When your dad is manager of the football team of the town you are growing up in and the team are enjoying a particularly good season, even if you don’t have the slightest interest in football, people presume you are good at it simply for sharing a surname. I didn’t expect to jump over buildings and lasso criminals because I had a Carter in the family tree now, did I?
Simply being called Carr meant that I was genetically modified to be a world-class striker. So whenever I joined a new school and word got round that Alan Carr (‘What? The really camp one with glasses and buck teeth?’ – ‘Yes that’s him’) was the son of Graham Carr, all the lads, even the tough ones, started hanging around me, inviting me round their houses for tea, asking if I wanted to share a cigarette, offering me a backie on their Grifters. My diary was fit to burst. For once in my life, I was in the midst of a social whirl. Well, let’s just say, this was before they saw me on the pitch.
It didn’t get me off to a good start. On Monday morning the PE teacher Jenko – he was Mr Jenkinson, but we could call him Jenko, and I would end up calling him a lot worse by the time I’d left that playing field, I can tell you – said, ‘We have a celebrity’s son with us today,’ and then went and appointed me captain.
‘Oh no, please, there’s been a terrible mistake,’ I wailed. ‘I’d rather just be here on the sub bench.’
‘I’m sure we’ll all be pleasantly surprised,’ boomed Jenko. They were surprised all right, just not in the way they intended. I lost it, whenever I did get the ball, I couldn’t control it, I forgot which end I was meant to be shooting at, and instead of an almighty kick all I could muster was a toe-punt.
Dizzy, I turned round to face them, and they looked at me as if to say, ‘This isn’t what I ordered.’ It was true; instead of being this athletic dynamo nutmegging the opposition, weaving with ease and scoring with flair, I was flailing up and down like Goldie Hawn in Bird on a Wire. I lasted five minutes and as punishment was made to collect the ball from the other side of the dual carriageway – which admittedly I had kicked over there, but not all the way over there, to be fair, it had ricocheted off a woman walking her dog.
I admit sometimes I brought the humiliation on myself, but more often than not it was induced by the PE teachers themselves. Jenko was all right, I suppose. I mean, he wasn’t malicious, he just couldn’t understand why some people were good at sports and others weren’t. Jenko was the final one in a long line of unimpressed PE teachers.
I can cope with unimpressed, but it’s the sadistic ones I find repulsive. It was during my years at the Middle School that I encountered the worst one of the lot. She was Mrs O’Flaherty. God, I hated that woman, and I still do. She hated me, too. There was no love lost when I finally left. She covered for Science, and I remember getting one of my first ever migraines during her lesson. She refused to let me out and I had to sit through a lesson on poly-photosynthesis with a paralysed face and what felt like a tsunami of pain flooding around my brain. I hate it when people say migraines are just ‘headaches but a bit worse’, it really is like saying tuberculosis is a chesty cough – they bloody hurt.
Ooh! I detested that Mrs O’Flaherty. I can still remember those piggy eyes and her bowl haircut: she looked like Joan of Arc – after the fire. Every tennis lesson she partnered me with Matthew, who had learning difficulties, yes learning difficulties, so how was I supposed to improve? Oh, and don’t think I didn’t notice that everyone else had proper professional tennis rackets and proper professional tennis balls, while Matthew and I were given these rackets so large that I swear if we waved them about in the air enough we could have landed a Boeing 747.
To add insult to injury, our balls were made of sponge. All the other lads got to play outside, apart from us. Apparently, according to Mrs O’Flaherty, if she let Matthew and me play outside, our balls would blow away. So we had to stand in the school hall watching the other kids outside, listening enviously to the ‘thwock’ of professional rackets hitting professional balls over professional nets.
Poor old Matthew was simple, bless him. I know you can’t say that nowadays but he was simple, he didn’t know what was going on. But I did! That’s what made it so frustrating. I tried to show him the difference between the others’ tennis balls and our sponge balls, mainly by throwing them at his head – which is wrong, I know, but I get frustrated too, you know. How am I supposed to improve my backhand if I’m demoted to home-helping my opponent? It just wasn’t fair.
Physical Education is the only lesson on the school syllabus where you don’t get any help if you’re no good at it. Physical it is, Education it ain’t. No arm around your shoulder, no comforting word from a teacher, just a great big dollop of contempt and sarcasm. Can you imagine the headlines if little Susie in English couldn’t spell scissors, and so was forced to do an extra lap of the library in her vest and pants and then have her arse whipped with a wet towel? The Daily Mail would have a field day. You can see why kids today don’t want to do exercise and would rather sit at home playing martial arts games on their Nintendo. I wish I’d done that, too – not because I like martial arts, but because the next time Mrs O’Flaherty tried to humiliate me, in one swift Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon style I’d do a body slam, with a nipple twist, and finish it off with a scissor kick – that would show her! I’d be a hero, and all the fat kids would pick me up and carry me around on their morbidly obese shoulders.
My heart goes out to any kids who are, shall we say, athletically challenged. I understand ‘Sport’ now that I’m older; it’s not so much to do with skill and finesse, it’s about Fear. Sliding tackles, scrums, tobogganing, it’s all about being fearless. I definitely wasn’t fearless – no, I had Fear aplenty, Fear and Worry in abundance. One of the reasons for my Fear was the fact that I would read everything, read and read and read – it’s true, ‘Ignorance is bliss’. So when it finally came to starting a game of rugby, all the other boys were imagining running down the field (what’s a rugby pitch called?) and scoring a magnificent try. Meanwhile, I would be remembering that article I read about the bloke who’s a paraplegic due to a hooker falling on his neck. Oh no, not for me, thanks, you go on, boys, you knock yourselves out – how the hell are my glasses going to stay on with a cauliflower ear?
Whether it was me being a chicken-shit or some deeper Darwinian self-preservation thing kicking in, I feared the scrum and all it entailed. I remember Mum pulling my immaculate rugby kit from my bag and accusing me of playing truant. How dare she? I had played rugby. I’d run my little socks off up and down the field. I’d just avoided the muddy bits.
* * *
Overall, though, it takes more than a few isolated moments to dim a wonderful childhood. Yes, we had our ups and downs, but if you’re expecting Alan’s Ashes you’re going to be bitterly disappointed. I haven’t really had much scandal in my life either. Seriously, at one point I was thinking of getting an uncle to interfere with me just so I could add a bit of pathos.
And I grew up in one of the most boring towns in England.
Northampton is famous for shoes and, apart from the Express Lift Tower, a listed building that in certain lights looks like a concrete dildo, its main landmark is the Northampton Boot and Shoe Museum, which we’d get dragged around every other year on a school trip. The museum contains a plaster copy of the shoe of one of the elephants that Hannibal used to climb over the Alps. Need I say more? Just imagine getting a guided tour of a massive Freeman, Hardy & Willis, only shitter.
‘Excuse me,’ I said, taking a replica of one of Marie Antoinette’s shoes off the display and holding it out to the curator, ‘do you have this in a six?’
‘Alan Carr!’ shouted the teacher. ‘Put that back at once!’
With a weary sigh, I replaced the replica. I just wanted to add a bit of sparkle. Was that a crime?