Anything Goes (21 page)

‘Emergency flapping!’ I yelled, and, as if we had all practised the manoeuvre, each of us opened a door and began flapping it back and forth.
¹¹    
We made it into the petrol station on our own wing power.

One of the reasons Turner was especially excited about this trip to Sequoia was because I’d told him that we might be staying at a couple of fancy hotels – and fancy hotels often leave chocolate on your pillow at night. On our first evening, Turner came rushing into his room, only to find a wee pile of poo on his pillow. I’ve no idea how it got there, but as the song from the musical episode of
Scrubs
suggests, ‘everything comes down to poo.’
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Until he leaned in close, Turner thought it was his chocolate treat.

When we reached the Sequoia National Park, we left the van near a campsite and decided to hike for a while. Signs were posted everywhere warning of black bears, telling tourists how to protect themselves against an attack, and alerting people about the dangers of exposed food and neglected garbage. Bears, you know, are smarter than the average campers and can recognize coolers and backpacks bearing jam rolls. Four or five German students had pitched tents just off the hiking trail and we watched as they finished up their picnic lunch and bundled their packs into very high-tech-looking metal containers. We chatted to them for a few minutes, and that was how we knew they were German, in case you were wondering.

Afterwards, we took a few pictures of each of us standing under the General Sherman Tree, one of the oldest and biggest in the park. Five bucks if you know who General Sherman was. Kidding – only Turner gets to guess.

We were heading back towards our van when I saw a shadow off to my right.

‘Don’t move,’ I whispered urgently, grabbing Turner’s arm. ‘I saw a bear.’

Clare looked up at me, terrified. ‘Where?’

‘Near the tree, directly behind Scott.’

‘What should we do?’ said Turner, edging behind me.

‘Is it in its bluff stance?’ asked Scott.

Now, let me pause here to point out one of the differences between Scott and me. I see a bear and want to run like hell. Scott sees a bear and wants to know if it’s in its ‘bluff stance’.

‘What does that mean?’ Clare asked.

‘It means he may not attack us,’ Scott replied.

‘Who are you?’ I yelled. ‘Doctor fucking Doolittle?’

‘He’s moving,’ said Scott, suddenly grabbing Clare’s arm and shoving her back on to the trail.

‘Run!’

Clare and Turner shot down the trail towards the van so fast they left cartoon speed lines in the air. Scott and I sprinted behind them. When we passed the Germans in their tents, I screamed maniacally, and in my biggest West End voice, ‘Bear!’

They scrambled from their tents as if the bear was inside the space with them, abandoned their camp and ran off, flapping wildly, into the trees. Clare got to the van first, threw the door open, and she and Turner hurled themselves inside. Seconds later, Scott and I reached the van and climbed breathlessly on to the front seats.

Clare looked at the red button blinking on the video camera. After a beat, she said, ‘There was no bear, was there, Uncle John?’

No bear, only a couple of loony uncles.

‘Nice Work If You Can Get It’

W
hen visitors first walk on to the site in Cardiff where
Torchwood, Doctor Who
and
The Sarah Jane Adventures
are filmed,
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the first thing they notice is how crowded the lot is. Each of us on
Torchwood
has our own trailer and each one is lined up side by side with the names of our characters taped to the door. There’s a catering trailer, a production trailer, a hair and make-up trailer, a wardrobe trailer, and then a host of trailers for men and women working on things like lighting, special effects and set design, who occasionally bustle in and out of said trailers when they’re not leaning up against them drinking tea and smoking. Oh, I’m going to pay for that remark.

My trailer has a bedroom, a fully kitted-out kitchen – supplied with bottled water every day
²    
– a bathroom, a shower, and a living area with a couch (where I spend most of my time), and a recliner (which is Eve’s favourite spot in her trailer). When we move to a
location, the transportation crew haul the entire lot full of trailers to that remote site. It’s not an exaggeration to describe these moves as similar to shifting a small city from place to place.

