Loe raamatut: «Look who it is!: My Story»

Chapter One

KICK-OFF!

I remember running and touching a tree, any tree, and then running back to my father and then running to a tree that was a little bit further away and then back to my father and so on. I seemed to have spent my whole childhood breathless, touching trees. If there weren’t trees available, Dad would bring bollards. There would be no escape from the tree touching.

Whilst I was running I would see all the other kids in the park having a kick-around, taking it in turns to be in goal, playing keepy-uppy, their playful laughter and squeals of joy slowly being drowned out by Dad’s ‘One, two, three, four! Quicker! You fat fairy!’ from the other side of the park. He would shout using the same booming voice with just a hint of Geordie that he used every Saturday on the touchline to his own players. I would see them try to shout back, only to be blasted again with that voice, the fools. It would be like arguing with a hand-dryer.

I first started running to try and dislodge some of the puppy fat. It would be just a leisurely run around the fields, nothing too strenuous. Strangely, although I hated sports, I did enjoy running; bounding along the country lanes seemed to clear my head and sharpen my mind. I remember running after school around a field at the back of my house, and as I approached the winning line, which was in fact an old tree with a dangly branch, who did I spot emerging from behind a bush? Yes, my father, with a stopwatch.

‘That’s 29 minutes, 38 seconds. If you’d pushed yourself a bit harder on that hill, you would have made 28 minutes easy.’

Not only had he been spying on me running, I later found out he had tried to enrol me in the local boys’ running team, the Overstone Phoenixes, without me knowing.

‘What’s the point of running if you’re not up against someone?’ he would say. ‘There’s no point, Alan, if there’s no challenge!’

I was a twelve-year-old spectacle wearer with a weight problem. The only challenge I had was finding sports shorts with an elasticated waist. As my father would tell me, football wasn’t about scoring goals, it was about discipline and fitness.

‘Alan, see those kids over there?’

‘What, the ones laughing and having fun?’

‘They’ll never be any good because they’re just kicking the ball about. We’re getting your thighs built up, so they will protect your knees and you won’t get arthritis in later life.’

Dad sure knew how to inject a bit of fun into the proceedings. Arthritis prevention, anyone? Apparently, if I followed Dad’s exercise routine and did the relevant amount of sit-ups every day, not only would I become a top professional footballer, I would be an athlete, an Adonis, from the top of my waxed Mohican down to the gold studs on the soles of my (limited edition) Adidas football boots. Well, that was the plan anyway.

I know what you’re thinking: ‘If you were forced to do so much exercise, how come you’re so fat?’ Well, for a start it’s my glands and, to be frank, Dad put me off playing football. Obviously, I realise you have to do the groundwork, and put the effort in to succeed at your chosen field, but what he didn’t understand was that a child has to be tempted into it in the first place. It is the exhilaration of scoring a goal that enchants a seven year old, an exhilaration that would then hopefully blossom into a career. No one becomes a pilot because they’d enjoyed an in-flight meal; no, they want to fly the bloody thing. My father had inadvertently managed to extract all the fun out of the game for me; on that playing field it was all work, work, work with him.

* * *

It’s been stated in every interview I’ve ever done that my father was a football manager. They write about it as if it’s a punchline to a gag, but it’s true, he has been involved in football all his life and in some respects it is his life, but what people don’t realise is how deep football runs in our family. Almost everyone (well, everyone with a penis) has been a professional footballer at one time or another. Granddad Wilf played for Newcastle United and West Bromwich Albion (if you don’t believe me, his photo is up on the wall as you enter the Hawthorns ground), an uncle played for PSV Eindhoven, cousins and nephews had tryouts at various football clubs up and down the country and of course there was my father, Graham Carr.

If you mention the words ‘Graham Carr’ to a Northamptonian of a certain age, their eyes mist up and a lump appears in their throat – Dad is a local hero. After taking Northampton Town, affectionately nicknamed the Cobblers, from the bottom of the Fourth Division up to the top of the Third Division in the late Eighties (with 103 goals and 99 points in their promotion season, no less), he became literally the talk of the town – just think Alex Ferguson, but on a budget.

Football chants honouring him would echo around the County Ground (Northampton Town Football Club’s home): ‘He’s fat, he’s round, his feet don’t touch the ground, Graham Carr, Graham Carr!’ or my personal favourite, ‘He’s got no hair, but we don’t care, Graham, Graham, Carr, ooh ah!’ I’m sad to say these chants were an apt description of my father. He was fat and round, well, maybe round’s going a bit too far, but he definitely has a bit of a pot belly. He definitely has got no hair. He went bald in his early twenties, something that I am beginning to experience myself. I feel it is only a matter of time before I look in the mirror and see my father looking back.

