It’s time gentlemen, please, for another pint in The Grapes
EARLY DOORS STARS ON DELIGHT AT RECEPTION FOR NEW STAGE SHOW
IT has been a week since the news that cult comedy show Early Doors was being brought back to life after 14 years – as a new stage show written by its creators and stars Phil Mealey and Craig Cash.
And since then things have gone, well, a little bit bonkers for the pair.
For Craig and Phil can’t quite believe the interest in the return of their comedy, following the lives of pub-goers at the fictional Stockport boozer The Grapes, for a new show at The Lowry theatre in Salford in 2018 reuniting the original cast.
Tickets weren’t even supposed to go on sale until this week – but after news of its return, Lowry staff were being flooded with calls from fans desperate to buy tickets so they decided to open the booking.
The initial two week run of shows at the smaller Quays theatre sold out so fast that it was swiftly transferred to the larger Lyric theatre space – but that just went and sold out too. So now an extra week has been added, with the potential for even more dates if sales continue at this pace.
Beaming Craig and Phil are astonished at the reaction to their comedy’s return, that ran for two series on the BBC back in 2003 and 2004 and in which they starred as pub-going lads Joe and Duffy.
Craig said: “The reaction still kind of shocked us because it was 13, 14 years ago since we did it. We knew there was an underground fanbase, we knew there was a few people who liked it, but even so, we didn’t expect to sell-out the shows like that.”
Phil added: “It has been fantastic for us. Obviously people do come up to you and say ‘oh we really enjoyed Early Doors,’ but you don’t know what the general feel is out there. It was surprising to us to realise how much affection people really have for it, how much people enjoyed it.”
Craig smiled: “We were dead touched. We had a moment didn’t we Phil?”
Phil, 55, and Craig, 57, first met as teenagers working ‘stacking shelves’ at Tesco in Stockport precinct, and it became a friendship for life, with Phil joking: “The trolleys bumped into each other and it’s been that way ever since.”
It was their experiences around the pubs and bars of Stockport that led to their idea for a sitcom, with initially the plans for it to be a community-based comedy series.
But they soon realised that ‘all the funny bits’ happened at the pub, so it ended up being centred around the fictional boozer, The Grapes, and hence Early Doors was born.
Craig said: “Because me and Phil have known each other for 40-odd years we grew up drinking in the same places, so it was an amalgam of the pubs we’d been in and the characters we’d met over the years.”
The TV series was filmed at a set at the old Granada Studios in Manchester, on the same stage that had been used for Sooty and Sweep, Phil recalls. He joked: “They just moved some puppets out, and moved some puppets in!”
The new stage show will bring back almost all of the original cast from the TV series including pub landlord Ken played by John Henshaw, 13 years on, reflecting many of the changes in the pub world – most noticeably of course, the smoking ban.
Phil said: “The one big change at the pub is there’s a smoking canopy outside because we’ve got to progress with the times.
“Although Joe is on the e-cigarettes nowadays, puffing away,” chips in Craig. Of course since 2004 many traditional boozers have now closed, but The Grapes has not been hit, with Phil quipping: “The Grapes is clinging on, it’s the sale of crisps that’s done it.”
So what can we expect from the new instalment from the team?
Craig said: “There’s romance, bromance, a bit of internet dating and IBS, oh there’s all sorts.”
Has a lot happened for Joe and Duffy? Phil laughed: “Well not that much. In life things don’t actually change that much. They’re still in the same jobs, my character is doing a bit of internet dating these days instead of doing the Lonely Hearts in the Manchester Evening News, and people are more knocking about with the mobile phones and that, but life doesn’t change that much for people, for those guys going into the pub.”
Craig added: “Maybe that’s why it’s been so popular, because people hanker after those ‘pub days’ when they’d go down to the pub and chat.”
Early Doors is at The Lowry Theatre in Salford from 29 August to 15 September (sold out) and for new dates 17 - 22 September on sale