Stand-up comedy is no laughing matter

Feb 8 2008 Liverpool Daily Post

Comic Dave Spikey spills the beans to Lew Baxter about his fears and occasional failures

HE HAS wowed millions with his riotous television shows and delivers a stand up comedy routine that earns him full houses across the land, but when Dave Spikey spotted the Queen at his Royal Variety Performance debut his mind went blank, and he prattled on with an unscheduled sketch that baffled even him.

There was, he recalls, barely a titter of amusement from the great and the good in Cardiff’s splendid Millennium Centre and Dave confides that, to his horror, when he first walked on stage only a quarter of the audience applauded.

“It was a bit off-putting, to say the least, but I figured they were tired as they’d been sitting there since early evening,” chuckles Bolton-born Spikey, who is a double British Comedy Award winner, as well as his live show picking up the Best Comedy Performance award.

The co-star of the glorious TV series Phoenix Nights, with pals Peter Kay and Liverpool’s Neil Fitzmaurice, also penned ITV’s prime time comedy drama, Dead Man Weds, with a stellar cast that included Johnny Vegas, Tim Healey and Michael Brandon.

Vegas played a washed-up Fleet Street journalist working on a local paper and it was hailed as probably the best sitcom to come out of the ITV stable for eons.

“But stupidly it was pitched against the hit American soap Desperate Housewives and really we didn’t stand a chance, and the ratings were poor,” comments Spikey, about whom one critic of his solo shows urged fans to “sell their first-born for a ticket”.

Mr Spikey’s foray into the cut- throat world of show business, and particularly the comedy arena, began almost 20 years ago when he was part of the Northern club circuit as a kind of warm-up act for the likes of Jack Dee, Eddie Izzard and Max Boyce, and one-time huge favourites Cannon & Ball.

He also had a stab at presenting the television game show, Chain Letters, while also popping into The Royal Bolton Hospital every day to work as a bio-medical scientist.

In fact, it was this experience that helped him achieve the highest ever score on Celebrity Mastermind.

He tallied 16 points on his specialist subject – which was naturally blood – but proved that he’s certainly got his finger on the general pulse, so to speak, when he chalked up an astonishing 18 points for general knowledge,

“The biggest thrill was finding that I’d beaten the very high-brow Stephen Fry,” chortles Dave, who confesses, though, that it was the scariest thing he’d ever done.

“No matter how many times you have appeared before an audience, the second that music kicks in is terrifying.

“You are all alone in the dark with just a ghostly image of John Humphrys, and the questions seem to come out of thin air.”

Yet he won handsomely and is inordinately proud of the trophy, which is in the form of a Perspex chair. “Mind you, I caught my wife trying to wipe off a dirty mark and had to explain that it was supposed to represent the spotlight in the show,” quips Dave, who has an endearing self-effacement so rarely found in those who earn their crust on the front line of public favour or disdain.

We verbally wander back to explore the mental scars from his brief encounter with Royalty a few years ago.

“I didn’t do brilliantly,” he says honestly. “But I was after Ozzie Osbourne and just before Shirley Bassey. So, I was on a hiding to nothing.

“As I stood staring at the Queen and Prince Philip, I couldn’t think straight. I launched into a routine that wasn’t planned and wondered what the hell I was doing. It was soul-destroying looking at the rows of bored faces. And hardly anyone laughed.

“I did eight minutes which felt like a lifetime. Fortunately, it was cut back to three on the televised show and didn’t look too bad. And I did get a lovely photo of me and the Queen,” he adds.

Apart from his comedy, Spikey has won his spurs as a game show host, two years ago taking on the hugely popular Bullseye; and he was a regular on Channel 4 as team captain in the hit show 8 Out of 10 Cats with Jimmy Carr and Sean Lock.