Multi award winner Dave Spikey is one currently of the UK's most sought-after comedians.He began his stand-up career in 1990 when he hit the comedy circuit and won North West Comedian of the Year. He gave up 30 years as the Chief Biomedical Scientist in Haematology at the Royal Bolton Hospital to take up comedy professionally. He has gone on the be a panelist on Channel 4's 8 Out Of 10 Cats with Jimmy Carr and Sean Locke, and present a new series of the classic show Bullseye.His most famous role is in the sitcom Phoenix Nights alongside fellow North West funny man Peter Kay. He plays Jerry StClair, the long suffering compare at the Phoenix Club. He has also embarked on a number of extremely successful stand-up tours.Here Dave chats to Female First about his new tour, why he hates the gym so much, and the possibility of the Phoenix Nights cast being kidnapped dressed as Nativity characters...
What are you up to at the moment?
Well, I'm starting my tour. It starts of February the 9th and I'm doing my first preview tomorrow night in Morecambe. Where are you based by the way - i thought i recognised the area code of the phone number?"Near Wigan...
Oh very close to me then, I'm from Chorley. We could've done this interview with two tin cans and a piece of string. When I was little we didn't have mobile phones, just tin cans and pieces of string. I'm going to Wigan on the tour actually.
Do you like playing in the North West?
Yeah because I'm back at home. I'm doing all sorts, Wigan, Blackburn, Preston. It's called The Best Medicine Tour because I used to work in the NHS, I worked in the NHS for nearly 30 years. Also, my Dad always used to drum into us kids 'laughter is the best medicine' which is why when I was six i nearly died from diphtheria. 'Dad, can I have some antibiotics?' 'Knock knock...' 'Oh, here we go... who's there? Just give me some penicillin, I want some drugs, give me some drugs.' The back up was, if i didn't laugh and it didn't get better my Mum used to spit on a hanky, that was medicinal. Or kiss it better. 'Come here, I'll kiss it better,' 'It's broken Mum, take me to the hospital. It shouldn't be facing that way.'
I think she was medically trained because she knew that if you went out with wet hair you got double pneumonia. Not even single pneumonia. I don't why but you got pneumonia and then you got it again because you had wet hair. But yeah, that's why it's called The Best Medicine Tour. I'm doing that and writing a couple of scripts as well.
Do you prefer doing live comedy and stand-up or TV and acting work?
Live comedy and stand-up. Live comedy is best because it's all your own work and I could think of something going to Morcambe tomorrow night. I could think of something funny and I could go on stage three hours later and make people laugh with it. It's that immediacy of it. It's seeing their response, seeing their faces and seeing their eyes. I can write something for television that would be very funny and I'd be very proud of it, but if it gets made it could be two years before it appears on television. Then people watch it at home and go 'hah' and that's it. It's less gratifying to some degree that getting up on stage. In a way it's a lot more nerve-racking and intimidating but the rewards are far greater.
Which one do you find easier to write?
It's a different technique. For stand-up I just think what makes me laugh, it's a discipline sort of thing. Like, I've got an ear for conversation or things that are happening or things on the news. I think that's a skill as a comedian. It's things we all see and hear or read in a newspaper every day of the week, but it's me turning it into a comedy element and exaggerating it and lying about it. It's like me going into the pub at night and something will happen and I'll be telling my mates about it. Then someone will come in and they'll go 'Dave, tell her about that, that was funny.' So you go 'well, this thing happened...' Then somebody else will come in and you'll have to tell them about it as well. By the time I've told the story five times in the pub it's twice as big as it was. I'll have exaggerated it so much and twisted it so much that everyone's staring and going 'where did the priest come into this?' And I'll say 'oh I don't know, it just works better with a priest.'
When you're writing sitcoms and scripts it's a different discipline altogether because you create a character and then you have to write as that character. In some ways it can be quite easy, once you've got the traits of that character established and their interaction with other characters, in some ways that's easier because you've only got three or four people in a scene usually. But it's a different thing altogether.
When you first started Phoenix Nights did you ever think it would be as successful as it was?
