by Dave Spikey
Kay was probably touched the most by Pippa. Pippa was a miniature Yorkie who had been fished out of a river in a sack with her brother. She was about three at the time and we took her on from Pet Rehome. She lived with us for over twelve years, but she never fully got over her experience.
Pippa was Kay’s lap dog, and replaced Lucy to a large degree. She was a great little dog with the heart of a lion, who loved to run on the beach and adored the wind in her fur. She started to go blind and we spent thousands trying to save the sight in her one good eye. But the operation was really traumatic and she went into kidney failure and we had to let her go. We still blame ourselves a little, but she was an old dog, and when she went blind, she couldn’t run on the beach anymore because she wouldn’t leave our side.
Kay has Pippa’s photo as a screensaver on her PC and phone. She was a special dog – but then they all were, in one way or another.
It’s fair to say that I’m much more a dog than a cat person – although I did once take in a ginger tom from Feline Rescue. I don’t know if you’ve heard about Feline Rescue, but they do a fantastic job: my particular cat had been pot-holing in Derbyshire without the appropriate safety equipment, there had been a flash flood and he was trapped underground, and Feline Rescue had gone in, with scant regard for the risks involved, got to him and brought him out.
They were a bit pissed off with him, actually, because apparently it was only two weeks before that they’d had to helicopter him off Snowdonia when he’d been caught in a blizzard wearing a light anorak and pumps. (Pumps! For climbing a mountain! But that’s cats for you: just because they’ve got nine lives, they get a tad blasé about health-andsafety and risk assessments, and weather forecasts in particular.)
A Night at the Opera
THOUGH RICK HAD pulled out of the talent contest with the first prize of £750, I was still up for giving it my best shot. And so it was that I found myself travelling to Scarborough for my first ever solo stand-up gig.
The talent contest was held at the Opera House, Scarborough. The heats were held in the Circle Bar, and the Grand Final in the main theatre. It was an annual big deal in Scarborough and I turned up for my heat to find the bar packed for the show. I explained that it was just ‘Dave Spikey’ tonight, and the organizers were fine with that.
I had written and rehearsed my ten minutes in the days leading up to the heat. I’d decided to perform it as a character rather than straightforward stand-up, which to be honest scared me. I invented a vulnerable, put-upon, loser-type character and wore a balaclava and big glasses. I really didn’t know what to expect, but I remember that I wasn’t really nervous and I didn’t know why.
So I went on, did my ten minutes, got a great reaction and came off, both relieved and exhilarated. And I won the heat! I was through to the semi-final, scheduled for two weeks hence, with the grand final only three days after that on a Sunday night. I met some lovely people on that heat night: wonderful Pat Helme and her lovely daughter Janet, who sort of took me under their wings and with whom I’m still in contact. Having their support meant so much at the time and has done ever since.
For the semi-final, Kay and I decided to take our newly acquired VW camper van and stay on a campsite. We were keen to explore the fantastic coast around there and take the dogs. We stayed on a campsite near Robin Hood’s Bay, which has to be one of the most beautiful areas of the country. I did the semi-final on the Thursday, which was a new ten minutes specially written – and I won!
The final was only a couple of nights away so we stayed and explored some more and walked the dogs for hours in the pouring rain, before all cramming into the camper van at night. It was a great few days. I performed in the final on the Sunday to a packed house at the Opera House, which sadly is no longer there. I can’t remember who else was on, it was all an excited blur because I won it! I won £750! I thought, ‘I’m a natural, this comedy lark is a piece of piss.’ And for a while it was.
I planned a similar campaign for the country’s biggest talent show: ‘Stairway to the Stars’ at the Riviera Centre, Torquay. It was a long trek to the south Devon coast, but the first prize was £1,000. I went down for the heat and opened with a gag about Quasimodo, ‘Look, once and for all, I haven’t got your ball!’ which went big (!) and then I put on half a pair of spectacles, which got a laugh, which increased when I delivered, ‘Specsavers – I only get half an hour for my dinner’ (if you remember, their slogan at the time was ‘a pair of glasses in one hour’).
