Dave Spikey

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Interview: Dave Spikey
21st August 2009
blackpoolcitizen.co.uk

COMEDIAN Dave Spikey is bringing his Best Medicine – Repeat Prescription tour back to Lancashire. He told us about his love of the Red Rose County, where he gets his material, and his friendship with Peter Kay.

You’ve written a book: “I gave him my kidney then he broke my heart” which is a compilation of all the local newspaper stories you discovered on tour. Do you get a lot of your material from local newspapers?

Yes I always try to do material based on stories from the local papers during the first 10 minutes on stage and then I do a collection of my favourites from around the country. I get loads of ideas from real life which is highlighted in the newspapers and on television as well as eavesdropping on conversations. I’ve got some sort of selective radar that locks on to strange and unusual conversations. Even in busy noisy places I pick up the one weird exchange.

Tell us some of your favourite headlines

I’ve got a story about a craft fair and a photo of some old people working there with the headline “Pensioners make lovely rugs”.

I mean, you know what they mean but just imagine someone coming round to your house and going “That’s a nice rug” and you saying “That’s my grandad”. The Oxford Mail had “Brothel closure brings relief” and when a llama got loose in Preston (A llama! That’s global warming for you!) and got into a school playground and created havoc the Lancashire Evening Post came up with “Llama drama ding dong” and the title of the book “I gave him my kidney then he broke my heart” concerns a story about a wife who donated her kidney to her sick husband and when he got better he ran away with her best friend. Which is odd because it’s usually the organ they reject...not the donor.

You recently took part in the “Round the Island Yacht Race” on the Isle of Wight. How did that come about?

I learnt to sail on a flotilla holiday in Greece years ago and we’ve been going back with the family every year for the past five years. I was asked to crew a yacht for Prostate UK and I wanted to raise the profile of the charity because men are hopeless at going to the doctors aren’t they? I read recently that experts reckon that it’s because they’re too macho but it’s not, it’s because we’re too lazy.

We’ve got a lazy gene. It’s like when you drop a towel on the bathroom floor you can’t pick it up. Just impossible. Lazy gene. And it’s so important to go to the docs if you’ve got symptoms or for a well man screen if you’re of a certain age because the only way of beating cancer in most cases is to catch it early. Once it’s got hold of you it’s the most horrible, most cruel, heartbreaking disease, which you’ll know if you’ve cared for a loved one suffering with cancer. No matter how courageous or strong or positive you are, it will kill you. So get yourself checked out fellas.

You’ve also recorded a DVD for Christmas – how did that go?

It was brilliant. You often wonder if you’ve picked the right night, right venue, right audience but I filmed it at Mansfield Palace Theatre and it could not have gone any better and I ended up doing about two-and-a-half hours on the night which we’ve had to cut down to 100 minutes.

Are you looking forward to bringing your show home? Do you always get a good reception in Lancashire?

I can’t wait. Plus I must mention that I’m doing a special charity performance at Chorley Little Theatre on Sunday, August 30, with all proceeds going to Hannah’s Fund. Hannah is a beautiful little girl from Chorley who has a very rare genetic disease and needs special equipment. I always get a great reaction. I’m Lancashire born and bred and love the place to death. I’ve been strongly advised over the years to move down to London where I’d get more high profile work but why would I want to do that? I love where I live, it’s a lovely village, I’ve got good friends and family close by.

Do you have any plans to make a return to TV?

I get offered quite a lot of stuff varying from presenting to panel shows, to sitcoms, to well-known soaps but I decided I wanted to get my stand-up tour show right and I believe that you can’t get it 100 per cent if you are distracted with other projects. I’ve been very busy writing and have a sitcom and comedy/drama with production companies at the moment plus a couple of other interesting offers in theatre so I’ll get stuck into them after the tour finishes.

Are you still mates with Peter Kay? Do you think you two will work together in the future?

I’ve not seen Peter for a couple of years maybe but that’s only because our paths don’t cross; I’m sure if I bumped into him tomorrow we’d have a good laugh. I’d love to work with him again if the right project came along.

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Spikey's back but wait for Phoenix is still ongoing
October 23, 2009
thisisstaffordshire.co.uk

IF YOU'RE holding out for a third series of cult TV comedy Phoenix Nights, then you might have to wait a little longer. The observational sitcom, set in a Bolton workingmen's club, was a surprise hit when it was first screened on Channel 4 in 2000. Written by Dave Spikey, Neil Fitzmaurice and everyone's favourite funnyman, Peter Kay, it went on to collect a BAFTA nomination and produced a spin-off show – Max And Paddy's Road To Nowhere, starring Kay and Paddy McGuinness.

"We spent ages writing Phoenix Nights," says 58-year-old Dave, who played club host Jerry St Clair in the show. "We worked really hard on layering it so if you came back to it and watched it, you could still find something new. We used a real club with real people as extras. We did all the staged stuff during the day, then turned the cameras on to the real people at night to capture their reactions. By the time the second series came about, we didn't realise it had happened but there were catchphrases that caught on. Every time I go into the supermarket I still get asked where the black bin bags are," he adds, a reference to a scene from Phoenix Nights.