Not really, I don't think you can ever second guess that. All we knew was that it was going to be good. That sounds a bit arrogant but the thing was three of us wrote it and because there was three of us we made an effort so that all of us had to agree on everything. It didn't always work that way but nearly every time the decision had to be between the three of us. Say we'd write a scene and two of us would think it was fine and it's lovely. But the other person would go 'hang on, we're still missing a trick here.' So we knew we'd been meticulous with it. I mean, we used to end up fighting about which was the funniest pie, chicken and mushroom? It's obviously chicken and mushroom, but no, there's cheese and mushroom. So we'd have these massive rows about which was the funniest pie. @You're from Liverpool - you don't know anything about pies!' They were really heated conversations.
But the bottom line is, when we'd written it we knew it was good. But whether other people are going to think it's good is sort of unpredictable really. We knew it was a bit special, put it that way.
Are there any plans to do any more Phoenix Nights?
No that I'm aware of. I know Peter (Kay) has said on occasions that there will probably be a third series. I see him, well not regularly, but I see the other cast members quite often. In fact Neil Fitzmaurice is just filming a feature film and I've just done a little part in that with him. I mean, me him and Peter wrote it and he's never heard anything and I've never heard anything. Justin Moorehouse and people and other people associated with it haven't heard anything. I think sometimes you can leave it a bit too late before you do a third series. I think it was of it's time and whether it'd work as well now I don't know. We should've done a third series at the time but we didn't. I think we could do a Christmas special, that'd be really good fun. I'd love to see Brian Potter in a wheelchair as Father Christmas and him hating every minute of it. They'd be trying to do a nativity in the games room.
I had this idea that they'd all get kidnapped by Den Perry from the Banana Grove when they were getting ready to put the big Christmas show on and he puts them in an old disused air field somewhere. It'd be like The Great Escape. That's on every Christmas so you'd have that on the telly then them trying to escape, you know, Brian Potter trying to jump the barbed wire in his wheelchair. They'd be tunnelling, trying to get out. We'd parallel The Great Escape if we could.
Who'd win in a battle of comedy wits between you and Peter Kay?
I think Peter would win, he's younger. The youngsters always have it.
What about you and Jimmy Carr?
Jimmy. Jimmy and his writers.
Why did you decide to leave 8 Out Of 10 Cats, do you miss it?
I don't miss it. I'd done four series in two years and I was sort of burnt out with it. It occupied my life. Every week I'd be looking at newspapers and news headlines and I knew I'd have to make comedy out of the news and what was going on in the world. I'm not the sort of person who's really that quick witted in terms of ad libbing, so I'd really have to be second guessing all the stories that were going to be happening that week, whether it be President Bush going to such and such a place, or Wayne Rooney getting caught with a prostitute. So I'd not only be writing funnies about it, but also trying to second guess what Jimmy would say or what Sean (Locke) would say. It took over my life for a while. I think one time we did 11 episodes and I lost all of my summer just sitting in my room trying to write funnies for 8 Out Of 10 Cats. I think in the end I just wanted something fresh to do. It'd be easy just to sit on panel shows forever but I wanted a new challenge. I also wanted to go on tour again and I thought I couldn't do both. I can't write for a panel show and do stand up as well. I've got two scripts to write as well which take up quite a bit of time.
What was it like appearing on Celebrity Mastermind?
That was really scary! It's one of the scariest things I've ever done. I'd say it was close to taking my driving test in terms of scary things I've done. I did one when I was 18 or 17 and I'd not even had a lesson or something. That was stupid. You know when you get to a roundabout and they ask you to go straight over it they don't mean it, they really don't mean it. You've actually got to go round it. So then you're like 'well you said go over it!' There's a sign down the road from me that says new traffic way, please use both lanes. They don't mean that either, They really get pissed of behind me when I start weaving across both lanes.
