by Dave Spikey
We asked if we could watch the early show in preparation for our big night and Kim kindly agreed, and so we sat in the dressing room before the show with the most amazing line-up. Paul Merton, Kit Hollerbach, Punt and Dennis and the brilliant John Sparkes. We were amazed and impressed at how relaxed everyone was backstage. We could hear the buzz of the expectant crowd getting louder and louder – and there was John Sparkes reading the paper!
The show was fantastic and blew us away. It dented our confidence a bit. Mind, it was only a bit, because we’d polished our act over the weeks and were confident it would work.
The late show beckoned and nerves began to jangle. In later years, when the ‘Store’ had moved round the corner, ‘open spots’ would perform in both shows just after the interval, to give them the best chance to impress, but in 1986 and certainly on this night we went on at the end after this amazing line-up.
There was one other open spot that night: a girl whose name I forget, but who I often think about and wonder if she continued in comedy. She was on before us and she lasted about three minutes before the audience shot her down and she started crying. We panicked then because, do you know what? She wasn’t that bad, in fact quite good for a newcomer, but by now it had become glaringly apparent that the destroying of open spots was an integral part of the Comedy Store’s Saturday night show.
The compère, Ronnie Golden, introduced us with a certain amount of uncalled-for disdain and then we were on. I looked out and saw all our friends and family sat watching us, their faces exhibiting a mixture of apprehension, fear and concern. We started off reasonably well, but then the crowd smelled fear and began to heckle and jeer. Rick whispered, ‘Let’s get off,’ but I wouldn’t. We’d come all this way, we’d waited eleven hours to do our routine and we were going to finish it.
We didn’t finish it – because the crowd got louder and louder, and the boos and jeers and offensive heckles saw us off a few minutes later. Ronnie Golden took us off with a few more barbed comments. We sat shell-shocked in the dressing room, worried mostly about facing our friends and family, who had witnessed our humiliation. Kim Kinney said some nice things, gave some constructive criticism and encouraged us to regroup and return.
Looking back now, I think that we knew then that we never would. That wasn’t to say that we were giving up, though; rather, we had to find a different audience for our comedy. We decided to try to move forward. We’d been impressed by the acts at the Comedy Store, so we had a rethink about all our routines and tried to rewrite and refresh them, having been hugely influenced by the acts we’d seen on that night. We knew that we were never going to get much work in the working men’s clubs, and we weren’t aware of any northern ‘alternative’ comedy clubs, so we had to find another outlet.
My biggest influences in comedy were what you might call the folk-club comedians. Comics who had started out singing folk songs, whose stories were told in between numbers; but then those stories about their own life experiences had sort of taken over and become the main part of the act. Each region seemed to have its own folk-club comic: Scotland of course had the ‘King’ in Billy Connolly; Wales had the brilliant Max Boyce; the Midlands had Fred Wedlock; and in Lancashire we had Mike Harding, Bernard Wrigley (The Bolton Bullfrog), The Houghton Weavers with Norman Prince, and my particular favourite, Bob Williamson, who given the right breaks both on- and offstage could and should have been a major player.
Inspired by these influences, I suggested to Rick that we give the folk clubs a shot; there wouldn’t be any money in it, but it would help to sharpen the act, and so he agreed. As it turned out, because we didn’t actually sing any folk songs per se, most clubs were not interested, but a couple were – and God bless the good people at Hindley Folk Club, who let us try our new and improved routines and encouraged us immensely.
We also did the odd talent show – partly to try to win a bit of cash, but mainly to work the act and try out new routines – but it soon became clear that most competitions were heavily ‘biased’, shall we say, in favour of the local talent. We once did a talent show at The City in Bolton, which is a smallish pub between Chorley Old Road and Church Road. The money on offer was only about £25 for the heat and £200 for the final, but we decided to give it a go. We were drawn second of the six acts and actually did really well and had high hopes of progressing to the final after seeing all bar one of the acts afterwards.
