by Dave Spikey
One of the highlights of my new career was the nomination of ‘The Overnight Success Tour’ for the prestigious Manchester Evening News Theatre Awards, in two categories. One was for ‘Best Comedy Show’ and the other was for ‘Performance of the Year’, which was voted for by the readers and which included shows from every genre of entertainment: Opera, Dance, Theatre, Music, etc. I was up against Peter Kay’s all-conquering ‘Mum Wants a Bungalow Tour’ in both categories, so I wasn’t holding my breath. Peter won Best Comedy Show and Sally Lindsay collected the award for him by reading out the acceptance speech that he’d texted in.
The Manchester Evening News Theatre Awards dinner at the Midland Hotel is possibly the best awards show on the planet; I have been privileged to host them in the past. The production of the event is always top class and themed; we walked into a ‘Winter Wonderland’ through a blizzard of snow the other year. The atmosphere is brilliant; warm and friendly, as you might expect. Bob Hoskins attended one year and said, ‘Forget the BAFTAs, this is the bollocks,’ and it is. The food is always stunning, the company great: we sat with Jason Manford, Jimmy Cricket, Badly Drawn Boy, the mad teacher from Corrie and the Bad Dingle from Emmerdale last year and had a right laugh from when the wine starts to flow at 12 noon, through the awards which end at 5-ish, and then onto the evening party.
And so it was that I was a smiling happy drunk by the time the last award was announced. The ‘Performance of the Year’ is the one to win because, as I mentioned, it crosses all genres and is voted for by the readers. Anyway, the point is that I wasn’t listening when they announced the winner, but noticed quite quickly that everyone was applauding and looking at me with weird smiley faces, and then Kay screamed, ‘You’ve won it!’ and I staggered onstage and, for the first time in my life, was lost for words, such was the shock and surprise. I was in the car going home when a text on my mobile snapped me out of my trance. It simply said, ‘What’s he won that for?’ which I think must have been sent in error.
I am lucky enough to have quite a few awards on my shelf at home, but the ‘Performance of the Year’ takes pride of place. It meant that at last I’d made it as a comedian and I’d done it the hard way. I’d done it my way. I’d not compromised; I’d not taken bad advice from a multitude of people who said that I needed to be more outspoken and edgier and provocative to succeed. You are what you are and I am what I am; I can only write and perform material that I think is funny, that makes me laugh.
I realized early days that of course I am not unique and that if I see, hear, think, imagine or invent something that makes me laugh inwardly, then it will probably make the majority of ordinary people laugh as well. My job – and a comedian’s skill, I think – is to take these ideas and exaggerate them to wring every ounce of humour out of them, and in doing so, to trigger off other ideas that often take you by surprise and steer you off at a tangent or help develop the same theme further. A good comedian must possess a high level of creativity and, most importantly, lateral thinking, in order to harvest the highest yield of comedy material from a given idea and then deliver the pay-offs with that crucial element of shock and surprise and … timing.
Charlotte did a deal with Universal to film ‘The Overnight Success Tour’ show at the wonderful City Varieties Theatre, Leeds and to distribute the DVD of the tour. Universal wanted me wearing a white jacket on the DVD cover to ‘connect’ me with Jerry from Phoenix Nights, and also to have small banners saying ‘Co-writer and co-star of Phoenix Nights’, but there were objections from some quarters so I happily reverted to my trademark black PVC jacket and the banners were relegated to the back cover. The DVD sold well in any case and got me a Gold Disc, which hangs in my kitchen.
Round about the same time, I was approached to release Jerry’s songs on CD, which sounded like a great idea and I’d have loved to have done, but as I didn’t own the rights, it wasn’t possible – although they are available on a CD called The Best of Peter Kay So Far.
I wrote a new show, ‘Living The Dream’, which I toured a couple of years later and which Universal again filmed, this time at Oldham Coliseum, which is a special place for me as it holds many great memories of my nights there with Eamonn and Jimmy and the WOW shows in the early years. The show wasn’t quite as good as the first one in my opinion, but I was still very pleased with it.