I don’t care, as long as he’s not shouting out ‘Touch the tree – Fatty!’

Those football chants came from a good place; the fans had a genuine affection for Dad. He had actually played for the Cobblers in the Sixties, their heyday, when they went all the way up from the Fourth Division to the First – and then back down again. He had been popular back then, too. His return as manager was the return of the prodigal son. Complete strangers would approach us as we sauntered around the town centre and take an interest in our lives.

At first the novelty of having people come up to us and say positive things about the Cobblers was nice, but then inevitably they would turn their line of questioning to me.

‘Does he play, Graham?’ they would ask with a nod in my direction or, worse, ruffle my hair and say, ‘What position do you want to play?’

I’d just smile sweetly and watch their face fall when my camp voice trilled, ‘I’m not really into football,’ then carry on listening to the Supremes on my Walkman.

To be honest, I don’t think I’ve got the edge to be a footballer. When I look through Dad’s scrapbooks at some of the newspaper clippings, I see a rock-hard defender – in the thick of the action, fearlessly performing sliding tackles and diving feet first onto some poor opponent’s legs. In fact, old Cobblers fans talk of him in hushed tones, looking over their shoulders cautiously as if he might suddenly burst from the undergrowth and tackle them.

‘He was terrifying alright’, ‘You’d know if your dad had tackled you’, ‘He could take a man down with ease’ – please don’t make your own jokes up. I suppose what I’m calling competitiveness, he’d probably call passion. In terms of sports, he doesn’t understand why anyone would want to do something for fun.

Of course I’d love to be earning £75,000 a week, working two days a week and then spending the rest showing OK! magazine my beautiful mock-Tudor mansion. But you’ve got to remember that when I grew up in the Eighties, football was grim, men in cloth caps with no teeth shouting on terraces and throwing bananas at the black players. It wasn’t the ghetto-fabulous existence that we all know and love today, with the fast cars and Louis Vuitton hand luggage. If I’d known I could have lived that kind of lifestyle, I would have endured my father’s stomach crunches and star jumps. I’d have even touched a few more trees.

One thing that I have been pleased to see, though, is that when it’s cold the Premiership players now wear gloves and leggings. This to me is a personal victory, as I’d proposed these changes at the age of twelve. But did Dad take these pioneering thoughts on board? No, he just said, ‘Only poofs wear leggings.’

To be fair, though, if that competitiveness is the worst aspect of my father, then I’ve been very lucky indeed. I know Dad would get frustrated at my lack of sporting ability, but then again I was shit! Even the kindliest PE teacher would break out in an attack of Tourette’s and start shouting profanities at me. I’ve had a PE teacher snap a hockey stick in frustration at one of my pitiful lobs.

You have to remember, I was the only boy at my Upper School to score an own goal at basketball – look, I got disorientated, and once you’ve seen one basket you’ve seen them all. But at times, I’ll admit, I didn’t really help myself. I remember shouting out at a Northampton Town Football match, ‘He’s behind you!’ instead of ‘Man on!’ It wasn’t deliberate, it’s just that I got carried away. I guess you could say I was being passionate – like my father.

Having a dad in the footballing trade is a bit like having a parent in the army or in the circus: you have to go where the work is. So if there are any children of sergeant majors or bearded ladies reading this, then you’ll know what I mean. I was actually born in Weymouth, Dorset, where Dad had made the leap from player to manager of Weymouth Football Club. To be exact I was born at the Portland Hospital on 14 June 1976. Six pounds ten. I was ‘a beautiful baby boy’. These are my words. I don’t know if anyone called me a beautiful baby boy, but I must have been beautiful at one stage, surely. I didn’t have my glasses or teeth back then, so the odds must be quite good.

I wonder if, as I lay there kicking my little legs in the air in my cot, Dad was imagining little football boots at the end of them and that my little wrinkled hands would be ideal for throw-ins. Mum once told me of when she was heavily pregnant with me and in bed with Dad one night I gave an almighty kick from inside the womb, so hard in Dad’s back that he woke up. It seems I had cruelly raised Dad’s hopes, and I wasn’t even born.

I’ve never been one of those people with a really great memory, and for someone as self-obsessed as me it’s a shame. All those wonderful times when I was the centre of attention gone forever – it’s enough to bring you to tears. In fact, I only have one memory of my first five years, and even that’s a bit shaky because I have been known to absorb stuff off the telly and pass it off as my own life. I remember telling Mum about the time I stopped a woman from having a diamond-encrusted necklace stolen and she said, ‘No, Alan, that was Poirot.’ Then there’s another time when I was with Dad at the seaside in Clacton, sitting on his lap as we slid down a helter-skelter. I remember the sky was blue and cloudless and the squawk of the seagulls made me jump and I cried. Even now I’m not sure whether we were down the tip on a sunny day or watching an episode of Holiday.

