For sex crime accused to stay anonymous
Women are not funny says Jim
separate pairs of glasses and I’m forever losing them. I’ve got funny, sensitive skin and I’ve got a bloody hernia that I was supposed to have an operation on. I’ve got to go and have my teeth pulled out, it’s really f****d up. I’m frightened to death.”
Jim dealt with the fallout allout of his Operation Yewtree ordealdeal by writing a 300- pagege memoir last year calleded No Further Action,, plus a stage show off the same name.
Happy
His wife Michelle e Cotton, who he wed in 2010, stuck by him throughout and noww Jim, who has been marrieded fi fivee times and has five children, says he is “happy enough” living in a cottage she owns in Wiltshire.
“When you get married and meet someone and fall in love, it’s great,” he said. “But then you plateau and stop being madly in love about each other and then you learn to understand each other’s differences.
“She’s got the dogs and I’ve got the shed. We still sleep in the same bed, we’ve only got a little cottage, so you shut the bedroom door and the knob gets into bed with you.” Jim often jokes on stage: “I’ve bought eight houses in my life and I’ve never had to sell one. They’ve all been takentak away or given to people who start off by sayin saying, ‘I’m not after you for your money’.” But the seemingly confidentc comic admitted he keeps on marrying out of “insecurity”.s Brought up in a council house in SouthS East London, Jim found huge fame and fo fortune as the face of Saturday night TV for much of the 1990s before he left the BBC in 2002. At one point, he was earning £1million a year – pocketing £50,000 for every episode of the Generation Game and £18,000 for each episode for the Big Break. But by 2006, he had declared himself bankrupt after failing to maintain payments on a £700,000 tax bill. Jim has admitted: “Spend tomorrow’s money ey today was my motto at the time. I went a bit mad on cars and boats. I spent £2million putting on six pantostos for two years, then someone undercutdercut me and I had to sell everything ing for two bob.
“Another terrible ble failed venture was buying uying Great Yarmouth Pier. I applied for lotterytery funding and didn’t get it. So I ended up spending £750,000 of my own moneyey doing it up just so people could say,y, ‘Look what you’ve e done for Great at Yarmouth’.
“But I got nothingng back for it.”
Jim is currently back on the road with his 40 Years On tour – but said he is slowly winding things down.
He said: “I think k the business retires you. The audience leavesaves you one row at a time.”ime.” AGE has done nothing to mellow controversial Jim Davidson’s uncompromising views about women comedians, political correctness and the disabled. The veteran star, 62, who reckons women are not very funny, was horrified TV favourite Miranda Hart was temporarily considered as a presenter for a reboot of his old showThe Generation Game. He said: “Women comedians? I don’t know any. Hillary Clinton, now I think she’s hysterical. It’s the president’s wife having a go, isn’t it?” Davidson, who hosted The Generation Game for seven years until 2002, said: “I don’t think Miranda would be right to do it.She’s not funny. “I didn’t like her show. You need someone who’s in your face and will do more than read the autocue and is fast at ad-libbing. Miranda’s not like that. “Miranda is amusing, cuddly and warm, but she’s not a Bruce Forsyth or a me.” Davidson would like to produce the old Saturday night favourite with Ant and Dec, Bradley Walsh or Alan Carr hosting it.And he is clear why the BBC show, that started in 1971, was eventually shelved. He said: “The BBC didn’t know how to make it. It could have been done so much better if you’d people who know what they’re doing and they’re not just filling in jobs with BBC-type people.”
Mad
Davidson, who cut his teeth doing standup in the 70s, said he despairs of today’s comedy. He said: “People my age say they can’t understand these young comedians. I don’t get Michael McIntyre at all, I just sit there staring at the screen. And I think Eddie Izzard should be locked up.” He thinks Britain is obsessed by political correctness. He said: “I think it’s PC gone mad these days. But I’m more than happy to take it on when I go on stage.” He also thinks laughing at other people is funny. He said: “But you mustn’t victimise that person. I’m a great believer of including people in the joke. “If someone is in a wheelchair in the front row, do you speak to him or to everyone else and ignore him? Or do you include them? “You have to be careful as someone will say I heard him take the p*** out of a disabled person, so you immediately get labelled as someone who makes jokes about the disabled. You’re damned if you do and you’re damned if you don’t.”