It was the programme that was to arguably launch Kay's career into comedy stratosphere. Building on the earlier critical success of That Peter Kay Thing, his turn as acid-tongued club owner Brian Potter was to endear Kay to the nation's heart.

"Peter doesn't seem that interested in making a third series," says Dave. "I think we've left it too long. It never happened because Peter had his own projects to pursue. I haven't seen him for a long time. He's just gone now, he's a superstar isn't he? We don't really see him a lot."

Comparisons between the relative success of the different cast members were always going to be inevitable, and in many ways the others were left languishing in Kay's wake. Still, one person who was always a sure bet in the pursuit of a solo career was Spikey. He is a winner of the 1990 North West Comedian Of The Year award – a prize Kay also later won – and continues to make regular appearances on TV. He has also completed filming Charlie Noades RIP, and his book, He Took My Kidney, Then Broke My Heart, is published this month. But best of all he has made a return to his stand-up roots. He decided to add several dates to The Best Medicine Tour – Repeat Prescription, after his gigs were well received by audiences.

"I was going to finish in the spring and I got so much interest and was enjoying myself so much, I thought 'I'll carry on," he says. Dave, who is a former chief biomedical scientist at The Royal Bolton Hospital and who spent 30 years working in the NHS. "I talk about my time working in a hospital," he says. "I was also a patient recently so I've seen it from the other side too. I had an investigation after I had some strange pains in my back. It's great lying in bed all day and taking it all in. It's a massive source of comedy."

So is he really ruling out a return to the famous fictional workingmen's club as the compere without compare, Jerry St Clair? "I'd actually love to do a Phoenix Nights Christmas special," he laughs. "Just to test the water. I've even got one written in my head. Jerry would be putting on the best Christmas gala show ever, in his mind, and Brian Potter would be Father Christmas even though he hates it. I'd love to do a parody of The Great Escape, but with the Phoenix Nights characters. But it will probably stay in my imagination forever."

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Dave Spikey reveals the truth about his fall-out with Peter Kay and Phoenix Nights movie
Roz Laws,
Sunday Mercury
Jan 29 2012

Dave Spikey has shot down talk of a Phoenix Nights movie – and says that he hasn’t spoken to former pal Peter Kay for TWO YEARS.Dave, who created the hit sitcom with Peter and Neil Fitzmaurice, says he was surprised when Britain’s top funnyman announced they were making a film.

“I don’t know what Peter’s talking about,” admits Dave, who is currently on a stand-up tour coming to the Midlands. “He’s apparently said a film script is all written and ready to go, but none of us have heard anything from him. Obviously it all revolves around Peter as Brian Potter, but we’d have to be involved. It’s blowing it up a bit to call it a feud between me and Peter, though you do have fall-outs in the creative arena. We had a rule that there were three writers on Phoenix Nights and we all had to be happy with every scene.

“We used to get into arguments about everything, like what’s the funniest pie. That’s chicken and mushroom, obviously. We could argue for an hour just over that. We were always work colleagues and never best mates. Afterwards we went in separate directions and lost touch, although we have spoken since. The last time was when I bumped into him at a TV studio and we had a chat. But that was a couple of years ago.”

Dave has said that one bone of contention was the fact that only Peter was nominated for a Writers’ Guild of Great Britain award for Phoenix Nights when all three writers should have been credited. Set in a working men’s club, the Channel 4 sitcom ran for two series and has been a DVD bestseller. Dave played hapless compere and licensee Jerry St Clair.

Now Dave is more interested in new projects, including a BBC series he has written with Neil Fitzmaurice called Glitterball, about ballroom dancing. “It’s set in a Blackpool hotel and is all about the rivalry and bitchiness in ballroom,” he says. “Neil and I are fighting over who will play the main character, a hotel manager, because he’s the only one who doesn’t dance. I’m also drawn to a one-eyed ex-crime scene photographer, who’s a rubbish dancer. I’m hoping a lot of it will be filmed from the waist up!”

Dave, 60, is in the middle of his Words Don’t Come Easy tour, which plays Birmingham’s Glee Club on February 29, as well as dates in Stafford and Leamington. One particular Midland gig stands out for him – appearing on New Faces, filmed at the Birmingham Hippodrome, in 1988. He was part of a double act with Rick Sykes, called Spikey and Sykey.

“That’s not such a happy memory,” he grimaces. “We’d only ever done three shows and never had a paid gig. New Faces came to see someone else on the bill and offered us a place on the show. We jumped at it but we were very naive and took bad advice. We were persuaded to do some material we hadn’t performed before. We pretended we were a double act from Vladivostok on an exchange scheme with Little and Large. We did the whole thing in Russian accents and did a Cossack dance after every punchline.

“My mate was going to come on with a kettle on his head, saying ‘You told me to put the kettle on’. But then we thought it would be funnier if we said it like ‘Put the cattle on’, so he came on with a massive pantomime cow round his shoulders. I cringe now when I think about it.”