Funny Peculiar:Changing Ends.

"This metamorphosis was fast turning me into a social pariah. For every pube I gained, I lost a friend" - Alan Carr

I've never had strong opinions on self-styled 'chatty man' Alan Carr. I've not got anything against him but neither have I ever really consumed much of his work. He just didn't particularly appeal to me. His chat show appeared a bit 'mainstream', perhaps even a little dull. 

But having just watched ITVX's Changing Ends (created and written by Carr and directed by Dave Lambert) I'm starting to think perhaps I should have done. Carr, quite clearly, is a funny and talented individual and Changing Ends tells the story of his young self growing up in Northampton in 1986 where his father Graham Carr (Shaun Dooley) manages the struggling local football club.

Northampton Town FC are known to all in the town, affectionately, as the Cobblers but one person isn't a big fan and that's Graham's son, Alan (Oliver Savell). He prefers birdwatching, cream teas, country dancing, and watching Murder She Wrote on VHS videos. Dad's not impressed with this but mum, Christine (Nancy Sullivan) is very much on his side. She is, we learn, "team Alan".

Alan's got a friend over the road in Charlie (Rourke Mooney) but Charlie's parents, Angela (Gabby Best) and Nigel (Harry Peacock - yes, Ray 'Bloody' Purchase from Toast of London) don't want Charlie hanging out with Alan whom they suspect to be "half rice, half chips". The eighties, as I remember well, were a decade rife with homophobia and Nigel and Angela, who bemoans there being gay characters on Eastenders, seem fairly typical of the era.

An era that is evoked very well on Changing Ends. There are references to Beadle's About, Happy Eater, Cinzano, Quavers, Emmerdale Farm, Bill Oddie, the Milk Cup, Trusthouse Forte, Viscount biscuits (how good were they?), and Pebble Mill at One so you know exactly where in time you are and a soundtrack of New Order, The Cure, OMD, Level 42, Sigue Sigue Sputnik, Alison Moyet, Bananarama, Echo And The Bunnymen, Visage, Erasure, Tiffany, The Communards, Robert Palmer, Devo, Hall & Oates, Taylor Dayne, the Pet Shop Boys, and the Bee Gees (as long as the theme tunes from both World of Sport and A Question of Sport) only fixes you further in the decade of which I, like Alan Carr, came of age.

But it's not all mentions of Falcon Crest, John Player Special, Razzle, Bruce Grobelaar, Childline, Wayne Sleep, The Thorn Birds, Russ Abbot's Madhouse, and Betty's hotpot. There's a gentle coming of age, and coming out, drama hidden beneath the comedy and it's driven by narration from the older Alan Carr who, much like Liam Williams in his excellent Ladhood, arrives from the future to explain what has happened, what is happening, and what should not have happened.

We see young Alan lead Northampton FC out against local rivals Peterborough, we see him start "big school" (where he befriends the dinner ladies and chats to them about smear tests), we see him worrying about having to shower in front of the other boys, and we see him come under the spell of eccentric, and egocentric, drama teacher Miss Graham (Cariad Lloyd) who's famous because she's been in a television advert for stain remover.

Young Alan doesn't let the fact that "drama's for benders" get in the way of expressing himself theatrically but he does suffer at the hands of a couple of boilerplate bullies in the form of Mandy (Matthew Stagg) and Leslie (Logan Matthews) who, along with others, call him 'goofy', 'fang face', and 'bummer'. There's a sweet scene where Alan is consoled by his mum after asking her if he's "normal".

Elsewhere, we see Alan get excited about winning a £2 book token for finding an escaped pelican and becoming so terrified of having his BCG injection that he concocts a made up illness so he can stay at home eating Matchmakers and watching Grace Kelly films.

It's gently funny all the way through but there a few laugh out loud moments. For me, they came with Graham thinking Alan's favourite pop star Prince was an "alsatian up the road", Alan lying to the bullies that his name is Airing - "like the cupboard", and Alan suggesting to the tortured boozy footballer Adam (a very daft cameo from Michael Socha) that they watch an episode of The Golden Girls together.

Other good performances come from Taylor Fay as Alan's younger brother Gary, Keira Chansa as Charlie's girlfriend Maz, and Colin Salmon as Northampton chairman Ron. Props too must go to David Mumeni as PE teacher Mr Chapman. A man whose wife has left him and feels that a load of schoolboys are the best people to listen to his problems.

Ultimately, Changing Ends takes what must have been a very difficult, upsetting, time in Alan Carr's life and makes great comedy out of it. If I had no strong opinion on Alan Carr before watching Changing Ends that's now changed. Turns out he's a funny man - and not just in the way that word would have been used in the eighties.