I did an ‘Audience With’ tour a couple of years later, which I really enjoyed. The audience filled in cards with questions, and while the fantastic Steve Royle, who has been my special guest on all tours, did his set before the interval, I sorted the questions out into some sort of order. I knew that there would always be the same recurring questions, and so I had prepared answers and routines for these, but about half of the questions were particular to that night’s audience. Q: ‘If you could have a super power, which one would you choose?’ A: ‘Russia. It’s got all that gas and oil for a start.’
As I say, it was great for me because it made me address topics I normally wouldn’t have considered, and in doing so generated new ideas and routines, which I later incorporated into my recent ‘Best Medicine Tour’. I consider this to be my best show to date and I toured it in well over a hundred theatres nationwide over eighteen months. It received great reviews from critics and audiences alike and the DVD was filmed at Mansfield Palace Theatre in front of a brilliantly enthusiastic audience.
I’m slowly putting together my next tour show and fifth national tour, ‘Words Don’t Come Easy’, for Spring 2011. The core of the show has sprung from an incredibly popular segment of my ‘Best Medicine Tour’, in which I deconstructed song lyrics. I have amassed a couple of dozen more and will use them to highlight the situations in life where indeed words don’t come easy, from parents’ rubbish sex-education talks, to adolescent chatting-up techniques, hospital ‘speak’, newspaper features and ‘readers’ poems’ and many, many others. It should be good and will be coming to a theatre near you! I’d be pathetically grateful if you would come along and have a laugh with me.
Bear with Me
EVERY DAY, I receive requests to help charities – either by sending autographed DVDs, books and photos, or by attending events, either as a guest or a performer, in order to raise the profile of the charity and/or raise funds. I still find it strange that the simple fact of me agreeing to participate in these events can make such a difference, but the fact is that it does – such is the power of ‘celebrity’ (hate that word) – and so I consider it to be a great and satisfying, if surprising, aspect to my job.
I think the job I did in the NHS for all those years was far more important, but nobody ever popped their head into the lab after an arduous, sleepless twenty-hour shift and said, ‘Dave, bloody well done last night.’ Now, people come up to me in the street and pubs, shops and restaurants to tell me how much they enjoy my work, and I get touching messages from people who say that watching Phoenix Nights or my stand-up DVDs has helped them through a particularly tough time in their lives – so I find it difficult to reconcile the two careers. I mean, it’s all very flattering and yes, everybody needs a pat on the back now and then, but you have to keep it in perspective, don’t you?
My problem is that it’s so difficult prioritizing and actioning so many requests, all of which are very worthy causes. While I do always send off signed memorabilia, I can’t attend the majority of the events that I’m invited to. I have a waiting list of around a hundred invitations, and requests to perform for charity, with more arriving daily, so it’s basically down to a question of logistics based on my forthcoming commitments, combined with how much a particular cause touches me and how it fits in with my personal adopted charities.
A couple of years ago, when the last of our lovely pets passed away, we made the decision not to replace them for the time being because I was now travelling and touring extensively and it was becoming increasingly difficult to find people to look after the animals while we were away. I decided that I would get more involved with animal charities at grass
roots level and channel my energies into helping them in this way. I became patron of Pet Rehome, which takes unwanted pets and finds foster homes for them until such time as a suitable permanent home can be found. This is far less traumatic for the pets than being placed in a destitute animals’ centre and living for months or years in a cold unwelcoming cage, especially when you consider that a fair number of these pets will have come from loving homes where the owner can no longer take care of them due to illness or old age.
I also support Paws for Kids, which is a unique charity I think and one which I am committed to raising the profile of. It helps children from families where domestic violence is prevalent, who are often deeply affected by witnessing violence to their parent, siblings or pets, whether or not they are themselves victims of an assault. In families where there is domestic violence, pets are often threatened, injured or killed by a violent person as a means of keeping power and control over his partner and her children. Paws for Kids’ ‘Safe Haven’ project provides a unique and specialized support service to the victims, their children and their pets; helping all involved, physically and emotionally, both in the short and long term. ‘Safe Haven’ provides families who have experienced violence first hand with an opportunity to become part of a meaningful, nurturing programme, which aids the development of emotional and relationship skills.
