THE queue outside the Pavilion Theatre in Whitby is even longer than that outside the Magpie Cafe, and fish and chip people will know that that's twice the size of a conger.

As forecast, it's a splendid spring Saturday, though one flat capped chap wears a grey raincoat buttoned up to his chin and probably has cardigan and comforter beneath it.

Oh ye of little faith? Meteorologically, anyway.

The big attraction is Cannon and Ball, the clue to their attendance writ large on the purple stage curtains. "Jesus saves" it says simply, to which the irreverent add "but Keegan scores from the rebound".

At their peak in the 80s, the comedy duo did seven royal command performances, had their own television series for 12 years, broke British theatrical records at the London Palladium and seemed to spend every Christmas playing panto at Darlington Civic.

Behind the scenes they went four years without speaking, travelled separately, stayed in different hotels. Bobby Ball in particular was a hard drinking, womanising thug. His partner offered new meaning to the phrase loose Cannon, too.

Now both are Christians, believe that their faith has cost them television work but insist it's the television bosses who are the losers. "If you aren't being persecuted you're doing something wrong," Ball tells his audience.

"Me and my family are constantly being battered and that's fantastic," he adds, but they still laugh at his jokes in Whitby.

The event is part of the fifth Whitby Gospel Music Festival, organised by Staithes based singer Paul Wheater and with stands selling everything from God's Little Book of Calm to 124 Prayers for Caregivers. Special offer, the Holy Bible has £4 off.

Another stall sells Christian soft toys, with a cross on the sole of the left foot, another offers Cannon and Ball videos and CDs - "take a piece of Cannon and Ball home with you". No one sells doves.

About 700 are there, warmed up by a couple of songs from Paul Wheater - "Remember that he's the potter, I'm the clay" - and are introduced to "two of the best laughter makers in the country".

Forty years ago, they were welders at the same factory in Oldham before taking with trepidation to the boards, at first as the Harper Brothers. "We were that bad we had to change our name every two weeks so people wouldn't know it was us," says Tommy Cannon.

The first half's comedy patter, exchanges with the audience; the second is testimony. Some of the jokes are pretty good - like the one about the CAT scanner, for those who've not heard it - others rather less memorable.

"I know you might say, 'Why aren't we on telly any more?' It's because we can't cook," says Cannon, neatly.

Even when preaching to the converted, however, it may not be especially wise for a comedian to begin a sentence "I don't mean to be funny but..."

Cannon, who begins the second half, announces that he might have to rush away at the end - "my wife has laryngitis, I don't want to miss it" - and also asks how many remember as kids knocking on doors and running away.

"They still do it today. It's called Parcel Force."

He became a Christian - they reject the term "born again" Christian - in 1993, seven years after his stage partner. "We had all the money in the world, women, booze, possessions, but we didn't really have anything until we found God. I have to tell you that no matter what you've got, you borrow it. God lends it to you."

Bobby Ball - "the original Jack Russell," says his mate, "if anyone said anything to him, it was straight for the jugular vein" - had been converted after meeting Canon Max Wigley, a Church of England vicar in Bradford and chaplain to the Alhambra Theatre.

They don't think much of vicars, or for that matter of "church" or organised religion, talk - as "new" churchmen irritatingly insist - of "proper Christians" and suggest that the devil may yet take the hindmost.

Up second, bouncing Ball confirms the Alhambra script. He lives in Lytham St Anne's with his wife Yvonne, encountered while in cabaret at the Fiesta in Stockton - "she were the bouncer" - says Lytham's lovely but has lots of old people. "All the shop windows are bi-focal."

What happened back stage at the Alhambra, it transpires, was as improbable as any Agatha Christie. "I'd ended up drinking a bottle and a half of whisky a day, I'd wake up many times in drunken stupors in alleyways and the entourage would find me and take me to the hotel before the Press found out.

"It would have killed my career. I was a violent man and I committed a lot of adultery against Yvonne, not a little bit, but I told the vicar I'd done nothing wrong because I really didn't believe I had.

"I hadn't raped, I hadn't killed anybody. I'd given to charities, bought the lifeboat badges. My addiction were to lust, that were my addiction, not the alcohol, not the fighting. That vicar had riches I couldn't find. It were fantastic. I believe that God is telling the truth; I have everlasting life."

The evangelist atmosphere's building, not much playing for laughs now, though there's still a nice line about Yvonne's addiction being to keeping the house tidy. "I got up at two o'clock this morning to go to the toilet and when I got back the bed were made." Christianity's fantastic, he says, Christianity's freedom. Only religion's a bind. "It's coming to Jesus Christ and saying, 'I'm a sinner, I've cocked up', that's what gets you into heaven. To God there's no level of sin. Gossip is as bad as murder; it's true that. It doesn't matter if people here today think I'm crazy, because God doesn't."

He's pacing along the stage now, still in control, building to a crescendo, working the room like the old trouper that he is. "If you are a Christian who's run dry, please top up now. Seize the moment. Let's see this country on fire because I'm tired of apathy and so should you be. If you are churchified, get it out of your life. Let's move forward..."

People are coming forward all the time, ones and twos, dozens and two dozens, led off to a side room to pray and to find out what happens next.

That night at the Whitby Pavilion the convention audience would hear Larry Ford, Crimson River, New Dawn and others. It may no longer be the London Palladium, but Cannon and Ball will still be a hard act to follow.

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