What we didn’t know then was that the favourite act, the one they wanted to win, always goes on last. When we heard the MC announce ‘Jimmy B from Elgin Street’, we weren’t particularly perturbed, even though he got a surprisingly loud cheer from the crowd. Then the MC pushed Jimmy onstage in a wheelchair. He was dressed as Elvis. Rick and I exchanged a resigned look before Jimmy started singing ‘The Battle Hymn of the Republic’ in the style of the King. By the time he got to ‘Glory, glory Hallelujah’, I was halfway back to Chorley.
The worst gig we ever did was at a London club in Mayfair that Trevor booked us into. I’d written a routine in which Rick and I played two male penguins. One male penguin was instructing the other in penguin-mating behaviour. It was all based on fact, but confused by another obvious fact: all penguins look the same. The mating routine, should you be interested, involves the male penguin picking up a pebble and laying it at the feet of a lady penguin. Should she be interested, she extends her neck heavenwards and emits a piercing cry, to which the male responds by doing the same. They then intertwine necks and repeat this call of the wild.
In the routine, one penguin (me) explains all this to other (Rick), who thinks about it for a while and then asks the question, ‘What if it turns out to be a male?’ to which the answer is: ‘He pecks your bleedin’ head in.’
We decided to include the sketch for the club date and thought – bizarrely – that we should have penguin costumes made specially, which we did, complete with big yellow swimming flippers. Why?! Why couldn’t we simply have done it in conversation as ourselves? Why did we have to act it out?!
So we turn up at this London club in Mayfair and the manager shows us into the dressing room/storeroom and asks us what we need on stage. So we say, just two microphones please, and he stares at us and says, ‘Why do you need microphones?’ And we explain that we are comedians and he pulls this face. A sort of exasperated, raised-eyebrows look of comical surprise … and we know then that it is going to be awful.
He disappears for a few minutes and then comes back to announce that there is only one microphone and that is the DJ’s and it will just about stretch to the performance space, but we’ll have to hold it because they don’t have a stand. Did I say ‘awful’? He said the speciality performance (us) usually went down well and that last week they had had a bloke who came out of a coffin, pierced himself with nails and ate glass. When we said that we would appear as two penguins, he just stared.
The rest of the night is a bit of a blur. The DJ announced us, we waddled on in full penguin outfits, I took the microphone from him and we made our way to just short of the stage, the extent of the lead. En route, I tripped over when Rick stood on one of my flippers. I looked out to the audience, who were stood on the various levels of the nightclub, and I realized that most of the assembled crowd were Arabs. Would they get penguin-based comedy? Nope, long shot when you think about it. Needless to say, the routine flagged. Afterwards, we got changed and sneaked out – luckily nobody recognized us without the beaks and flippers.
All was not lost, though, because Trevor Chance still believed in us, God bless him. He got us an audition for the new series of New Faces in 1987, which was to be hosted by Marti Caine. We auditioned with our Government Inspector routine. The producer, Richard Holloway, seemed to like it, but we stuck out like a sore thumb against all the other club-based entertainers.
A couple of weeks later, I took a phone call at work in Haematology. Trevor told me that they wanted us and not only that, they wanted us on both the non-broadcast pilot show and the first show of the s
eries, both to be recorded at the fab Birmingham Hippodrome.
Then we did something incredibly stupid. Instead of playing it safe with our strongest routine, we took bad advice from various sources, who suggested that we should write a new routine which was more ‘TV-friendly’.
In the excitement of the moment and bowing to far more experienced performers than ourselves, we were convinced. We changed the act. I’d had an idea that I’d been working on about a top Russian comedy double act, who were on a cultural exchange visit (so that while Little and Large were playing Vladivostock Conservative Club, they were over here performing). The comedy would arise from their poor grasp of English, their Russia-based jokes about potatoes and gulags, and their appearance. I also added a ‘catchphrase’-type of thing, where at the end of every joke, they did a Cossack dance on their haunches while singing ‘Hava Nagila’.
And do you know what, that’s not a bad idea, and if we’d just had time to perform the bloody thing live a few times before showcasing it on national television (!), it could have gone down big.
