a performer is lagging, but in panto there’s no room for even the smallest dip in enthusiasm. A crowd of younger people is very aware when you’re not giving them all you’ve got – or, worse, when you’re not taking seriously the role you’re playing and the magic your character is a part of.

I watch a lot of movies in my dressing room during panto season and I try to pick films with exuberance that pops out through the screen and keeps my energy level peaked. This last panto season one of my favourite films was
Kung Fu Panda
. Man, I could do all his moves.

Panto is a blast to do, but it’s also a serious business and it can have its own inherent dangers.
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During my most recent foray to
Sherwood Forest as Robin Hood, we staged a diabolical move, where the Sheriff captured Robin and bound his hands and feet in cuffs, and then trapped him inside a deadly torture cage deep within his lair.

This cage was everything it appeared to be. Believe me. The cage had massive spikes, which were meant to make Robin Hood into mashed potatoes. Think that theatre sets are all created with smoke and mirrors? Think again. When the designers of the illusion constructed the cage, they knew they couldn’t use fake spikes because, from the seats in the stalls, fake spikes looked like fake spikes. The result was that during every performance, I had to be spread out under countless very sharp and dangerous knife-like spears.

Obviously, safety was everyone’s concern,
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so the drop lever for the spikes had a number of protective features built into it. Nevertheless, whenever the lever was on notch #1, the spikes had only two notches left until … splat! As a final safety measure, the ensemble actors playing the Sheriff’s evil minions were instructed to pay very careful attention to the man in the cage. If I was in trouble, they were meant to free me immediately.

One matinee performance, I was captured and bound, as usual, under the spikes. The Sheriff had not yet pulled the curtain around the table, which was the cue for me to be released and the effect to play out – as soon as I was freed, the spikes would come crashing down. As I was lying underneath those spears, I glanced up – and I noticed that the latches weren’t connected all the way to their safest range. The lever was on the first safety, which meant that there were only two more left until I’d be a walking sieve.

I was clamped down with handcuffs, so there was no easy way to get me out of my predicament without ruining the effect for the audience. While the scene was playing itself out, I started to signal to the ensemble actors, my backup, that I wanted to get out. Pretty soon, I was really getting agitated … because no one was paying any attention to the cuffed man under the deadly spikes. Only when the Sheriff finally pulled
the curtain round the torture table, and I was hidden from the audience, was I released.

A bucketload of adrenalin and fear fuelled my anger. I leapt off the table so fast when the bindings were loosened that I scraped the skin off my wrists. Needless to say, everyone offstage knew at that point what had almost happened.

Clare, who was with me at the time, ran behind me as I charged to my dressing room, where I threw a chair across the room, shattering it against the door. I was so furious I could barely speak.
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Once I’d calmed down, and picked up the chair bits, the entertainer in me took over. I told Clare, ‘Don’t tell Grandma about the spikes. She’ll panic and she’ll never be able to enjoy the show.’

‘What’s John doing now?’

‘Trying not to be Swiss cheese in pantoland.’

★

‘If it has tyres or testicles, it’s going to give you trouble.’

Saying on a decorative tile above my back door

1 Mercedes Gullwing (I’m drooling just writing this).

2 A 1964 Studebaker Super Hawk (a car for
Mad Men
).

3 A Tucker.

4 Aston Martin DBS (stands for ‘damn brilliant sports car’).

5 AMC Pacer (a seventies icon that reminds me of my childhood).

6 Range Rover.

7 Bentley Continental.

G
iven my love of driving, and my passion for cars – actually, my adoration of anything with a chassis, an engine, and more than one axle – I’m often asked why I’ve never appeared on BBC’s
Top Gear
. The truth? I’ve never been asked. Because if I were to be asked, I’d be a guest faster than you could shift from first to third.

Top Gear
is one of my favourite shows. I never miss watching the programme when I’m home and I record every episode when I’m not. I enjoy the entire team, their banter, and the show’s overall format.

A few years ago, I got in a bit of trouble because, after an interview, when I thought my comments were being made ‘off the record’, I gave an impulsive answer to explain why I’d never been on
Top Gear
.

In my defence, a while before I made the remark,
Top Gear
had received a small number of complaints following Jeremy Clarkson’s use of the term ‘ginger beer’. However, a London free paper published my comment, which I’d thought was ‘off the record’, and as a result people at the BBC thought that Clarkson and I were having a public fight. I’m not sure that we ever really were, and I’ve consistently remained a fan of the show.

In the summer of 2009, my absence from prime-time car shows was remedied. I was asked to be a guest on
Fifth Gear
on Five. The programme had heard I was a petrol head beginning my own car collection, and their producers read in a
Motor Trend
magazine interview that one of my childhood dreams was to race a rally car, and that as an adult I’d like to buy my own some day and drive in off-road rally races. It seemed the perfect fit. And, I have to say, although I ended up destroying a £120,000 rally car in a death-defying crash on the show (and my mum yelled at me for days about my risk-taking
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), it was a truly brilliant experience.

