I Am What I Am (14 page)

The BBC announced that it had commissioned the pilot of
Tonight’s the Night
the week after the ‘Ballgate’ incident. I put ‘my boys’ behind me
⁴
and went to work on one of my lifelong career dreams: hosting my own Saturday-night variety show.

The BBC and I began talking two years prior to the actual commissioning announcement about the possibility of me having my own show on prime-time Saturday night.
The Kids Are All Right
had been a huge success, but the BBC wanted me to do something different: something bigger, with more variety.

A show with all those components was a very tantalizing prospect, and, best of all, it would give me the opportunity to be involved behind the scenes as well as in front of the camera. Gavin and I established Barrowman Barker Productions (BBP) in 2008 so that we’d have more creative input into whatever I do, and so that we could get involved in aspects of the entertainment business where I’m not necessarily a performer. Forming BBP made perfect sense at this point in my career because it united my performing side with my creative side.

During all my years in theatre, I was always bothered by the dichotomy that many producers perpetuated between their talent (that would be me and the other actors) and themselves, sometimes forgetting that without the performers, they could produce themselves right into the dole queue.
Tonight’s the Night
was not only the unveiling of my Saturday-night entertainment show, it also marked my attempt to unify these two important sides of the entertainment business with Barrowman and Barker’s debut as producers.

Setting up BBP was in itself a new and exciting challenge. As well as attending hours of legal meetings, Gavin and I also created the company’s logo. The image we decided on has a retro feel to it, with an element of the ‘boy’ in it – without being too gay. It’s a man pushing a wheelbarrow with a dog sitting inside it.
⁵
We designed the logo in such a way that if we wanted to make beer mats or T-shirts for gifts,
⁶
the logo would work well.

A major benefit of this new development in my career, however, was that it added yet another string to my bow. I hate being pigeonholed – as an actor, singer, ‘the talent’, whatever. Sometimes producers, and even network heads, want to put me in a nice neat performing niche, but I refuse to go. This is one of the reasons I don’t answer a question that’s often put to me – ‘Which do you prefer: singing or acting; theatre or telly?’ – in the way the asker may want.

My response is always: ‘I’m an entertainer. I love all of them.’

As a case in point, one of the most difficult decisions I’ve ever faced as an entertainer was having to make the choice between television and theatre when, a couple of months after Cameron’s rant at me during
I’d Do Anything
, he offered me one of the biggest deals in the West End: the lead in
Barnum
. Oh, man, I really wanted to do it.

Barnum
would have been a great musical to showcase my voice and my talents, what with its unique blend of music, comedy, drama and the razzle-dazzle of the circus. The Cy Coleman and Michael Stewart musical first opened on Broadway in 1980, and in the West End the next year. The plot follows the life of the innovative entrepreneur and outspoken entertainer P. T. Barnum, and his ‘Greatest Show on Earth’ as it travels from city to city.

Cameron had a lot of terrific ideas about making his revival more modern and accessible to today’s theatre audiences. His production would be more in the style of Cirque du Soleil, with acrobats and high
wires, rather than three rings with lions and tigers and bears.
⁷
What would have been really brilliant about playing Barnum was that I would have gone to circus school in Amsterdam, to learn the ins and outs of being a Big Top leader. Can you imagine me on a high wire? Doing a double backflip? In a ring with a whip?
⁸

However, the more I thought about the details and the planning and the schedules of such a project, the more I realized that, at this point in my career, when there are so many new things I still want to do, I couldn’t devote so much time to one single venture. If I were to return to theatre for a new show, I’d have to be with the production for a full year’s run. That would be fair and reasonable. At that particular time, I couldn’t and didn’t want to commit to a full year of anything.

While I was negotiating with Cameron, I was also in meetings with the BBC, brainstorming the format for
Tonight’s the Night
. As that dream was moving closer to reality, I finally had to admit that I’d have to give up
Barnum
.

