When James Corden announced that he would be leaving the UK to head to the US as the new host of The Late Late Show back in 2014, the collective applause from every British person who valued things like good TV and laughing out loud was almost audible. It was like the collective exhale you get on a train carriage when a bunch of lads who have been drinking tinnies and chanting “England!” for three hours finally get off at their stop.
Corden’s legacy in the UK can be summarised by one gradual cringe. After being introduced to us as the talented writer yet most irritating cast member of Gavin & Stacey; he quickly descended into shitty Sky quiz shows like A League of Their Own, which answered a question – “What will replace A Question of Sport?” – that nobody ever asked. Then came films like Lesbian Vampire Killers, before he graduated to somehow making the Brits even more boring they already are with his jokes that wouldn’t get any retweets, and shite banter about Harry Styles making a suspicious number of trips to the toilet. You know you’ve done a mediocre job when Ant & Dec are the Mr Wolfs drafted in to fix things.
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In essence, Corden became the mascot for Creme Eggs and Burton’s polo shirts, a personification of the phrase “builder’s tea”, a sort of Peter Kay-lite without any of the idiosyncrasies that made Peter Kay tolerable. His UK stardom finally culminated in the inevitable: presenting a show called Very British Problems, where he perched on a bar stool in an immaculate kitchen ruminating on all the times he has faked a phonecall to avoid talking to his neighbours about the bins. But the words that actually came out of his mouth never mattered anyway, because the real problem was that his face constantly screamed, “PLEASE… PLEASE LOVE ME!”
Since going to America though, I find myself hating him less and less, and it’s not just because there is now a large ocean between us. With every episode of the Carpool Karaoke sketch on The Late Late Show, I don’t see Mr. Very British Problems anymore. Instead, I’m starting to see someone who has, maybe, finally, found a role in which he feels entirely comfortable: a down to earth chauffeur-cum-one-time bff to the stars. Watching him cruise around with Stevie Wonder like two rascals, was like seeing grainy home video footage of your dad and his best mate in the glory days. Watching Corden and Adele sing Spice Girls on their way around rainy London made me cry a single patriotic tear. He’s turned into one of those really sound Uber drivers who hand you the aux cord knowing full well that you will hook it up to Spotify and play “Sorry” by Justin Bieber eleven times. He’s gone from someone I would actively avoid making eye-contact with in a supermarket to someone I wouldn’t mind having a few drinks with at a Christmas do. He’s become… not neccessarily good, but much less shit.
Maybe the West Coast has endowed him with more self-confidence, more of that soft lens, adorable American ego that makes people like Pharrell able to wear THAT HAT and still be taken seriously, rather than the “I am too big for BBC Three!” British sort. Perhaps the Carpool Karaoke concept is so good – that watching Adele spit Nicki Minaj’s verse on “Monster” and Sia talk about aliens is so enjoyable anyway – that all of Corden’s gurning banter slides by the wayside. Or maybe it’s a testament to the sheer power of music as a unifying force. Riddle me this: have you ever had a bad time while singing along with anyone to a song you both love? Exactly.
It also turns out that James Corden is quite good at singing. He harmonised with Adele in ways the rest of us think we are when we’re a few vodka slushies deep at Rowans’. I’m not sure where he oiled his pipes, but it certainly wasn’t when he did that football song with Dizzee Rascal and hammered the final nail in the coffin of first wave commercial grime – which is an offence so serious the Home Office should have it stamped on his passport.
Until a few months ago, the only emotions I had for James Corden were indifference on a good day and nausea on the rest. Not in a million years did I ever think that some music-driven video #content starring him could make me feel anything other than crushing ennui, and yet here he is, delivering lines that don’t collapse like a horse climbing out of a tent, and balancing eggs on Sia’s weird double jointed fingers with the best of them. Maybe it’s time we all finally admit it. Maybe America, a land historically famous for ruining good things, has actually made James Corden – the British personality equivalent to baked beans – an alright guy.
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