Chat of the land

Comedy isn’t traditionally a superstitious game, but when a mysterious broad in a head scarf and hoop earrings tells you to do something, you had better make sure you do it. At least, it worked for best-selling author and chat show supremo Alan Carr.

“I’d gone to a gypsy fortune teller,” he tells me, “and she said that stand-up was the way forward and that I’d make my money by writing comedy! I was like ‘Ooh!’ Maybe it planted the seed, I don’t know, but I did it.”
Like most comedic debuts, Carr’s first go of the mic was less than glamourous. His inaugural foray into the spotlight happened while he was studying Drama and Theatre at Middlesex University (it’s got sex in the title, I’ll give him that…) where he took a module (who knew?) in stand-up comedy.
“I couldn’t eat all day,” he pains. “My God, it was coming out both ends! The jokes went down really well but I thought, ‘I can’t live like this!’ I left it alone for four years and I had a really crap job. I needed to make some money and I thought, ‘Ooh I’ll do that stand-up again!’ That’s how bad I was! Stuck in a call centre covered in psoriasis, dead-end job, not going anywhere. I went on stage in this pub in Chorlton, Manchester and this woman was crying with laughter, they just went crazy! I was only doing it to get out of a tight spot but then I thought, ‘Alan, this has to be better than, ‘Hello, Barclaycard?’”
Ten years and two British Comedy Awards later, the Dorset-born funnyman says he still hasn’t mastered his nerves.
“I’ll be terrified at the arenas,” he confesses. “I did the Birmingham NEC which is a big arena last Christmas and it’s the first one I’ve done. I didn’t realise that when you tell a joke you get (prolonged, echoing laughs) ‘Ha ha ha ha ha ha..’ You’re like, ‘Do I interrupt this laughter? Should I go and do a Sudoku?’ I didn’t know, by the time it travelled around. That was a shock! At least Beyoncé can do a bit of bogle or something.”
But then, getting butterflies in front of 16,000 people is hardly extraordinary – even international chart-topper Adele is too chicken to play arenas. I ask Carr how he combats his stage fright, but as it turns out, he doesn’t.
“That is stand-up for me, I find it terrifying anyway, going onstage. It’s flight or bite and I can’t explain to someone but suddenly it just goes. You’re nervous, nervous, nervous and then it hits you. I don’t want to sound like a twat but it probably is Dr. Showbiz helping you out!”
Carr cut his teeth warming up audiences off-camera for big name chat show stars, including Jonathan Ross. At any point did he find himself dreaming of a show of his own?
“Never, never, never,” he says. “I mean I couldn’t see myself doing a chat show and Jonathan is just one of the best. I have great guests on Chatty Man but you gotta remember with Jonathan Ross I met Paul Newman, and when I say ‘met’ they went, ‘Move! Out of the way! Entourage coming through!’, but Cameron Diaz, Tom Cruise, Brad Pitt, Angelina Jolie, Jane Fonda, I mean legends! I thought never could I do a chat show and then when Channel 4 offered it to be I went, ‘Oh no, it’s not really me’. But then when you think about it you’ve just got to be yourself. I thought I’d have to be like Parkinson and sit there chewing the end of a pencil like, ‘Em, yeah… yeah interesting’, but just do it as yourself! Just pretend like they’ve come around your flat for a laugh and a chat, and it works! I don’t want people bloody crying. I mean with Kylie, we touched on the cancer but do you really wanna see Rihanna sobbing into a hanky?
“People have it in their head that if someone cries then that’s a good interview. I don’t think it is. I think if you come away thinking, ‘Oh my god, I really like that person,’ or, ‘Oh, I never thought they were that funny!’ I think that’s a better interview, that’s why I ply them with cheap drink and I don’t let them get a word in edgeways!”
Speaking of the pint-sized princess of pop, who’d have thought that Kylie Minogue can drink like a sailor?
“After the show she said, ‘Shall we go back to your room and have a whiskey?’” he laughs, “I’m like, ‘Yes okay Kylie!’ It was amazing, you think she’d be tucked in bed by 10pm with like, a Horlicks and a nightie on, but she was like, ‘Come on, let’s go and have a whiskey!’ And she’s such a gossip!
“People surprise you. You’re surprised that some of them are like, ‘You can talk to me about anything!’ and then you get the ones who are like, ‘Don’t mention this or this or this or this’. You’re like, ‘Alright love, you’re lucky you’re sitting on the settee, you’ll be in the jungle in two years time eating a crocodile cock!”
For most of his career, Carr’s material has always come from everyday life, but you can’t blame him if his newfound showbiz lifestyle is seeping into the jokes a little.
“You know, the last journalist was saying, ‘Oh you must have struggled on this tour because you can’t talk about going on the night bus or the cinema’, and I went, ‘Well, actually yeah, I can!’. Obviously, I don’t want to be one of those comedians who go on stage like, ‘God, don’t you hate it when you’re in Poundland...’ and you’re like, ‘You’ve got two swimming pools and a house abroad!’. I mean, I think that some people watch Cribs and they transport you into Beyoncé and Jay-Z’s world! I still have to go to the post office and post parcels, I still like a bargain! I still get two for one at the supermarket. I’m not Greta Garbo sitting in me house going, ‘What’s a pint of milk?’”

Spexy Beast comes to the O2, Dublin (October 12) and the Odyssey Arena, Belfast (17, 18). Alan Carr: Chatty Man returns to Channel 4 on Friday June 17.