Comedy

I’ll tell you how it started. Some years ago, my wife Isabel and I went to a show of his and loved it. He was very funny and original. I noticed that his next date was in Hull, my hometown and I thought: Ah, he might struggle there. I wrote him a little note to wish him well there and not to expect too much.

I don’t think it was his best date – Hull’s broken many a touring heart. Glasgow’s famously indifferent, but Hull would run it close. He replied with a funny card, and we’ve been sending them to each other ever since.

The first one I remember from him was of the Common Cold Research Centre, and he’d written: ‘I’m having a break here, very relaxing but my nose is a bit runny.’ One of the best ones I sent him was from Cape Town when I was doing ‘Flood’, of me being licked by a leopard. I got it done in one of those ‘Amaze Your Friends’ photo booths, where you lie on a bench and in the background they put a leopard. He had it on his fridge door for ages.
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So that’s been going on for years. This is where the story really begins to grip. Are you paying attention? At Christmas, Isabel bought me a ukulele and it has not left my side: two paces and it’s in my hand now. I loved it, but wanted to be better, so I bought an instruction book by a man called Steven Sproat. I didn’t know this when I bought it, but on the back of the book it said that he’d taught ukulele to Harry Hill. I emailed Steven and he got very excited – he’d quite wanted to be an actor for some time – and he suggested he could give me Harry’s number. I said, ‘Oh I couldn’t do that – if I called him out of the blue he might be caught off-guard. You can give him my number.’ So a couple of days later, who should phone me but Harry?

We agreed to go to one of Steven’s Saturday workshops, but on the morning I decided not to go along – my head was spinning and
I had too much practising to do. So Harry suggested that I go over to his house, which I did last Sunday. He played me his party piece,
which is a song called ‘Grandad’s Flannelette Nightshirt’ – but he told me not to be too impressed because it had taken him two years to learn it. When you get more advanced, you do some flashy stuff on the uke. Which reminds me, I must email him about the George Formby split stroke. I could tell from the look on his face that he didn’t think I was very good at it on Sunday. He can do the fan stroke, which I can’t. I can do the Hawaiian stroke, though.

He’s lovely in person – Matthew Hall rather than Harry Hill. To see him without the collar and glasses and a bit unshaven, he looks very different. He’s quite quiet but a very good listener, which is from his days as a doctor. I still think he’d be a very good doctor, but he prefers being silly. Who doesn’t?

‘TV Burp’ is a terrific example of him being silly, although it’s quite hard work because he has to watch an awful lot of stuff. He knows his pop culture – I just get the general drift. People seem happy to come on the show and be made fun of. I wouldn’t mind it myself – I might get my chance with ‘Flood’. He’ll find out soon enough that I pull no punches!

So that’s the story of Harry and me and how the ukulele brought us together. It’s humorous, mystical and rather moving, isn’t it?