My spectacular crash on
Fifth Gear
was, unfortunately, not my only crash of this summer – but my quick responses and fast thinking during a car accident in Bridgend proved to me that driving off-road might be a sport at which I’d excel. After all, it was in my genes. Driving off-road (and into snow banks and under snowploughs) were driving skills we practised as a family when we first moved to America.

In the early eighties, after our first few years in the US, our neighbours had a name for the Barrowmans.
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We were labelled the family with the disposable cars because the drivers in the house at that time – my parents, Carole and Andrew – wrecked seven cars in a short period of time.

In their defence, not all of the accidents were the fault of their skills or lack thereof. During the first year that we lived in Prestbury, Illinois, my mum was driving her VW Rabbit on Hankes Road, the road that led into our neighbourhood, after a light snowfall, with my gran, Murn, sitting in her favourite seat in the car: the back seat. (Murn also liked travelling backwards in the extra seat at the very back of a Volvo station wagon we once owned. She and I would often ride back there when we took trips. Together we would wave,
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pull silly faces and pick our noses at anyone who got less than two chevrons behind us.)

That wintry day, my mum’s car skidded at a turn, the wheels caught on the lip of the road, the car flipped … and crashed down on its wheels in a nearby field. No one was hurt, but poor Murn was pinned in place, essentially caught in the space behind the seats, until my mum freed herself and then manoeuvred Murn out of her seatbelt.
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When I came home in the school bus that day, I recognized my mum’s car in the field, which sent me into a panic until I got home and saw my mum sitting safely on the couch – albeit sipping whisky rather than her usual sherry.

The family car at that time was a Caprice Classic with rear-wheel drive, and for many winters after that accident, the car had big bags of
salt weighing down its rear to stop it fishtailing on the ice or snow. Driving in the Midwest, where winters sometimes brought 8–12 inches of snow in one storm a couple of times a month, meant that learning how to drive out of an icy skid and how to avoid sliding into ditches were must-have skills. I still pride myself on them to this day.

A few weeks after my mum’s accident, Carole was waiting at the corner of Hankes Road for a city snowplough to pass – when the massive machine turned left and directly into her car. The plough’s blade scraped up across the hood and kept coming. Carole was so stunned that this was actually happening, it took her a few beats to register that the blade was moving closer to the windshield – and to her head. She decided she’d better get the hell out of there.
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She clambered out the passenger side of the car, screaming at the driver, who’d finally stopped, but not before he’d sheared a chunk off the front of the car.

Then it was Andrew and my dad’s turn. Andrew’s car had been sideswiped on the left while he crossed an Aurora intersection on his way home from school. A week or so later, when the car was repaired, my dad went to pick it up. As he pulled out of the body shop’s parking lot, he was blindsided on the right side of the car. After swearing loudly (in Glaswegian) and freaking out the other driver, my dad reversed the car directly back into the repair bay. He climbed out to the stunned looks of the mechanics.

He said, ‘You fixed the wrong side.’

The Barrowmans disposed of seven cars in those first years as American drivers. When my turn came to get my first car, I had learned from the entire family how to drive defensively. In America in the eighties, driver’s education was sponsored by your local high school and so, as soon as I was eligible, I signed up for the driving classes and passed with chequered flags. On the day of my sixteenth birthday, the age when you’re able to get a driver’s licence in the US, I was first in line at the local Department of Motor Vehicles. I passed the road test at my first attempt.

Later that week, my dad took me to Bill Jacobs VW showroom in Joliet. (Despite the fact that the Barrowmans had wrecked a number of VWs in the past, we kept going back for another one.) My first car was a fire-red Scirocco. I adored it, and I think when I sat behind the wheel for the first time, at that moment I knew that, whenever I could afford it, I wanted to collect cars.

Around this time, I met Stacey Simmons, who became a close friend and confidante all through high school, and who also owned a red car, a Pontiac Firebird. I believe our first conversation, after I’d introduced myself to her, was about that car.

Stacey was a tall, leggy blonde. She liked clothes, especially Ralph Lauren. Even better, Stacey was a bit of a petrol head like me. She adored all the stuff a girl wasn’t supposed to be into; and I loved all the things a boy wasn’t supposed to like. We complemented each other perfectly.

Stacey was also a member of our high-school Pom Squad, the Tiger Paws. When I’d hang out at her house, I’d help her with the choreography for her dance routines. This, of course, fuelled the high-school rumour that we were dating, which was rubbish. We were BFFs.
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When she and I went to parties, she was usually the designated driver because I’d be the one who’d like to have a drink.
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Stacey’s mother, Lynn, and her father, Frank, were from a big real-estate family in Joliet, and it was Stacey’s mother who first introduced me to ‘Midwest Caviar’. It’s still one of my favourite snacks. Take a block of Velveeta cheese, pour over a can of Hormel Chili with Beans,
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add a carton of sour cream, and then heat in the microwave for a few minutes. Mix and dip. I’d devour the entire bowl. Loved the stuff!

Stacey’s dad and I got along well, too. He was a really genuine guy, but one day – with absolutely no malice intended on his part – he said something that gutted me. I’ve kept this to myself all these years. But as I think about it now, in the context of these stories, I
believe it was another of those small, defining moments that’s stuck in my psyche, and that may have had a bigger impact on me than I first thought.