The comedian pays tribute to his sometime co-conspirator on BBC Radio 4’s I’m Sorry I Haven’t a Clue
There cannot have been anyone from the world of British comedy in the last 60 years that Barry Cryer didn’t know, work with or have an anecdote on. As such, he became an honorary uncle to countless comics, always keeping up with who was doing what in the business and very often seeking out shows to see in small, out-of-the-way venues. Few professionals maintain such zest for their craft that they do this in their senior years. And few continue to work so relentlessly as he did, performing his cabaret show with long-standing friends and associates Colin Sell and Ronnie Golden as well as, of course, I’m Sorry I Haven’t a Clue. “I do the shows for free. It’s the travelling I get paid for,” he once explained to me.
It seems an obvious thing to say, certainly to anyone lucky enough to know the man, but Barry had an insatiable passion for jokes. It was a frequent treat to answer the phone to that familiar voice and a line that would typically have gone something like: “There’s a priest in the confessional box and someone comes in and sits down behind the screen. After a couple of minutes the person still hasn’t said anything so the priest knocks on the side of the confessional. There’s no response, so a minute later he knocks again and a bloke’s voice says ‘You can knock all you like, there’s no paper in here either.’”
