Inside story of John Barrowman’s downfall: As he reveals suicidal ideas, what actually occurred on set that noticed him cancelled… and the secrets and techniques of his extraordinary comeback
John Barrowman was sitting in his car in the Colorado Desert contemplating killing himself when his phone chimed. It was a request from a fan for a personalised message in return for payment. The showbiz instincts kicked in, the smile came on, and the Glasgow-born entertainer recorded the set-piece on the Cameo app there and then behind the wheel.
‘I don’t like to disappoint people,’ he said.
On this occasion the fan request pulled him out of the moment, and he drove back to his home in Palm Springs. But these suicidal drives into the desert were becoming something of a habit.
A few weeks ago, the 58-year-old described the bleak thought processes. ‘I drove out to the desert quite a few times to figure out how I was going to do it,’ he said. ‘I didn’t tell anybody.’
‘You’re looking at the dashboard of the car and you’ve got your head in your hands and you’re thinking, “How am I going to get out of this? I don’t see myself coming out of this”.
‘You don’t see what’s around you. You’re just focused on where you are at that moment, and I’m thinking, “Can I drive the car into something? Can I pull into traffic and go head-on into something? Can I drive it off the edge of a cliff?” Unfortunate thing: I’ve got a Tesla. It will stop.’
Such was the star’s reaction to ‘cancellation’ in 2021. A born performer, driven by every instinct into the limelight – yet suddenly he was not welcome in it.
After revelations about his lewd behind-the-scenes antics in TV shows such as Doctor Who and its spin-off, Torchwood, he was dropped like a stone.
John Barrowman found himself being pushed out the limelight after revelations about his lewd behind-the-scenes antics while working on TV shows such as Doctor Who and its spin-off, Torchwood
Barrowman with Torchwood co-stars Eve Myles and Mekhi Phifer, alongside whom he played Captain Jack Harkness
He was unceremoniously dumped from his job as a judge on ITV’s Dancing on Ice.
Of the BBC, he says now: ‘[They] never came to me to ask anything. They just literally shut it all down.’
The phone stopped ringing and he felt ‘blacklisted completely’ from the entertainment industry. Depression spiralled, and his thoughts turned to ending it all.
Four years on, a rejuvenated Barrowman is back in Scotland. He is performing in his new stage show, Camp as Christmas, in Rothes Halls in Glenrothes, Fife, tonight and there are only a handful of seats left.
Tomorrow night the show goes to the Assembly Rooms in Edinburgh. Again, it is almost a full house. And on Tuesday, for the tour’s finale, he appears at Glasgow’s Royal Concert Hall with his old panto pals The Krankies as special guests. Only a few dozen of the 2,475 seats remain unfilled.
‘The audience is still there; the fanbase is still there and that is totally something,’ said Barrowman in an interview in the US a few weeks ago.
And, in Scotland at least, there are ticket sales to support that claim. His present stage show appears to represent progress from his last one – Laid Bare – ahead of which some venues were reportedly ‘giving away’ tickets.
A 2023 UK tour attracted so few ticket sales that it was called off before it began. The star admitted he was ‘devastated’ and that the last few years had been ‘possibly the hardest’ of his life.
Originally from Glasgow’s Mount Vernon, Barrowman moved with his family to Aurora, Illinois, as a child. He broke into showbusiness in the UK in his 20s and became a staple in panto and a leading light in West End musicals.
Barrowman with his husband, Scott Gill, and his parents, Marion and John Barrowman, after the actor was awarded an MBE in 2014
The shunned in a Jack And The Beanstalk pantomime with Janette Tough in 2004
There were multiple prime time acting credits on both sides of the Atlantic and he proved a natural as a talent spotter and judge on TV shows such as How Do you Solve A Problem Like Maria? and Dancing On Ice.
That changed in May 2021 when he was dragged into a Guardian investigation into Noel Clarke – his one-time co-star on Doctor Who – who faced allegations of bullying and sexual misconduct from 26 women.
The newspaper reported on a YouTube video from 2014 in which Clarke regaled a live audience with tales of Barrowman exposing himself on set ‘every five seconds’.
Barrowman – who came out as gay aged 25 and has been in a relationship with architect husband Scott Gill for more than 30 years – had long been open about his ‘tomfoolery’ on set. Indeed, he appeared to think fellow cast members and crew loved it and that fans were tickled to hear about it.
But in the age of cancel culture and MeToo, it took on a disturbing complexion – one which Barrowman has struggled to redress. His stock lines of defence for repeatedly exposing himself off-camera are three-fold. First, he argued, this happened when he was required to do nude scenes.
Second, ‘nobody complained’.
Third, the noughties were a different time. He would not behave like that today.
While there certainly were nude scenes in Torchwood, it may seem a stretch for Barrowman to suggest he stripped only for those. Indeed his 2008 autobiography Anything Goes states that he and his Welsh co-star Eve Myles regularly flashed cast and crew members.
Barrowman was dragged into a Guardian investigation into Noel Clarke in 2021 – his former co-star on Doctor Who – who faced allegations of bullying and sexual misconduct
Barrowman – who had long been open about his ‘tomfoolery’ on set – later ventured into the jungle for ITV’s I’m A Celebrity
‘My co-star Eve’s breasts are known as “the girls” and my naughty bits are “the boys”,’ he wrote. ‘Whenever we’ve had too many night shifts in a row, or when morale needs a bit of a boost, the boys and girls come out to play.’
