Kennedy Center Honors

Kander and Ebb were being honored at the 1998 Kennedy Center Honors and I was asked to take part in the presentation in their honor, directed by Rob Marshall. It was me, Joel Grey, Bebe Neuwirth, Chita Rivera and Liza Minnelli! Not bad company!

I felt completely out of my depth.  I remember in rehearsals Liza trying to teach me how to do that funny shoulder thing she does in New York, New York (which was the finale of the presentation) and not being able to grasp it and Liza saying 'Oh darling, just make it your own!'

I was still performing Cabaret on Broadway and they wouldn't let me have the Sunday matinee off so I had to rush to the airport right after the show and fly to D.C. and of course I missed the plane I was supposed to get, so by the time I got there I was late and there were Secret Service men waiting to get me when the plane door opened.  I was driven so fast, in a car with a siren on top of it, and drivers were literally driving off the road to get out of our way as we passed. The thing is you have to get into a building before the president arrives cos once he gets there the doors are all locked. I was opening the entire show so it was kind of important to get me there that fast! We made it in the nick of time, but the entire experience was utterly surreal.

Afterwards at the party I met Henry Kissinger and we had our picture taken. I had it made into a christmas card and it said 'Love and Peace, Love Alan and Henry'!

Talk shows

Here is a reel of interviews and appearances about Cabaret, on CNN Showbiz Tonight, NY1, The Late Show with David Letterman, Fox's Judith Regan Show (my Mum appears!) and the Rosie O'Donnell show, which had to have a PG rating because of our performance of Wilkommen!! And finally CBS' Morning Show.

Also there is the Broadway Beat special on the show.

Also here's me discussing my experiences in Cabaret with Charlie Rose...

And here is Launching the Tony's 98

Talk shows/awards

I went on Light Lunch and 5's Company to talk about the Spice Girls movie, amongst other things, then here I am on Mariella Frostrup's show to promote Romy and Michele's High School Reunion.

Next, I popped over the Irish Sea to Belfast to appear on Kenny Live, then I gave a gong to the lovely Judi Dench at the Scottish BAFTAs and rounded up the year with an appearance on This Morning, which showed a clip of Forbes Masson and I guesting on the show in 1995 as our flight attendants from The High Life.

Finally a short-lived MTV talk show Oddville.

The Travel Show: Palm Springs

In a gap from shooting Romy and Michele's High School Reunion in Los Angeles, I went with my then girlfriend, Saffron Burrows, to Palm Springs to shoot a report for the BBC Travel Show.

The Travel Show: Hong Kong

The BBC asked me to go to Hong Kong with a bunch of travel agents and report back for their Travel Show.

Have I Got News For You

This was one of the first of these sort of celeby game shows I had ever done and I remember being very nervous. Also these shows are always quite scary because you feel you have to spend the entire week leading up to them committing to memory every morcel of every newspaper as though you are studying for your finals at university.

I was also very excited because Dolce and Gabbana had sent me a suit to wear.

I had worked with Paul Merton at various benefits and shows when he was doing his stand up act and I was doing Victor and Barry. He is really nice and very funny

Talk shows/awards

I appeared on Pebble Mill to talk to Ross King about Comic Relief, gave a gong at the Scottish BAFTAs, gave the Costume Design award at the BAFTAs, and popped into Scottish Television to talk about Goldeneye.

Lee Jeans commercial

I was a Lee Jeans boy!! My friend Paul Weiland directed this.

He had previously directed me in the BBC film Bernard and the Genie, and shortly after he came to see me in a play in London, La Bete. We walked to our cars and he was driving a swanky BMW and I was in my beaten up Citroen 2CV. I think he felt sorry for this starving artist and so put me in several of his commercials over the next few years. Bless him!

Victor and Barry - In The scud

Victor and Barry's swan song was entitled In The Scud, which is a Scottish phrase meaning naked.  And so Victor and Barry were bearing their souls and selves one last time for their fans.  Forbes and I worked really hard on the script for this show with our friend Ashtar Alkhirsan, and in one of the previews at the Tron theatre in Glasgow Ashtar actually appeared as Victor, wearing Jimmy Somerville's motorbike helmet which we had borrowed from him! Don't ask! Suffice to say that the reason she was impersonating Victor was that Forbes was getting ready to re-enter as one of Victor and Barry's female friends.  The scene was cut when we did the show the next night in Cumbernauld, and Jimmy's helmet was returned.

We went on to perform In The Scud at the Assembly Rooms in Edinburgh during the Fringe festival and then took it to the Kings Theatre in Glasgow before taking it to the Perrier Pick of the Fringe season later in the year where we performed a short run of a version of the show at the Purcell Rooms on the South Bank in London.

Scottish Power commercials

Forbes Masson and I did a whole series of commercials as various characters from history for Scottish Power.  This was the first one.

I remember finding it galling that the budget for these commercials was many times larger than the budget for Prague, which I was about to shoot next.

But I did get paid more money than I ever had in my life.