Alan Carr: Being trolled by people backing Caroline’s Law made me delete Twitter

Alan Carr made a big life decision a couple of months back.

The 43-year-old comedian – who was born in Weymouth but spent most of his childhood in Northampton – had five million followers on Twitter. But following the death of TV presenter Caroline Flack, who took her own life in February, he deleted his account.

“When you first get abuse on Twitter, you’re like, ‘Why are you saying that?!’” gasps the animated star.

“And then I found I was just scrolling past it. [The tweets said] ‘You should die’, ‘I hate you’, ‘I wish you were dead’, and I thought, ‘This is no way of living’.

“The last bit I got, it was quite inane, just ‘You’re s***’ or something like that.

“And then I looked at the person’s timeline and they’d just signed Caroline’s Law about how she feels like the media should be a bit nicer [following Flack’s death], and I just thought, ‘Well, what the f*** am I doing on this s***** app anyway?’ I thought, ‘It just affects my mental health’.”

Now a well-known face around the nation, Carr initially made his name for himself on the comedy circuit after previously working in call centres and factory work.

He worked his way up the comedy ladder to selling out arenas but has previously said that one of his favourite venues is City Varieties, in Leeds – partly because it where the likes of Houdini and Laurel and Hardy and Chaplin have also performed.

As well as not being afraid to talk candidly, down-to-earth Carr is a fun interviewee.

He has all of us journalists howling with laughter, especially when he lets out his own infectious cackle.

It probably helps that the interview took place before lockdown started, so we were able to chat about his latest project  in person rather than over video call. His new Saturday night series for ITV is called Epic Gameshow and features five of the country’s all-time TV quiz favourites – Play Your Cards Right, Take Your Pick, Strike It Lucky, Bullseye, and The Price Is Right – rebooted with a different format featured in each episode.

The six-part series kicks off with a celebrity special of Play Your Cards Right, starring Ore Oduba, Portia Oduba, Eamonn Holmes, Ruth Langsford, Rosie Ramsey, Chris Ramsey, Martine McCutcheon and Jack McManus.

Carr says he knows if he has done something below standard and doesn’t need social media feedback to tell him.

But he says this new programme doesn’t fall into that category.

“I’m really confident with Epic Gameshow. It will be really good.”

Carr, who married long-term boyfriend Paul Drayton in 2018, is hoping that one of the gameshows gets commissioned for its own full series.

“I’d love Play Your Cards Right. The audience were just going crazy for that.

“It is just turning the cards over, I know it’s so simple, but it just works.”

Each of the retro programmes has been updated for modern audiences with a new, exciting endgame; in fact, Carr describes part four of each episode of Epic Gameshow as “mental”.

“It all goes like steroids… it just gets supersized and the prize money is like £50,000. You know, big prizes!

“Some of these people are expecting a kid, they’re newlyweds, so the casting is brilliant. Your heart really goes out to them.”

Play Your Cards Right, which first aired in the Eighties, was memorably presented by Sir Bruce Forsyth, who died in August 2017 aged 89 (he also hosted The Price Is Right in the Nineties).

Is it worrying for Carr to be stepping into Sir Bruce’s shoes?

“Well, it is really. It’s so in your bloodstream, in your DNA, that I found myself going, ‘Good game, good game, didn’t they do well?’” (Carr’s impression of Forsyth is brilliant, by the way).

“And then you’re like, ‘Oh no, not only are you doing his show, you’re taking the mickey out of him, and he’s died!’

“But that’s not you being rude, it’s just because we’ve all watched him.

“I feel like the rose-tinted glasses are going to help me, in a way.

“People are going to start going, ‘Oh Brucie’, but, go back and watch some of the older ones, and I think you’ll be surprised, and you’ll see they’re better for getting rid of some of the casual sexism and racism. You know, it might be a bit better.”

Asked if he ever met Sir Bruce, Carr reveals that the beloved entertainer was the first ever guest on Chatty Man, which ran on Channel 4 from 2009 until 2016.

“Then during the week, the phone rang, didn’t recognise the number, I thought it was PPI, didn’t pick up.

“And then he’s like, ‘Hello Alan, I loved being on Chatty Man, you’ve got a hit on your hands there’.

“I was like ‘Oh my god!’ I couldn’t believe it.

“And I kept it [the voicemail] on my phone until I lost my phone. So, he’s sort of been a bit of a lucky charm for me.”

Pondering whether he misses hosting a chat show, he sounds genuinely unsure of how he feels.

“I do, and I don’t. I see people like [American rapper] Cardi B, and I’m like, ‘Oh my god, I would love to have her on Chatty Man!’

“But, when you’re doing a chat show, you’re always up against Graham Norton, who has the pick of the best – and then you’ve just got to really hope and pray that people have a good time.

“But, you know, sometimes you had crap weeks, sometimes you had good weeks. It was Justin Bieber, Bradley Cooper, Lady Gaga on one week! That’s amazing.”

Encouraging us to give our opinion, he adds thoughtfully: “I don’t know… the chat show, is that still going?

“No-one wants to talk anymore. As a format, does it work?”

Well, one show which definitely does work is RuPaul’s Drag Race.

The UK version aired on BBC Three last year and proved to be such a massive hit that it’s returning for a second series.

Carr was a rotating resident judge (sharing the role with Graham Norton), joining RuPaul, Michelle Visage and various celebrity guest judges on the panel of the reality show, in which drag queens compete against each other in various challenges.

“It’s just nice, isn’t it – everyone’s excited about it.

“And everyone was so negative before it even started, I was like, ‘You idiots, you’re going to be eating your words’.

“I just thought the girls were just so down to earth.”

He admits he did have his own worries that the show wouldn’t take off.

“It’s like with these gameshows; I’m like, ‘Oh god, if it dies a death, it’s because of me’,” he quips.

“But Michelle Visage says they’ve had double the applicants for this series, so I think it’s going to go up a gear.”

Epic Gameshow starts on ITV on Saturday, May 30.

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