SO RELIEVED that the experience of turning 50 wasn’t nearly as horrendous as he’d imagined, Julian Clary turned the revelation into a stand-up show.
And because that went better than expected, he expanded the tour for another few months.
He will be bringing it to the Theatre Royal in St Helens on Thursday, and promises it will be a different performance to the one he started out with.
“Because it’s a one-man show, I’m free to do whatever I want, it’s not like I’m locked into a script,” says the controversial comic.
“You may say an off the cuff remark one night and the next night you’ll add a bit to it and over the course of a tour it’ll become a whole 15-minute routine.”
As spontaneous as he may make his remarks appear, they are often carefully prepared in advance, he reveals.
“I scribble them down and get them in a vague order.
“If you think about it too much it becomes a bit scary, but actually if you just think of it as a chat with people it’s easier to do it somehow.”
The show looks back over the five decades of his life, considering the things he has done right and those he hasn’t.
Among them is his infamous, sexually explicit quip about Tory MP Norman Lamont at the 1993 British Comedy Awards.
The audience laughed, the nation blushed and Clary was the subject of a failed campaign to ban him from live TV forever.
He refers to it, with faux sheepishness, as “when I offended the public” and says he has no regrets.
But his words hint at more complex emotions behind his bravado.
“In retrospect, it’s not that shocking anyway. It was a long time ago and it’s not the sort of thing that would get you into trouble now,” he says.
“But that whole period was . . . there were quite a lot of things going on in my life . . . but I wouldn’t say I regret it. I don’t regret anything really.”
Now that his self-imposed watershed has been and gone, Clary seems quite taken with being 50.
“The prospect was traumatic but the reality is that you feel a sense of achievement and a wisdom that comes with age,” he says.
“I think when you’re in your 20s you have all these expectations of yourself and things you want to achieve, and when you’re 50 you’ve either done them or you haven’t.
“Your course is set by then.”
His particular course has been something of a meander, taking in stand-up, radio, TV and novel writing – with two best-sellers in the bag as well as the first installment of his autobiography.
Later this year, he takes his comedy tour to Australia and New Zealand, of which he says wryly: “They understand vulgarity, which I have been known to explore.”
Then it’s back to the British countryside to write another novel.
“I like the way my life’s worked out because it’s full of very different things,” he says. “If I was stuck doing one thing I’d be miserable, I like a complete contrast.”
There is at least one other thing he would like to try out, he reveals, and that’s Shakespeare. He has his eye on the comic character Andrew Aguecheek from Twelfth Night.
“I did him in a student production when I was about 19,” he says. “I’ve always fancied reviving that performance.”
JULIAN CLARY: Lord of the Mince is at St Helens Theatre Royal on Thursday.