My early memories are all seaside-centric. When I try to recollect some of those days, I get little flashbulbs of a Punch and Judy show or the curve of a brightly coloured windbreaker or of myself sitting on the beach sipping a bottle of tea, which apparently was my favourite drink as a toddler.

What I do know is my favourite donkey on Weymouth beach was Pepper and my parents would have to take a detour around the amusements because I would run off into the arcade and lose them among the noise and crowds. They would find me each time in the same motor car clutching the steering wheel.

It can be lovely to hear relations talking about your early years, the sentimentalism tugging on your heart strings, just the act of remembering warming you up.

‘What do you remember about my childhood, Nan?’ I asked recently, all dewy-eyed and expectant.

‘You always jumped in shit!’ she cackled.

Dogshit, donkey shit – any kind of shit, I would just love to step in it. There was one time when my parents had just bought me some brand new shoes from Clark’s. I came out of the shop all excited. Then I spotted some dogshit and without any hesitation jumped in, both feet first. The shoes were so caked they had to be thrown in the bin, which still makes me feel guilty because I realise now how skint my parents were at the time and how they struggled to make ends meet. But why couldn’t Nan talk about my first word or the first time I walked – away from a piece of dogshit?

Other memories bustle for attention. Every morning when I was little, I would stand and look out of the window that overlooked Weymouth beach to watch my father go to work and wave at him as he got into his green Mazda. Sometimes, Dad would say that I would become distracted by the beach, and he would drive round again and again to try to get my attention. My eyes would finally leave what was happening on the beach and reconnect to my father in his car and I would carry on with my waving and he would drive off to work.

For someone who swore that they could never do Dad’s job, our lives have eerily mirrored each other’s. The ridiculous amount of travelling we both do is testament to that. I find it strangely comforting to know that if I’m in some weird village hall performing on the other side of the Pennines, he’ll be somewhere twice as obscure up a mountain watching a football team in the Dordogne.

Funnily enough it was this incessant travel that bonded us: sitting around the dining table we would often discuss in great detail the benefits of the M40 or ask, ‘Have you been on that new flyover yet?’ while Mum’s eyes would slowly glaze over and she’d try to stick her head in the oven. It also took me a while to recognise back then that the moodiness and sharp exchanges we’d get every Friday night weren’t Dad being grumpy, but merely his anxiety about the game the next day. This is pretty similar to me now as anyone who’s had the misfortune to approach me before I go on stage can testify, receiving a glare or a curt ‘leave me alone’ for their troubles.

* * *

Dad was away quite a bit when I was a kid, but that did mean I could spend a lot of time with my mother. Before my brother Gary was born it was often just us two in the house and the bond that usually connects mother and son became that little bit stronger. People say I look more like my mother than my father. Stop! Get that image of Olive from On the Buses out of your head – my mother is an attractive woman, I’ll have you know. One thing that we share is our sense of humour, and growing up I remember the house just being full of laughter. My mother is very much like me when telling a story; she will get to her feet and start mimicking the person, taking on the different characters and voices.

I remember when my father was away at a match, asking my mother how she met him. She says she was sitting in the stands at Dartford Football Club watching a match where Dad was playing. When Dad scored a goal, he ran over to the stand and pulled a moonie at the supporters.

‘What did you think about that?’ I asked her.

‘I thought, “What an idiot!”’

Well, I guess that’s an icebreaker in anyone’s book. Most romances start with a furtive glance across a crowded room, not by exposing yourself to your loved one. Anyway, my mother not only fell in love with that idiot, she married him.

Dad must have been doing something right at Weymouth, because he was asked to become manager of Dartford, so not for the last time in our lives we were on the move. Now when you’re poor, having a beach on your doorstep and bright, delicious sunshine for what felt like 24 hours a day can take the edge off having empty pockets. Dartford sadly didn’t have any of these things going for it; the tunnel is a wonderful man-made phenomenon, admittedly, and the Thames can be a majestic thing up by the Houses of Parliament, but down near Dartford it looked as grey and weary as the people.

As it happens, we weren’t there for long because Dad became manager of Nuneaton Town Football Club, so yet again we were on the move. Dad, Mum and I journeyed up the M1 in the Mazda. We stayed in Northampton instead of Nuneaton due to the fact Dad had played there in the Sixties and thought it would be a nice place to live.