I won the heat and drove the long haul home, elated. I won the semifinal too, a week or so later, and returned for the final later in the month. Kay came with me and we treated ourselves to a nice hotel with a swimming pool!
The place was rammed on the night and the judging panel impressive: Dora Bryan, Buster Merryfield, Larry Grayson and – ohmigod! Who’s that on the end? It’s Nina MysCOW! Will she remember the Russians?
She didn’t and I won the final. I won £1,000 and drank to the early hours, listening in awe to the showbiz stories of Larry Grayson. What a great man he was.
Club Nights
AFTER MY TRIUMPH, I returned home, now a conquering hero in my mind. Then it dawned on me that I had the same problem that had plagued Spikey and Sykey. Where was I to perform? I reluctantly decided that the only route for me to progress was the working men’s clubs; I’d have to tailor the act a great deal, but it was easier doing that alone than with the largely scripted routines of the double act.
Back to the Sunday agents’ showcases. It never occurred to me at the time, naive fool that I am, why these agents booked their acts direct from a showcase, rather than through a reputable agency. It’s obvious looking back that these guys ran small, rough, poxy little clubs, who wanted to pay the least amount of money for their acts. Showcases were a perfect arena for them because these were acts either just starting out or unwanted by agencies, and who were therefore desperate for work. I appeared in a few of these showcases and they were depressing experiences. I got a few bookings, but most of them were dreadful, demoralizing events.
I turned up at Blackburn Railwayman’s Club on a Saturday night to be greeted with disdain by the doorman, who enquired, ‘Where do you think you’re going?’ I said I was the ‘turn’ and he asked me what I did. I told him that I was a comedian and he said, ‘Go on then, change colour,’ which, I have to say, made me laugh. That soon stopped when he said, ‘We don’t get comedians here, this lot don’t like them. They like singers and git-vocs [guitar-vocalists].’
I made my way despondently to the dressing room, the walls adorned by many of the stars of clubland; most of them strangely only having a letter as a surname: ‘Johnny B’, ‘Jackie G’. I imagine that this is for security reasons – social security (boom boom). I once got hold of the North-West Concert Secretaries’ monthly programme, which listed all the acts due on at all the local clubs, and I managed to get all the way through the alphabet with artistes’ names. From the ‘A Train’ through ‘Susie Q’ to ‘Billy Z’.
The concert secretary limped into my dressing room and announced with no warmth or friendliness – ‘This is how it works. You go on at eight o’clock, do forty-five minutes, then you’re off and it’s supper, then bingo, and then you go back on to do your dance spot.’ I told him I was a comedian and so didn’t have a ‘dance spot’. He said he didn’t care, they always had a dance spot; I had to do one. Then he left.
I went on at eight o’clock and died on my arse. They didn’t heckle, they didn’t smile, they simply ignored me. I worked away for forty-five minutes and now and then a few people would turn away from their noisy conversations and look towards the stage with an expression that seemed to say, ‘Is he still here?’
In the dressing room, the concert secretary was unhappy. ‘What was that all about?’
I apologized and said that whoever had booked me had got it wrong and that I wasn’t the right sort of comedian for this club. I offered to leave – without payment, just go – but he was
n’t having any of that. I had to go on and do my dance spot, didn’t I?
As I waited for what seemed an eternity for the pie and peas to be served and the bingo to end, I seriously contemplated escaping. There was no way out through the club because they’d see me, but I could see my car in the car park and I could climb out of the window. I didn’t run, though; my pride got the better of me and so I went back on for my dance spot and did the same forty-five minutes I’d done before and they didn’t notice because they didn’t listen the first time. Nobody danced and they all ignored me again.