I didn’t relinquish it without a fight, though. At one point, I was so desperate to try to get my schedule to work that I even considered doing a variety show and a West End production at the same time.
⁹
But it would have been completely unreasonable of me to expect that Cameron would give me Saturday nights off from the theatre so that I could spend the time on television. There was no way I could do both.

To do or not to do
Barnum
was an emotionally difficult decision for me to make. My life as an entertainer began in the theatre, and being an entertainer has always been more than a career choice for me: my double helix is a treble clef in a belt with sparkles. In the end, I had to say ‘no’ to
Barnum.
But no matter how heavy this ‘no’ weighed on me, no matter how difficult and disappointing, it was also, in some quiet way, affirming that all the career decisions and choices I’d made
to date were paying off – because I was in a position, professionally, where I could say ‘no’ to a West End show, to say nothing of the thrill of being on the verge of launching my very own prime-time variety TV show.

If you’re single and, say, between eighteen and twenty-five, it’s unlikely that anything on the telly will keep you home on a Saturday night, but if you’re my age,
¹⁰
you’re married with children, or you’re in my parents’ generation, then sitting down to watch something light and entertaining on a Saturday night is exactly what you want from your licence fee.

In preparation for our initial meetings with BBC Entertainment, who are just the best at coming up with successful Saturday-night shows, Gav and I spent hours on the web and YouTube, researching the people and programmes we personally might want to watch on a Saturday night. I’d jot down ideas, fragments of ideas, and details of fragments of ideas – anything I liked and thought was worth considering. After six months or so, we realized that – given the success of the BBC’s talent-search shows, and my own background as a performer – whatever the overall format turned out to be, a significant part of my Saturday-night show had to be performance-based.

My own performing dream came true in 1989, when I debuted in
Anything Goes
with Elaine Paige in the West End, and I believed this kind of programme was one way for me to give back a little. But you know what else? I think it’s really nice to do good things for good people, and to see them have a chance to experience something that, for whatever reason, hasn’t happened for them.

Good television is not only about what you see on the screen, it’s also about what you don’t see behind the scenes. The team working on
Tonight’s the Night
was great and we all worked well together, collaborating with ease and with the purpose of a shared vision. Moira Ross,
¹¹
the show’s executive producer and our boss, was very experienced in the entertainment field, having produced
Dancing with the Stars
for American TV and
Last Choir Standing
for the BBC, among others. Mel Balac was the series producer and the one who talked into my ear during the Sunday-night recordings of the show,
¹²
and who’d done all three of the Andrew Lloyd Webber programmes with me.
¹³
Funnily enough, Mel also produced the Barrowman family
¹⁴
when we appeared on
All Star Family Fortunes
.

Finally, Martin Scott was the third executive producer on
Tonight’s the Night
. He represented BBC In-House Entertainment and oversaw the entire production on behalf of the channel. I’d worked with him on all the BBC entertainment shows I’d ever done. Martin’s a veteran of
Strictly Come Dancing
and the ALW talent searches, as well as lots of others.

Every series also needs runners and assistants. In fact, television shows couldn’t operate without them. Runners are the young men and women, often interns or recent graduates directly out of university, who scuttle around a set taking care of the small details that hold all the big stuff together. Left your script in the dressing room, your phone in the car, your costume change in the rehearsal room, your sister in the wrong hallway miles from the studio? The runner solves these problems and makes everything okay.

My runner for the term of
TTN
was a terrific, hard-working young man named Alex Bender. I knew we’d work well together and the production was off to a great beginning when I saw the call sheet for show one. My runner’s name was listed next to mine. The sheet read: ‘John Barrowman – A. Bender.’

Even though I was a production virgin,
¹⁵
Gavin and I had lots of input into the production side of the show, and we worked very closely with Mo, Mel and Paul Domaine, the show’s choreographer, to make the whole ensemble pop.

Paul was brilliant. He could take any show tune or pop song and choreograph it into something hip and flashy and breathtaking. With
the talents of the show’s eight dancers, the J8s, the dancing was always fresh, fluid and, well, pretty fabulous, I thought.

