It’s like a home game says comic legend Dave Spikey ahead of two Lancashire shows

Chorley based comedian and TV star Dave Spikey is heading back on the road again with his latest tour.

In case you missed it the last time around, Dave Spikey’s Life in a Northern Town is returning to Lancashire next month with two shows.

The former Phoenix Night star will be at Colne’s Municipal Theatre on Thursday, February 27 and Fleetwood’s Marine Hall on Thursday, March 6.

Ahead of his homecoming shows, Dave, 73, had a chat with our celebrity reporter to talk all about his show, his love for Lancashire and his career now and in the future.

How are you feeling about heading on the road again with Life in a Northern Town?

“I'm a bit apprehensive really but only because it's a while since the first leg of the tour. To book the theatres that you want to play in, which I'm privileged to do at the moment, you've got to book them like a year in advance. I finished the first leg of this same show mid last year, so I've been waiting nearly eight months. So you just get a bit apprehensive. I'm like a kid at the moment, I'm revising, I've got my set list out and every day I'm going over it as if I’ve got an exam coming up. I've got that sort of feeling of ‘will I pass the test or not?’

What can people expect from Life in a Northern Town?

“It's strange you should ask because it's about my life in a northern town! When I was touring the tour before it, I kept noticing that in newspaper features about the show, people referred to me as a veteran comedian and I suddenly thought ‘Oh I'm a veteran? I remember my grandad winning a veteran bowls competition, he was about 90, I can't be a veteran’. So then it just prompted me to realise how old I am and I thought it might be an idea to look back at my journey. That sounds a bit pretentious but life's like that, isn't it, it’s a series of decisions and crossroads that you come to that define your life and I wanted to look back at those moments.

“I don't want to be too nostalgic, I don't want to isolate any younger members of the audience by just doing my own nostalgia freak about when I was growing up so I reference what life was like for me growing up in those days with what it's like at that age these days, compare modern standards, if you like. So I started writing it and you discover things along the way that you've forgotten all about and I thought that was quite funny, I'll put that in and that and that and then it's like a very, very elaborated journey of my life and I'm hoping people will find it as funny as I do”

I have to ask, as you grew up in Bolton- this is not a loaded question- but would you say Bolton is still part of Lancashire?

“Yes!, All my friends who still live there, when I write them Christmas and birthday cards, because I'm in Chorley-. I moved to Chorley for tax purposes- it’s always Bolton, Lancashire. I love Greater Manchester, don't get me wrong. I like working in Manchester, they’re great people, but it's not a county, is it really? I think you need a county, a shire, I think that's one of the reasons I moved to Chorley because it’s in Lancashire, it is a bit of a thing!”

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How did your early life in Lancashire lead to your career in comedy?

“We have that wonderful self deprecating humor in the north where people give as good as they get, and they'll laugh in the darkest of times- you’ll either laugh or you’ll cry sort of thing, we always look on the bright side. I know it's a cliche but the north looks at the humor in every day. I've got a friend who I talk about in the show called Derek, who's originally from the south, and he just takes things literally. When we were growing up, if somebody said something and then in banter one of us would come back with something funny, it would take him two or three minutes to realise it was a joke and we weren't being serious. But that's the way of life up north, you make fun of everything.

“Adding to that, you've got your environmental influences as well, like my dad, he was my hero. He had no academic qualifications but decided to self educate and I went along for the ride because I was the eldest. He got into art and literature and music, and he used to sit conducting the radio’s classical music with my mum's knitting needle! But he encouraged me to write a lot, even from a very early age so I had that creative, imaginative thing going on all the time. One of the happiest memories of me and my dad growing up is that we used to listen to the radio comedy on a Sunday afternoon and we’d just laugh so hard, we couldn’t breathe and we’d sliding off our chairs. So that was a massive input into my brain, When I was a kid, I'd get a report from school saying ‘another good essay from David, but why does everything have to have a comedy element to it?’ I wasn't aware I was doing it, that was just my life. So yeah growing up in the north, I was surrounded by laughter.”

Your life has included a pretty big career change - going from being a biomedical scientist to a comedian- what made you take that jump?

“I wanted to be a doctor when I was kid because I was quite ill and I saw the work that they did. So because of that and my dad's academic influence, I did very well at school. I passed my O-levels very well, my A levels had just started and then my dad - he was a self-employed painter, decorator- he had an accident and I had to leave school because I had to go looking for a job. When he was in hospital, he noticed a job advert for medical laboratory scientists and he said ‘why not get that?’ because he felt guilty about me having to leave school to support the family. He said ‘When you get this job, and then when I’m well, and back at work, it’ll be great background for when you do resume your studies and do medicine’. So that was a little crossroads to come to and then, I liked it so much I stayed for 32 years.

“Another little moment is that I got involved in radio comedy because I used to write a lot and send stuff off to TV shows and somebody at the hospital heard about this and said ‘you should write for the pantomimes and the review society at the hospital’. So I started doing that and I ended up running the whole shebang! Long story short, there was a nurse called Abigail Todd who played another massive role in my life. She's very funny and after one of my performances, she caught me at the side and said, ‘I’m a big fan of radio and television comedy, and you should be a comedian. There's a talent show coming up called Stairway for the Stars and you should do it’. I believed her like an idiot but I went and did it and I won! I thought ‘I'm a comedy star’ then I came back up north, and I wasn't, I fell down the stairway to the stars quite quickly, because we're talking in like the late 1980s, there was nowhere for me to come up here and be a star. So I did the Working Men's clubs and I picked up a lot of material that came in handy when I started writing Phoenix Nights with Peter and Neil. But yeah, I left work in 2000 and it took me another 10 years of working the circuit to move my way up the ranks.”

