John Barrowman was sitting alone in his car, surrounded by the vast silence of the Colorado Desert, when his thoughts turned frighteningly final.
Once one of British television’s most recognisable faces, the 58-year-old entertainer found himself contemplating how his life might end — pushed to the margins after revelations about his off-camera behaviour while working on Doctor Who and Torchwood exploded back into public view.
Then, unexpectedly, his phone buzzed.
A fan had requested a personalised video message on the Cameo app.
Instinct kicked in. Barrowman straightened himself, smiled, switched on the camera, and recorded the message from the driver’s seat.
“I don’t like to disappoint people,” he later said.
That brief interruption pulled him back from the brink. He drove home to Palm Springs. But it wasn’t the first time — nor would it be the last — that he drove into the desert wrestling with thoughts of suicide.
Only weeks ago, Barrowman finally spoke openly about those moments.
“I drove out there quite a few times to figure out how I was going to do it,” he admitted.
“I didn’t tell anybody.”
Sitting behind the wheel, head in his hands, the questions looped endlessly.
“You’re staring at the dashboard thinking, ‘How do I get out of this? I don’t see a way.’ You think, ‘Do I drive into something? Pull into traffic? Go off a cliff?’”
Then came a dark, almost absurd reality.
“Unfortunately,” he said, “I’ve got a Tesla. It stops.”
This was the psychological wreckage left behind after his cancellation in 2021.
A born performer — someone whose entire identity revolved around being on stage, on screen, in front of people — suddenly found himself unwanted. Allegations about his past behaviour resurfaced, and within weeks, projects vanished. He was dropped as a judge on Dancing On Ice. Opportunities evaporated.
Of the BBC, Barrowman says:
“They never came to me. They never asked anything. They just shut it all down.”
The phone stopped ringing. Work disappeared. He felt, he says, “completely blacklisted.”
Depression followed swiftly — and suicidal thoughts soon after.
Four years later, the picture is strikingly different.
Barrowman is back in Scotland, touring a festive stage show titled Camp as Christmas. Dates in Glenrothes and Edinburgh are selling strongly, with a grand finale at Glasgow’s Royal Concert Hall close to selling out — a sharp contrast to the bleak months when previous tours were quietly cancelled due to lack of ticket sales.
“The audience is still there,” he said recently.
“The fanbase is still there — and that means everything.”
Born in Mount Vernon, Glasgow, Barrowman moved to the US as a child before carving out a career spanning West End musicals, pantomime, and prime-time television on both sides of the Atlantic.
That trajectory derailed in May 2021, when he became entangled in a Guardian investigation into former Doctor Who co-star Noel Clarke. As part of the reporting, a resurfaced video and accounts described Barrowman exposing himself on set — behaviour he had long dismissed as harmless “tomfoolery.”
In a post-MeToo era, that explanation no longer stood.
Barrowman has consistently argued that the incidents occurred in environments involving nudity, that no one complained at the time, and that the culture of the early 2000s was vastly different. His own 2008 autobiography, Anything Goes, even recounts such moments as jokes intended to lift morale.
While no suggestion of predatory intent was made, a complaint did exist, and in 2008 an executive producer instructed him to stop.
Even years later, the pattern lingered. In January 2021 — just months before his fall — Barrowman appeared on Lorraine wearing a sequinned jockstrap and twice offered to reveal it on air.
By May, his career had collapsed.
Speaking later on the Inside of You podcast, Barrowman admitted the silence from colleagues hurt deeply.
“People were scared to reach out,” he said.
“What upset me most was that people I would have been there for weren’t there for me.”
Asked if he now believes his behaviour was wrong, he replied quietly:
“It was probably daft and dumb. I wouldn’t do it now.”
Attempts to return to television were uneven. A hoped-for reset on Celebrity SAS: Who Dares Wins ended abruptly when he quit just 32 minutes into filming — a decision criticised publicly by chief instructor Mark Billingham, who said Barrowman had “wasted a space.”
Viewers were unimpressed — particularly after reports emerged of a £30,000 fee.
But theatre remained his refuge.
After therapy and deep self-reflection, Barrowman chose to rebuild where he feels most alive: on stage, in front of a live audience.
“They can say what they like online,” he says of critics.
“Delete. Delete. Delete.”
His current tour spans 16 venues, featuring near three-hour cabaret performances, premium meet-and-greet packages, and plans for two major musical tours next year.
Scottish entertainment journalist Beverley Lyons believes his resilience defines him.
“When a performer gets cancelled, they either disappear — or they stand up and face the music,” she said.
“John was never going to hide.”
In a final, deeply human twist, Barrowman recently reunited with the fan who ordered the Cameo video that saved his life that day in the desert.
“I told them the truth,” he said.
“That message stopped me killing myself.”
The fan was stunned.
“You thanked me,” Barrowman recalled.
“But I was thanking you.”
There is life after cancellation.
And for John Barrowman — slowly, cautiously — it is beginning to look like life again.
