Even when I’m in the comfort of first class, I’m a nervous flyer, keeping myself occupied with music, movies and any other distraction that I can legally embrace from take-off to landing. It’s rarely enough, though. I can count on one hand the number of times I’ve flown when I’ve successfully managed to distract myself so that I haven’t thought about the plane plummeting through the clouds to the ground at 500 miles an hour … and bear in mind I fly a lot. However, one of those rare times of calm was on an American Airlines flight from California to London in 1992, when I was seated next to Dame Shirley Bassey.
‘Dahling,’ she said, in her distinctive drawl, when she noticed how nervous I was, ‘nothing can happen when you’re with Shirl!’ Then she burst into the opening lines from her signature number, ‘Goldfinger’.
The first-class cabin wasn’t busy and by the time the plane reached cruising altitude, she and I were bosom buddies. In the years before 9/11 and the financial troubles the tragedy forced on the aviation industry, American Airlines used to serve caviar in its first-class cabins. An hour or so before we were due to land, Shirl leaned into me and said, ‘Dahling, you know they have to throw the caviar out before landing. They’re not allowed to bring it into the country. Why don’t you go and ask them for what’s left?’
I did, and she and I devoured the remaining caviar and most of the champagne before landing. You might therefore think that my fondness for this particular flight has something to do with how smashed I was when the plane finally landed, or the fact that I’d eaten so much caviar I had gills, but you’d be wrong. My fondness was a direct result of Shirl’s presence, because she’s the woman, the woman with the calming touch.
The RAF had invited me to be part of the Tattoo launch partly because Captain Jack is in the RAF. Additionally, since I have dual nationality in the United States and the UK, they thought I’d be the perfect person to represent the sixtieth anniversary of the US Air Force and the RAF working and fighting together. I must admit I had a couple of personal motives for accepting this particular request out of the hundreds I regularly receive.
First of all, a serious motive. The British Armed Forces in general have allowed homosexuals to serve since 2000, and the RAF in particular has worked in partnership with the gay-rights organization Stonewall to reshape their recruitment strategies to include gays and lesbians. In 2006, I’d won Stonewall’s Entertainer of the Year Award. Their positive association with the RAF factored into my decision to participate that afternoon.
My second reason was way cooler. The launch events for the Tattoo included the opportunity to fly in a Hawk fighter jet, and I’m a man who loves big, fast, loud toys.
Luckily, I get to play with a few on the Torchwood set. After we’d shot the first few episodes of the first series, Burn Gorman, who plays Owen on the show, made it clear that he did not like stunt driving for the team (he’d only ever driven manual cars before, and the sleek Torchwood SUV is an automatic). I couldn’t wait to get my hands on the wheel. Eve Myles, who plays Gwen, thought she’d picked the short straw with this new arrangement, though. She doesn’t like it when I drive too fast – but hey, it’s TV. It needs to look good. Plus, scaring the hell out of her is a side benefit.
When I arrived at the Ministry of Defence base at Salisbury Plain that June morning, a security detail marched over to my car. As I was about to be led away, my sister Carole, who was visiting me at the time, jumped from the back seat to give me a kiss and a hug, which scared the hell out of me. She figured if I were about to plummet to my death at 500 miles an hour, our mum would have wanted her to have said a special goodbye. After prying her fingers from around my neck, I was swept away under the security detail’s watchful guard. To what, I wasn’t sure, but I was convinced that touching wood wasn’t going to help me anymore. In all honesty, I was scared shitless.
The dread had settled in the day before, while I was sitting in my trailer on the Torchwood set. I’d been watching the Hawk fighter jet safety DVD that the RAF had sent me, and when I ejected the disc, my hands were clammy and my mouth was seriously woolly. Last time I’d felt this way was when Janice Dickinson marched toward me backstage at Friday Night with Jonathan Ross.
There were so many bloody things to clip, fasten, touch and not touch. The DVD even pointed out stuff I thought I already knew, like where to put my feet, where not to put my feet, what to do if I had to eject from the plane, and what to do so I didn’t eject prematurely. But the most intimidating piece of advice was how to avoid blocking my oxygen mask with my own vomit. The answer: swallow it.4
For the rest of the day, I walked around the set mumbling all the things I was supposed to remember to do and not to do. My co-stars on Torchwood, Eve and Burn, knew something was seriously wrong when I missed an opportunity to sing a dirty limerick with them during a camera set-up and instead sulked off silently to our artist chairs and sat down. By the time I returned to my flat in Cardiff Bay that night, I was seriously freaked out.
