Still Standing: The Savage Years (39 page)

The larky sort was aghast when I said as much.

‘You’d love it,’ she announced, shaking her head in disagreement. ‘Cruises are wonderful if you sail with the right lot. There are some fabulous ones for people our age – you
know, the over-fifties – and it’s not all bingo and Ovaltine neither – although you can have those if you want them. No, there’s fabulous shows and ballroom dancing and keep fit. Everyone’s very lively, you wouldn’t believe some of the carry-on – put the young ones to shame, they would.’

I don’t know how old she thought I was but one thing was for sure, this lady would never see sixty-six again; in fact the jury was out on the chances of her seeing seventy-five again, well preserved or not. The prospect of finding myself in the middle of the Med surrounded by elderly ravers fuelled by a deadly combination of HRT, Viagra and Seven Seas Tonic, who, when not keeping fit or ballroom dancing, were going at it hammer and tongs in their cabins, convinced me that a cruise was not for me.

As I was putting my shopping bags in the boot of the car one of them burst, as they inevitably do, torn to shreds by the corner of a carton of Lactofree milk. Environmentalists inform us that these plastic bags are most definitely non-biodegradable and virtually indestructible and I believe them, yet how come mine are in bits by the time I’ve reached the boot of the car?

Effing and blinding under my breath as it doesn’t do to eff and blind out loud in Hythe, I bent to retrieve my spilt shopping. Mrs Larky Sort was loading up her shopping two cars away and came to help.

‘Has your bag burst then?’ she asked cheerfully.

‘No,’ I wanted to say, ‘I just had the urge to throw a bag of King Eddy’s and a punnet of strawberries around the car park,’ but I didn’t. Instead I just nodded and grinned inanely.

‘Here,’ she said, stooping down to retrieve something that had rolled out of sight under the car. ‘You nearly lost your Steradent tablets and we can’t be having that, can we?’ She
roared with laughter as she handed the tube over. ‘How would you soak your teeth tonight?’

‘They’re not for me,’ I muttered, aware that the young couple walking past had heard every word and were much amused. ‘I’m doing my neighbour’s shopping’ (apologies to the neighbours now).

‘Aren’t you good,’ she said as she drove off, making me feel guilty for lying. Bloody Steradent tablets. I never thought I’d see them on the side of my bathroom sink but the truth of the matter is I’m currently sporting a plate with a canine tooth on it. The tooth that it’s temporarily replacing had to go. The poor little thing finally crumbled away to nothing, the damage irreparable after years of root canal work by an assortment of dentists with skills ranging from excellent to barbaric.

Before the titanium rods that would take the implants could be put in place I had to have a bone transplant in my jaw as well as having my sinuses moved. It sounds a lot worse than it was and hopefully by the time this goes to press I’ll have a nice new tooth screwed into my jawbone.

While I’m waiting for all this intrusive and highly expensive procedure to begin I have to put up with this awful bloody denture and a pink plastic plate to cover the roof of my mouth that has to be glued in place and is driving me insane. Food is rendered tasteless and it’s like talking with a piece of Lego in your mouth, so I only wear it if I’m on stage or the telly and prefer to go without it when no one, apart from close friends, is about. I never thought I’d hear myself emulating my mother by calling out, ‘Has anyone seen my teeth?’ after I’ve mislaid it. Once or twice I’ve forgotten that I haven’t got it in and gone to the shop, to find myself forced to talk out of the corner of my mouth like a bad Humphrey Bogart impersonator.

The corn plasters are to ease the pressure of a corn I sustained during the rehearsals for the ill-fated
Coronation Street
musical,
Street of Dreams
. Oh, for a crystal ball and the powers of prophecy to forewarn me against getting involved in such projects.

I finished my second series of the ITV
Paul O’Grady Live!
(a title that had nowt to do with me, I hasten to add) and even though I was asked if I’d like to return in February 2012 I declined the offer for no other reason than that I wanted to try my hand at something different. Hosting a chat show was no longer a challenge. I felt that I was just another cog in the well-oiled publicity machine – plug the book, plug the film, plug the TV series. Nobody comes on to ‘chat’ any more, it’s all about plugging the merchandise.