I once did a club where the concert secretary went on before me to make an announcement about a club member who had died suddenly. He requested a minute’s silence – then introduced me!
I had another who said …
Concert Sec: Ladies and gentlemen, we have had numerous complaints about the quality of acts that we have been putting on recently. People are saying that they are not of the required standard and that this club deserves better acts; acts of a higher calibre. I want to assure you that we have had a meeting of the committee and at that meeting, we agreed that the recent acts have not met the standard required and so we have decided that, in future, all acts will be booked through a reputable agent. (Cheers from the audience.) So, that’s from next week, ladies and gentlemen, but for tonight will you welcome Dave Spikey!
On another occasion I witnessed this extraordinary announcement:
Concert Sec: Ladies and gentlemen, we on the committee have received allegations that the finances of the club are being mismanaged, that the standard of acts has declined, that the quality of the catering has become unsatisfactory and that the ale isn’t as good as it used to be. Now, I have to say that we have been hurt by these allegations; the committee feel they do a difficult job under the financial constraints, and allegations such as these are unhelpful. So I have called an extraordinary meeting of the members for Tuesday night and I want all the Alligators to attend in person.
I somehow got a booking for a corporate event in Wigan. It was the Brickmakers’ and Concrete Fabricators’ Awards night (next stop the BAFTAs). It was an all-male affair and I was due to go on after the final award – the Golden Trowel or something – and do my forty-minute set. It was a very subdued affair, which didn’t augur well because the building industry had declined over the previous year and many of those present had been hit hard.
The awards went okay and then it was time for the Golden Trowel and emotions were running high. The chap who won it had been a brickmaker or concrete fabricator, I forget which, for thirty-odd years, and had just gone bust because of the downturn in demand. The chairman gave him his award and the bloke, let’s call him Jim, made an emotional acceptance speech, during which I had to bite my lip until it bled in order to stop laughing. It went something like this.
Jim: I never meant to get into bricks. I fell into bricks. And bricks get in your blood. If you cut me in half, you’d find ‘Accrington’ written all the way through me. And, as you all know, I’ve been in bricks all my life until this year when I went …
(Begins to cry a little. Stops to compose himself. Rousing support from the audience – ‘Come on, Jim!’)
… bust. This is a great honour for me and I’ll treasure this forever because I don’t think there’s any way I can recover from this setback. I don’t think I’ll ever make another …
(Cries again – audience crying too now, floods of tears – ‘Good man, Jim.’ )
… brick. Who’d have thought it would have come to this, lads?
(Not a dry eye in the place.)
Thanks a million, I love you guys.
(‘We love you’ echoes back, interrupted with sobs as he retakes his place at the table.)
Chairman: Ladies and gentlemen – Dave Spikey!
(I do my set to two hundred crying men. It goes slightly better than expected.)
Animal Farm
AT HOME, it became apparent that if we were to continue to increase our rescued animal intake, we should move to a house with a bit of land or a really big garden, and so we started to look in and around the Bolton area. We quickly realized that we couldn’t afford anything so big in the immediate vicinity and would have to cast our net wider.
We got a map of Lancashire and drew a circle to include all areas within a twenty-mile radius of Bolton General Hospital. With our search area widened, I spotted a farmhouse that was up for auction in a place called Charnock Richard, the home of the ‘Camelot’ theme park, which boasted funfair, jousting and a show from Mad Edgar, the court jester, thrown in. (Mad Edgar was my very good friend Steve Royle, comedian and juggler extraordinaire, who should be a star.)
Kay was on call on the Saturday that the house was open for viewing, so I went to see it with my daughter Jill. We got there at the appointed time, but the house and grounds were deserted. After waiting for half an hour, we decided to explore. We tried the front door and it swung open with a creak like in all those horror films. We crept inside – like they do in all those horror films – to discover a weird arrangement of rooms and decor. The dining room and lounge downstairs were fairly traditional, but then we opened a door and found a really surprising gothic bathroom with sunken bath, all in dark marble and not quite finished off.