Having done stand up since 2000, what's the funniest thing you’ve ever been heckled?

“I shouldn't say this because it’s just asking for trouble but I very rarely get heckles. When I start telling stories, I just ramble on and I don't leave any gaps for anybody to heckle. If it happens, I just generally nod at them and ignore them, because I think they just want that acknowledgement. I think that the audience self-polices them, they all look at them and go ‘you're a bit of a d***’. I sometimes applaud a good heckle, which is very rare. Not too long ago, I was doing a routine- something had happened to me at a garden center in Chorley and this kid asked me a stupid question- and I said ‘do you not think kids are getting stupider?’ This voice from the back went ‘it's more stupid!’, so I just went yeah fair comment mate, but on the whole - I’m touching wood as I speak, I don't really get heckled.”

You’ve mentioned Phoenix Nights already, if people were coming to see you because they loved that show, what can they expect that’s similar or entirely different?

“Well it’s just me, I’m true to myself. The character I played in Phoenix, Jerry, he is your typical club compere. I'm not really like Jerry, I just go on and chat for a bit. There is a risk when you get into stand up, that you do try and conform to what's expected, what the stereotypes are and what the current trends are in comedy. But I think you just got to be true to yourself and say what you think is funny, and if I think it's funny, hopefully you will as well! It's worked over the years I've been doing it- my first tour was 2003 off the back of the success of Phoenix so I've been doing it for over 20 years now and luckily enough, it's gone really well.”

You're bringing it to both Colne and Fleetwood, so how are you feeling about coming up to Lancashire?

“Great, it’s like a home game innit. ln fact, there's a little bit more pressure, because you've got to be right on the top of your game. You can never be complacent about it. You've got to have adrenaline, before you go on stage you've got to go and listen to the audience and see what they’re like. The thing with the northern shows in general, I love standing waiting to go on 5 -10 minutes before because without exception, you know they're up for it because they're laughing. I don't know what they're laughing at, they’re not laughing at me because I’m not on yet but they’re all having banter, there’s a lot of talking going on in the audience, a great atmosphere and you just want to get on then. As I said, Lancashire shows are like a home game but then again, for every home game, you've got to win it and you've got to be on top of the game so that's why I'm revising as we speak.”

I know you're not travelling far from home but will you get up to anything in Colne or Fleetwood?

“Probably not, I’ve seen the sights already! I've not been in Colne for quite a long while though, it was being refurbished. It's nice that Muni, proper, little northern theater, but they came out of the blue about 12 months ago and said we're open, we’re ready to book new shows so I didn't approach them, they approached me, which is great, because I've done all that area on this tour, I've done Burnley and I've done Blackburn so it’s the same sort of communities with the same sort of sense of humour so it should be great!

“But no it’s just quick visits. I don't think it's any secret, really, this is my last tour. I'm of a certain age now and I did promise my wife, who supported me all the way through work and kept looking at me going ‘where are you going tonight?’ ‘I'm going to a show in Cheltenham’, ‘why? You were head of the hematology laboratory?’ that when I got to a certain age, I would semi-retire.

“I'm also getting offered a lot more television work now. I've just done Alma’s Not Normal which was great to be involved in, a really great show with Sophie and now and again, I get offered nice roles on television, some of which I can do, and some of which don't appeal fo whatever reason. But if a theater came in and said ‘we'd like to bring your show here’, I'd jump at the chance if it was something I fancy but I wouldn't put a tour together. I’d just do an odd show here and there.”

If this is your last official tour, does it add a bit more gravitas to those shows?

“Not really. One day at a time me. My wife's planning for Easter, I'm just wondering what's going to happen tomorrow. The next thing on my horizon is I’m looking forward to Colne and then Fleetwood.”

Why should people get those last remaining tickets to see you in Lancashire?

“To have a laugh! If you open the paper these days, you need a laugh. I sit and read the paper every morning. I get halfway through a paragraph and I’m like ‘can't read this story, can't read this story. In the months running up to a tour, I collect local newspapers, and I find stories inside that are away from the doom and the gloom and the pressures of the outside world, you know what's going on globally. I find what's happening locally and there's always something that’s comedic - it doesn't really have to be that funny, but maybe it’s funny to an outsider like me who doesn't know the area. I just got ‘so what's happening here with this story’? I read it out, and they just start laughing, because it defines Colne or whatever.

“The Lancashire Post had one of my favourites ever, it’s going back a few years so it might have even been Blackpool but a llama got loose and it got into a school playground when the parents were picking the kids up. Kids are panicking and screaming, parents are panicking and shouting, teachers are like ‘what can we do’? And the headline on the front page of the Lancashire Post was ‘Llama drama ding dong’, which is just genius. Another one which was very, very funny was about an obese bloke smuggling cocaine into a prison in Preston, by shoving cocaine in the folds of his stomach, and the headline was ‘flab concealed crack’. So I love those little stories inside papers and that defines a northern town.“