He freely admitted he would also bare his bottom. ‘I remain partial to the occasional “full moon” to shine the way when the set is feeling dark.’
Barrowman, then, saw the act of exposing himself as a way of cheering people up. And while there was no suggestion he was behaving in a sexually predatory way, there was indeed a complaint to the show’s executive producer who, in 2008, ordered him to stop exposing himself. That was the same year Barrowman did a Radio One interview with Nick Grimshaw and Annie Mac.
‘You’re famous, we’re told, for getting your willy out in interviews,’ said Grimshaw. ‘Is this going to happen today? Should Annie be careful?’
Apparently viewing this as an invitation, Barrowman promptly exposed himself, saying: ‘I can’t believe I’ve just done that!’
He later apologised, stating that he had joined in the show’s ‘light-hearted fun and banter’.
Might he have overlooked the danger of his idea of ‘fun’ falling well outside the comfort zone of others around him?
As to the idea that the noughties were a different age, it was as recently as January 2021 that Barrowman appeared on a live link-up with breakfast show Lorraine and gleefully revealed that he was wearing a sequinned jockstrap.
He twice offered to give viewers a glimpse, but host Ms Kelly managed to deter him. Just four months later, this propensity for lewdness – or ‘bawdy behaviour, silly behaviour’, as he would have it – would torpedo his career.
Speaking in September on American podcast Inside of You, Barrowman revealed that his depression at his cancellation soon turned to anger. He said ‘the silence was deafening’ from certain fellow cast members and friends.
He told host Michael Rosenbaum: ‘People were scared [to reach out] because they were afraid of what could happen to them because, I’m just saying bluntly, no one’s got a clean slate.’
He added: ‘What upset me was people who I would have been there for at the drop of a hat were not there.’
Asked if he now thought the behaviour which resulted in his cancellation was wrong, he replied: ‘I think it was probably daft and dumb of me to do it. I wouldn’t do it now.’
The road back has been a rocky one. He had hoped to kickstart it last year with an appearance on Channel 4’s Celebrity SAS: Who Dares Wins, but he was barely in it, quitting just 32 minutes after arriving on base. He said at the time: ‘They said we would find out who we really were on the show. I thought, “I know who I am”, then I started to get sick and I just thought “I’m out”.’
The show’s chief instructor Mark Billingham was far from impressed. ‘He gave up at the first opportunity and wasted a space that another person could have taken, so it was very disappointing,’ he said.
The shunned actor had hoped to kickstart his career last year with an appearance on Channel 4’s Celebrity SAS: Who Dares Wins, but he quit just 32 minutes after arriving on base
‘He gave up at the first opportunity and wasted a space that another person could have taken, so it was very disappointing,’ said the show’s chief instructor Mark Billingham
Nor were viewers impressed when the star reportedly pocketed a £30,000 fee for his brief engagement on the series.
And yet, perhaps, a certain grit is clear in his determination to revive his career where he seems most comfortable – the stage, playing directly to his audience.
After therapy and years of soul-searching, he appears to have decided to come out fighting. He says of the critics who endlessly taunt him on social media platforms: ‘They can say what they like about me online, but they are not going to come and see who I am – John Barrowman. They’re going to bitch about me.
‘And you can bitch all you want because, you know what I do? Delete, delete, delete.’
And while he may have been ill-suited for lasting the pace on a survival show, there is no doubting his stamina on tour.
The current one kicked off last month and has taken in 16 English and Welsh venues before arriving in Scotland. They may be far from the biggest venues in the biggest cities, but, by all accounts, Barrowman is giving the near three-hour cabaret nights his all.
And, of course, it doesn’t end there. Each night, there are the inevitable add-ons for those willing to pay more; a chance to witness the soundcheck and a pre-show Q&A; a post-show meet and greet with photo opportunities.Next year, it’s more of the same. Barrowman’s forthcoming show, My Life In Musicals, has a spring tour and an autumn tour taking in a total of 39 venues, including nine Scottish ones.
For a cancelled star, he is keeping busy. Scottish entertainment journalist Beverley Lyons, who interviewed him often, says his resilience is typical of the man.
‘When a performer gets cancelled there’s really only two ways they can go – either retire and hide away or stand up, face the music and go back out there.’
She adds: ‘I think he’s made of steely stuff and always followed the mantra that the show must go on. It’s not in his nature to just give up.’
Ms Lyons says the fact his new show appears to be attracting larger audiences than the last one will be hugely encouraging for him.
‘Every day he manages to sell another ticket is progress for him which will no doubt impact positively on his own mental health.’
In that recent podcast, Barrowman added a postscript to the tale of the fan who requested the Cameo message. He said the two met months later and the fan told him how the Cameo had provided a boost at a difficult time.
Barrowman recalled: ‘I went, “Can I tell you something? You ordering that Cameo pulled me out of that moment because I was thinking about killing myself.
‘Their face just dropped and I said, “So you’re thanking me for doing that for you. I’m thanking you for ordering that Cameo because I turned around after it, and I went home.”’
There is life after cancellation, it turns out. And, little by little for John Barrowman, it is coming to resemble life before it.
For confidential help and support, call Samaritans on 116 123 or visit samaritans.org
