How NI comic Adrian bounced back from the stroke that nearly killed him
One of NI’s funniest exports has adjusted since a health scare that was no joke. Ivan Little reports
BANGOR-born comic Adrian Walsh isn’t joking when he says that he’ll mark the third anniversary of the stroke that nearly killed him in Madeira by playing a special show… in Madeira. And the 69-year-old funnyman won’t shy away from talking about his nightmare that started on a cruise ship stage.
“Yes, I do talk about the stroke in my routine,” says Adrian. “There’s maybe 15 minutes of material relating to it.”
But while he admits that his medical crisis three years back is no laughing matter, he says a good comedian always speaks about what he knows.
And he now knows more about strokes than he ever did before, although in November 2015 he hadn’t a clue what was happening as the illness kicked in.
He says: “I was on a ship called the Oceana and I was about to launch into my little Michael Flatley routine. But I couldn’t do anything with my legs and I felt my words were getting slurred.
“I went up to my stateroom and lay down before doing my second show. The next morning I felt worse.”
After seeing the ship doctor he was rushed to the Santa Catarina hospital in Funchal, Madeira’s capital.
What he heard at the outset of his three-week stay shocked him.
He recalls: “Doctors told me that 80% of people who have the sort of stroke I had usually die or get locked-in syndrome. So I was very lucky to come through, lucky to be alive.
“The doctors and the nurses were all superb with me. I went back last year to say thank you to them.”
Asking for an explanation about what caused the stroke, he was informed that some of his arteries had been blocked as a result of smoking. But he’d never smoked in his life.
Bizarrely, it’s thought that his problems had been caused by passive smoking in the pubs and clubs where he performed in front of people who watched a show with a drink in one hand and a cigarette in the other.
Clouds of smoke were common sights in entertainment venues before a ban on tobacco was introduced, meaning that Adrian and other comics had breathed in a lot of smoke down the years.
In his case there’d been almost half-a-century of smoky rooms during a career that started in his teens when he was a star turn in bars and clubs all over Belfast — sometimes playing gigs on the Shankill and the Falls on the same night.
In 1972 he moved to England, where he also found that the clientele in all the bars and on the thriving nightclub scene were no strangers to a cigarette.
But he never imagined that the smoke-filled venues might one day contribute to a serious illness he hopes now is firmly behind him.
His return to the Portuguese island off the north west coast of Africa on the anniversary of his stroke is purely coincidental.
“I was also there around the time of the second anniversary,” says Adrian, who jokes that he’d like to be back on Madeira on the 25th anniversary of his stroke, too.
More seriously, he says his recovery has been slow, but sure.
He rested up for a long time on doctor’s orders but he made his comeback after 14 months in his native Northern Ireland.
He says: “I was given the chance to tour with Gene Fitzpatrick and John McFettridge back home and I asked my doctor if he would clear me to do it.
“Thankfully he said yes. But he told me not to overdo things. And I didn’t. The good thing about the Make Me Laugh tour was that I only had to do a 20-minute spot every evening as opposed to double that time on one of my own solo shows.”
He admits that he’d rarely experienced nerves like the ones he suffered before returning to the spotlight.
He explains: “I hadn’t felt like that since I started off in the business as a youngster.
“I was bursting to get out on stage but not having done any shows for 14 months left me slightly anxious.
“I hadn’t gone so long without taking part in a show in my life. But once I was out there in front of an audience
I was able to relax a bit more, especially as the people out front were so amazing.”
The Northern Ireland tour eased him back into showbusiness and dispelled his own doubts about his ability to return to work on a more regular basis.
“I still had a touch of aphasia from the stroke. I was speaking with a bit of a slur and my arm and leg weren’t as good as they are now. It takes time,” says Adrian, who won’t deny that there were dark days during his recovery and rehabilitation.
There were times he concedes that he was a “pain in the butt”.
He says: “You get frustrated within yourself and there’s a danger that you take it out on the people you love the most. It was probably harder on the family than on me.“But he says his wife Vivienne and his children were all patient with the patient and cared for him through the worst of the bad times.
