Julian Clary in Jack and the Beanstalk at the London Palladium
(Picture: )What is your favourite venue?
I love performing in any theatre designed by Frank Matcham. There are about 20 left, including the Hackney Empire, Buxton Opera House, Grand Theatre Blackpool and the London Palladium. They are lavish, exciting and exuberant buildings that infuse both performers and audience with their magic.
What piece of music reduces you to tears?
Took the Children Away by Archie Roach. It’s a beautiful song about the stolen generations of Aboriginal children forcibly removed from their families by governments, churches and welfare bodies.
An unforgettable lyric?
Sometimes I like things that are low-brow and meaningless. The lyrics to Marc Bolan’s New York City are an example. Allegedly he was sitting on a bench in New York with either Rod Stewart or David Bowie when a woman passed by carrying a frog. It’s a glorious song thanks to Gloria Jones’s backing vocals. It’s more or less the same line repeated on a loop. “Did you ever see a woman coming out of New York City with a frog in her hand?” We are told Marc was in his cocaine and cognac phase at the time. We’ve all been there.
What artwork would you pinch from a gallery?
Bronzino’s An Allegory with Venus and Cupid. I saw it at the National Gallery at an impressionable age and was mesmerised by all that milky flesh and the girl with her thumbs the wrong way round. Years later my history of art teacher, Mr Innes, explained what it all means. I love a painting with a story to tell.
Who or what turned you onto your path as a performer?
My sister was a dancer. A show girl. When I was 14, I sat in her dressing room with all the other dancers, surrounded by feathers and sequins and by the time I left I knew my life, whatever it might be, needed to involve glamour. Comedy was the thing as it turned out, but dressing up was an essential part of it for me.
What was the best piece of advice you were ever given?
“Just say yes.” If ever I’m in a dilemma, I call my mother. When I was asked to go on Celebrity Big Brother for example, I wasn’t sure if this was the career highlight I’d been waiting for. “Just say yes,” she said. Simple. And it worked out fine. I got paid plenty of money, was voted the winner and sold lots of tickets for my tour. However, when I was offered crystal meth in the toilets of a nightclub called Cock in New York I also heeded my mother’s advice. I came to 24 hours later in a multi-storey car park with a strange man holding a grease gun and a rolled-up copy of Marie Claire.
If you weren’t a performer what would you be?
I’d be a tour guide – everything you need to know about gay Doha.
What’s your worst habit at work?
Forgetting the script and making things up: improvisation, some call it. It’s fine to be spontaneous when I’m doing my own shows. They’re often the best bits. But when doing a play, apparently, it isn’t encouraged. I did a tour of The Dresser recently, playing Norman, who has endless monologues. There’s nothing quite like a dreary matinee in Plymouth for bringing out the devil in me. I’m afraid my mind wandered and I enhanced Ronald Harwood’s text with a description of what Norman saw in Market Square. Let’s just say I wasn’t encouraged to do it again.
Which artist/creative do you think is unfairly underrated or overlooked?
The British dancer and mime artist Lindsay Kemp. He had the ability to mesmerise and transport an audience. Hugely appreciated in Europe, particularly Italy and Spain, the critics here were always a bit sniffy about him, rather missing the point. I last saw him perform in Rome a few years before he died at the age of 80 and it was wonderful to see him with an audience who appreciated his genius. I often need a Lindsay fix and thankfully I can still see him on YouTube – Memories of a Traviata is a particular favourite.
What art form can you just not get on with?
Jazz brings me out in hives. Especially that frantic, discordant stuff. It genuinely makes me feel ill.
What is your favourite panto and who are your favourite panto performers?
It’s very hard to choose. Apart from Jack and the Beanstalk obviously! Dick Whittington, maybe. The jokes more or less write themselves. But I also love doing Cinderella. I had a scene in the woods with Paul O’Grady where we had to talk about my over-sized muff… My favourite performers, apart from my usual co-stars at the Palladium, are the dancers – they are the life and soul of our shows, the hardest workers and the nicest, happiest people.
What was the most surprising thing that happened to you in panto?
In Birmingham one year, I had to do a bedroom scene with Keith Harris and Orville. I can’t remember the script but I think we got the line in “I suppose a duck is out of the question?”
