I Am What I Am by John Barrowman (white hot kiss .TXT) 📕

looked like it was seriously ill when he was finished.

9 Sounds like a Monty Python skit: ‘Fool the Luftwaffe and win the comfy cushion.’

10 And whisky.

11 Oh, it was a requirement. No options, no gimmies, no mulligans.

12 Shameless plug: if the Scottish slang is throwing you, pick up my first book, Anything Goes, for clarification.

13 Yvonne and Bridgett’s name for me.

14 Sounds like some really bad Tolkien ritual.

15 Scottish potatoes – watered with Irn-Bru.

16 For some reason, my dad and his brothers called their mother by her first name.

17 If you’ve ever stood at a Glasgow bus stop on a Saturday night, you’ve met him.

18 Usually about bums or farting.

19 My Uncle Charlie died in 2001 and, sadly, no one’s seen Wee Jimmy since.

20 I didn’t say there wouldn’t be any political rants at all.

21 Kidding.

22 If you really squinted your eyes and used your imagination.

23 It was a deeply spiritual evening.

24 Happens all the time in Labour and Delivery, I’m told.

25 My dad was only seven when war was declared.

26 I know … that should have been a clue.

27 His bunion.

28 Andrew thought a brothel was a soup kitchen where tasty broths were served.

TABLE TALK #1

1 I lied, as you’ll discover.

2 An important detail for later.

3 Snore.

4 I loved this eighties version of Brideshead Revisited.

5 She should use them when she’s marking students’ papers, don’t you think?

6 Huge, drooling sigh.

7 I was being helpful; it’s not about being in control.

8 Afterwards, I decided she was probably younger than Carole, who, I must add swiftly under pain of death, is absolutely nowhere near ‘auld woman’ status.

9 There’s something to the cliché ‘don’t judge a book by its cover’ after all.

10 Of course I did the sound effects.

CHAPTER THREE

1 Scott loves to play ‘Doctor’.

2 Technical term for a small electronic explosive, not to be confused with a squid – which is neither small nor explosive.

3 Thanks, Danny!

4 Bet you were hoping for something naughty?

5 Okay, so maybe only three or four. It just seemed like a lot.

6 Which you can see played out on YouTube.

7 Think about it in Scottish as you say it phonetically.

8 Their ‘clinging’ was well within the health-and-safety definition of ‘clinging’. Trust me.

9 Russell usually read the stage directions, and he did so with great gusto.

10 Behave. Nothing kinky about this – well, in this context at least.

11 I’m so not going there!

12 Everyone had a nickname – or two – on Torchwood.

13 Says Molly Ivins, political columnist in the US.

14 Scott appeared to be choking on my word choice so I’ve added ‘professional’.

15 Carole is convinced that some day I’ll be scheduling my shites.

CHAPTER FOUR

1 How Do You Solve a Problem Like Maria?, Any Dream Will Do and I’d Do Anything, if you need to know.

2 It’s easier to find stuff in my notebook.

3 Andrew Lloyd Webber, to be precise.

4 But I’d never yell at John Barryman. I love him!

5 It’s the BBC. No one gets rowdy and everyone drinks bitter lemon and Schweppes tonic water.

6 In the interests of complete disclosure, although the food was tasty, it would never have passed the standards of a real American BBQ.

7 He performed in a number of West End musicals, including Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat.

8 Van Outen, who joined me on the panel for Any Dream Will Do and I’d Do Anything.

9 I can only explain this to those of you over eighteen.

10 I like it in a man, too.

11 I mean this in the US sense of the word, of course.

12 No, I was not born that way!

13 My family still wants to know how to get me to do this.

14 Term I learned from another Mel, Mel Brooks, when I worked with him on The Producers.

15 Fashion tips are free with the purchase of this book.

16 Hot! Hot! Hot!

TABLE TALK #2

1 It’s probably a good thing we hadn’t watched Scarface or The Shining.

2 Turnabout’s fair play, I figure.

3 Insert another evil laugh here.

4 Thank goodness my dad had done his poo chore for the day.

5 Scot is.

6 For a quiet night.

CHAPTER FIVE

1 A Scottish cuddle, not to be confused with a ‘Glasgow kiss’. Ouch.

2 And no, before you ask, I wasn’t cleaning the garage.

3 For those who don’t know, Scott is a fully qualified, creative and very experienced architect – and not just an extreme DIY enthusiast (though there’s a bit of that in him, too).

4 And I do mean years.

5 In 2009, the blue tarp bathroom, like the Berlin Wall, finally came down.

6 Probably a bathroom needing a tarp changed.

7 My mum calls this ‘yammin’. I have no clue as to the origins of this Scottish term.

8 They were not human.

9 You decide which one is which.

10 Both of us!

11 Scott has another name for the cat (and for me) when he recalls this story, so we shall speak no more of it.

12 You may have seen the Tim Curry/Michael Palin version on TV or read the book?

13 Let me clarify for readers under, say, sixty-five. Back in the day, this is what women used to get when they waxed their floors – and you thought a Brazilian hurt.

14 Actually, after a fit of laughing, Carole said both.

TABLE TALK #3

1 You’d be surprised how easy it is to get lost.

2 If Scott’s not around …

3 In truth, there are always cables everywhere.

4 Really not as much fun as it sounds.

5 Notice I’ve said ‘professional’ ’cause I know myself too well.

6 A place where no woman has gone before.

7 Children, cover your eyes.

CHAPTER SIX

1 Puhleeze. In any other context, with my eyes closed.

2 I said ‘went to school on him’. Clean out your ears.

3 Well, new ones anyway.

4 There are still one or two.

5 Young people back in the day really knew how to hurt a kid, didn’t they?

6 If you need this spoiler explained, put the film on your movie rental list and discover the pleasure for yourself.

7 Heard that one, two or twenty times in my career …

8 Really. That’s what we