I was excited about the entire team. Plus, because I was one of the producers as well as the host, I was in a position to solve problems when they arose, in an efficient manner that didn’t hurt our shared creative vision.

For example, the BBC producers, Gav and I wanted to do a big Bollywood number for one of the last shows of the series, to the track ‘Rhythm of the Night’. The dancers and Paul were up for this kind of lavishly choreographed number. The problem was the budget. No money left. The budget couldn’t cover our chocolate biscuits, never mind the eight additional dancers we required to make the number a true Bollywood piece with its array of colourful costumes and mix of dance styles.

As we sat around the production table, reviewing the past week’s show and planning for the upcoming one (this meeting was a weekly one, and essential to the overall flow and ongoing success of each episode), Gavin and I decided that the Bollywood number
had
to happen. If the BBC didn’t have the budget, then Barrowman Barker Productions would pay for the extra dancers. BBP coughed up the cash. In the end, the number was worth every extra penny. I think this kind of synergy made for better production values overall and was also great telly for our viewers.

When production started for the show, my schedule took on a pattern that was exhausting and invigorating – and as full of variety as
Tonight’s the Night
itself. Since each show was taped in front of a live studio audience on a Sunday evening, the Saturday before was a full dress rehearsal for everyone. My work for each episode began early on the Monday at the Dance Attic on the Fulham Road, where I’d rehearse with Paul, ‘Jennie Fabulous’, his assistant, and all the J8s. They would dance through the opening and closing numbers with me, and I’d rehearse my moves in relation to theirs.

Sometimes, these rehearsals took longer than expected. One morning, I couldn’t get my left hand to coordinate a parallel move with my right foot while moving forward in a chorus line using a complicated
cross-step. At another session, the dancers were having a difficult time with a complex series of lifts and turns in their routine. I grabbed Jennie and moved to the front, next to the room’s long wall of mirrors. I worked with her to simplify the lift routine – because if there’s one thing a musical-theatre leading man knows how to do really well, it’s how to lift his dance partner. I can’t think of any musicals that don’t expect a lift or two. One of the first dance lessons I had in college at the start of my theatre training was how to lift and turn my partner above my shoulders with ease.
¹⁶

During these rehearsals early in the week, I would often try out one or two moves of my own to connect my routine with the choreography of the dancers around me. I always appreciated that Paul would let me work through my own innovations at least a couple of times before he would affirm them, critique them or, if necessary, ask me to cut them out.

On one of those busy mornings, rehearsals ran even later than usual – because a children’s ballet troupe was rehearsing in the next room and the children spotted Captain Jack on the stairs. Their dance mistress popped in to ask me if I’d come and say a few words, because maybe then she could settle her dancers down.
¹⁷

After rehearsing the choreography for a couple of hours on those Monday mornings, I’d sprint upstairs to another room, where Matt Brind,
TTN
’s musical director, and I would run through my songs and I’d learn any new arrangements he’d created. I’d repeat this same process the next day at the BBC studios, to make sure everything sounded good, and once again on Friday, the day before the show’s dress rehearsal.

At some point during the morning, usually in time for a cup of tea and a biscuit, Gav would arrive to review my other work and to discuss commitments I’d already made or that had to be made. We’d dash upstairs to a smaller rehearsal room for privacy. As an example of the sort of things on our agenda, during a two-day period one week
in April, I was offered a Broadway show, asked to make a number of guest appearances on UK television, finalized a few things for my concert tour, and arranged interviews and photo shoots for a handful of press requests.

When Gav and I had finished, I’d dart back down to the main rehearsal room and run through the opening and closing numbers with the dancers one more time. If my schedule permitted, I’d eat lunch with the J8s, Paul and Matt in the Dance Attic’s cafe;
¹⁸
otherwise, I’d grab something to eat from M&S, while on my way back to the BBC studios to do a voiceover for one of the surprise hits I’d already filmed.