‘I’m the real life Frank Spencer! Whatever I do goes wrong...’
IMEET Joe Pasquale straight from the boxing gym where he trains.van drivers greet him with cheery cries of “Oi, Squeaky!” and give him the thumbs up. “Love you, Joe!” adds a passing female fan.
“People treat me like I’m their mate,” the down-to-earth comedy star says.the trappings of celebrity don’t interest him. “I’m just happy to be working,” he shrugs. “To me it’s a job I love.”
And one he takes seriously. Pasquale is about to start a new run of the stage version of the much-loved 1970s TV sitcom Some Mothers Do ’Ave ’Em.
“It’s not a cheap remake,” he assures me. “It’s a loving reinvention, a play in its own right about Frank and Betty and about what makes their love story ring true”...with lashings of slapstick chaos.
Joe, 58, agreed to play Frank Spencer after realising he had “become” him. “Frank was lovely but everything he did was dogged with disaster and I’m exactly the same,” he says. “I’m the real life Frank Spencer! Whatever I do, something always goes wrong.
“It started when I was 13 and I got run over on Friday the 13 – I broke my leg and was in hospital for six months, which put me behind at school and was the reason I failed all my exams.
“That’s why I ended up in showbiz, I wasn’t qualified to do anything else!”
He’s been as accident-prone as South Park’s Kenny ever since. Joe fell out of a pantomime beanstalk in Birmingham, dislocating his shoulder. He broke three toes tap-dancing, and set his own foot on fire during his 1987 appearance on New Faces.
Once, performing in an Essex bingo hall, Pasquale fell down a hole the bingo machine had been covering, got stuck for 45 minutes and needed 14 stitches in his right shin.
“When I did the Dancing On Ice tour I broke my hand – I wasn’t skating, I just fell over,” he says. “And I dropped my skating partner Vicky Ogden on her head during the first rehearsal...” Ooh Betty!
Even when Essex-born Joe won I’m A Celebrity... Get Me Out Of Here! in 2005 he suffered. “I got a tick in my left nipple and a leech on me big toe which the medics had to burn off,” he says.
Some Mothers... brings a whole new set of risks. “Before the 2018 tour, a stuntman came down to show me how to fall 20ft down the stairs knocking out every banister. At the end he was wincing! I said, ‘Hang on, you’re a professional’ and he said ‘Yes, but you’ll be all right!’ After two weeks my legs were black and blue.we had to cover them in make-up every night, because of a scene where I lose my trousers.”
Michael Crawford played the original Frank, with Michele Dotrice as his longsuffering wife Betty, now played by Sarah Earnshaw who “has to make the audience believe that she loves Frank even though he’s an idiot – she’s brilliant”, he says.
There is far more to Pasquale than you might realise.the former Smithfield meat porter has published a collection of horror short stories called Deadknobs And Doomsticks and is working on his first novel.
He left school with no qualifications but has notched up a dozen Open University courses, and two creative writing courses.
Joe is also a fully-qualified pilot and is close to achieving a geology degree. “I’ve learnt more in the last nine years than I did in the previous 49,” he smiles. “But playing Frank is the hardest thing I’ve done. It has to be pulled off with the precision of a brain surgeon. It’s like a tennis match of dialogue all the way through.and it’s a risk because he’s such a beloved, well-defined character.”
It was Spamalot stage director Guy Unsworth who first dubbed Pasquale “the real life Frank Spencer” after Joe took an electric fan apart to repair it backstage, wrecking it in the process; and Guy’s idea to turn Some Mothers... into a stage play.
HE CONTACTED original writer Raymond Allen to ask his permission and he refused point blank – until Guy told him he had Pasquale for the lead. Ray told him, “I’ve bought tickets to see Joe live every year on the Isle ofwight for ages – he’s absolutely right for the part.” Another of humble, hard-working Joe’s legion of fans.
Pasquale’s latest panto was Britain’s third biggest over Christmas, but he goes down a storm at comedy clubs too, and has triumphed in proper plays and stage musicals. His ambition is to make TV programmes explaining volcanoes, earthquakes and tsunamis to children.
It’s a long way from his humble beginnings as a “cack magician” on ITV talent show New Faces back in 1987.
Joseph Ellis Pasquale was born on August 20, 1961, in Grays, Essex, the third child of four. Dad worked in the local margarine factory. Mum was a housewife.after school, jobs came as as thick and fast as Joey Essex on roller blades: tea-boy, garage mechanic, Ford factory worker, labourer, market porter...
After a tough start losing talent shows to long-time pal Bradley Walsh, Joe ended up as a Greencoat atwarner’s in Lowestoft.
The twice-married star has five grown-up children, three daughters from his first marriage and a daughter and son – actor Joe Tracini – from his second.
I ask if any challenge has ever scared him and Joe tells me about the time he went to entertain British troops in Iraq in 2006.
“As we came in to land, our helicopter came under attack; someone fired a mortar at us,” he says. “Luckily it exploded behind us.at the airbase we were warned they were expecting another attack so we had to sleep in a flak jacket with our helmets close by.
“They said, ‘If the alarm goes off climb under the bed’. I was sharing a room with agent Robvoice and when the alarm sounded at 3am we couldn’t get under the beds so we got into the cupboard in our flak jackets, helmets and pants.
“No one told us to come out when the alarm stopped, so we stayed in there all night...he had terrible wind too.”
● Some Mothers Do ’Ave ’Em tour starts at Churchill Theatre, Bromley, February 25