I Am What I Am (22 page)

After the crash, emergency personnel surrounded us almost immediately. As a precaution, I insisted a paramedic wash out my eyes. The camera inside the car had bounced loose a bit as we flipped, and the arm it was attached to had shattered the windscreen into tiny pieces, many of which ended up on Tiff and me.

After twenty-six years behind the wheel and twenty-three years in the entertainment business, I had finally made it onto a car show, but I went from first to
Fifth
and skipped
Top Gear
.

Oh, and don’t tell my mum, but this Speed Racer may well do the whole rally race driving thing again.

There’s an old gay saying
¹
that not much comes between a gay man and his dog. This distinct bond has been written about a lot, and it’s not difficult to see why. In a society that has not always condoned gay men having children, our dog, or in my case dogs, can be akin to having kids. And because many gay men, sadly, still find themselves ostracized from their families, a dog can be the one companion who loves unconditionally and wholeheartedly. I’m not saying that gay men love their dogs more deeply than other dog lovers, but dogs do play a role in our lives that is remarkable if not unique.

Scott and I pamper our dogs, we buy them toys
²
and, when we can, we travel with them. A few days before Harris joined our family, I was so excited I dashed into the Louis Vuitton store on Bond Street and bought an outrageously expensive doggy carrier. Oh my God, it was so fabulous I wanted to crawl inside and take a nap. When we brought Harris home, I set the carrier out on the floor and presented it to him. Ta da!

He stared at it. Sniffed at it. Tentatively, he stepped inside. I was already planning where I’d go with the LV on my arm and Harris snuggling inside. He sniffed around for a few minutes inside the carrier, and then he quickly backed himself out. He stared up at me with an expression that can only be described as saying, ‘Well, that was a big waste of your money.’ In the entire course of his puppyhood, I was able to get him inside the LV only one other time, and that was after pulling a Hansel-and-Gretel move and lining the interior with treats.

Our dogs not only have the run of our homes, but also of our lives, and when we lose them, we grieve deeply because we know in our hearts we’ve lost much more than just a pet. Between 14 March 2007 and 6 May 2008, Scott and I had to say goodbye to three dear family members: Penny, Tiger and Lewis.

Miss Moneypenny was the first dog I owned as a grown-up person living independently, without needing the permission of a parent to have, and when she died, her loss was devastating. Penny’s health had been failing for quite a while before she died. She was nineteen and she was getting a bit leaky and pretty senile.
³
Her eyesight was severely diminished, and she moved only when necessary. But the vet always told me that as long as she was wagging her tail and she was eating well, then she was not in distress. And I clung on to that wisdom for as long as I could.

When Penny began to have difficulty getting outside on her own, I bought her doggy diapers and a little doggy stroller. Every night before bed, I’d wheel her out of my Cardiff flat and into the elevator, with Tiger and Lewis tagging along behind, and we’d all troop onto the Roald Dahl Way at Cardiff Bay, where we’d take a stroll. I’m sure we made quite a sight – a man, two dogs and a beautiful blonde spaniel stretched out in a padded stroller, leading the way.

One night, Scott and I came home after dinner and Penny was having seizures. We knew it was time to do the one thing I did not want to do: say goodbye to one of the first loves of my life. Before there was Scott, before there was fame, before there were any other dogs, there was Penny. She’d grown from a puppy to a mother
⁴
to the Grande Dame of my household. As I established myself in the theatre world and then in television, Penny shared in all my successes.

Scott drove to the vet’s office while I sat in the back seat, with Penny wrapped in her favourite blanket on my lap. In the car, she had another seizure, and I did my best to hold her even tighter. She nestled into my lap for a few minutes, and then the weirdest thing happened. She
suddenly let out a sad, mournful howl, as if she knew death was near. I’m not sure how Scott and I made it to the vet’s office through our tears.

Penny’s favourite treat was fresh chicken slices from M&S. The day before she died, Scott had wanted to make Penny feel better, and he’d given her more chicken slices than she usually ate. As we were driving to the vet’s, Scott tried to tell me through his sobs that he may have inadvertently killed her with his sliced chicken.
⁵

When the vet was ready to give Penny the injection, I cupped her little head in my hands, and I put my face right up close to her snout. I gently blew my breath into her face and I whispered over and over to her she was a good girl, my good girl. I knew Penny couldn’t see me clearly anymore, but until she slipped away, I made sure she could smell me, and that she knew I was with her until her end.

