Comedy

I am a cynical person by nature. I don’t like it about myself, but years of experience have shown me that more often than not, the people that I’ve thought were arseholes from a distance have been even bigger dicks up close. However, some people surprise you.

Years ago, I had to write an article about Bob Monkhouse. I was never a particular fan of his, having been tortured by my nan, throughout my formative years, who regularly forced me to watch his insincere, grinning, disturbingly orange face on one hellish light entertainment programme after another. I had more or less written the article in my head, taking the Mick out of the old codger,when the phone rang. ‘Hello, it’s Bob Monkhouse here.’

We chatted for more than an hour, and by the time I hung up, everything had changed. He was one of the most intelligent, kind, funny and self-aware comedians I have ever had the pleasure to talk to, even at one point saying: ‘I know everyone thinks I’m a cunt’ – before explaining the complicated legal and contractual reasons which explained why he’d had to make ghastly show after ghastly show. I was a Bob convert and it soon became clear to me what a stunning, and encyclopaedic, comedy mind he had. Feature continues

Although more than 15 years have passed since then, I still haven’t learned my lesson. I wasn’t that keen on meeting Joe Pasquale. My only knowledge of his work, prior to our interview, had been gleaned from various snatches of routines on naff ITV shows. Although it’s not my kind of humour, I knew ‘the King of the Jungle’ had legions of fans, but I couldn’t really imagine what we’d have to talk about. As it turned out, not only is he a very modest and easy man to get on with, he has 101 very amusing showbiz anecdotes, and more importantly shares my love of Mr Monkhouse.

Bob Monkhouse

‘I owe Bob a lot – he was like my comedy dad. I remember, when I was just starting out, I was playing Butlins in Bognor. I was downstairs in the small club room and Bob was upstairs in the giant theatre. I got this message from a stagehand saying he wanted to meet me. I thought he was taking the piss. But he actually did. We had a couple of sandwiches and he said: “You know what? You should be doing more telly.” He got me on “Celebrity Squares”. From that I got on “The Royal Variety Show” and him and Colin [Edmonds], his writer, helped me put my act together. He said: “The show is notorious for people dying on their arse, so let’s do it properly.”

‘For about 15 years we mainly corresponded by email. He was a brilliant comic, and a great man. He was also very generous with his material and gave me a lot of gags. However, it was only in the final six weeks of his life that I really got to know him. About two months before he died, I got a call from Colin, who said: “Bob doesn’t want anyone to know how ill he is, but he wants you to know so you can come and visit him.” Luckily, at that time I was doing a panto only half an hour away from his hospice, so I’d go and visit him four times a week, depending on if he was feeling up to it.

‘In the hospital I’d sit by his bed and we watched telly and DVDs together. He had his famous joke books in there, too, and he let me look at them. They were like two bibles. There were about 120 jokes on every page. There were also a lot of stories and one-liners, and loads of cartoons everywhere. They’re amazing things. There’s even one joke of mine in there. Well, he wrote the opening line, I wrote the tag. One day he said he had this first line: “I’ve just had my telephone cut off.” But said he couldn’t think of the punchline. I came up with: “Well, in the cold weather I can still hear it ring.” He knew full well what the tag was, he was just letting me have it. I actually got to write it into the book.

‘The cancer spread and just before the end he returned home. His lovely wife, Jackie, said I could visit him if I wanted to, but warned me that he was more or less in a comatose state. I went, and although he wasn’t aware that I was there, I said goodbye to him. That was just before Christmas. A couple of days after that, she called me up to say Bob had woken up in the night and said: “I know why I’m paralysed now. I’ve been experimented on by aliens. They’ve injected me with something.” He was hallucinating, obviously. Then he said: “When Joe Pasquale gets here, send him in. He’s got the antidote.” So I drove over to see him again. When I got to the house, he was completely out of it again. I didn’t really know what to do, all I had on me was a piece of paper so I said, “I’ve got the antidote, Bob,” and put it in his hand and I left.

'At 5am the next morning he died.

‘It’s strange, I only really got to know him because he was ill and I was in the same area at the same time. I’d loved to have had that sort of friendship with him over the years, but I’m really grateful to have had those last six weeks with him. Anybody who knew Bob would have given their right arm to have that sort of one-to-one time with him.’

Joe Pasquale is on at The Fairfield Halls, Croydon (Oct 18) and The Churchill Theatre, Bromley (Oct 19).