AT 83, life for Roy Walker is still full of laughs, potential, and surprises – along, of course, with quick-witted one-liners, as dry and deadpan as ever.
And he never misses an opportunity - they cut into natural conversation like a knife through butter; smooth and satisfying, precision timing still intact. He can’t help himself; it runs deep: the need to perform, to please and, ultimately, to make people think the world is a much better – funnier – place than it really is.
For the Belfast-born comedian and original host of ITV’s Catchphrase, comedy is a medicine that fuels the soul and although he sees retirement “rushing, headlong” towards him - he turns 84 in July – there are no plans of stepping away from the stage just yet.
“I’m just getting started,” he quips (one of many that genuinely made me laugh) in a wide-ranging chat down the phone from his holiday home in Tenerife and ahead of three Northern Ireland gigs with fellow ‘old timers’ Jimmy Cricket, Adrian Walsh and Gene Fitzpatrick. The four are taking to the stage with showband, Clubsound, for shows - aptly entitled The Comedians - in Larne, Belfast and Coleraine this week.
“It will be so much fun because we are all from the same era, the same place, and it is always nice to work with fellow comedians,” says the genial, mild-mannered Walker, who had his big break on popular 1970s TV talent show, New Faces.
“When I was working on Phoenix Nights with Peter Kay some years ago, he told me the worst place you could ever be was in the Comedy Store dressing room in London... he said the jealousy was terrible, but we never had any of that going on, among us older comedians.
“The way we were brought up was different. We had to deal with jealous audience members coming along to try to upstage you – they always thought they were funnier than you, so you had to prove your worth.”
He believes there is a trend today to return to those comedy roots - “not so much to old fashioned stand-up, but more a new type of old comedy that I call ABS – Adults Being Silly,” he says. “That’s what my great friend, Jimmy Cricket did, that’s what Morecambe and Wise did, what Laurel and Hardy did.”
With regard to the latter, Roy (one of the stars of the original 1970s television show, The Comedians), is particularly delighted to be performing at the Grand Opera House for the Belfast date, as it is the place where he saw Laurel and Hardy perform in 1952 – a memorable experience that “planted a seed” and set him on his own path to showbiz stardom.
Back among the audience at Christmas to see son Phil perform as Muddles in the GOH pantomime, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, he is proud of all three children who have followed in his footsteps – son, Mark, also went into comedy and his daughter, Josie, is a theatre and television actress. A grandfather of two grown-up children, granddaughter, Verity, is continuing the tradition, he says, “working in showbusiness”.
The former choirboy from Woodstock Road in Belfast – also, randomly, a former Northern Ireland hammer throwing champion – was first dazzled by comedic timing when given a part as a wizard in a school play while in secondary school - the former Park Parade school on the Ravenhill Road.
“I had to do magic tricks,” he recalls, “and that got me some laughs and that was me hooked, you know. Some people might say I was craving for attention and I suppose I was.”
Life wasn’t always a barrel of laughs, though, and the young Roy had a tough childhood, living for a time in foster homes and leaving school at 14, unable to take up an offer of a grammar school (Annadale) place because his mother couldn’t afford it. As a young adult, he worked for a while in the shipyard with Harland and Wolff, had a spell in the army (as a PT instructor) and later ran a shop on the Woodstock Road, while working as compere at a cabaret club in the evenings.
In previous newspaper interviews he has spoken of having to leave Northern Ireland with his wife, Jean (who passed away from cancer in 1989) in the early 1970s to escape the Troubles - and after having a pistol thrust in his face because Jean was a Catholic.
He likes to leave those darker days firmly in the past, but it’s probably true to say his stellar TV career may never have happened but for the move to England where he went on to establish himself as a clean, popular - and funny - stand-up comedian.
“Catchphrase was really the one that changed things for me,” he says. “I used to live next door to Les Dawson and he told me if I wanted longevity in this business, I had to get a game show. It was the best advice I was ever given. But, it was just before Catchphrase came along that my confidence really surged. I was selected to perform with Tom Jones – I did 14 shows in the Royal Albert Hall with him; he was absolutely brilliant. It was at that time that I sort of knew... I thought, ‘I think you’ve got something, Roy’”
Is he still a fan of Catchphrase today? “Yes, I love to watch it – the only real difference, really, between Stephen [Mulhern’s] Catchphrase and mine, is that there are now celebrities on the show. Because I am older, I don’t know who half the people are – I look at them and think, ‘Who the hell is that?’ I have to say, I prefer the public as contestants because you never knew what they were going to say.”
He knows exactly, though, what people will say to him when he’s out and about, whether at public speaking engagements, at a performance, in a restaurant or just walking down the street near his home at Lytham St Annes. “There’s hardly a day goes by without someone shouting a catchphrase at me: ’Say what you see’, ‘It’s good, but it’s not right’ - I hear them every day,” he says, cackling with laughter.
I wonder if it gets more difficult, getting up on stage as an octogenarian? I tell him that I read somewhere that he used to carry four hours of material around in his head. “That’s now down to three hours and 45 minutes,” he retorts, quick as a flash.
There’s hardly a day goes by without someone shouting a catchphrase at me: ’Say what you see’, ‘It’s good, but it’s not right’ - I hear them every day
— Roy Walker
Still in demand as an after dinner speaker, he is also writing his memoir – title still to be confirmed. ‘I’m thinking I might call it: ‘I Said What I Saw’ – what do you think of that, as a title?” I like it, I tell him. When might it be published? “Before I die”, he says, laughing again, before informing me he must get off to his lunch-time yoga class.
“I’ve been doing yoga, on and off, for about 10 years,” he says, brightly. “It keeps me supple and I love the spiritual element. It makes me feel at peace and thankful for the health I have and the life I have lived. Life is still treating me well; I can’t complain.”