All our dogs have had very distinctive personalities. Of the three in the family now, Harris is the baby brother of the crew. He’s black and sleek, with boundless energy. He charges into everything – including regularly raiding the laundry baskets for socks and underwear that Scott and I later find spread across the lawn or dropped in the pool.

Charlie, our newest rescue dog, is the eldest, and is certainly the most neurotic of the three. He freaks at loud noises and is frightened of any confrontations with other dogs. When Harris is being too rambunctious, Charlie looks down his long regal nose at him, turns, and bounds away.
⁶

Captain Jack, our Jack Russell, a rescue from Cardiff Dogs Home, had been abandoned in an apartment and was discovered only because his bark was so loud. Jack is the family thug, and a maniac for playing football. If you bring anything that looks even remotely like a ball into the house, you will have CJ at your feet the entire time, nudging you to play with him.

It most definitely doesn’t have to be a real ball. Whenever Carole took a swim in the pool during a recent visit, she’d don a black Speedo swimming cap, which Jack would then chase up and down the length of the pool, barking as he went, because her head looked – to him –
like a ball skimming across the water. When she turned, he’d try to bite at her noggin. It was hilarious to watch.
⁷

Tiger, a rescue from Dogs Trust, joined the Barrowman–Gill household in 2006. He was a gorgeous, red-haired spaniel, and he was certainly the grumpiest dog we ever had. He was only with us for about a year and we did our best to love him madly. Whenever we’d lift Tiger a certain way – to put him in the rear of the car or to help him up on the couch – he’d nip at us. Scott and I always assumed his mild aggressiveness was because of his past experiences. He’d been abandoned at a dogs’ home.

The night Tiger died, I’d been filming
Torchwood
. When I came home, I was having a lie-down in the bedroom. Tiger climbed onto the bottom of the bed and settled against my feet.

I’ve always believed that animals can be more sensitive and more connected to the natural world than we are. As many of you may know, I’m also very superstitious – and what happened next has always seemed like an omen to me. As I lay on my bed napping, a hawk swooped across the bay and flew against my window. I sat up, startled, and when I did, I noticed that Tiger was panting heavily. When I checked his gums, they were very pale. I knew he was in distress.

Scott and I took Tiger to the clinic immediately. One of the worst moments for me as a dog owner was when I had to leave Tiger overnight in that stark vet’s cage. I didn’t want him to think he was being abandoned all over again. As I reluctantly made my way out of the clinic, I kept calling back to him that we’d return, and that when he was well, we’d bring him home. I promised.

The next day, after exploratory surgery, the vet called and told us that Tiger was riddled with tumours. He’d likely been bleeding internally for a while. This explained why he’d always been so sensitive when we touched him. Poor Tiger had been ill for months. He died on the operating table that night, and never got to come home. I felt terrible about that for weeks afterwards.

Scott was alone with Lewis when he died seven months later. I was filming
I’d Do Anything
and I was on a training mission with all the Nancy contestants in central London.

Lewis had been sick for about a year with various cancerous tumours. He’d been having regular blood transfusions and glucose injections and all sorts of other treatments, and, bless him, he kept fighting back. Some nights, when he seemed to be fading away, Scott would pour a couple of teaspoonfuls of thick sweet yoghurt onto his hand, and Lewis would lick up every drop and then almost immediately he’d rally for a few hours. For a long while, Scott had been the primary care-giver for Lewis in London because I was filming
Torchwood
in Cardiff and was travelling back and forth a lot.

The day before Lewis died, Scott had come home and found Lewis particularly lethargic. He packed him up and headed to the vet, hoping another transfusion might help, but the next morning, when Scott went in to collect Lewis, the vet told Scott that Lewis had had a seizure in the night, from a blood clot that had migrated to his brain.

