Anything Goes (5 page)

I think as a result of this strand of my heritage, I have an addiction to adrenalin-fuelled activities. Over the years I’ve skied in the Alps, snowboarded in the Rockies, driven fast cars in Monte Carlo, sailed the Aegean, dived in the Caribbean, flown on Concorde multiple times and kite-surfed across the Straits of Gibraltar. I’ve gone scuba diving during a solar eclipse in Turkey, canoed inside a volcanic crater near Santorini, and I’ve even chanced a few Friday nights with Jonathan Ross, which can be a terrifying experience.

I’ve been in great shows, good shows and a few so-so shows, and even in the failed endeavours, I’ve never regretted my decision to accept the role because I’ve always gained something from chancing the experience. Once, during the short-lived London production of the musical
Matador,
in which I starred with Stefanie Powers and which ran for only three months in 1991, I learned a valuable lesson about what it meant to close a company with dignity.

One afternoon, Stefanie and I were called to a meeting with the producers to hear officially that we were closing and the financial implications of that decision. I was an emotional wreck, close to tears and feeling very sorry for myself. On our way into the room, Stefanie pulled me aside.

‘Don’t you say a word,’ she said, her face so close to mine I could feel her breath on my cheek. ‘Stop being so pathetic, John. This is not about you. Do you understand? It’s about the show. Let me do the talking.’

I did as I was told and the meeting’s outcome was far better than it might have been if I’d charged in with crumpled tissues in my hands. Our contracts were honoured, and she and I made it clear we were not happy with the way things were winding down.

I also took some professional grief for agreeing to participate in
Dancing on Ice –
the ITV programme on which celebrities learn to ice dance – for choosing to put myself out there in the public eye in such a physical manner and in a reality show, no less. In the acting profession, reality shows can be seen as the gigs you do only if your career is in a slump and your visibility needs a boost; it’s generally thought you would never choose to do them when your career is ascending, which mine was at the time, as I was fresh from appearing in the first series of
Doctor Who.
While that perception may be true for some, I chose to be involved with
Dancing on Ice,
and later
How Do You Solve a Problem Like Maria?
and
Any Dream Will Do,
²    
because they had high entertainment values and I’m an entertainer. These shows were far removed from the kind of ‘car crash’ voyeurism that can be the attraction of too many programmes; programmes that I’ll admit I’m not above watching.

Agreeing to be a judge on
Maria
and
Joseph
also appealed to one of my professional values: those of us who’ve made it up the ladder of success should reach down when we can and offer a hand to others.
Dancing on Ice,
meanwhile, had broad audience appeal – and I wanted to show that audience, some of whom had probably not seen me in anything else I’d done, that I could entertain them.

As it turned out, poor Papa Barrowman would have lost his pound if he’d bet on me, because although the bookies had me as the favourite after the first round, I was voted off mid contest. I was crushed. When I got home that night, I ignored the messages on my answering machine from family and friends, and instead felt sorry for myself for a while. Then I got over it – because this is showbiz and a thick skin is a necessary accessory.

Despite being voted off part-way through the series, I don’t regret the decision to perform at all. I learned how to skate from the masters, Torvill and Dean, made a good friend in my ice-dance partner Olga Sharutenko, and I left the show with the hardest bum I’d had in years.

Despite the risk-taking in my genes and the bravado in my actions, I’m not above worrying about death or on occasion being gripped by fear. Oscar Wilde is reported to have gasped on his deathbed that, ‘Either that wallpaper goes, or I do.’ From what I’ve
read about him, Wilde’s death wasn’t the least bit funny, yet he never lost the ability to laugh at himself or the world around him. Now, whether or not I can be so glib when actually facing death remains to be seen in the very far-off future – everyone, on the count of three, touch wood, spin, spit and throw salt over your shoulder
³    
– but in June 2007, when I was asked to participate in the launch of the Royal Air Force Tattoo, the thought that I might die in a ball of blazing jet fuel crossed my mind more than once.

