Features
Clued up Cryer
He's been a key element of BBC Radio 4's I'm Sorry
I Havent A Clue for 35 years, but Barry Cryer tells
Steve Pratt that he still enjoys stand-up comedy
and attending the Edinburgh Festival each year
SOMETHING different
every night is the
promise of comic
writer and raconteur
Barry Cryer when he
returns to South
Shields next month. He's set to
make his third appearance at the
Customs House in a show in which
he recalls his showbiz world with
the audience. He has no worry
about having to come up with a
new show. "It's different every
night," he says of the second half in
which the audience quizzes him on
any subject they like.
"There's a bucket and a pile of
paper and pens C and they write
down questions on pieces of paper
and I have to talk about whatever
theyve written down. It's my
favourite part of the show. If I'm
boring myself, I'm boring the
audience."
This method of conducting a
Q&A can led to strange questions.
One person simply wrote, "Thank
you for the pen" on the piece of
paper. "I read that out," recalls
Cryer. "People sometimes just put
one word C like shirt C and you have
to start thinking. It keeps you on
your toes. Theres raw material
everywhere you have an audience."
At 72, Cryer has plenty of
memories to fall back on at
question time. Hes written
material for everyone from
Morecambe and Wise to Bruce
Forsyth via Tommy Cooper and
The Two Ronnies.
He rejects the idea that there's a
difference between comedy in the
North and South. "Humour is not
as regional as it used to be in the
old days, mainly due to television, he says.
"There was a great breed of
Geordie comics, like Bobby
Thompson. He was a legend, but his
stuff wouldn't travel. But it's
loosened up a bit now."
As he comes from Leeds, you
might be tempted to call Cryer a
Northerner. He wouldn't
necessarily go along with that. "I
don't think of myself as anything. I
don't think of myself from a region
at all," he says.
What he will say is that his life
has come full circle. He began life
as a stand-up and now his writing
has given way to performing again.
He hasnt written for shows per
se for years now, he explains. All
that goes back to Monty Python
and the "brilliant breed" who write
their own material. No longer do
comedians need a gag writer to put
the jokes in their mouths.
"It was a great era with
Morecambe and Wise, Tommy
Cooper and Frankie Howerd. You
realise its a generational change,
which is great, but suddenly it went
a bit quiet."
His career has, in his opinion,
been a series of lucky accidents.
"I've been dogged by good luck," he
says. "I wrote some stuff for a
revue C this was before Beyond The
Fringe C and Danny La Rue came
in, saw it and asked me to write for
his nightclub show for 13 years.
One night David Frost came into
the club, asked me to write for his
show and I became a Frost writer."
As a non-driver, he collected
material as he was travelling about
and absorbed what was happening
with people. He doesn't decry the
current crop of comedians, singling
out Geordie Ross Noble as one of
those "who is as good as anyone I
ever saw" and adding that "there's
great people out there all the time".
Every year Cryer is to be found at
the Edinburgh Fringe Festival,
catching up with and being asked
advice by newcomers to the comedy
game. They call him Uncle Bazza,
he reports. "I meet a lot of young
stand-ups. I first did the Fringe in
1990 with Willie Rushton, and have
been going up and down there ever
since. I did six years solid
performing at the Gilded
Ballroom."
He's not tired of making people
laugh because he finds performing
"so energising". He's also been
doing Radio 4s I'm Sorry I Haven't
A Clue for 35 years, although
doubts about its future have been
cast following the recent death of
chairman Humphrey Lyttelton.
Cryer loved touring that show to
theatres up and down the country.
"This sounds boastful, but we
played Hammersmith Apollo to
over 3,000 people. It was just
amazing. We felt just like the
Rolling Stones,2 he says.
ö Barry Cryer appears at the
Customs House, South Shields, on
May 8. Box Office: 0191-4541234 or
online at www.customshouse.co.uk
10:37am Thursday 1st May 2008
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