But Mastermind was scary. I men doing stand-up I've been in quite a few stressful situations, and I'm quite intelligent, I went to grammar school, but when I did it I was the fourth one to go on and the nerves really got to me because I'd seen how hard it was. Once the lights go down it's like being interrogated and it's really weird. They ask you a question and there's like a void. The words go into your head, you can almost see them, and then you've got to process them and then an answer's got to come out straight away.It's almost automatic, it's a really weird feeling. I got really wound up because I went on last, because what you don't see on television is that they interview you for about 15 minutes first. So they interview you and then they ask you questions. So by the time I was answering my questions it'd been about an hour and I was really bricking it. I chose my topic which was human blood because I used to work in a hospital doing haematology but the thing is human blood is such a complex organ I thought 'I'm going to look an idiot here because I know some aspects of the human blood, I know the haematology side of it but I don't know anything about the biochemistry side of it, or the blood transfusion side of it and I could really look an idiot.' But luckily enough the questions they asked me on those topics were pretty standard questions and I won the specialist subject. On one par I was really pleased but on the other par I thought about the fact I was going to have to wait another hour to go on again and got all nervous. So I was terrified and I got to the end and I didn't really know I'd won. You know people look surprised and you think 'he must have known he'd won' but I didn't. I was like a rabbit caught in headlights. It was almost like that joke where you sit down and they say 'And your name is?" And you're thinking 'oh, I know this one... happy birthday to you, happy birthday to you, happy birthday dear David. That's it - David, my name's David." It was really that scary.
Was it scarier than performing in front of the Queen?
No actually that was the scariest thing. Only because again, we'd got there at something like 9 o'clock in the morning for the dress rehearsal and for some reason they decided I was funny enough to put on third from the end, after Ozzy Osbourne and before Shirley Bassy. And then Cliff Richard thought my wife was stalking him because every time he turned round she was there. And she wasn't, it was just an accident.And it took all morning to do the dress rehearsal because things kept going wrong and I was getting more and more nervous. I was in a dressing room with McFly, they wouldn't shut up. So the show started at half seven and I was on third from the end and after two hours the audience had had enough. I'd been there god knows how many hours and the nerves really did hit home. I was waiting to go on and there was a technical hitch so Cliff Richard had to go on and sing a song. Also, the theatre was lit because it was for television which means you can see all the audience's faces which is intimidating and they went 'Ladies and Gentlemen, please welcome on stage Dave Spikey!" So I ran on stage all full of nervous energy and they were sitting there with their arms folded, the ones in the posh seats didn't even applaud. The ones in the stalls did but I just saw these few faces and they were bored to tears because they'd been sitting there for two hours and were just thinking 'get Shirley Bassy on will you so we can go home.' So I went on and I did ok but I was just a bundle of nerves the whole way through it.
But the Queen seemed to like it, I've got a nice picture of me shaking hands with her.
Have you got it framed?
Have I heck. I don't know where it is. They made a bust of me, I'm Chorley's face of culture so they made a bronze bust sculpture of me, so I gave it away to some museum somewhere. I'm not into all of that.
Have you got any New Years Resolutions this year?
I want to lose some weight, definitely. I'm touring and I'm about half a stone too big. But I hate going to the gym. I cant get past that first machine with and the Twix and chocolate in it and I sit on the rowing machine eating a Crunchie. I just drift, I don't even row. Or I sit and watch the TV, but the thing is I never like what's on the TV. My wife gets really annoyed when she's watching something and some bloke comes in and turns it over to sport. I always seem to be sat on some machine when there's some fat 50 year old bloke sat on the thigh buster opposite me with his legs open and his underwear's perished and I can see his brains hanging out. I just hate the whole the whole gym ethic of blokes parading around in shorts and baseball caps on. What do you need a baseball cap for, you're in a gym! Then they park their 4x4 in a disabled parking spot so they don't have to walk as far. Get some exercise! There's always this woman that comes on the cross trainer at the side of me and puts it on the lowest level - that's not doing you any good! Just make it a bit more difficult for yourself.
The funniest thing happened when my wife wanted to weigh herself and the scales are electric and they weren't plugged in. She saw a plug in the wall so she unplugged it to switch them on and all the running machines, all the cross trainers stopped and everyone was falling all over the place. I nearly pissed myself laughing. She really could have injured a load of people.
Female First - Jacqueline Farrer