I called my manager Gavin, and told him I would still participate in the launch, but I wasn’t going to fly in the Hawk no matter how fucking fabulous I’d look in the flight suit.
Gavin was quiet for a second and then he said, ‘You know Connie Fisher5 is flying in a Hawk tomorrow too? It seems her grandad was an RAF man during the Second World War and her mum had some connection as well.’
‘Ye bastard!’ I exclaimed, because there was no way Maria was flying high above the hills while Captain Jack was quivering in his boots.
So, despite some rumbling in my lower intestines, I arrived at the RAF base and marched off with my escort to be prepped for the flight. Connie and I were told we’d eventually land at an RAF base in Fairford, Gloucestershire, where at least sixty members of the press were waiting, including photographers and TV journalists, as well as a number of British and American Armed Forces personnel. But before we could even suit up, we had to undergo two hours of medical checks and safety preps.
Then a surprising thing happened. When the tests and preps were over, I felt much, much calmer. Two things helped my mood considerably. The first was that the pilots who were helping Connie and I kit up were so matter-of-fact about the whole experience that I figured they were not planning on dying that day.
The second was that right before the final suit checks, one of the pilots got down on his knees in front of me, pulled out a long hose that ran along the inside of my thigh and blew hard into it. By the time the air was circulating round my G-suit, I wanted to spoon with him.
Two hours later, Connie and I were finally prepped and ready. We stepped out on to the tarmac looking like we should be in Top Gun, but rather the musical version, where I get the hot guy in the uniform and my own fighter jet.
I climbed the portable steps into the gunner compartment, where Squadron Leader Gary Brough fastened me in, reminding me of a few last-minute safety points.
‘Don’t vomit into your oxygen mask.’
‘Check.’
‘Don’t pull the yellow lever prematurely or you’ll die.’
‘Double check.’
We were good to go.
‘Fear lend me wings,’ I mumbled, channelling Clint Eastwood in Where Eagles Dare, one of my dad’s favourite Second World War films. Frankly, any film about the Second World War is a favourite of his.
My dad has advanced degrees in business and engineering, and from 1954 until 1963, he worked at the Rolls-Royce plant in East Kilbride, a town on the south side of Glasgow. He started out working on the Merlin piston engine. He eventually moved to the design shop, where he was part of the team working on the Griffin engine that was originally in the Spitfire, and he worked on the design of the other Avon engines that made millions for Rolls-Royce in the 1950s and 1960s. My dad’s love for and fascination with planes and engines have fuelled my own passion for machines of all kinds, which is why, as I sat in that Hawk with the engines roaring to life beneath me, my eyes started welling up. When he was a young man, my dad would h
ave loved the chance to fly in a plane like this.
After release from the tower, Squadron Leader Brough engaged the throttle and we lurched forward. Through the intercom system in my helmet, he explained, ‘John, the most dangerous time to fly a plane like this is at take-off and during the few minutes in the air before we reach our cruising altitude.’
‘Okay,’ I replied, my pulse quickening once again.
‘If we need to abort before take-off, I’ll yell “abort” and you need to slam both your feet on the brakes. Okay?’
‘Okay,’ I replied, my heart now lodged securely in my throat.
‘Finally, John, if we need to abort when we’re in the air, I’ll yell “eject”, but if that happens, you need to pull the yellow lever immediately. Don’t wait for me, because if you look up and I’m already gone, it’ll be too late. Got that?’
‘Got it,’ I rasped, my hand immediately gripping the yellow lever.
‘Good man. Now, would you like to taxi this bird?’
‘Thought you’d never ask,’ I croaked.
The rudder pedals were at my feet and they were surprisingly fluid. I taxied the plane for a hundred yards or so6 until we got the go-ahead to fly. When we lifted off the ground, Connie’s plane was directly next to us and we rose into the clouds side by side, a duet of the finest kind.
