There was a moment during my interview with Alan Carr when he asked me where I thought his accent was from, London or the north. I froze – was this a trick question? What would be the penalty for getting it wrong? Alan Carr can be a little – how shall I put this – harsh in the face of weakness. But, he explained, “My mum’s cockney, my dad’s geordie. Then there’s Northampton and Dorset in the mix.” So yes, he wants to know. In truth, Carr’s accent is unplaceable. Moreover, he occasionally drops into a quite deep voice which sounds, dare I say, like every other west Londoner in television (sorry, Alan). I wonder if that’s the voice he uses when he’s alone, just chatting to the dog.
As we grew up in the same era, I jump on common ground. Carr loved Wonder Woman – “I mean, I wrote to Jim’ll Fix It asking to meet her and I still had to come out to my mum”– so I tell him that one of my brothers was also a big Wonder Woman devotee. “Oh, riiiight,” Carr says, nodding knowingly. He used to kiss the screen when she came on, I say. “Oh.” He looks shocked, then appalled. “I never used to do that.”
He “absolutely loved” Agatha Christie, although acknowledges she had questionable views. “Sometimes you’re reading and you think, Oh, that’s a bit mean and not very nice.” Also, many of our 70s and 80s favourites have us raising an eyebrow today. “I used to watch The Golden Girls. So good. But some of the [episodes] are a bit problematic.” He frowns. “Some of it you just couldn’t say these days.”
We talk about his regrets in comedy, and he returns to the subject a few times. Comedy is especially fraught, he believes, because of the specific need to riff off contemporary events. “You’re in a catch-22 because if you’re a good comedian, then you will do topical material. But topical stuff is like writing during an earthquake. The tectonic plates” – he demonstrates the friction between his hands. “For example, when I grew up George Michael was seen as some pervert who hung around toilets. Now he’s this wonderful philanthropist; salt of the earth, what a legend! But if you’re working with the zeitgeist, you haven’t got that hindsight on how things change. You haven’t got a crystal ball. People are getting cancelled for all kinds of things, but the truth is some stuff simply doesn’t age. That affectionate joke about Rolf Harris? It’s going to seem ‘Oh my god!’ today. That’s the price you pay for topicality.”
He says he always feels sorry for celebrities who have had pictures taken with people like Jimmy Savile or Gary Glitter. “But you have to understand, it’s just a photo.” He chuckles. A thought has just occurred. “You should see the people at stage door I’ve had my photo with. They could be serial killers for all I know.”
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