Approaching his 70th birthday, Syd Little is still busy in pantomime at York. He talks to Steve Pratt about the good old days of Little and Large and why he keeps working

TEN years after the end of his double act with Eddie Large, Syd Little says: “Oh yes, I do a good 45-minute spot if anyone is interested.” – letting it be known he’s still available for work. In a way he’s come full circle because he began entertaining by playing guitar and singing in pubs and clubs around Manchester while an apprentice painter and decorator.

Now, he’s back doing it.

When ill-health forced Large to stop performing, Little carried on. “People say, ‘When are you going to retire’ and I say, ‘When the phone stops ringing’,” he says.

“I couldn’t believe I would still be doing it at 70 years of age, but I enjoy doing it. When you start not to enjoy it that’s the time to stop. As long as I’ve got my health, touch wood. That’s a big thing having seen Eddie’s decline.”

This Christmas finds him at York Grand Opera House in the panto Sleeping Beauty, playing King Egbert the Umpteenth.

He’ll celebrate his 70th birthday on stage, on December 19. “The great thing is it’s a 10.30am show, then a 1.30pm show and I’ve got the next day off, so that’s it. It’s my birthday, I can celebrate it and then I don’t have to get up.

The day after that is only one show at night so I’ve got a day-and-a-half to recover. So that should be all right,” he says.

HE’S travelled from his Fleetwood home for the launch at the York theatre and is soon reminiscing about a career that reaches the 50-year mark in 2013. Halfway through the interview he’s joined by his wife, Sheree, whom he met in panto and to whom he’s been married for 37 years. “I’m just telling my life story,” he says to her. It is, of course, a fascinating story as it covers a very different period in British comedy performance. Not just the style of comedy, but the places it’s performed have changed drastically.

He and electrician Eddie turned professional in 1963. He even remembers the date – October 18. They’d perform in three Manchester nightclubs seven nights a week. First, they’d do Bernard Manning’s Embassy Club, then the Palladium and finally the Wilton. They’d be paid £50 between them for the lot. As he was 21 and earning two pounds ten shillings a week as a painter and decorator, £25 apiece seemed a fortune.

“I remember Bernard when he was very poorly. I went to see him four or five years ago and reminded him of that story and he said I could come back to his club any time I wanted – for the same money,” says Little.

“That got us off the ground and then we started to do all the rock tours that went round the country. We were on tour with Dionne Warwick, the Isley Brothers, the Searchers, Tom Jones, people like that, all on the same show.

You’d get your bus in London and end up, say, in Newcastle. Then you’d stay there and travel to Birmingham or whatever. It was for three or four weeks.

“The thing that got me and Eddie was that the top of the bill could afford to stay in the best hotels. We got 75 quid for the week between the two and had to find our own digs, our own food and everything. We used to get digs for ten shillings. We stayed in some dumps.

“That was what you called your education.

Like you’d go on The X Factor and that now.

We didn’t have that. We flogged our guts out for years me and Eddie, doing these sort of things.”

Eight years later they appeared on TV talent show Opportunity Knocks and won. It changed their lives and careers. Their first panto together was Cinderella in Southampton in 1969, billed as Syd and Eddie “because we couldn’t afford second names”. There was another comedy act called Fred and Charlie which, someone pointed out, was too close to Syd and Eddie for comfort.

“So one night Eddie got on the typewriter, stayed up all night, put all these names down.

You know like Nicklaus and Palmer because he was into golf and things like that.

“He came down to breakfast next day and said pick a name. Right in the middle was Little and Large. And he said, that one? And I said yes.”

In their first panto, they played Brokers Men.

As it was their debut, they were told the old pros would look after them because they didn’t have a clue what to do. All that was required of them, it emerged, was to do a ten-minute act at the ball, and bring a chair on stage for Cinders to sit on.

“That was it. But the two comics in the show were moaning they’d only done 15 entrances.

And we had two. But it taught us a valuable lesson – old pros don’t look after you.”

He remembers one of the last pantos the pair did in Hull, because Eddie’s health was deteriorating.

“I had to walk him home and he could hardly get his breath. If I’d had known how bad he was I’d have gone, ‘We can’t go on like this’.

But he just wanted to do it. It’s Doctor Showbiz, you get hooked on it.

“But that was the start of his heart failure and eventually, in 2002, he had to have the heart transplant and he’s still here to tell the tale. Semi-retired, I think he does after-dinner speaking.”

BY that time their style of TV show had gone out of fashion, although it should be remembered they were massive TV stars with their shows attracting 18 to 20 million viewers until the BBC said ‘no more’ in 1991.

Little’s right when he says that doing their shows for 14 years isn’t a bad thing, but something to be proud of.

He wasn’t ready to give up when the double act was disbanded. It took a while to get used to performing on his own, but returning to his first love of playing guitar and singing has been a joy.

He has only one grumble. “I’m an entertainer, not a comedian. I hate it when they put comedian Syd Little. I know where they’re getting it from because I was in a comedy double act, but entertainer sums me up.”

  • Sleeping Beauty: York Grand Opera House, Dec 14-Jan 6. Box office: 0844- 8713024 and atgtickets.co./york