Even when I’m in the comfort of first class, I’m a nervous flyer, keeping myself occupied with music, movies and any other distraction that I can legally embrace from take-off to landing. It’s rarely enough, though. I can count on one hand the number of times I’ve flown when I’ve successfully managed to distract myself so that I haven’t thought about the plane plummeting through the clouds to the ground at 500 miles an hour … and bear in mind I fly a lot. However, one of those rare times of calm was on an American Airlines flight from California to London in 1992, when I was seated next to Dame Shirley Bassey.

‘Dahling,’ she said, in her distinctive drawl, when she noticed how nervous I was, ‘nothing can happen when you’re with Shirl!’ Then she burst into the opening lines from her signature number, ‘Goldfinger’.

The first-class cabin wasn’t busy and by the time the plane reached cruising altitude, she and I were bosom buddies. In the years before 9/11 and the financial troubles the tragedy forced on the aviation industry, American Airlines used to serve caviar in its first-class cabins. An hour or so before we were due to land, Shirl leaned into me and said, ‘Dahling, you know they have to throw the caviar out before landing. They’re not allowed to bring it into the country. Why don’t you go and ask them for what’s left?’

I did, and she and I devoured the remaining caviar and most of the champagne before landing. You might therefore think that my fondness for this particular flight has something to do with how smashed I was when the plane finally landed, or the fact that I’d eaten so much caviar I had gills, but you’d be wrong. My fondness was a direct result of Shirl’s presence, because she’s the woman, the woman with the calming touch.

The RAF had invited me to be part of the Tattoo launch partly because Captain Jack is in the RAF. Additionally, since I have dual nationality in the United States and the UK, they thought I’d be the perfect person to represent the sixtieth anniversary of the US Air Force and the RAF working and fighting together. I must admit I had a couple of personal motives for accepting this particular request out of the hundreds I regularly receive.

First of all, a serious motive. The British Armed Forces in general have allowed homosexuals to serve since 2000, and the RAF in particular has worked in partnership with the gay-rights organization Stonewall to reshape their recruitment strategies to include gays and lesbians. In 2006, I’d won Stonewall’s Entertainer of the Year Award. Their positive association with the RAF factored into my decision to participate that afternoon.

My second reason was way cooler. The launch events for the Tattoo included the opportunity to fly in a Hawk fighter jet, and I’m a man who loves big, fast, loud toys.

Luckily, I get to play with a few on the
Torchwood
set. After we’d shot the first few episodes of the first series, Burn Gorman, who plays Owen on the show, made it clear that he did not like stunt driving for the team (he’d only ever driven manual cars before, and the sleek
Torchwood
SUV is an automatic). I couldn’t wait to get my hands on the wheel. Eve Myles, who plays Gwen, thought she’d picked the short straw with this new arrangement, though. She
doesn’t like it when I drive too fast – but hey, it’s TV. It needs to look good. Plus, scaring the hell out of her is a side benefit.

When I arrived at the Ministry of Defence base at Salisbury Plain that June morning, a security detail marched over to my car. As I was about to be led away, my sister Carole, who was visiting me at the time, jumped from the back seat to give me a kiss and a hug, which scared the hell out of me. She figured if I were about to plummet to my death at 500 miles an hour, our mum would have wanted her to have said a special goodbye. After prying her fingers from around my neck, I was swept away under the security detail’s watchful guard. To what, I wasn’t sure, but I was convinced that touching wood wasn’t going to help me anymore. In all honesty, I was scared shitless.

The dread had settled in the day before, while I was sitting in my trailer on the
Torchwood
set. I’d been watching the Hawk fighter jet safety DVD that the RAF had sent me, and when I ejected the disc, my hands were clammy and my mouth was seriously woolly. Last time I’d felt this way was when Janice Dickinson marched toward me backstage at
Friday Night with Jonathan Ross.