In the hair and make-up trailer, a bulletin board located directly inside the door is covered with pictures of the main cast of
Torchwood,
and also any supporting actors who’ll be in the episode that’s on the filming schedule for the day. The snaps display each of the cast in samples of the make-up that’s needed for the episode, as well as the way our characters look on a regular basis. If Captain Jack needs to have blood on his cheek or a cut on his lip, days before the episode will actually be filmed, Claire or Marie Doris create the scar or mix the blood that will be used for the wound, and an image of it is put on the board for reference. Eve, Burn, Gareth, Naoko and I are listed on this board as numbers one through five. I’m number one, Eve is two, Burn is three, Naoko is four and Gareth is five. When I sit in my make-up chair at the beginning of each day, I still get a rush when I read that number under my name.

My first job in television was on
Live and Kicking,
a BBC variety show for children broadcast live on Saturday mornings in the early nineties. The programme was successful because of its format and the variety of guests that were booked. In 1993, my agent at the time, Janet Glass, who helped steer my early career, heard that the show was hiring presenters. So one afternoon, I took my video camera and walked around Oxford Street with a friend. We taped a segment of ‘What’s Hot and What’s Not’. I hung out at Hamleys toy store for an afternoon, where I chatted with children, played with toys and generally entertained shoppers until the store manager kicked me out, politely but firmly. I sent the tape to the BBC and within days of receiving it, they called me in for a screen test with Andi Peters and Emma Forbes, who were already signed up as the show’s main anchors.

The
Live and Kicking
producers offered me the role right away, but as is often the case in these situations, I was not allowed to tell anyone I had the job. Over the years, I’ve gotten much better at keeping a lock on my lips in those circumstances. My cheeks, all four of them, ached from keeping the
Live and Kicking
news to myself.

Hours after accepting the position as a presenter of the show, I was in a production studio recording an album of the musical
Godspell.
The album’s producer, John Yap, had brought together a number of musical theatre performers to make the record. Yap heard from someone that one of the other artists involved in the project, Darren Day, had been offered a job on
Live and Kicking.
To cash in on this news, John asked Darren to sing the part of Jesus, an irony of casting that was not lost on any who knew of Darren’s personal proclivities.
³    

My old friend Ruthie Henshall was also on the record, and we were both present in the studio when John Yap brought in a photographer to shoot the album’s cover and its publicity photos. The poor guy thought putting Darren on the sleeve would boost his sales. While the photographer was snapping pics of Darren, I sat at the back of the studio with Ruthie, eating chocolate and having a cuppa.

Finally, I couldn’t take John Yap’s fawning over Darren anymore. I leaned over to Ruthie and whispered, ‘Darren’s not going to be on
Live and Kicking.
’

‘How do you know?’

‘Because it’s going to be me,’ I grinned, with a piece of warm chocolate smooched across my front teeth as if I’d been eating dirt … or worse.

‘You’re evil,’ she laughed.

My introduction to live television quickly became a classic blooper clip. I jumped enthusiastically on to the back of the golf-cart-like vehicle behind Andi and Emma to introduce myself – and my momentum carried me right off the cart and on to the ground.

As a presenter of
Live and Kicking,
the experience I gained in front of the cameras was fantastic, but not so much from behind them. Emma and Andi were terrific and they have remained good friends, but this was my first foray into television – not just live television, but television in general – and given my, erm, slight stubborn streak, my sense of humour, and my love of improvisation and creating characters, working with the producers of
Live and Kicking
was a bit like working for a bunch of Captain von Trapps before Maria came into their lives. There was little room for any creative deviation and I had to do exactly as I was told exactly when I was told, whether or not it made any artistic sense.

