And there’s more ... Jimmy Cricket will muddle through in his usual style when he appears in pantomime in Billingham this Christmas. Steve Pratt hears his thoughts about contemporary comedy and keeping it clean

WHY haven’t you seen Irish comedian Jimmy Cricket – he of the wellies, hat and letters from his mammy – in the I’m A Celebrity jungle? Because they eat crickets in the jungle. “I’ll put that on Twitter tomorrow,” he adds. We’ve been talking about the changing face of comedy. Making people laugh is a whole lot different than when Cricket came into the business via holiday camps and winning ITV’s Search For A Star.

Now there’s a new breed of comedian who do arena tours and are to be found regularly on TV comedy panel shows. Belfast-born Cricket is from the old school and proud of it. At 67, he’s still working with a summer season in Hunstanton and pantomime – I know it’s March, but theatres are already thinking about Christmas – at Billingham Forum, ensuring his year is a busy one. But that doesn’t stop him weeping at the demise of beautiful old venues and lack of oldstyle seaside shows.

“The summer show is three days a week. It’s all one-nighters now. Where is a comic to go to ply his trade? I’m walking the streets looking for gigs, phoning people up. I have me wellies and me hat, but I’m definitely not going into the jungle.”

Cricket is an old pro (in the nicest possible way) who clearly thrives on an audience whether he’s performing or being interviewed before a matinee performance of the Old Time Music Hall, in which he’s starring at the Forum, the day we meet.

He arrives in a Muddles costume for the panto photo call. He’d borrowed it from a guy who makes costumes in Rochdale, where Cricket lives. “This is the second time he’s helped me. I did one in Doncaster and the promoter couldn’t get a costume and said is there any way you could borrow one?

So I rang up this guy Frank and he gave me one to borrow,” he explains.

He hasn’t seen the script for the Forum panto Snow White And The Seven Dwarfs, but did see the show in Bolton last year. It’s not an easy one for a comedian because “a lot of people are breathless with excitement waiting for the dwarves, so you’ve got to hold their attention”.

He’s done 24 pantos, a figure of which he was unaware until someone read it out to him from a press release. “I missed a couple of years and it’s only right that I did. Most of them, thank goodness, have been beautiful, but if you get one that doesn’t work you need a year off to recover,” he says.

“When you think what an eclectic mix panto is – soap stars, legitimate actors, speciality acts, fancy turns – so to get it right each year is a minor miracle.

“It’s concentrated on four weeks, which in one way is nice. Sometimes it can drag in a seven- or eight-week season.”

There’s the creative element, but panto serves another purpose too. “The start of the year is always quiet so, to be honest, to get a couple of bob for a jobbing comic is always good. You’ve got to keep the mortgage going.

“I write and get ideas and things so I’m ploughing away but it’s so hard to get people to put shows on in January.”

Panto is still making people laugh and entertaining them. The difference for him is that’s it’s an ensemble, not just him on his own telling jokes.

But panto has represented milestones in his career.

“It was the first time I ever sang, ever put a few steps together. So it’s been like a performing arts course for me. It was the first time I did slapstick with other people. Yeah, I owe a lot to panto.”

He’s always Muddles, Simple Simon or, in his younger days, Buttons.

“I try to act a bit, but they know it’s me. There are times when a bit of pathos is needed and I try to do that. Not to do it would be sacrilege from the audience’s enrichment point of view. Comedy is fine in front of the backcloths while they’re changing the scenery.”

Inevitably, things have gone wrong over the years, like introducing Aladdin as Cinderella and forgetting to collect a performer for the finale.

Once, in Notingham, the entire city blacked out and the audience was led from the theatre by torchlight as Cricket read one of his letters from his mammy.

There was also a gag where a large bag fell from above and he’d dodge it. One time he didn’t. Dodge it, that is, and was hit on the head (“wee bit of concussion there that brought me to my senses”). He also remembers his first panto, an early excursion into Christmas shows by Nick Thomas and Jon Conway, who now run panto company Qdos, “Robinson Crusoe In Outer Space. We emptied the place. It was just too clever,” he says.

“Jon was in it himself and he wrote it. He’d put me and Keith Harris and Orville together for the summer in Scarborough. It was the last of the summer shows, packed them out two shows a night. It was the early 1980s, just as things were starting to change.”

There’s a new generation of Crickets in comedy as his daughter, Katy Mulgrew, is a stand-up.

“She’s quite a natural and is doing well,” says the proud father.

We went to see her in Edinburgh last year and it went well. Of course, they’re doing observational humour about growing up a Catholic, but we all bought it and nobody was upset.”

One big difference these days in comedy is the bad language. Cricket has never sworn on stage.

He and fellow comic Mick Miller toured comedy clubs last year, appearing on the same bill as contemporary comedians.

“I’ll work anywhere. The kids remember me from when they were young. and it’s different for them to hear gags,” he says. “They can take clean stuff in the middle of what’s going on. I used to worry about people swearing before me but it doesn’t make any difference.

“I lean towards the younger comics who are clean because they’re clever, and I admire them more and respect them more for that.

“One time I did a few lavatorial jokes but I never swore. As time went by, I dropped it and became totally squeaky.”

He finds some modern comedy a wee bit embarrassing if he’s watching with his family. He’s sure any father would say the same.

“If the guy on stage is being very graphic about bodily functions, it makes me cringe to be honest with you. That’s not what we really buy our tickets for, is it?”

  • Snow White And The Seven Dwarfs: Billingham Forum, Dec 7-Jan 5. Box office 01642-552663 and online at forumtheatrebillingham.co.uk