Phoenix Night's Dave Spikey on his return to Parr Hall

It has become that difficult area for observational comedians who are just returning to the circuit.

Do they broach the pandemic and try and find the funny side of lockdown life or just not talk about it altogether with a view that their audiences want a bit of an escape from it?

Dave, best known for writing and starring in Phoenix Nights, said: “I had a good think about this and normally we have a reputation in this country of laughing in the face of adversity and saying every cloud has a silver lining.

“But I can’t say that this is anything to laugh about or make jokes about so I’ve declared it a Covid free zone.

“I’ll probably touch on how I dealt with it and how we all tried to occupy our time though.

“We all started off with good intentions. For example, I tried to teach myself Spanish and failed miserably.

“I like going to Spain and wanted to learn because once when I went to a restaurant I meant to ask for the bill and asked for cheese.”

THE FUNNY SIDE OF LOCAL NEWS

Another thing that Dave enjoyed doing while stuck at home was reading between the lines of news articles.

He added: “I’m obsessed with local newspapers so what I did was escape the doom and gloom by looking for stories where funny things were still happening despite the overpowering fear and dread.

“There was one where the police boarded a ship in Hartlepool at 4am to arrest a sailor who was drunk and disorderly.

“My little brain automatically goes: ‘But what are they going to do with a drunken sailor that early in the morning?’ Another I saw was a Branston Pickle lorry crashing near Cheddar. I was just hoping it was outside a pub called The Ploughman. That would have been perfect.

"I’ve not found anything in the Warrington Guardian recently but I got a lovely letter from someone in Warrington who is going to the show. His daughter booked the tickets back in August 2019 and he’s now 80.

“He said: ‘I was surprised we had to book so far in advance. You must agree at my time of life it is a bit of a gamble’. So I thought that was great and I’m going to bring the letter on stage with me.”

Dave admitted he has some butterflies about the show though.

He said: “It’s that mixture of excitement and apprehension because I’ve not been on stage for about 18 months.

“Even at my stage you get nerves when you’re a bit rusty. I tour most years and when I’m not performing on a theatre stage I’m working somewhere. So it’s my longest absence since I started doing this.”

Dave will be at the Parr Hall on Wednesday, September 1 – and it has been a long time coming considering it has been rescheduled twice.

He added: “It’s been a long wait. This is the ‘spring 2020’ tour but what is nice is that everybody had the chance to cash their tickets in and start again but nearly all – 90 odd per cent of them – have decided to keep hold of them.

“It’s great for me that loyalty after such difficult times for everyone. It’s really nice.

FUNNY THINGS ALWAYS HAPPEN

“The world has changed significantly so I’ve had to tweak the act a little bit but essentially it’s the same.

“I’m of the opinion that in everyday life funny things happen all the time. We all notice them but maybe they wash over us or whatever.

“But I’ve had the sort of brain since I was a kid where I see a different angle to it. So it’s my job to find those little moments and try and make them funny. It’s the gift of exaggeration with a bit of the absurd thrown in there too.”

DAUGHTER NEXT DOOR

Dave may be keeping away from the C-word on stage but he knows a fair bit about the situation given his former life as a biomedical scientist in the haematology laboratory at Bolton General Hospital. His oldest daughter also works in cardiology and lives next door to him.

Dave said: “We have a nice big back garden and we both share it. So I’ve not only had my own take on it with my haematology and immunology background – knowing about antibodies and immune responses and stuff – but also my daughter came home each day and gave me ‘frontline’ reports.

“She is very dedicated but also very funny so she was able to come home and lighten it all up. We’d get the doom and gloom conferences from Downing Street every night but it’d be reassuring when I’d ask her how it was going at Wigan and I’d then know they were just about managing. That helped us in the early days when no one knew what was going on.”

THE BIG 7-0

Meanwhile, Dave, known for the likes of Bullseye and 8 Out of 10 Cats, has a big milestone coming up – he is 70 on October 6.

Dave added: “I’ve not really thought about it at all. My wife said to me the other day: ‘What do you want for your birthday?’

“I’m hopeless to buy for. I never want anything but she said: ‘It’s your big one’. I thought: ‘Oh yeah’. It’s just zoomed past.

“I was doing an interview the other day and we were talking about the NHS and offhand I said I’ve been very lucky to have two really great careers that I’ve thoroughly enjoyed – 32 years with the NHS and 21 in this’

“And he said: ‘So you’ve been working for 53 years?’ It took me aback. I said: ‘Yes I have. Oh my lord’! I’m not a party person but I’m sure the family have something planned. We’ll wait and see...”

DAVE'S TRIBUTE TO SEAN LOCK

Comedian Sean Lock

THE UK comedy scene was rocked when it was announced that Sean Lock died on August 18.

A well loved comedian, Sean sadly lost his battle with cancer at the age of 58.

Dave Spikey worked with Sean on the first four series of 8 Out Of 10 Cats.

The pair also came up through the northern comedy circuit at around the same time and Sean helped Dave to break into the London stand-up scene.

During our interview with Dave, he described Sean as a ‘genius’ and said the loss was still hitting him hard.

Dave added: “A comedian’s job is to distract the audience and misdirect the audience to get to the punchline.

“Everybody naturally is trying to guess what that punchline is going to be and that’s why it’s called a punchline because it hits you and you’re surprised by it.

“That’s what makes people laugh out loud.

“But what makes what Sean did special is when he had a gag to do – some surreal, absurd story he was going to tell – he would embellish it and never let it go until he squeezed every little moment of joy and humour out of it.

“So before you got to the punchline you’d have laughed about half a dozen times.

“It was a rare gift he had. It was the way his mind worked but it was also about his delivery and his voice. He was the comedian’s comedian.

“Although I only worked with him for those four years it’s hit me really quite hard. I’m still thinking about him a lot.

“There are not many like him. Eddie Izzard is one, Harry Hill to a degree and Ross Noble but Sean was the best at what he did. He had an analytical mind.”

The comedian and TV star, known for his surreal content and deadpan style, was a team captain on Jimmy Carr’s Channel 4 comedy panel show 8 Out Of 10 Cats and spin-off 8 Out Of 10 Cats Does Countdown.

One of his first professional TV appearances was in 1993, starring alongside Rob Newman and David Baddiel on their signature TV show Newman And Baddiel In Pieces.

He script-edited the 1998 BBC Two series, Is It Bill Bailey? and had his own show on BBC Radio 4 called 15 Minutes Of Misery, which was later expanded into TV series 15 Storeys High.

Dave Spikey is at the Parr Hall on September 1. Visit parrhall.culturewarrington.org