For Adrian, it was all about learning to come to terms with acceptance and gratitude. “Acceptance that it happened and that I couldn’t have done anything about it, and gratitude that I was still there,” he says.
But it wasn’t until six months after that tour Adrian took the plunge again into the more demanding world of cruising, where he’d established himself as a much sought-after comic on the biggest ships on the high seas.
The arduous travelling by air and roads to join cruise liners in ports all over Europe for four- or five-night stints might scare off younger performers.
For Adrian it’s all part and parcel of an industry that he loves. But it’s all very different now from the world he knew.
Nowadays budding stand-ups cut their teeth in comedy clubs the length and breadth of the British Isles.
Many of them have gone on to establish themselves as multi-million-pound earners who can draw crowds of tens of thousands to the biggest arenas in the UK.
But he is too pragmatic to be jealous. He knows the likes of Michael McIntyre, Kevin Bridges and Peter Kay can earn more in a night than many other comics take home in a year.
“But that’s the way it is,” he says. “Times have moved on. Why would I be jealous? And besides, I remember the days when footballers had a few hundred pounds in their wage packets. Nowadays the megastars measure their earnings in hundreds of thousands of pounds every week. It’s all about timing. Good luck to them.
“I’m a fan of younger comics like Russell Howard
(right), and the political comedians, too.
“I know that back home in Northern Ireland there’s a great pool of talent, too.
Back in my day in Belfast there was Jimmy Crick- et and me and that was about it.” Like Cricket and Frank Carson, Adrian eventually left Northern Ireland to live and work in England.
In March 1972 he settled first in Blackpool, where he spent 10 years.
The nightclubs that hosted up-andcoming comics like himself in Belfast were vanishing before their very eyes.
He wisecracks: “I think they blew them all up because they didn’t want me back”
He went on to appear on Opportunity Knocks, introduced by fellow Bangorian Terry Neill, the Arsenal manager.
Adrian became a regular on hit TV shows, which led to playing support to stars including Shirley Bassey and Barry Manilow in massive arenas.
But he says: “Not one of the people in an audience of maybe 20,000 or more had come to hear me.”
The crowds in his early days back home had been more modest. But they did have their challenges as Adrian was thrown into what many saw as the lion’s den of the roughest of clubs of Belfast.
It was a steep learning curve. “Many of the ones in the audiences weren’t there to see the comedian. They were there for a night out or maybe a night of bingo or maybe they went in the hope of winning a raffle.
“You had to learn how to handle yourself and, more importantly, the hecklers,” says Adrian, who lives in Somerset now and goes to the gym three times a week, as well as working out at home, too.
“In the first year after the stroke the main problem was tiredness. I was sleeping for hours.
“But I was encouraged to be optimistic
Doctors told me 80% of people with the sort of stroke I had usually die or get locked-in syndrome
by other people that things would improve.”
His son Callum knows a thing or two about health and fitness. He’s the fitness coach at Huddersfield Town in the Premier League.
Callum previously worked for Wigan Athletic and Cardiff City, but another of his jobs rated higher on the glamour scales — for he was fitness coach to Atletico Paranaense in Brazil, and he was also at the Euros in France with Turkey.
Adrian, who’s a Tottenham Hotspur supporter, has been to watch Huddersfield, and the club want him back because they’ve won the games he’s attended.
He sees a physiotherapist regularly and he says the improvements in his health have been encouraging. He’s swimming again and he’s determined to keep getting better.
“I’m a stubborn old so-and-so,” he adds. “I’ve done 16 cruises so far this year. But that’s me cutting back. The stroke hasn’t really changed my outlook on life, though it has slowed me down, but my wife says I was probably ready for slowing down anyway.”
Looking to the future, he says he would like to engage with charities who are helping stroke victims.
During his Northern Ireland tour he found himself talking to stroke victims after his shows.
“There’d been some publicity over my condition and people who’d had strokes came to see me, and they stayed behind for a chat and we were able to share our experiences,” says Adrian, who is enjoying his new lease of life on stage and off.
“I’m delighted to be back doing what I love doing and keeping my brain active.
“And I’m looking forward to celebrating a big birthday next August when I will be 50 and 240 months old.”