His story is not my story, but I can identify with the struggle of the journeyman comedian. I was lucky enough not to be stuck in that world.
"When people ask me 'What was your biggest achievement?', I say, 'Surviving in that industry'.
"Showbusiness can chew people up and spit 'em out."
The speaker, Eighties TV stalwart Les Dennis, is reminiscing about the years he spent as a comedian struggling on the working men's club circuit in the 1970s. It's a time he's able to call on, in vivid detail, in his current role as a seen-better- days, old-school comedian whose career isn't so much going to pieces as simply stalled in the working men's clubs of his native Liverpool.
Dennis first showed us Jigsy, a one-man portrait of a Scouse comic on his uppers by Bristol playwright Tony Staveacre, at the Tobacco Factory 12 months ago.
Programmed for just two nights, the show was such a huge success (with standing ovations after both shows) and so highly praised that the Factory have now brought it back for a longer run.
Dennis is perhaps best known as the engaging host, for some 15 years, of ITV's Family Fortunes; a younger generation, though, may recognise him as the resting actor/presenter who had an emotional meltdown, after his split from actress Amanda Holden, on 2002's Celebrity Big Brother.
For Dennis the man, CBB may have been an emotional nadir, but it was also the start of an upturn, as within a couple of years he found himself appearing, to widespread acclaim, as an emotionally imploding actor in Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant's Extras.
Over the past decade, buoyed by that success, he's been up on stage dozens of time, playing in Chicago and Me and My Girl on the West End, as well as Yasmina Reza's intense three-hander Art. For his current role, though, Dennis can bring that most valuable commodity: real-life experience.
Brought up, like Jigsy, in Liverpool, Les started working the local comedy circuit while still at school.
"When Tony sent me the script, I found it funny, interesting – and about a world that I knew," Dennis explains.
"I did the Liverpool working men's club circuit when I started out in the late Sixties and early Seventies. And as well as being a story of a journeyman comedian who never made it, Jigsy is also about the social history of Liverpool at that time.
"Jigsy reminisces about working on the docks and becoming, against all the odds, a stand-up comic, about making his living from it and about fighting the bottle."
Learning to hold his own in the working men's clubs of the North West was an instructive experience for the man who would later shine in front of national TV audiences.
"You're fighting a room full of people who are there to see each other, and for the booze and the bingo, rather than listen to you. I was 17 when I started, so people gave me a chance – 'aah, he's only a lad' – but once you've been round the circuit a few times they can change. I got a reputation for being good at staying on – they nicknamed me Bronco. My thinking was, 'Why would I just walk off and forfeit my fee?' I'd just stay there and look at the clock."
Dennis, though, moved away from that world: Jigsy never did.
What's the difference between them? "I think it's wanting to explore, to go beyond that world – and to improve your set, to educate yourself by putting yourself up in front of different audiences. Some of the Liverpool comics of that time were up there with the best – Eddie Flanagan was a match for Tommy Cooper. But they never quite made it. Maybe they were content with their lives, not that curious about the wider world."
Unlike the well-travelled Mr Dennis…
Jigsy is at the Tobacco Factory Theatre, Bristol from Wednesday, August 29 to Saturday, September 8. See listings for details.
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