I’ve also been privileged to open the new Haematology Unit at the Christie Hospital and the new ‘skateboard’ park and playground at Rainbow House, as well as perform in shows to support Macmillan Nurses, Shelter, Bolton Hospice, The Wonderbus, Special Care Baby Units, The Suzy Lamplugh Trust and many more.
However, I decided a couple of years ago that, rather than send off a donation here and there, it would be far more effective if I donated all the money from selected tour shows to certain charities. Last year, Pet Rehome, Paws for Kids and Animals Asia were my chosen charities.
I mentioned that if a certain cause touches me, I will try my hardest to get involved and help. Such was the case with Animals Asia China Bears Rescue. In China, Vietnam and neighbouring countries, bear bile is used in traditional medicine to treat a variety of conditions, ranging from fever to haemorrhoids. I know, it’s ludicrous; even more so when you consider that there are over fifty homeopathic and synthetic alternatives.
Because of this nonsensical ‘medicine’ of the dark ages, the bears are kept in appalling conditions in horrific torture chambers that they call ‘farms’. These beautiful, majestic, stoic animals are kept in tiny cages for up to twenty-five years and milked of their bile. That’s twenty-five years – can you even begin to imagine the interminable pain and suffering? The method of extraction is achieved by either clamping the bears in a metal corset, through which a steel canula is embedded in their liver to drain the bile, or by randomly sticking needles into the liver in a hit-and-miss, pot-luck attempt at trying to hit the gall bladder! ‘Barbaric’ doesn’t begin to cover it. The cages they are kept in are so small and constrictive that the bear cannot ever stand, move or turn – and again, that’s for up to twenty-five years. And of those who were trapped in the wild, many will have at least one paw missing due to traumatic injury in the trap.
So I sent the money from a show to Animals Asia, and they replied and asked if I would host their roadshow in Manchester and the following year in Liverpool, which I said I would. There I spoke with Jill Robinson MBE, the inspirational founder of the charity, and she told me that the money I had sent was sufficient to free two bears from their lives of torture. I was dumbstruck. When I help a charity, what normally happens is that I get a letter thanking me and telling me where the money that I’ve helped to raise has been sent, so maybe a new incubator for special care or specialized equipment for physically challenged kids, and so on. That is obviously very pleasing and gratifying – but this was something else. I had actually freed two bears from their suffering!
The way this works is that the charity has to buy the bear ‘farmer’s’ licence and take his bears away. Although in China it is still legal to farm bears, I understand that no new licences are being issued, so you effectively reduce the number of farms by one every time you do this.
Jill asked if I’d consider allowing the charity to name the two freed bears ‘Spikey’ and ‘Kay’. Of course I agreed to this. Then they asked if Kay and I would like to fly out to Vietnam, to choose ‘our’ bears from the eighty that were pending release in an area south of Hanoi and to visit the brand new sanctuary, which was approaching completion. They also suggested a visit to their established sanctuary, which was home to over 200 rescued bears in China, after the visit to Vietnam. I looked in my diary and found a week in November free and we booked our tickets straight away.
It was a whistlestop visit with seven flights in six days. Manchester to Singapore – Singapore Airlines. Singapore to Hanoi – Singapore Airlines. Two days in Hanoi, then Hanoi to Guangzhou (98-point score in Scrabble!) – China Southern Airlines. Guangzhou to Chengdu – China Southern Airlines. (Bear with me, there is a point.) Three days in Chengdu, then Chengdu to Beijing – Air China. Beijing to London Heathrow – Air China. Then the last leg – almost home now, been travelling twenty-two hours – Heathrow to Manchester – British Airways – f***ing cancelled!
The visit was incredible. Three words: emotional roller coaster. There were highs, but also many lows. I knew there would be, but it was still too upsetting at times. Nothing can prepare you for the sight of the bears in their tiny cages. Their sad, desperate, tortured eyes pleading with you. The self-mutilation, endless pacing and mental illness that the continued pain and suffering has caused.
