Sidmouth FolkWeek, Thursday
Barry Cryer says he hasn't had a career in comedy... "It's just a series of incidents." Those "incidents" have kept him in work for 50 years, making people laugh as a writer, and then as a performer.
He has written jokes and routines for practically every top comedian in the country from Morecambe and Wise and Bruce Forsyth to Tommy Cooper and Frankie Howerd. As a performer he is, of course, very familiar to fans of radio's I'm Sorry I Haven't A Clue.
He left Leeds University with a BA Lit (failed), a situation that was remedied this week when he returned to Leeds to pick up an honorary doctorate. He finds it hilarious that a failed scholar should be made a Doctor of Arts.
"I'm also very touched," he says. "I feel like I'm finishing my unfinished business. I'll probably say a few words. We have three sons – an MA and two BAs – I think I outrank them now."
Will he insist on being called Dr Cryer? "Only at home," he laughs.
After flunking university – "due to my propensity for following girls around and being in the union bar" – he got a job as a stagehand at the Empire in Leeds and, because of university experience, was asked to produce a student show.
"Someone saw me telling jokes and I was pitchforked into show- business."
He opens Sidmouth FolkWeek on Thursday with Twitter Titters, a show inspired by his lack of technological skills – "I talk about being a Luddite" – and his interaction with the audience is suitably low-tech. "I've got a bucket and a pile of paper and pens and people can write anything they like. I draw them from the bucket – this is living dangerously – and make a joke.
"You do get some weird things. One just wrote 'shirts'. My brain clicked into action and I told a joke about a farmer. I said: There was this farmer... and he was wearing a shirt... It got a lot of laughs. There's nothing like live performing."
