Dave Spikey, star/co-creator of ‘Phoenix Nights’ and erstwhile team captain on ‘8 Out Of 10 Cats’ has arranged to meet me in the reception of BBC Radio 2. While I’m waiting I can hear him being interviewed on ‘The Steve Wright Show’ by the host and his wacky band of merry funsters. Listening to Spikey laugh and joke with another interviewer makes me feel oddly jealous. It’s a bit like hearing your girlfriend having amazing sex with someone better than you through the wall of a cheap motel.
I try to blank this image from my mind and determine that whatever Steve can do, I can do better. I’m extra smiley as he walks across the lobby to meet me and shake his hand.
‘Where would you like to do this?’ he asks in his broad Lancashire accent. The big tease.
‘Where ever you fancy?’ I reply coyly.
‘I could murder a pint.’
Perfect! Shove your Factoids up your bum, Wrighty! I’m taking Spikey out to get hammered. We adjourn to the nearest dimly lit hostelry.
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What things spark you off? ‘Everyday nonsense, really.’ He chuckles as something pops into his head. ‘For instance, I was watching a piece on Granada the other week about a brothel that had been found in a residential area. The police are going to shut it down, right, so the programme goes to interview one of the prostitutes. “Is it busy?” the interviewer asks – remember this was on at teatime – and the lady says, “Let’s put it this way, I’ve been up and down them stairs 26 times today.” ’ Spikey can barely get the next line out for laughing. ‘ “Oh,” the bloke interviewing said, without thinking, “Your poor feet.” Then back in the studio Gordon Burns rounds the whole piece up by saying, “Police advise residents not to take matters into their own hands.” It’s a bloomin’ massage parlour. Brilliant. That’s what I meant about everyday things. It’s all out there, all I have to do as a comic is nail it down.’
Another pint. Let the good times roll. Now onto his new show, ‘The Best Medicine’. ‘It’s full of those kind of things – real stories. I get asked a lot if I was the class joker, people sort of presume that you were if you’re a comedian, but I wasn’t. But some of this show is about the guy in my class who was. He was called Derek Rigby but he couldn’t say his ‘r’s so he was always Dewek Wigby. He was very much part of our gang but you know at school there is always a kid with sticky-out ears, there’s always a kid with a big nose, always a kid with a lazy eye, well Derek had them all.’
Normally I wouldn’t be up for laughing so heartily at stories about a child with a speech impediment and bizarre physical abnormalities, however these tales are stupidly funny and Dave assures me Derek’s been to see the show and gave him his full blessing. ‘We were doing physics or something, early days, when we were about 11 or 12 and the teacher asked, “What’s faster: speed or light?” I remember a girl saying something like, “light is fastest because as soon as you press the light switch it comes on”, which is funny enough in itself, but then Derek shouts out, “Diarrhoea! Diarrhoea is faster than either of those.” The teacher, puzzled, asks, “Why do you think diarrhoea is the fastest thing?” And he said, “Because I had diarrhoea the other week and before I’d turned the light on in the toilet, I’d shit meself!” ’
I'm halfway through a large gulp of lager when he delivers that punchline and laugh so hard I swallow my drink down the wrong way and end up spluttering, giggling and choking all at the same time.
We chat for another half an hour or so about everything from writing with Peter Kay to his 30 years working in the haematology laboratory at Bolton General Hospital but, to be honest, I never really manage to recover my full professional composure after the near-death experience caused by Fosters flying out of my nose. Wrighty would never have made such a schoolboy error, damn him.
Dave Spikey’s ‘The Best Medicine’ is on at the Cambridge Theatre on May 18.
