I Am What I Am, John Barrowman [smart ebook reader .txt] 📗

of people. My Papa Butler was the Match Secretary of Shettleston Junior Football Club, so a number of the players – who were also relatives of my dad’s – would hang out at the Butler house. They all knew Andy Butler’s ‘bonnie lass’, Marion.

Mum was one of the children evacuated from Glasgow during the air raids. When she’d tell Carole, Andrew and me stories about what it was like for her growing up during the war, I always imagined her as one of the children in Bedknobs and Broomsticks, doing her part for the war effort with a broom.7

Like many children of her generation, she never tasted a banana until after the war was over. Toys were scarce. My mum remembers the first doll she was ever given as a present – it was made of china and had real hair. One day, a neighbour’s dog got hold of the doll and tore out all its lovely locks. A family friend tried to paint them back on, hoping my mum wouldn’t notice.8 I think one of the reasons Carole and my niece, Clare, had so many dolls when they were growing up was because my mum only ever had one. She bought her daughter and granddaughter all the dolls she would have loved to have played with when she was wee.

During the war, my Papa Butler was the team leader for his local Air Raid Patrol. This meant that when the sirens sounded, he would don his dark overcoat and cap and head out into the night to make sure no slivers of light could be seen at any of his neighbours’ windows. One night, he was nearly blown up when he discovered a house on Amulree Street, Sandyhills, with an unexploded bomb in the front garden. He roused the family and got them to safety before the bomb exploded.

When I was filming the season-two Torchwood episode ‘Captain Jack Harkness’, in which Tosh and Jack are sitting out an air raid in the basement of a Cardiff dance hall, I thought of my papa and what it must have been like for him to live through air raids as a regular occurrence.

Air raids sometimes lasted for nights on end. By far the most famous of them all – in our area, at least – was the three-day bombing attack on the Clyde docks and shipyards. The lights were off at the shipyards, of course, but the river ran parallel to the main road. During those three nights, it was raining heavily, and according to my dad, who was only a child at the time, but who knows his WWII, the reflection of the rain and the lights of the road confused the Luftwaffe.9 They bombed the highway instead.

For his day job, my Papa Butler was a machine-shop foreman in Stewarts & Lloyds Steel Tube Works, where they made artillery gun barrels, and Murn and her sister, my Auntie Jeannie, worked in the munitions at Turner Manufacturing, making aircraft parts and bomb casings.

Both of my grandpas, like many of our grandparents during that time, worked for the war effort in whatever way they could if they were too old or had other health issues and couldn’t fight.

My Papa Barrowman (John) was a bus conductor and then a ticket collector in the Glasgow underground at St Enoch Station, while my Gran Barrowman (Emily) was an insurance agent during the war, looking after the business for the owner, who was in the RAF. Afterwards, she managed her father’s snooker hall in Parkhead; she was an accomplished snooker player herself.

Interestingly, the fob watch that Captain Jack wears is actually my Papa Barrowman’s watch, given to him upon his retirement, so part of him is with me every day I’m on set.

The Barrowmans and the Butlers all loved to tell stories. I believe it has something to do with our Scottish sensibility. After all, even Rabbie Burns would sit round the cottage fire on a Saturday night and tell a tale or two. Before we emigrated to the States, the Barrowmans would gather for family celebrations and holiday get-togethers, and this Scottish sensibility10 would keep everyone in stitches.

Every Christmas Eve, my dad and his brothers (Neil, Charlie and Alex), their wives (Lottie, Jean and Dorothy), and all my cousins would assemble for an annual family Christmas party. Each brother and his wife would take a turn as host and, without fail, every year my Uncle Charlie would mysteriously disappear directly after dinner. Within an hour of his vanishing, one of my aunts would yell to the kids from the front window that she could see Santa coming down the street. We’d all scramble to see and, sure enough, there he was – can you believe it? – carrying a sack full of presents.

The other annual Barrowman party was steak pie dinner on New Year’s Day at Gran Barrowman’s flat in Springboig. It was required that every child and adult have a party piece to share.

For some families, this requirement11 would seem like a fate worse than death. Not so for the Barrowman clan. We looked forward to planning our party pieces in the days beforehand just as much as we looked forward to performing them. This excited anticipation was so fervent, in fact, that, in order to stop arguments about who would go first, and to ensure that we weren’t all performing at once, my Gran Barrowman invented a family ritual. She would take off one of her rings and thread a long piece of string through it, tie together the end of the string, and then everyone would sit in a circle holding the loop. Her ring would be passed through everyone’s hands as the music played. If you were holding the ring when the melody stopped, you had the stage. You could sing or dance or recite a poem or tell a joke. The Barrowmans were open to anything – including making balloon animals, a party piece we could sometimes talk my Uncle