Clued up Cryer

SOMETHING different every night is the promise of comic writer and raconteur Barry Cryer when he returns to South Shields next month. Hes 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. Its different every night, he says of the second half in which the audience quizzes him on any subject they like.

Theres 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. Its my favourite part of the show. If Im boring myself, Im 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 theres 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 wouldnt travel. But its loosened up a bit now.

As he comes from Leeds, you might be tempted to call Cryer a Northerner. He wouldnt necessarily go along with that. I dont think of myself as anything. I dont 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.

Ive 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 doesnt 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 theres 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.

Hes not tired of making people laugh because he finds performing so energising. Hes also been doing Radio 4s Im Sorry I Havent 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, 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