Now add into the mix the bizarrely ill-judged transformation of the opening gag at the suggestion of the show’s script editor … and we have an accident waiting to happen. The original idea was that I would go onstage first and set the scene, worrying about where my partner had got to. Then Rick wanders on with a kettle on his head and I say in a dodgy Russian accent, ‘Where have you been, Igor?’ and Rick says, ‘Before you are leaving the dressing room, you say, “Put kettle on.” ’ Look, alright, I know! But it would have got a laugh for the visual, trust me.
However, this script editor suggests that a better ‘misunderstanding’ would be if Igor had heard me ask him to put the ‘cattle’ on, and, if we sourced a pantomime cow, he could carry that onstage for a bigger laugh. We were persuaded and so Rick sauntered onstage with this huge cow draped around his neck. ‘You say, “Put cattle on!” ’ – not as funny as ‘kettle’, right?
To make matters worse – oh yes, they can get worse – the judges that night were Barry Cryer, Bonnie Langford and the acerbic Nina Myskow, and somebody (it might even have been me, I don’t remember) suggested that I ask Igor about the cow he’s carrying: ‘Who is this?’ And Rick replies, ‘Is Nina,’ and I go, ‘Nina?’ and he says, ‘Ya, Nina MysCOW.’
We did the gag, it got a muted laugh from the audience and a sneering grin from Nina and then … then … instead of ditching the cow and making some clever comedy comment, Rick kept it on for the entire routine. Why didn’t anyone suggest we dump the cow into the orchestra pit? That would have been funny. Or on the stupid script editor’s head, maybe?
We did the routine and, to be fair, Barry Cryer was very positive, Bonnie didn’t ‘get’ it at all and Nina was quite critical, but we got away with it. We didn’t come last – but we were beaten by a whippet juggler from Todmorden and a Latvian plumber who played ‘I’ve got sixpence, jolly jolly sixpence’ on a selection of radiators. There was also a good impressionist, George Marshall, on the bill and a couple of decent girl vocalists. A Scottish piano player won it, and a three-girl a capella group who sang ‘Mr Sandman’ finished last. So not a total disaster. Just sit back and wait for more TV, radio and theatrical impresarios to come knocking.
Nobody knocked. Not even opportunity. By now, Rick was getting understandably disillusioned. He even broke his arm on purpose once to get out of a booking at a working men’s club (he didn’t, obviously, but I thought he might have).
As a last resort, I entered us into a talent contest in Scarborough, which had a first prize of £750! But as the day of the heat approached, Rick said he didn’t want to trail all that way across the country for a talent competition, and so I said I would go and do it on my own and he said okay. And that was that. R.I.P. Spikey and Sykey.
It’s Raining Dogs
KAY HAD A dog, a cocker spaniel called Lacey, and two Siamese cats when I first moved in. I’d always wanted a dog and we agreed that I could get one from Bolton Destitute Animal Centre; it would be great for us to rescue a dog and it would be company for Lacey.
We decided that we would let fate decree which dog we rescued by offering a home to the next dog due to be put down at the centre (they don’t put healthy dogs down now, but they did then). I was on call at the hospital on the Saturday night and I said I’d pop into the centre on my way in. I nipped in and asked if I could home the next dog to be ‘destroyed’ – what an awful description. They told me that they had an Alsatian cross due to be euthanized on the Monday and I said I’d have her. They asked if I wanted to see her and I said no, I was late for work, I’d pop in first thing Monday.
We picked up ‘Cagney’ (obviously) on the Monday and she was a wonderful dog. I cannot believe or understand how anyone could have allowed her to be killed. We had Cagney for about fourteen years and she was just about the best dog that you could ever wish for. Loyal and trusting, loving and always playful, with the most perfect temperament with people and other dogs.