Despite all this, I had a great time on the programme. It was my introduction to British TV and gave me an opportunity to extend my visibility beyond the world of the West End. I also interviewed some great guests. My first one was Lulu, whose family lived in Mount Vernon, not far from my mum and dad’s old haunts. In fact, back in the day, my dad drew the plans for an extension to their bungalow, and my brother Andrew was a mate of her brother. This was one of the first public interviews where I used my Scottish accent. Funnily enough, another early interview was with Jayne Torvill and Christopher Dean, who later coached my ice dancing for
Dancing on Ice.

My work on
Live and Kicking
was one of the reasons Cameron Mackintosh put me back into
Miss Saigon
for another short run in 1993 – my second time playing Chris after I’d first taken on the role
in 1990. As I’d now become more recognizable, my increased profile brought a younger audience to the theatre to see the show.

The experience also led to some ‘pin-up boy’ work for me because
Live and Kicking
had its own teen magazine.
⁴    
As a result of this adulation, I was invited to lip-sync – I know, gasp, the horror – a song called ‘Bare Naked’ at a
Smash Hits
concert. I was wearing a Nicole Farhi scarf I’d been given on loan. In the middle of the song, I leaned into the audience to shake some of the outstretched hands. Suddenly, four girls in the front row grabbed my scarf. I knew if these ladies succeeded in yanking it from my neck it would cost me about £600 to replace. Plus, they were trying to separate a gay man from his accessories.
⁵    

There I was: hanging off the stage, no longer in sync with the song, fighting with four teenage girls for the fucking scarf. Of course, I got it back, but I think that was the moment when I realized I didn’t want to be a pop idol. My album
Another Side,
which SonyBMG released in November 2007, was my chance to embrace that side of me again – only this time I personally picked all the songs and I’ve bought extra scarves for the tour.

Live and Kicking
whet my appetite for children’s television, for which I have a real fondness. Not only because I’m a big kid at heart, but also because I love acting and interacting with children, and I hope that my career continues to present me with opportunities to do this.

My exposure on
Live and Kicking also
led to me securing another kids’ TV programme to present,
The Movie Game.
Although the show had been on the air with two other hosts before me, this was a coup given my limited experience on television. I loved doing this
programme. It was mostly a game show, with three teams of children competing. The game was very active for the kids and for me, involving lots of costumes, props and opportunities for skits and slapstick here and there. Signing up to present
The Movie Game,
though, meant my schedule was now packed to the rafters. A typical weekend meant rolling out of bed at 5.30 a.m. on Saturday to be driven to the BBC studios in Shepherd’s Bush for 6 a.m. We’d rehearse
Live and Kicking
until the show went on the air at 9ish and ran live until noon. I’d then head back into the West End to perform two shows as Chris in
Miss Saigon.
On Sundays, I’d get up before dawn. Viv Rosenbaum, the wife of my driver at the time, Dave, would make sandwiches for us to eat on our drive north to Birmingham, where I’d tape two shows of
The Movie Game,
and then return to London in time for a Monday production meeting for
Live and Kicking.
All week, of course, I’d perform a daily production of the musical, too.

In the spring of 2007, my schedule looked a lot like this one from 1994, only substitute filming
Torchwood
in Cardiff for
Miss Saigon,
and replace my drive back and forth to Birmingham to shoot
The Movie Game
with motoring to London for the live TV finals of
Any Dream Will Do.

Don’t take this litany of commitments as a complaint, however. I’ve always been busy and I always want to be busy. I like to keep my schedule packed because, honestly, I’m a nightmare to be around when I’m doing nothing or when I don’t get to do all the things I want to. Just ask a certain bear with a cracked jaw from Oswego, Illinois.
⁶    

Unbeknownst to me, though, something was about to happen to ease some of the pressure on my schedule. Over the course of my two years on
Live and Kicking,
my role grew smaller and smaller. I
was more and more the roving reporter, and less and less involved in developed segments on the set. The proverbial last straw for me was when we were in a production team meeting for about three hours, and by the end of the meeting I’d been assigned three small segments. I pushed my chair away from the table and stood up to address the team.