Alanatomy: The Inside Story

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From family to friends, from school to home, young Alan has a lot to contend with. He has “the voice of an elderly grandmother”, his teeth and glasses provide the regular punchlines you might expect, and even as a child, his busybody neighbour Ange suggests he might be, so to speak, “half rice, half chips”. His mother, Christine (Nancy Sullivan), supports him all the way, but he has a more complicated relationship with his father, Graham (Shaun Dooley), a gruff man’s man who manages Northampton Town football club – languishing at the bottom of the fourth division.

At the moment, my baby daughter shares our bedroom and bedtime is the only time I get to read....I found it quite impossible at times NOT to laugh out loud for risk of waking her! I also found myself snorting and sniggering at the book whilst in the dentist's waiting room and people looking at me oddly probably wondering what I was laughing at. What I loved the most was seeing the extremes of Alan – from extremely nervous to travelling the world for a year. Seeing him see himself just as he had done before, even when success hit And even when things didn’t go so well – he still writes with such humour and wit about it.I tell Carr I love Rihanna, but on his show she seemed a little, ahem, dazed. “Yes. You’d go into her dressing room and there’d be a shower cap over the smoke alarm,” he says. He didn’t mind because “she just laughed at any old thing I would say. She’s just smiling. She’d had her first hit but there was no massive list of things you couldn’t talk about. She was just really fun and lovely.”

a b The Law of the Playground (Documentary, Comedy), Zeppotron, 21 July 2006 , retrieved 15 May 2022 The tension is in watching a child with Carr’s flamboyance unknowingly navigate the rampant homophobia of the 80s while his mother, Christine, fiercely beats away sneering neighbours. In one scene, Graham and Alan are sitting in their bronze Audi Quattro on the drive. “I don’t think you know what normal is, Alan,” his dad says. Modern-day Alan crashes in with a voiceover: “Hey, snowflakes! This was therapy, 80s style.” I love Alan Carr, put him on the tele and you are bound to be in stitches, his voice, facial expressions, I could listen to him all day. So when I saw this book years ago I bought it and it has stayed on my TBRM for years. I finally got round to it. I read it all in his voice which just adds to the humour. Instead, we discuss how, in his 40s, he’s finally comfortable in his own skin. In the past, he’d never watch his own appearances – not even one episode of Chatty Man – because he hated his looks. He always thought he was overweight and his teeth were gappy – although he’s astute enough to know they enhance the caricature, the brand, much like Kenneth Williams’s flaring nostrils. The younger generation has taught him a lot about gender and sexuality, and how to be, he says.

Alan Carr Book

The ridiculous thing is, you say to people, ‘Oh, I’m writing a sitcom based on my life, where my dad’s like a northern, tough-talking football manager and his son’s camp as a row of tents’ and they say, ‘Oh, that writes itself.’” He narrows his eyes. “It does not write itself. You have to put in a lot of effort.”

Alan Carr's Christmas Box". BBC Radio 2. Archived from the original on 28 December 2007 . Retrieved 1 February 2008. a b "Alan Carr - Who Do You Think You Are? A mysterious change of name..." The Genealogist. Who Do You Think You Are?. 26 September 2011 . Retrieved 2 October 2018. Crucially, young Alan doesn’t much care about being liked. He loves Prince, shell suits and Angela Lansbury and seems unbothered by whether he is “bloody embarrassing” or not. The Carr family’s rivalry with their uptight neighbours is great and that aspect has the feel of a classic British sitcom to it. Changing Ends emerges as a sillier, warmer cross between Ladhood, Liam Williams’ own fourth-wall-breaking comedy about his youth, and Keeping Up Appearances. That might sound about as appealing as a Frazzle dipped in Tizer, but when he raids the bag of clothes that Ange has donated to charity, young Alan makes it clear that sometimes, clashing patterns just work. What about Graham? “My dad found it incredibly sad. Which is not what you want to hear when you’ve made a sitcom.” Whereas I used to maybe slag off someone from X Factor, I think we’ve realised now who the enemy isFuller, Christian (26 January 2022). "Alan Carr's husband Paul Drayton jailed for drunkenly hitting police car". The Argus. Brighton . Retrieved 26 January 2022. Noah, Sherna (6 March 2012). "Alan Carr gives up radio show to reclaim his weekends". Independent.ie . Retrieved 17 April 2022. Alan Carr: Chatty Man (Talk-Show), Open Mike Productions, 14 June 2009 , retrieved 6 September 2022

Carr performs stand-up regularly, on tour and on television. He became a regular performer on the Manchester comedy circuit in his 20s, where he met fellow comedians Jason Manford, Justin Moorhouse and John Bishop, and had his own monthly comedy and cabaret show Alan Carr's Ice Cream Sunday at the Manchester Comedy Store. [19] [20] [21] In January 2018, Carr married his partner of ten years, Paul Drayton, in Los Angeles. [27] The wedding was officiated by his best friend Adele. [28] The couple announced their separation in January 2022 following Drayton's conviction for drink-driving. [29] Carr lives in West Sussex, three miles from Horsham. [30] Controversy [ edit ] Of course there is an underlying theme of Alan fighting against, or maybe just shrugging off, prejudice, but mostly it is quite subtle, the script seems to assume intelligent viewers already understand what is going on, rather than having to spell it out to them as so many other series do these days.

Alan Carr Partner

Carr's early TV career included guest appearances on 8 Out of 10 Cats in 2005 and The Law of the Playground in 2006. [12] [13] He and Justin Lee Collins co-hosted The Friday Night Project from series two in 2006 until it was cancelled after the end of series eight in February 2009. [14] Carr went on to host two series of Channel 4's game show Alan Carr's Celebrity Ding Dong from 2007 to 2009, and the chat show Alan Carr: Chatty Man, which ran for 16 series from 2009-2016, with Christmas Specials in 2016 and 2017. [15] Radio [ edit ] Interview: Alan Carr". This is Nottingham. 8 October 2008 . Retrieved 18 January 2009. [ permanent dead link] Carr with actor Oliver Savell, who plays the comedian as a boy in the sitcom Changing Ends. Photograph: Matt Frost/ITV