In Vietnam, the practice is now illegal, but many farms still exist under the guise of tourist cafés and restaurants – ‘The Black Bear Café’ etc. – where customers can have a drink and look at the ‘lovely’ bears. This is, of course, a front, and in a dramatic twist of fate we stumbled upon the reality of what actually happens when we returned unannounced to one such café. A coachload of Korean tourists were just leaving, having chosen a bear for bile extraction. We discovered the bear unconscious and we found bile on an ‘operating’ table, together with horrible long needles that had been stabbed into the bear’s gall bladder. We filmed the evidence and the panic of the farm owners. We have since submitted it to the Vietnamese government, who have said that it is not sufficient evidence to shut down the ‘café’!
On the plus side, we visited the new sanctuary in Vietnam, which is situated in a beautiful spot inside a national park and will provide a wonderful retirement home for the bears.
The established sanctuary in China, meanwhile, is nothing short of stunning. On 200 acres, it has ten bear houses and enclosures and is home to over 200 happy bears, some of whom spent the first ten to twenty-five years of their lives in the horrible ‘crush’ cages, which are particular to China – and yet these bears have somehow forgiven us for their awful suffering and you can actually feed one or two by hand through the bars of their luxury compounds!
One heartbreaking day, the vets brought a beautiful big bear called Fuzzy into the hospital for her two-year routine health check. I helped clip her paws and took blood from her jugular vein for a full laboratory screen. During the physical examination, we found a mass in her abdomen. The laparotomy revealed a huge liver tumour, which had spread to the lymph nodes. Fuzzy never went back to her enclosure; another victim to the liver cancer that is a common legacy of the years of trauma that the liver suffers during the bile extraction by needle, canula or fissure.
My abiding memory, however, will be a happy one. Seeing the bears free at last, feeding, playing, climbing their platforms, splashing in their pools, foraging for their hidden food and play-fighting – many of them with limbs missing, a result of the terrible snare traps that captured them in the wild. There are thousands of them still suffering and I’m dedicated to help this wonderful charity carry on until all of them are free.
Education is key, I think. You can’t go blundering in
to these countries and lecture them on animal welfare and the rights and wrongs and plain ridiculousness of their traditional medicine because it is exactly that: hundreds of years of tradition. Both sanctuaries have education centres which detail the history of bear farming, with many diagrams and photographs to illustrate the practice, exhibits on show including the cages and the metal corsets, and presentations of the many alternative treatments available. They finish with a tour of the sanctuary, where the happy bears roam in acres of space, foraging for the food that the Chinese staff have hidden early in the morning. Thankfully, I think the message is getting across. Please check out their website animalsasia.org to see at first hand the fantastic work they do.
Schools These Days
AS WELL AS undertaking charity work, I also often get invited into schools to present prizes or give motivational talks or career advice. I am continually amazed at how much the schools and their teaching methods have radically changed since I was hit with a chair leg for defacing a ‘Lost Property’ notice (which incidentally I did not do – it was Chris Whitehouse).
I’ve seen this at first hand on more than one occasion recently, and although there have been many, many changes, I’m not convinced that they have all been for the good. It might be an age thing, but I am convinced that somewhere along the way, during the abolition of ‘streaming’ children and the implementation of liberal teaching methods, PC initiatives, health-and-safety considerations, league tables and scrapping of competitive sport etc., etc., etc., the actual education of our children has suffered and kids aren’t as bright at the same stages of development as they used to be … and an incredibly high number are really thick.
I present to you, mi’lud, evidence to support this.
1. A friend of mine is head of department in humanities in a big comprehensive school near Manchester. He’s a good bloke and a great teacher. The other Christmas, he had an idea to organize a ‘Form Fortunes’ quiz for his class, combining all the aspects of the classic family TV game show with the coursework they’d studied on the Industrial Revolution – a sort of fun revision period. He asked me if I would go in and be ‘Les Dennis’, and I said of course I would. This is what happened.