When they saw Cagney, Kay’s mum and dad decided that they’d quite like a dog from the shelter too, so we took them down not long after and they chose ‘Kim’, a ‘Cagney’ lookalike, but not as dark and with floppy ears. While we were down at the shelter, I spotted a beautiful Rottweiler-cross puppy and Kay saw a small, black, timid spaniel-cross, which a bloke who worked there called the ‘Iffy’ spaniel because she had attacked him! We mentioned the puppy to Jenny, who immediately wanted her, so we went back to collect her … but came away with two dogs because Kay couldn’t leave the ‘Iffy’ spaniel cowering and shaking in the cage. The Rotty puppy was named ‘Bo’; the spaniel was ‘Lucy’, and she was probably Kay’s favourite and most loved dog of the twenty-odd we re-homed over the next twenty years.
I don’t really have time or space to tell you about all the wonderful dogs we’ve re-homed over the years. They were all great characters and many had come through terrible experiences at the hands of their human owners with immense courage and resilience. They all were quickly accepted by the resident ‘pack’, who seemed to sense their history of abuse and neglect and welcomed them into the house and the gang. The most we had at one time was nine and they all lived in perfect harmony, which always amazed me considering their individual histories and experiences.
One of our dogs was Rosie, a cairn terrier-cross who was full of fun. She was probably the friendliest, most gregarious dog we had. When we took her out and about and down the pub, we could let her off the lead and she’d wander around, making friends of everyone she met.
She was also very intelligent and loved soft toys to ‘savage’ and throw about. In fact, she had this uncanny, almost psychic power, you might say, of knowing when we’d bought her a soft toy from the market. We might struggle into the house, laden down with shopping bags from a variety of outlets, but she absolutely knew if we had a toy for her in there and went wild with joy. How could she know?
We were all in the pub one lovely summer’s day; Rosie had made herself at home under the bench seating beneath us. The pub was full and a young couple came in with a toddler in a pushchair and made their way into the back lounge. Rosie decided to go for a wander. As usual, we heard a lot of ‘Aws’ and ‘Ahs’ as she made her rounds.
About half an hour later, the young mother appeared from the back lounge and started looking around on the floor. Someone asked her if she’d lost anything and she said that her little girl must have dropped her teddy bear somewhere between the car and their table in the pub. Kay and I exchanged a look of dread.
Once the search had been called off, we slowly bent down to look under the bench – and there was Rosie, with the remains of what was once a teddy bear. She saw us, wagged her tail madly, and dropped a little furry arm at our feet. I quickly kicked it back under the bench, out of sight.
Sammy, meanwhile, was a beautiful bearded collie – a pedigree, probably, who’d been on the streets for months, years maybe. He was terribly malnourished, partially sighted and his back legs
were so weak he could hardly stand when we got him. He’d been found after a storm under a pile of cardboard boxes, unable to walk. The staff at the shelter asked us if we’d take him for the last couple of months that they assessed he would live.
We took him and bathed him and groomed him and he was so handsome. He lived for two years and had the best time running with the girls (he was the only boy at the time). I say running ‘with’, but in practice this was running ‘after’ the girls. They would chase the stick or ball and he’d set off with them, but only catch them up when they were on the way back.
His back legs went after two years and we had to carry him everywhere and take him outside for his toilet. It was heartbreaking because he deserved longer. His brain was still active, his eyes still bright, but he couldn’t walk. We thought about getting a contraption to put him in with wheels on the back, but we decided that this was just prolonging the inevitable by only a matter of weeks.
We arranged for the vet to come round the following morning and put him to sleep on his favourite bed. This is something we always did when the time came; we couldn’t take our dogs into the vets at the end of their lives and leave them there, we owed them so much more than that. We had to sit and stroke them and talk to them as the injection was administered, so that the last thing they heard and remembered were our words of comfort and praise: ‘Good girl, Lucy.’ ‘Good boy, Sammy.’
It always broke my heart when they died. Whether we’d had them for a matter of months or for seventeen years, they all touched our lives. They all had their own traumatic back story and they all deserved happiness and peace in their old age – and that’s what we tried to give them. When you only take old dogs on, as we did, you also have to take on the accompanying heartache.