At 15,000 feet, the Hawk was in cruise mode, and the risk of an aborted flight was now minimal. I unclenched my butt cheeks, and turned my head to ease my knotted neck muscles.
‘John, are you interested in a civilian flight or a pilot’s flight?’
I hesitated for only a beat. ‘A pilot’s flight.’
With my permission, the pilot banked the plane and we flew under and then over Connie’s Hawk, eventually flipping upside down so that I was looking down on Connie. We could almost touch each other through our respective cockpits. The planes then swooped, banked, dived, flipped and soared, as they replicated fighter manoeuvres above the British countryside.
Our flight path took us along the southern coast of England to Cornwall, and then over the city of London. I was in awe of Gary’s skill and the majesty of what I was seeing beneath us. A number of times, he pulled the plane completely vertical, and with the pressure from the G-forces pinning me hard against the seat, I could see the curve of the Earth. Fighter jets aren’t allowed to fly over villages of a certain population in the UK, and so every time one loomed on the horizon, the pilot zigzagged around them, as if we were the Millennium Falcon cutting into the Death Star and I was Han Solo.
Of course, puking was inevitable. The aerial acrobatics with their resulting G-forces finally did me in. I could no longer control my rising nausea. Like most virgin flyers, I had actually paid attention to the safety instructions and with very little fumbling I managed to get my oxygen mask off in time, vomiting neatly into one of the sick bags supplied in my flight-suit pocket.
‘Are you okay, John?’
‘I’m brilliant,’ I replied, and I really meant it.
Meanwhile, miles away, two other fighter jets had landed at Fairford to whet the press’s appetite, followed quickly by a huge pug-nosed carrier. Finally, everyone looked up into the clear blue June sky and waited for the stars to appear.
When Connie and I finally streaked across the sky, we were once again flying in unison. Our Hawks banked at about 400 miles an hour, their wing tips almost touching, and then they crossed the sky from separate directions, touching down smoothly and safely.
I eventually emerged from the Hawk as if I’d been doing this all my life, which in Captain Jack’s world, of course, I had. In my world, though, this was the experience of a lifetime. In fact, I was so high from the adrenalin rush and so in awe of the Hawk itself, I was almost speechless.7
Despite my best intentions, I did finally crash that day. After all the interviews were completed, I changed back into my civvies, climbed into my car, and collapsed. I was physically a wreck. My equilibrium was shot. I couldn’t hold my head up without tidal waves of nausea washing over me. My complexion turned Daz white with a hint of Palmolive green under my eyes, and because of the G-forces my chest and legs felt as if they’d been pummelled with a baseball bat. To make matters worse, the drive back to Cardiff was through narrow, winding country roads, where trying to keep perfectly still was like asking George Michael to stay out of public toilets. Not going to happen.
Yet if I was ever asked to do this again – in fact, if I was ever asked to repeat any of my experiences – I’d have to say, fuck it, bring them on. I’ve no regrets.
This is what it means to be alive.
‘Journey of a Lifetime’
My favourite novel when I was a young teenager was S. E. Hinton’s The Outsiders. The novel opens with the narrator, Ponyboy Curtis, saying, ‘When I stepped out into the bright sunlight from the darkness of the movie house, I had only two things on my mind: Paul Newman and a ride home.’ When I was Ponyboy’s age, I actually had three things on my mind: a love for all things Star Wars, becoming an American boy, and an infatuation with the television show Dallas.
In a curious way, all three were related, each one a result of my dad choosing to accept an executive position in America with Caterpillar Inc. in 1976, when I was nine. Although I didn’t realize it at the time, I can see now that each one of those youthful passions represented a piece of the man I was to become.
I was ten years old when Star Wars was first released. As it was for many boys of my generation, the film became one of a handful of defining cultural moments. I collected Star Wars figures, Star Wars ships, Star Wars books, and other bits and bobs from the Star Wars universe. I had Star Wars curtains in my bedroom, Star Wars sheets on my bed, every Star Wars action figure I could get my hands on and, of course, my very own lightsaber. When I wasn’t playing with my figures, I stored them in their assigned compartments in the official Darth Vader Carry Case, which I kept on a shelf next to my model X-Wing Starfighter and my full size Tauntaun. I could, and still can, quote the exact classic line Boba Fett says in Episode V – ’He’s no good to me dead’ – tell the difference between a Sandcrawler and a Landspeeder, and deduce that the acronym TIE, as in TIE Fighter, stands for Twin Ion Engine. And like any true Star Wars geek, I got tongue-tied when I had the chance to talk to the Force himself, George Lucas.
