My one-man show is not to everyone's taste, but the public is being very kind. It's a night out, of sorts
Flushed out of my safe and cosy existence in Cabaret, I find myself back in the
cut-throat world of TV and solo performances. Two very different gigs reacclimatised me. Chairing Have I Got News For You isn’t an easy job. It’s a bit like being a nervous supply teacher suddenly thrust into a classroom full of overconfident adolescents. Still, there’s some nice finger food after the recording.
I've been around for a few decades now, and I'm sure even if you've never experienced the excitement of seeing me live on stage in my own one-man show you can imagine the sort of nonsense I get up to. It's all quite ripe, as you would expect: anal and oral references are ten-a-penny and I even use the "c" word in relation to Postman Pat. (Someone's got to.) It's not to everyone's taste, but the public are very kind. They tolerate me. It's a night out, of sorts.
Even so, I was a tad surprised to be booked for the National Motorhome Show. I wouldn’t have thought I was their Tupperware cup of tea, somehow, but there it was in my diary, bold as brass: “Soundcheck 5pm. The showground, Peterborough.” Who was I to argue? Off I went.
I found myself at Entrance 12 and asked a security bod where to go. "Well, mate," he said, waving a tattooed arm towards a large building glistening amid a sea of motorhomes, "you're performing in that cowshed over there."
Sometimes theatres are named after the building's previous incarnation, I reassured myself, like the delightful Watermill Theatre or Edinburgh's prestigious Assembly Rooms. On this occasion that wasn't the case. It was indeed a cowshed, plain and simple, and evidently only recently vacated.
Nevertheless, a stage had been built and 3,000 plastic chairs filled the space. I loved the way ruched net curtains had been hung over the skylights, as convincing as Les Dawson in drag. I was sharing the evening, and indeed my dressing room, with Dusty Springfield and Elvis Presley - both, thanks to the magic of show business, alive and well and wearing crusty old wigs. ("I've got to get away early," explained Elvis. "I've got another gig in Milton Keynes.")
Following my soundcheck, a woman called Miranda marched towards me in a no-nonsense manner and introduced herself as the person "in charge". I looked her up and down in her crumpled leisurewear and sensed trouble.
"Now then," she said, firmly. "You know it's family entertainment tonight, don't you?" "I beg your pardon?" I said. She might as well have said that I had to perform in Russian. "Family entertainment," she repeated, showing her teeth. "Nothing blue!" "But I'm Julian Clary!" I reasoned. "We've got families in tonight," she said ominously. "NOTHING BLUE!"
"It'll be good for them," I said insolently. "Broaden their horizons." I held her gaze, enjoying her discomfort. She'd booked me and must take the consequences. I'm not Bobby Crush, after all. Even so, I spent the next three hours fretting about my forthcoming performance: should I do buggery and oral but cut the Postman Pat routine?
Come ten o'clock I was on. Dusty and Elvis had worked the crowd into a frenzy and now it was my turn. "Good evening, punters! I love motorhomes! Like you, I'm really only happy when I'm bent double in a small space washing my hair in recycled urine . . ."
I got a tentative laugh, but a laugh all the same. "I'm not sure how rude I'm allowed to be," I confessed. There was a vague murmuring from the throng. Then I spied a woman in the front row eating chips, and asked if I might have one. She obligingly offered me her polystyrene tray and there it was - a gift, a sign from God in my hour of need - a saveloy, pink and plump and steaming. I held it up to the light. You can imagine the rest.
Julian Clary
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