Alan Carr would like to make it clear that he is not, and never has been, remotely cutting edge. “Oh no,” he says, sipping on a dainty cup of green tea and lifting the saucer politely as he does so. “What’s the point?”
It is true that Carr, 31, one of the UK’s most promising young comedians, does not exactly fit the mould of a foul-mouthed stand-up, the kind who out-heckles the audience and swaggers about on stage knocking back cans of lager in a haze of spittle and sweat. Carr, with his neatly buttoned shirt and non-skinny jeans, his sensible glasses and toothy smile, looks more like a kindly nephew in his first year of an accountancy course.
We are sitting in one of London’s most exclusive nightspots, a place so painfully fashionable that the lavatories have no signage on the door, presumably because everyone who is anyone will know where they are simply by word of mouth. Carr is perched on a golden leather banquette in a curious breast-shaped dome. He gazes around with a mystified expression, appearing slightly out of his element.
“I don’t really like being a celebrity,” he admits. “It’s like, you get invited to a party and say of course I’ll come and then you get the invite, and it says Hello! or OK! magazine will be hosting it and you’re just like, well I can’t get as pissed as I want to get now because I’ll be photographed with Jodie Marsh or Dean Gaffney.”
As a comedian, Carr prefers to mine the rich seam of the mundane. He made his name on the circuit with acutely observed anecdotes that poked fun at his own hapless interactions with everyday life (on the theft of his supermarket reward scheme card: “Half of me was fuming, half of me was thinking, “What about the points?’”). On television, he has crafted a popular persona that manages to be simultaneously waspish and endearing, like a particularly camp version of the old local dear holding forth in a neighborly way over a glass of sherry. He won the BBC new comedy award for stand-up in 2001 and since then has become comfortably ensconced in the mainstream as the host of two big-ticket entertainment programs on UK TV — Alan Carr’s Celebrity Ding Dong and The Friday Night Project, with Justin Lee Collins. The DVD of his 2007 stand-up show, Tooth Fairy Live, was a Christmas bestseller.
Openly gay, Carr insists he is perfectly at home in Middle England, despite his detractors pigeonholing him as the anachronistic lovechild of John Inman and Frankie Howerd. On stage or television, his demeanor is coy and mischievous. His voice — shrill, giggly, nasal — is so ubiquitous that when he called up Kwik-Fit a few weeks ago to get his tire changed, the mechanic recognized him over the phone. “He started going all camp on me, like Danny La Rue.” His act makes no overt reference to his sexuality, but his critics accuse him of being a throwback to the limp-wristed homosexual stereotypes of the 1970s.
“Gays hate me,” Carr says, affably. “I just think gay people need to get over themselves. Just because you’re gay and on the telly doesn’t mean you’re a role model. I’m just a comedian. That’s all I am. If you find me funny, good. But they look at me like, ‘Oh, you’re letting the side down.’”
“I’ve done the circuit, I’ve won competitions and awards and this wasn’t just in some tired old drag act. I haven’t just minced on to the stage and said, ‘Ooh I’ve got the willies up me.’ Please, give me a little bit of credit.
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