Julian’s had a few sticky moments

Lock up your sons! Julian Clary is looking for a husband. Ahead of the Scottish leg of his Uktour, the camp comedian told Jack Mckeown about his rise to fame, Fanny the Wonderdog, and why gay marriage is nothing to get your knickers in a knot about

THAT VOICE. At once highly camp and treacly smooth, even across 500 miles of telephone line it could not be anyone else. Away from the stage and television and in casual conversation, Julian Clary is a more subdued character than his public persona.

You get the impression he’s waiting to unleash one of his famous double entendres – his autobiography was called A Young Man’s Passage – but the recent Celebrity Big Brother winner is on his best behaviour.

Born in 1959, the 53-year-old is one of the few stars to have gone back to his given name.

Born Julian Peter McDonald Clary, to a probation officer mother and a policeman father, Clary began his comedy career under the name Leo Hurll, a fake keyboardist for pop band Thinkman.

In the early 80s he entered the alternative comedy scene under the alias Gillian Pieface and later as The Joan Collins Fanclub.

“The early days were fun,” he told The Courier. “I came up at the same time as Jo Brand and we did a lot of stuff together.

“I came to Edinburgh for the Fringe every year from 1981. I used to play at the Abercraig Lounge.

“There was a terrific feel about the Edinburgh Festival then. I doubt it’s the same now, it’s all gone too corporate.

“Back then it was delightfully haphazard but also an important place for upcoming comedians. It was sort of like a giant comedy trade fair.”

After a number of appearances on the Channel 4 series Friday Night Live he was given his own television show on the same channel.

Sticky Moments with Julian Clary was devised by Clary, with Paul Merton helping to write the gags. The show was well received and made Clary a household name.

“It was a rollercoaster ride,” he said. “I’d gone from a struggling comedian to doing really well and it happened very quickly.

“It was tempting to get stressed out but I remember thinking I should just relax and enjoy it.”

Sticky Moments lasted for two years. Ostensibly a quiz, but really a vehicle for Clary’s comedy, it saw him wear a more outrageous outfit each week and select contestants from the audience.

After being subjected to some lighthearted teasing, the quiz – littered with innuendo and double entendres – would be played for laughs rather than competition.

Clary was accompanied by his “steadfastly heterosexual pianist” and an announcer, “Hugh Jelly” who was almost as shockingly dressed as the host.

More than 20 years on, few people remember these co-presenters, but there’s one companion whose fame threatened to eclipse Clary’s itself.

Clary adopted Fanny the Wonderdog from an abandoned dogs’home and she was his performing partner from his early days as a struggling stand-up.

The whippet mongrel performed with Clary in all the major theatres, including the London Palladium, Hackney Empire and Edinburgh Playhouse.

She stoically accepted the indignity of wearing a wig and – if she was in the right humour – could be coaxed into her famous “impressions” of the Duchess of York and the Queen Mother.

By 1987 it had all become too much and Fanny stopped treading the boards to take a well-earned rest, being cared for by Clary’s parents in Swindon. His faithful furry sidekick emerged from retirement in 1998 to appear on ITV’s In the Presence of Julian Clary.

Even when she wasn’t by his side, Fanny was never far from Clary or his audience’s thoughts – plaster casts of her were given away as booby prizes in his Sticky Moments game show.

“Ah, Fanny the Wonderdog,” he said, with a fond sigh. “She was a wonder dog. People would come to see Fanny instead of me.

“She died 13 years ago and I’m very happy people still remember her so fondly.”

In 1993, Clary appeared to overstep the bounds of taste and decency for the time. At the British ComedyAwards he made a joke comparing the set to Hampstead Heath and claimed he had just committed a sex act on the then Chancellor Norman Lamont.

The tabloids turned on him. No longer was he a charming, flamboyant and harmless gay comedian. He was an amoral degenerate and the Sun led a campaign to have him banned from television.

Although the audience laughed at the joke, it nearly killed his career, and Clary has since said he was on a powerful cocktail of drugs when he delivered the line.

While there’s an argument that Clary brought trouble on himself by delivering such a potentially offensive joke, he was already used to having nasty things written about him in the press.

Being one of the first openly gay comedians in 1980s Britain, he developed a thick skin when it came to thinly disguised abuse.

“Life’s very different now than it was in the 1980s,” he said. “It’s very acceptable to be incidentally gay. I didn’t set out to be a trailblazer, it was just how it happened. I just thought the gay angle was a rich ground for comedy.

“There used to be a lot of heckling at my gigs. I got nasty things written about me in the Daily Mail. But so what? I always thought that if they were having a go at me that meant I was doing some good.

“If you stir people up they have to stop and think about why they feel the way they do.”

These days Clary is, he says, drug free, but that doesn’t mean he’s mellowed, or that he doesn’t still enjoy being the centre of attention.

This summer, he was the winner of the 10th series of Celebrity Big Brother, beating Martin Kemp and Coleen Nolan in the final vote to be crowned champion.

Emerging from the Big Brother house he told the cheering audience: “You’ve made a 53-year-old homosexual very happy.”

Now, he’s touring the country hoping to find still more happiness. “I’m on the hunt for a husband,” he said.

“This tour is all about finding me love. Every night I’ll be selecting people from the audience and at the end of the evening I’ll choose somebody and we’ll have a gay wedding, with bridesmaids and a bishop and confetti.”

There is a – albeit slight – serious undertone to his tour though. Both Holyrood and Westminster appear set to change the law so gay people can marry.

Clary sees the issue as a battle for social progress that will inevitably be won, as interracial marriage and the vote for women were over the last century.

“This is my contribution to the gay marriage debate,” Clary continued. “It’s not that long ago that all gay relationships were something people were concerned about.

“Of course, now it’s been demystified and there’s nothing wrong or even very unusual about being gay.

“It will be the same with gay marriage. People will see that the entire fabric of society isn’t immediately torn apart.

“It’s like when women were g iven th e vote. It’s just a matter of equality.”

Julian Clary