The comedy writer and performer Barry Cryer was a ubiquitous presence in the lives of most British (and some American) comedians for as long as anyone can remember. Michael Darvell recalls the great comic talent that was Barry Cryer…
In his day, if not appearing in person, Barry Cryer was there as a tenacious writer, contributing to the success of everyone from Dave Allen to Stanley Baxter, from Rory Bremner to Kenny Everett, from Bruce Forsyth to Dick Emery, from Les Dawson to Frankie Howerd, from Tommy Cooper to Mike Yarwood, from The Two Ronnies to Morecambe and Wise, plus Bob Hope, Jack Benny and Joan Rivers, everybody in fact except Benny Hill.
What was so creditable about Barry Cryer was the fact that he loved funny men and women, or maybe he just loved the idea of comedy itself. This is perhaps because he had such good taste in deciding what was and what wasn’t funny at any given time. Obviously this came with his experience, first as a stand-up comic himself and later when he was commissioned to write for some of the most celebrated funny people in the business. Often performers such as Tony Hancock or Frankie Howerd didn’t really understand what was funny and, more to the point, why. But Barry Cryer obviously did.
Barry Charles Cryer was born in Leeds in North Yorkshire on 23 March 1935 to John Cryer, an accountant, and his wife Jean. He was educated at Leeds Grammar School and subsequently attended the University of Leeds. He joined a local theatre group, the Proscenium Players and also appeared in a university revue. He was then asked to appear at the Leeds City Varieties theatre, home of Northern music hall and The Good Old Days TV series on which Barry often appeared. He left his university course and moved to London to audition for the famous Windmill Theatre which featured comedians doing their acts between the intervals of the nude shows.
Because he suffered badly with eczema Barry gave up theatre work to concentrate on his writing. He first wrote sketches for the Scots comedian Jimmy Logan and became resident writer for Danny La Rue at his West End nightclub in London. There he was discovered by David Frost and he wrote for the variety show A Degree of Frost on which he met his future collaborators Marty Feldman, John Cleese and Graham Chapman and they all wrote for The Frost Report on TV. With Chapman Barry also wrote episodes of Doctor in the House and No – That’s Me Over Here with Ronnie Corbett, amongst other TV shows that also included The Two Ronnies.
Eventually Barry was writing not only for Morecambe and Wise, but also the likes of Les Dawson, Ken Dodd, Tommy Cooper, Spike Milligan, Billy Connolly, Dick Emery, Max Bygraves, Dave Allen, Stanley Baxter, Bruce Forsyth, Jasper Carrott, Bob Monkhouse, Frankie Howerd, Rory Bremner and many more besides. Remarkably he was able to tailor the material to suit the various styles of comedy that each stand-up required. Barry Cryer was indeed an all-purpose purveyor of wit to the comic gentry.
He did return to performing himself in the radio show Hello, Cheeky with Tim Brooke-Taylor and John Junkin, which also had a short run on television. He was also the chairman on Jokers Wild, Yorkshire Television’s comedy panel game featuring many of the then current (1969-74) comedy practitioners. He wrote for and appeared with Kenny Everett in his Thames Television show.
From 1972 onwards Barry was part of the original team on the BBC Radio 4 comic quiz I’m Sorry I Haven’t a Clue which is still running after 50 years. Sadly most of the original line-up are no longer with us. Willie Rushton was the first to go in 1996, and he was replaced by special guest appearances by other comics. Barry was initially the show’s chairman but, when he joined the panel, Humphrey Lyttelton took over and made it all his own. He died in 2008 and then his role was taken over by Jack Dee.
In 2020 Tim Brooke-Taylor died and, with the passing of Barry Cryer, the only surviving member now is Graeme Garden who seems to have been retired from the programme. It has to be said that without the original line-up the show is not what it was. With much younger participants it has lost that precious feeling of old comics behaving badly. Barry and Graeme Garden did several spin-off series for BBC Radio 4 called You’ll Have Had Your Tea, the single-entendre doings of Hamish and Dougal, two extremely mean Scotsmen. The sketches were published by Preface in 2008.
For several seasons Barry toured with his old friend Willie Rushton in Two Old Farts in the Night and when Willie died Barry took his That Reminds Me show on the road with singer, guitarist and comedian Ronnie Golden. I saw it a couple of years ago when he played his home ground at the Harrow Arts Centre in Hatch End, nearby where he lived with his family. I had also interviewed him for What’s On In London magazine in 1999 when he appeared as W.C. Fields in the musical comedy A Saint She Ain’t, written by Dick Vosburgh and Denis King which opened at the King’s Head Theatre in Islington in north London. Directed by Ned Sherrin, it transferred to the Apollo in the West End.
Barry had played in other stage works including the original production of Wolf Mankowitz’s Expresso Bongo in 1958 with Paul Scofield, Millicent Martin, Susan Hampshire and Victor Spinetti at the Saville Theatre. The following year saw him in Nina and Jimmy Thompson’s musical The Quiz Kid at the Lyric Hammersmith.
Amazingly Barry Cryer had a number one hit record in 1958 with his version of Sheb Wooley’s ‘Purple People Eater’. The original recording by Wooley reached No.1 in the US Billboard charts, while Barry’s cover version was No.1 in Finland!
Apart from my interview with Barry Cryer, I can admit that we also met a number of other times, namely at a British Comedy Society lunch and a memorial service at St Bride’s in Fleet Street, and I have to say that he was hilarious at both events, particularly the funeral. And we have also appeared in the same film, David McGillivray’s Trouser Bar, in which we both played ‘bystanders’. (It’s available on Boys on Film Vol. 15, from Peccadillo Pictures).
As a recognised authority on comedy and comedians, Barry Cryer often paid tribute to his fellow performers including those he had written for, such as Bob Hope, Jack Benny and Joan Rivers. From 2018 to 2020 he presented the Sky Arts series on Comedy Legends, some 30 examples of most of the comics you could care to mention. The programmes are still constantly being repeated. His most recent work was a series of podcasts with the likes of Stephen Fry, Danny Baker, Miriam Margolyes and Sanjeev Bhaskar.
Barry Cryer was married to singer Theresa ‘Terry’ Donovan and they would have celebrated their 60th wedding anniversary later in 2022. They have three sons and a daughter, seven grandchildren and one great-grandchild. Barry received his OBE in 2001 and Leeds Metropolitan University made him an honorary Doctor of Arts in 2013. In 2017 he received an honorary Doctorate of Letters from the University of Leeds.
A naturally funny man to his bones, Barry Cryer was the same off stage as he was on – he just never switched off. He really couldn’t help being funny because it came preternaturally to him and he was an inveterate giggler and, if you were in his company, it was never long before you would hear the great guffaw that was his signature laugh. Although he was continually writing comedy, telling jokes as a stand-up, giving after-dinner speeches or hosting The Oldie literary lunches, Barry Cryer was always entertaining his audience. However, he never thought he had had much of a career, calling it: “Just a series of incidents. I’ve been dogged by good luck all my life.” Anybody else should be so lucky…
Barry Charles Cryer was born on 23 March 1935, and died on 25 January 2022. R.I.P.
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