The opportunity arose when I was performing at the Cannes Film Festival in 2003. I was there as part of the promotion and premiere of the biopic of Cole Porter’s life, De-Lovely, which starred Ashley Judd and Kevin Kline. I had a few lines in the movie, but along with a number of other musical performers, including Robbie Williams, Alanis Morissette, Sheryl Crow, Natalie Cole and Elvis Costello, I also performed a Porter song in the biopic, in my case it was ‘Night and Day’. At one of the many Cannes parties, I found myself literally speechless as I stood with a glass of champagne in one hand and my jaw in the other, trying to sound like a grown-up having a conversation with George.1 Now to be playing a character like Captain Jack, who’s part of a similarly iconic cultural phenomenon is, to say the very least, a bit mind-blowing to contemplate sometimes.
My family’s permanent move to America in 1976 was not our first time in the US. When I was three, in 1970–1, Caterpillar, where my dad now worked, transferred him to Aurora, Illinois, for a year’s stint. My dad kept a journal of this entire year, and many of the experiences we had as a family were detailed in the pages of that book (which came in handy when I came to write this one). Back then, my parents embraced the trip as an educational experience, a sort of ‘Barrowmans’ Excellent Adventure’, but with much better diction, dude. Whenever my dad managed to get an extra Friday or a Monday off work, we’d pile into the leased station wagon, a wide berth woody,2 and we’d take advantage of the long weekend to explore the country. On each trip, my parents extended the range in different directions, covering territory that many of our neighbours in Aurora had never ventured into – which I think may be typical if you live in a city with a tourist economy. H
ow many of my colleagues in Cardiff have actually been inside Cardiff Castle? Gareth?3 No? It’s a date, then.
One weekend during Barrowmans’ Excellent Adventure, we found ourselves in the Motor City: Detroit, Michigan. We were all so busy gawking out the wagon’s windows at the tall buildings, like refugees from Planet Lame, that my dad didn’t realize he was driving at 5 miles an hour and holding up the traffic until he spotted flashing lights in his rear-view mirror. A cop pulled us over. Now when I say cop, I mean cop. This was not a police officer, but a true-blue, American city cop in all his lovely leather motorcycle glory. My dad weaved over to the kerb amidst a cacophony of car horns and raised middle fingers from drivers accelerating around us. Carole, Andrew and I pressed our faces against the back window, amazed and slightly terrified.
The cop pulled up directly to our rear. He touched his fingers to his forehead in a mock salute, grinned, and slowly unzipped his leather bomber jacket, exposing his black T-shirt straining tight against the line of his abs, the weight of his gun belt sitting on the edge of his muscular hips. He carefully removed his helmet.4
‘John, we’re going to get a ticket,’ said my mum to my dad.
‘No, we won’t. Let me talk,’ said my dad to my mum.
The cop stepped up to the driver’s window.
‘You’re driving a bit erratically, sir. Is everything okay?’
‘Officer, I’m sorry if we were holding up traffic, but I think we’re lost,’ replied my dad, in a Glaswegian accent so broad Billy Connolly would’ve barely understood.
‘Well, goddamn, sir! You really are lost.’
We did not get a ticket. What we got instead was our own personal motorcycle escort guiding us back to the motorway.
Then there was the weekend my dad borrowed a friend’s RV pop-up trailer, the kind of camper that’s quintessentially American, so we could take a trip deeper into the Midwest, in particular to Springfield, Illinois, the state’s capital. The camper was one of those toppers that hooked over the cab of a truck, where my parents sat, and it was fitted with a double bed over the cab, where Carole, Andrew and I stretched out in glorious but dangerous accommodations. Seriously, think what would have happened if every family in the 1950s through the 1970s had to stop suddenly. No seat belts, no air bags, no children’s faces …