As neither of us had had a big axe implanted in our skull so far, we decided to push our luck and venture upstairs, where we found a long corridor with all the bedrooms off it to one side. We opened a couple of doors to find scruffy rooms in need of decoration, then opened the third door and there, in the bed, under the bedclothes was … a body! The body groaned and moved and we stifled a scream and left, very quickly, and never went back.
On the way home, Jill suggested that we called into nearby Chorley to have a look at what the local estate agents had to offer because, if nothing else, we had discovered that it was a really lovely area. In the first estate agent’s window, we saw an old stone house built in 1839 with a fifth of an acre of garden, which was well within our budget and situated in a nearby village. We asked for the details and the agent asked if we’d like to view it later in the afternoon. We said we would, he arranged it and an hour later we were walking up the small, private road towards the house.
Have you ever walked into a house and known immediately that you had to live there? That’s what happened to me on that day. We had only seen the small, old, oak-beamed lounge and I absolutely knew and Jill agreed. The garden was a bit unkempt with the remains of a big aviary, but it had a mini orchard with various fruit trees, a massive Douglas fir and a few other big trees and numerous bushes. It was perfect.
We arranged to go back with Kay and Jenny the day after, and although Jenny loved it, Kay was less impressed – but I had to have it and it was three votes to one. I agreed that we should look around the area and meet a few locals before making a final decision, so we spent a couple of days doing this and realized that this was a dream location. Everyone we met was very warm and welcoming, the local pubs were very traditional and hubs of the local community, and our neighbours were brilliant; Ruth was a complete nutter and became an instant friend to Jenny, being as they were (and are) on the same wavelength – which is some way off the dial.
We bought the house and we’ve lived there for over twenty years now. Over time, we’ve ripped out nearly all the modernized aspects and tried to return the house to its original state, with flagged floors, beams, pine kitchen and a fantastic Lancashire range, which we discovered in a Preston junkyard. We luckily found someone who could reassemble and fit it, and even though it meant building a chimney and having a couple of missing pieces manufactured, it really was worth it. It’s absolutely magnificent when the fire is roaring away in it and it acts like a giant radiator.
Having moved into our new house, we assessed the many changes we’d like to make. The garden was great, but the grass needed keeping down and neither of us are keen gardeners, so we thought that a rescued goat would be the ideal solution.
I went
to Blackburn Auction Mart, a man on a mission. Kay wouldn’t come as she thought it would be too distressing – and so it was. I saw a baby goat cowering in a corner, being poked and prodded by a group of men (I found out later that much of the ‘meat’ curry served up in restaurants is in fact baby goat). The goat was a brown-and-white baby boy goat – a Toggenberg – and he was a pretty boy, who had been taken away from his mother very early because they want the goat’s milk to sell and boy goats ‘aren’t much good for anything’.
The kid was terrified and I had to rescue him. I paid twelve pounds for ‘Billy’ – come on, you don’t get a choice of name – and I popped him in the back of the estate car and took him home. When I parked by the front door, Kay came out to see if I’d been successful, but he was so small that she didn’t see him at first. Then he jumped up on his little back legs and she fell in love with him.
Because he was so young, he still had part of his umbilical cord attached. We had to go to ASDA to buy a baby feeding bottle and milk, and over the next few weeks we handfed him.
The dogs accepted him quickly and he ran and played with them. Throughout his long and happy life, I’m convinced he thought he was a dog. He was a handsome kid and we took him on holiday on the narrowboat with us; he’d run up and down the roof as we sailed. When we moored up for the night, you’d see people walking along the towpath, smiling at the sight of our three or four or five dogs … and then the smile turning to a quizzical look as they tried to identify the little brown and white ‘dog’ running with them.
When Billy was weaned off the baby milk, we introduced him to our lawn and said, ‘Look, Billy! Lovely grass.’