The comedian brings his ‘Regional Trinket’ tour to New Zealand this month and in his only NZ interview tells us about: what he plans to get up to in Aotearoa, his life after divorce and bonding with Graham Norton.
Alan Carr’s ‘Regional Trinket’ tour arrives in New Zealand this month. It’s been six years since the chatty man last visited our shores.
“I couldn’t believe Christchurch when I went there,” he tells us. “Still not sorted out after the earthquakes, it was heartbreaking.”
A lot has changed for both Christchurch and Carr in the time he has been away.
In 2018, two years after the ‘Yap, Yap, Yap’ tour that brought him to NZ, Carr married long-term partner Paul Drayton, in a lavish ceremony in Adele’s back garden in Los Angeles. Yes, ‘the’ Adele – who became a celebrant, just so she could marry them, and paid for the wedding too!
But fairytale beginnings don’t guarantee a fairytale ending. Drayton, who had struggles with alcoholism, fell from the sobriety wagon during Lockdown in disturbing fashion.
In August 2021, British tabloids went into a frenzy after Drayton posted a picture on Instagram with a black eye, claiming the two ‘had a row.’ He deleted the photo shortly after and publicly apologised for suggesting Carr had hit him, but the damage to their relationship was done.
Three months later Drayton was in court pleading guilty to drink driving with over four-times the legal limit of alcohol in his bloodstream. In January 2022, the two would publicly announce they were divorcing.
So it comes as no surprise when Carr tells us that ‘Regional Trinket’, his first tour post-divorce, is ‘very personal.’
“I wrote the show in 2020. It was all about getting married, living on a farm and falling in love with a farmer but then like a lot of people in Lockdown, I went ‘why the hell am I in this relationship? Why am I living here?’ A lot of self analysis and then the marriage broke down.”
Already touring ‘Regional Trinket’ in the UK, Carr knew he needed to change its content as it was no longer authentic.
“So I just wrote it really quickly. Opened my heart, wrote it all down on paper… It was nerve racking because I was actually writing it in real time. Because as I was touring, he got arrested for drunk driving. He went to prison … Journalists were coming into the show, writing it all down, just waiting for little snippets of stuff and taking everything out of context for clickbait. So, it’s been a very odd experience. But the show’s better for it – it’s more raw,” he explains.
As with most stars going through personal issues in the spotlight, Carr is weary of journalists twisting stories to enforce their own narrative.
He tells us about a recent interview where the journalist, “was basically trying to get me to say I’d had a breakdown. I didn’t have a breakdown. I love it that people can talk about that sort of thing now, and there’s no shame in having a breakdown but I just haven’t had one. I just get on with work, that’s how I get through it. I might have one next year. But for now I just get on with it.”
I bit of googling highlights the interview eventually ran with the title: ‘Alan Carr says comedy probably saved him from a breakdown after divorce,’ so it’s unsurprising that when I ask if Adele (who herself divorced on 2021) has given Carr any advice on separation, he’s having none of it.
“No, we’re not going to have any clickbait about Adele, thank you very much! One sentence about Adele and it’s ‘oh my God, Alan’s talking about Adele again!”
He delivers his refusal with a knowing eye-roll and smirk. It helps that I have interviewed him before and am laughing out loud at being caught out. I make no attempt to bring up Adele again.
“No one has told me anything really,” says Carr, returning to my question of wise words people might have given him. “I’m just soldiering on right now.”
Carr certainly feels a lot less carefree than last time we spoke, but that can be said of many people since the pandemic. “It’s just always been one of those shitty old years,” he reflects.
“Somebody did say to me, ‘you’ve got to go home at some point,’” he says in a sombre tone, reflecting that between the tour, his show Interior Design Masters, judging on RuPaul’s Drag Race UK and filming an additional design show with Britain’s Got Talent judge Amanda Holden, he has been ‘throwing myself into my work’, avoiding home, post-divorce and the passing of his beloved dog, Bev.
“I need to get that out there,” he concludes, leading me on to the question of how, after 13 years in a relationship, he is adjusting to being a single man again?
“Oh God, I’m terrified!” He exclaims candidly. “I don’t know about all these apps, Grindr and all that, and then we’ve got Monkeypox! I know people think COVID is a conspiracy but I mean as soon as I get single, we get Monkeypox! I think that’s a conspiracy.”
“I’m just enjoying being by myself now. I mean, no one has slid into my DMs!” He concludes.
I assure him they will.
“No, they won’t,” he counters. “But you know what’s nice. Last time I came over to Australia and New Zealand, it was Winter and I was happily married. Now it’s Summer and I’m single, so I’m gonna be a slut!”
Until his tour arrives on our shores, Carr can be seen as a presenter on Interior Design Masters (a new season has just been filmed) and as a judge on RuPaul’s Drag Race UK Season 4, which has been getting rave reviews.
“Myself, Graham (Norton) Michelle (Visage) and Ru, we all said when we filmed the last episode, ‘this might be the best one yet.’ It felt special. They all bought it,” he tells us before confessing, “we were worried when the show was commissioned, because the UK is a very small place. Are we going to run out a drag? Am I going to have to get a blonde wig on? I don’t know where they found them all, but they are really good!”
He confirms that the show is as much fun to film as it looks, and, “it’s nice at the finale when I finally get to work with Graham because we alternate and I thought I might never get to see him,” adding, “there are some notes passed in between episodes!”
Graham Norton and Alan Carr have enjoyed similar careers. Openly gay comedians who were offered chat shows after making a name for themselves in standup. It had even been suggested the two were rivals when their respective shows were both screened on Friday nights (in the UK) on competing networks.
Alan assures us the two have been ‘friends for ages,’ before pointing out, “isn’t great in the UK that you can have two gay chat show hosts, on the same time. They couldn’t do that in America!”
Drag Race has given Graham and Alan even more to bond over as the two attempt to select the most eye-catching suits to wear on the judges panel.
“It’s not the show that you just think, ‘Oh, I’ll put a cardigan on,’ you have to bring it! We laugh about it because, we’ll be shopping and we’ll see a suit and go ‘oh my god, that’s so disgusting. I must buy it for Drag Race!’”
“I got to keep all my clothes from Chatty Man and I think Graham does as well, so he’s got a never ending supply, but you really have to delve deep into the back of the wardrobe to find tassels, glitter and disgusting broaches. Then you’re judging these drag queens who are these amazing seamstresses and I’m wearing a packet of Star Burst and busting out of my ill-fitting suit giving fashion advice!” He laughs.
It’s been a journey of ups and downs, but for Carr life is about to go full circle, as he is halfway through writing a sitcom about his childhood, growing up with a gruff football manager father.
Despite everything he’s been through in recent years, Carr still applies his signature self-deprecating humour as he tells us about the audition process to find an actor to play himself as a child.
“Trying to find a young Alan for the sitcom was very traumatic! Watching 400 videos of kids trying to be me. I mean, some of them were cute, but some of them were downright offensive!” He confides with a laugh.
Alan Carr’s ‘Regional Trinket’ tour play’s Christchurch’s Issac Theatre Royal on 23 November, Auckland’s Aotea Centre on 24 November and Wellington’s Michael Fowler Centre on 26 November. Tickets from Ticketek, Ticketmaster and alancarr.net