There were so many bloody things to clip, fasten, touch and not touch. The DVD even pointed out stuff I thought I already knew, like where to put my feet, where not to put my feet, what to do if I had to eject from the plane, and what to do so I didn’t eject prematurely. But the most intimidating piece of advice was how to avoid blocking my oxygen mask with my own vomit. The answer: swallow it.
⁴    

For the rest of the day, I walked around the set mumbling all the things I was supposed to remember to do and not to do. My co-stars on
Torchwood,
Eve and Burn, knew something was seriously wrong
when I missed an opportunity to sing a dirty limerick with them during a camera set-up and instead sulked off silently to our artist chairs and sat down. By the time I returned to my flat in Cardiff Bay that night, I was seriously freaked out.

I called my manager Gavin, and told him I would still participate in the launch, but I wasn’t going to fly in the Hawk no matter how fucking fabulous I’d look in the flight suit.

Gavin was quiet for a second and then he said, ‘You know Connie Fisher
⁵    
is flying in a Hawk tomorrow too? It seems her grandad was an RAF man during the Second World War and her mum had some connection as well.’

‘Ye bastard!’ I exclaimed, because there was no way Maria was flying high above the hills while Captain Jack was quivering in his boots.

So, despite some rumbling in my lower intestines, I arrived at the RAF base and marched off with my escort to be prepped for the flight. Connie and I were told we’d eventually land at an RAF base in Fairford, Gloucestershire, where at least sixty members of the press were waiting, including photographers and TV journalists, as well as a number of British and American Armed Forces personnel. But before we could even suit up, we had to undergo two hours of medical checks and safety preps.

Then a surprising thing happened. When the tests and preps were over, I felt much, much calmer. Two things helped my mood considerably. The first was that the pilots who were helping Connie and I kit up were so matter-of-fact about the whole experience that I figured they were not planning on dying that day.

The second was that right before the final suit checks, one of the
pilots got down on his knees in front of me, pulled out a long hose that ran along the inside of my thigh and blew hard into it. By the time the air was circulating round my G-suit, I wanted to spoon with him.

Two hours later, Connie and I were finally prepped and ready. We stepped out on to the tarmac looking like we should be in
Top Gun,
but rather the musical version, where I get the hot guy in the uniform and my own fighter jet.

I climbed the portable steps into the gunner compartment, where Squadron Leader Gary Brough fastened me in, reminding me of a few last-minute safety points.

‘Don’t vomit into your oxygen mask.’

‘Check.’

‘Don’t pull the yellow lever prematurely or you’ll die.’

‘Double check.’

We were good to go.

‘Fear lend me wings,’ I mumbled, channelling Clint Eastwood in
Where Eagles Dare,
one of my dad’s favourite Second World War films. Frankly, any film about the Second World War is a favourite of his.

My dad has advanced degrees in business and engineering, and from 1954 until 1963, he worked at the Rolls-Royce plant in East Kilbride, a town on the south side of Glasgow. He started out working on the Merlin piston engine. He eventually moved to the design shop, where he was part of the team working on the Griffin engine that was originally in the Spitfire, and he worked on the design of the other Avon engines that made millions for Rolls-Royce in the 1950s and 1960s. My dad’s love for and fascination with planes and engines have fuelled my own passion for machines of all kinds, which is why, as I sat in that Hawk with the engines roaring to life beneath me, my eyes started welling up. When he was a young man, my dad would have loved the chance to fly in a plane like this.

After release from the tower, Squadron Leader Brough engaged the throttle and we lurched forward. Through the intercom system in my helmet, he explained, ‘John, the most dangerous time to fly a plane like this is at take-off and during the few minutes in the air before we reach our cruising altitude.’

‘Okay,’ I replied, my pulse quickening once again.

‘If we need to abort before take-off, I’ll yell “abort” and you need to slam both your feet on the brakes. Okay?’

‘Okay,’ I replied, my heart now lodged securely in my throat.

‘Finally, John, if we need to abort when we’re in the air, I’ll yell “eject”, but if that happens, you need to pull the yellow lever immediately. Don’t wait for me, because if you look up and I’m already gone, it’ll be too late. Got that?’

‘Got it,’ I rasped, my hand immediately gripping the yellow lever.

‘Good man. Now, would you like to taxi this bird?’