It had become far too easy and that was where the problem lay. I needed something entirely new that would give me that adrenalin rush again. I was bored with having to write out all the questions that I intended to ask the guests for approval from the network and their lawyers. The same rule applied to what I intended to say in the opening monologue, an obligatory five minutes employed by every chat show host in history that usually involves telling a few topical gags and hopefully warming the audience up in the process. This too had to be submitted to the lawyers and execs before I could be given the green light to utter a word of it, just in case anything I said could be taken as slander – which, in retrospect, I now see as a wise precaution on the network’s part.

To give ITV their due, they didn’t bat an eyelid the night I went into my rant live on air about the latest Tory cuts, venomously condemning them as ‘Bastards who probably laughed when Bambi’s mother got shot’. People thought I
might get the sack or, even worse, be made to apologize live on air but ITV were very supportive and were in fact quite delighted with my temporary transformation into Dennis Skinner.

The competition for any A-listers (Hollywood stars or anyone with an American accent) who are coming to town is fierce among the many chat shows on offer and occasionally I had guests inflicted on me that I really didn’t want but who the network insisted on. I’d moan and complain and kick off to no avail and in the end I’d resign myself to the fact that I’d have to get on with it and, to quote an old maxim frequently heard in showbiz circles, think of the money. I wouldn’t have minded if these people were worth the fees they were paid but they frequently turned out to be disappointingly dull and, on occasion, complete prats. When I encountered these guests I’d grit my teeth, be dutifully courteous and affable, plug whatever needed plugging, do my job and then take the money and run, which is good for the bank balance but bad for the soul.

Luckily there were very few guests that I really couldn’t stomach. In fact, more often than not, a guest I wasn’t looking forward to meeting would charm the pants off me and convert me into one of their adoring fans for life. In the eight years I interviewed the famous, there were only nine individuals who I really took exception to and loathed and six who made me extremely nervous, as they’d obviously had a little pharmaceutical help before the show. Their erratic behaviour during the interview had me on tenterhooks, making me self-mutilate under the desk in case they swore or came out with something completely untoward, particularly at five o’clock.

As for all the rest, well, I consider myself very lucky to have been able to spend some time in the company of these remarkable people. I’d be beside myself with glee at the
realization that I was chatting away happily with the stars who were my idols as comfortably as if we were old friends.

At Lauren Bacall’s book launch the lady herself greeted me warmly, introducing me to the group gathered around her as ‘my good friend Paul’. For me it was an encounter tinged with regret that those old movie-loving friends and family members weren’t alive any more to witness Humphrey Bogart’s widow referring to me as her ‘good friend’.

Now and then I had to take up arms and fight for a guest that I desperately wanted on the show, particularly if this person was perhaps a little more obscure than the usual run from the light entertainment stable. This would automatically disqualify them as a suitable candidate for the couch, the common cry being ‘because the viewers won’t know who they are’. I had to adopt a degree of low cunning and learn to sound impartial when mentioning the name of my choice. Too much enthusiasm was fatal. It was far wiser to sound vaguely uninterested, in a ‘just thought I’d mention them while I’m here’ sort of way, until eventually Chad, our celebrity booker, was given the go-ahead to ring the agent and book ’em.

It’s not arrogance to say that I was positive the viewers would love these guests and thankfully I was proven right when they invariably went down a storm.

Leslie Jordan, the diminutive star of
Will and Grace
and
Sordid Lives
, had the studio audience eating out of his hand. He enchanted the crowd with his self-deprecating honesty and Southern charm, as did Caroline Rhea, the Canadian stand-up comedian and actor probably best known in the UK for playing
Sabrina the Teenage Witch
’s Aunt Hilda. We’d booked Caroline for the Halloween show and she was incredibly warm and very, very funny and within seconds of
her sitting on the sofa every single member of the audience and crew had fallen in love with her.

Nadine Coyle of Girls Aloud was on that show as well, proving herself a real trouper by singing live ‘I Put A Spell On You’, a song that she wasn’t familiar with and only got to rehearse a couple of times before going on air. While she sang I supposedly accompanied her on a white grand piano behind her that rose off the floor as the number progressed, slowly turning a full circle before returning to its original position. It was a very clever trick and I’m not going to reveal how it’s done but I will say that it was bloody painful. To stay seated, I had to push down hard with my feet and up with my thighs against the underside of the piano to support myself. Nadine never missed a beat throughout all of this lunacy. She just carried on singing as if she were totally oblivious to the chaos going on behind her, wowing the audience in the process and gaining respect for masterfully pulling off what is a difficult song to sing.

