The silly season goes on

The peerless panellist on self-obsessed humour, an eczema cure and Boris Johnson

- Jack Watkins

BARRY CRYER describes himself as a university dropout: ‘I was supposed to be studying English Literature at Leeds, but I was in the bar and chasing girls and my first-year results showed it. So I’m “BA Eng. Lit. failed” of Leeds.’

That may be so, but he’s got a doctorate in the art and history of comedy. A chat with Mr Cryer is an anecdotal stroll through decades of comedic performance on stage, radio and TV. No wonder the British Music Hall Society honoured him with a lifetime achievement award last year.

‘I had a half-baked idea of becoming a journalist before I got pitchforked into this business, but before any of that, I used to listen to Max Wall on the radio. People know he was astonishing visually, but that voice!’

Then there was the fabled Max Miller. ‘My mother took me to see him on one of his rare forays north, at the Empire, Leeds. She just sat there twinkling through his entire performance. He was a naughty boy, you see. He played to the women in the audience.

‘Years later, after I’d come down to London, I worked with him. He walked in wearing his stage costume, one of those extraordinary floral-patterned suits, for what was only a radio broadcast. I was in awe. He said “All right, son? I know, I know. I can’t work in ordinary day clothes”.’

Mr Cryer recently presented an eight-part Sky Arts documentary called Comedy Legends. They filmed it in the kitchen we’re sitting in. It went down so well that another series is in the offing. One of the finest raconteurs around, he is the polar opposite of a stereotypical taciturn Yorkshireman, although he doesn’t suffer foolish questions. He admits he prefers talking about other people: ‘I’m not my favourite subject.’