THE FABULOUS BAKER BOY...
DANNY BAKER TELLS MARION MCMULLEN EVERYONE IS CALLING HIM FOR TOUR TICKETS... TO SEE PETER KAY
Peter Kay played your dad in BBC’S Cradle To The Grave. Will he be coming to see you in At Last… The Sausage Sandwich Tour?
(Laughs) We are very good friends but let me tell you at the moment being one of Peter Kay’s very good friends is not a good thing to be.
People I have not heard from in donkey’s years have been calling saying, ‘Hi, Danny, how are you doing?’ And I’ll go, ‘Not bad’.
Then there’s some chit chat and they’ll go, ‘I’ll be honest with you. You know Peter Kay, could you get me four tickets [for the stand-up star’s new tour]?’
‘No, I can’t’. Put the phone down, it rings again ‘Hi, Danny ...’
Then I have to say, ‘I can’t get you Peter Kay tickets, but you know I’m doing a little tour myself’ and they go, ‘I’ll have to consult my diary.’
I’m getting so many calls about Peter’s tickets and I’m actually on tour myself. I do hope Peter will make it to one of my shows though because we do make each other laugh. We are pretty close.
Your new show follows two bestselling tours. Have they been a long time coming?
We should have done the tour two and a half years ago but like everything else it got put on hold.
And the tour I was doing before that, with [BBC Radio 2 presenter] Bob Harris talking about rock music, that had to be rescheduled.
We’ve now finished that and can clear the decks for the last in the triumvirate of these tours, which happened by accident but seem to have done very well. I will be doing this and then taking my leave.
It was always meant to be one show and it’s become three tours.
What was it like taking to the stage with presenting legend “Whispering” Bob Harris?
(Laughs) I think the phrase chalk and cheese might be appropriate.
Bob’s style is the antithesis of mine and it’s why those shows worked. The pair of us between us had over 100 years of hanging around with rock ’n’ roll stars and stuff.
I would jump up and walk around and Bob sat there.
I’m all hand gestures and hellzapoppin. There was no script and most nights I acted like jump leads upon [Bob].
How do you find the energy for the shows?
During lockdown and everything I’ve got as fat as a house.
I used to be as fat as a house and then I got ill for a couple of years and I look at those photos now and I’m like a scarecrow.
Anyone who has seen my shows knows I walk and I walk and I walk from side to side of the stage.
I try to engage everyone in the audience. After Christmas I’m going to have to have some sort of regime otherwise they’ll have to roll me around that stage.
Once this tour finishes I should be back to mid-season form again, but the first few shows I might be huffing and puffing a bit.
You took part in I’m A Celebrity ... Get Me Out Of Here! in 2016. What was your experience like?
I adored it. People who look down their monocle and say, ‘I don’t watch shows like that’ they should.
Anyone in my game, and I know close friends of mine, they won’t do the jungle, but they should.
It’s the biggest show on British television, it’s the business we’re in, as they say in The Godfather ‘This is the business we have chosen,’ and millions and millions of people watch it.
No one is too good for it. I was asked to do it loads of times and, I’ll be honest with you, the money hit the spot in the end so I went and I had a ball.
I was last in and first out and it is entirely different to what people think it is.
What is it like looking back on your career?
I realised the other day that I first did television in
1978.
Man alive, 1978!
I said this to people, certainly not of my vintage, and they looked aghast, like I was one of those shrunken men they find in bogs in Norfolk that they thaw out after 10,000 years.
I never planned on being a performer on stage, never. I’ve written for everyone you’ve ever heard of, even those who say they don’t have writers, but the idea of doing it myself never occurred to me.
I had no inclination to do it until my first book came out and they said, ‘do you want to do this date in a theatre with an audience?’.
They had an interviewer there for me and I went onto the stage and he asked me one question and an hour and a half later I sat down.
The audience all applauded and when I came off I was asked if I would like to do more of these.
That was six years ago and here we still are.
After Christmas I’m going to have to have some sort of regime otherwise they’ll have to roll me around that stage Danny Baker
Danny Baker’s At Last… The Sausage Sandwich Tour runs from January 28 next year. Visit Dannybakerlive.com for tour dates and ticket details