Barbara Knox, the woman who gave life to
Corrie
’s Rita Tanner (she’ll always be Littlewood to me), is a true television legend, the Garbo of Weatherfield, notorious for fiercely guarding her privacy and for hardly ever agreeing to an interview. I’d tried to get her for years until eventually, to everyone’s surprise including her own, she agreed to appear. When the much-anticipated day arrived it was like a visitation from royalty, which in television terms she is.

Barbara is a charming, unassuming lady who was genuinely humbled by the fuss the team had made of her. They’d gone to town, filling the dressing room with flowers and little gifts that we knew she’d like, making sure that she had everything she needed. Barbara is a real pro, yet backstage she confessed to being extremely nervous before she went on as she’d never
been on a live chat show before. She needn’t have worried for as soon as she appeared at the top of that staircase the studio audience did their collective nut, giving her a standing ovation. Miss Knox, genuinely overwhelmed and every inch the star, showed not a trace of nerves.

Perched elegantly on the end of the sofa wearing a fur hat that had once belonged to her mother, she exuded the old-style glamour that’s so often missing today. She was relaxed and I could’ve easily chatted to her for the full hour. At the conclusion of the interview the audience gave her another standing ovation and as she stood there thanking them it was apparent that she couldn’t quite believe that the warmth and affection in that studio was all for her. I told her afterwards that the last time I heard applause like that was on a Marlene Dietrich LP. We had quite a late one in the green room that night, I seem to recall; it was gone 3 a.m. when Barbara, the boys from McFly and I eventually left the premises and a bloody good time was had by all.

I’ve had lots of late ones drinking in the green room after the show. Tom Jones is very good company, always up for a few bevvies and a laugh, and loves to compare notes about the clubs we’ve worked in the past. Bette Midler is another one who enjoys trading stories about the early days and some of the places we found ourselves working in. ‘I wasn’t called Bathhouse Bette for nothing,’ she said when we were chatting in her dressing room after the Christmas Eve show and I was secretly over the moon when she wryly referred to us both as ‘a pair of old troupers doing the rounds’.

I’d hit it off instantly with Lady Gaga when she first appeared on the C4 teatime show. Apart from being a brilliant musician, she is a very interesting and captivating young woman indeed. Hearing that I was back on air, she
interrupted her tour to fly to London on her only day off to do the show. We gave her the whole hour and it was funny to see all the mums and dads sat with Gaga’s ‘Little Monsters’ in the audience. Gaga was great value and a good sport and the show did very well in the ratings. I gave her a pair of skull cufflinks that had once belonged to Fats Waller and a very nice Burleigh Ware teacup and saucer I got off eBay.

I confess to being one of Gaga’s greatest admirers. She does extraordinary work campaigning for human rights and Aids awareness and is a thoroughly decent human being, and if she wants to go out wearing a frock made out of three lamb chops and a quarter of corned beef with two pickled onions for earrings then that’s her affair.

As soon as the show ended I took off for China and Tibet with André, my partner of the last six years. (There’s a book here.) Our first port of call was Shanghai and I was amazed at how much the city had changed since I was last here in the nineties. (Another book.) From our hotel on the Bund we could see across the Huangpu River to the east side and Pudong, the skyline now dominated by a mass of brilliantly illuminated and highly elaborate skyscrapers that hadn’t been there before. Impressive as this mighty vista was, I still sought out the old Shanghai and with the help of an excellent guide we managed to catch a few glimpses into the past. My favourite was the Astor House Hotel, once the grandest of all hostelries in Shanghai but sadly run-down and allowed to fall into rack and ruin. The old place is now being sensitively renovated and visiting it one hot sticky morning, stepping off the noisy, dusty street and into the cool of the oak-panelled lobby, I knew I’d be back one day to stay there. André was horrified when I mentioned this, considering the Astor one
step up from a dosshouse, but for me it reeked of the Shanghai that I was constantly seeking.