While I was finishing up filming the segment with the Nancy contestants – on a boat on the Thames, out of phone reach – Scott was saying his final goodbyes to Lewis. Scott remembers that Lewis was lying on his side in the vet’s cage, paddling his legs in the air like he was trying desperately to get up and escape out of there. Lewis looked so distressed that Scott knew he had to make this decision for Lewis as quickly as possible, even if it meant that I couldn’t be there with them. Scott climbed into the cage next to Lewis and as the drugs dripped into Lewis’s line, Scott recited in his ear all the silly gibberish phrases that had been their secret language for twelve years.

When Scott was finally able to reach me on the boat, we’d just docked. I told the contestants what was happening and Jodie said, ‘Fuck this stuff and go to your family.’ I knew then for sure she was something special.

The loss of Penny and Tiger devastated both Scott and me, but Scott was especially gutted by the swift deterioration in Lewis’s health and his death. This is one of the reasons why one of our newest family
members, Harris – a black spaniel like Lewis – is being completely spoiled by Scott.

Penny, Tiger and Lewis were cremated. We sprinkled most of their ashes in all the places they loved in Florida and in London, and the rest we spread under a tree in our garden in Wales. We miss them all, and feel blessed that they enriched our lives.

★

‘You’re an impossible thing, Jack.’

The Doctor ‘Last of the Time Lords’,
Doctor Who

1 He has changed my life.

2 He has touched the lives of millions.

3 He got me a ticket to ride in the TARDIS (and to straddle it).

4 He brought me face-to-face with Davros (still get chills).

5 He introduced me to ‘Sarah Jane’.

6 He introduced me to Catherine Tate.

6
¹
⁄
₂
And did I mention I got to be in, on and near the TARDIS?

P
rometheus, the Greek god, stole fire from Zeus, gave it to humans, and allowed them to use it to establish civilization. Because, you know, it’s hard to invent the wheel, write poetry, make art, sing songs and dance when you can’t cook your dinner and your toes are numb. Because of Prometheus’s generosity – the whole bringing ‘light’ to humans thing – ordinary men and women back in the days of myths and stories considered him to be a pretty good god.

Unfortunately for Prometheus, Zeus was pissed at his disloyalty and his challenge to authority. Prometheus had to be punished. Poor Prometheus was chained to a big rock, where an eagle was sent to eat his liver.
¹
As if this wasn’t bad enough, because Prometheus was immortal, every day his liver regenerated and the eagle would swoop back and have another nosh.

As Captain Jack’s character has developed over the years, I think he’s becoming a twenty-first-century Prometheus, and in ‘Children of Earth’, the allusions and connections are even stronger. Both Prometheus and Jack are cunning, smart and immortal.

Before hard-core Woodies protest, yes, I know the debate. Technically, Jack is not immortal because he can die … he just doesn’t stay dead. He rises, and he resurrects, and I realize that this may make him more Christ-like than Promethean, but I think that’s quibbling. Plus, I think the darker, roguish qualities in Jack’s nature make him more rebel than angel; however, I wouldn’t rule out Russell T. Davies’s connotations of either in Jack’s make-up. After all, every culture from ancient times onwards has myths of men and women who sacrifice themselves for the good of others and then reappear, resurrect, or – like the Doctor – regenerate.

To continue: in one version of the myth, Prometheus is chained naked to a rock face. In ‘Children of Earth’, Jack is chained naked to a rock wall. This was a gruelling scene to film, mostly because, although I could struggle against the chains, I had to be held in one place.

I made sure I had some fun with these nude scenes too, though.
²
Before the filming of series three began, Euros Lyn, the director, asked me if I would be okay getting naked on camera.
³
If you’ve watched ‘Children of Earth’, you’ll know that Jack is naked for most of the sequence that begins in the military jail cell and ends in the quarry where Jack, with Ianto’s help, breaks out of his tomb.
⁴

The scenes in the jail cell were filmed first, and a few days before we were due to begin, Ray Holman,
Torchwood
’s costume designer, asked me if I wanted a jock.
⁵
As you may know, I have no issues about baring my bum, but I did think about it for a beat or two in deference to my colleagues and the crew. However, in part of the sequence, viewers would see Jack in
all
his glory from behind. Ray, Euros and I therefore decided that if I were to wear a flesh-coloured jock, the strap of the jock would need to be digitally altered in post-production, so as not to affect the aesthetic of the scene.
⁶
So why bother? The three of us concluded it wasn’t worth the hassle, and I declined Ray’s offer.