Celebrity Big Brother winner Julian Clary chats to Steve Pratt about his experience on the show and why he decided to turn his hunt for Mr Right into a comedy tour taking in Harrogate and Newcastle

JULIAN Clary is sitting in the garden of his 15th Century house, once owned by Noel Coward, in Kent, when I ring him.

His two dogs are seated by his feet as his chickens and ducks cluck and waddle beneath a walnut tree. Why on earth would you want to go on tour and leave such an idyllicsounding home? I ask.

“I think that sometimes,” he admits. “I would get bored. I like being slightly exhausted.

I like making people laugh and the whole creative process and taking it out on the road. That’s what you do if you’re a comedian. I could spend six months writing a book and then go and do panto. But the meat and veg of my life is touring.”

He has just left another, very different house.

The Celebrity Big Brother house. He emerged as the winner – beating the likes of Julie (Bet Lynch) Goodyear, Martin Kemp and Colleen Nolan – of the latest series on Channel 5. He fitted it in between rehearsing and hitting the road with his latest tour Position Vacant: Enquire Within (more of that in a minute).

“It just popped up,” he says of the invitation to go into the House. “They have asked me before and this time I looked at my diary and saw I could go in after rehearsing and before I went on the tour – and I thought, ‘this might sell me a few tickets’.”

It’s done more than that. He’s discovered from warm-up dates for the tour that the TV show has brought him a whole new audience. “Younger people. Because I am of an age, I have my fans from the last few decades and now there are all these student types. It’s a good thing and a generally lovely atmosphere. I am very thrilled,” he says.

Those of us who followed the antics of the celebrity inmates were, as always, alarmed at the thought of being locked up at such close quarters with a bunch of strangers for two-and-a-half weeks. “It’s hard to describe how claustrophobic it is. You can get accustomed to the cameras and things, you’re aware you’re being watched,” he says.

“You get a bit institutionalised in as much as you know it’s a game show where your emotions are controlled by Big Brother. It’s very wearing. But I’ve always liked watching it and thought why are they all arguing, they’ve only been there for two weeks.”

What he learnt was that he’s too quick to judge people, he says. To survive in the house you have to find something nice about everybody, something interesting about everyone no matter what they think about you. He also found out, when he emerged the victor, that he’d forgotten most of the tour that he’d rehearsed before going in.

“But it was in my brain somewhere and I had a week to rehearse when I came out. It’s been going awfully well and I’ve added some material about Big Brother.”

The tour, which includes dates in Newcastle and a sold-out appearance at Harrogate Comedy Festival, is a blatant attempt to find love. He’s dedicating himself to finding a husband, which means putting some members of the audience through a series of hoops to test their suitability. As Clary puts it – tongue in cheek you might say – “Because I’m still considered to be quite a catch and because the UK is noted for its heterosexuals on the cusp, there’s bound to be stiff competition”.

Quite. He is, he admits, always looking for an excuse to mess around with the audience and get some of them on stage. Cast your mind back to a previous incarnation as the Joan Collins Fan Club and you may recall his penchant for searching the handbags of audience members.

The idea of searching for a mate came through a personal dilemma. “There was a time a year ago when I thought my partner was going to move to LA, so my brain was thinking I am going to be single and the shame of it. I am 53 and single, I have to go and look for another man,” he recalls.

His partner “saw the light and hung around” but Clary is persisting in his search for a man. The show ends with a gay wedding, complete with bridesmaids.

AS well as TV shows like Sticky Moments, pantomimes and tours rejoicing in such titles as Lord Of The Mince, Clary has become a successful novelist and actor (with the MC in the musical Cabaret and Leigh Bowery in Boy George’s Taboo among his credits). Touring is special because it’s his world and creation. “It’s just so good for me to make people laugh. It feeds a need and I couldn’t imagine living without it.”

The writing began with his autobiography, A Young Man’s Passage, which went well enough for the publishers to ask him to try his hand at fiction.

Murder Most Fab, Devil In Disguise and his new novel, Briefs Encountered, have followed.

“If you had asked me as a child what I wanted to do, I would have said be a writer. It’s such a different thing. When you’re writing, you’re connecting with the reader. You can do very subtle things, be tragic and funny. Now, I will probably do more writing.”

In the wake of Celebrity Big Brother, various TV people “have come sniffing around”. Nothing definite is fixed up, but he thinks something will come of it. There are always those comedy panel games that swamp the schedules. “It’s easy to be cynical about TV because they are dead behind the eyes, but if you can get a programme that plays to your strengths, that’s fine,” he says.

  • Julian Clary’s Postition Vacant: Enquire Within tour: Oct 12, Harrogate Theatre – sold out. Box Office 01423-502116 and harrogatetheatre.co.uk Oct 13, Newcastle Mill Volvo Tyne Theatre. 0844- 4939999 and millvolvotynetheatre.co.uk