Lord of the prance

JULIAN CLARY, self-styled Lord Of The Mince, remembers a previous visit to York to appear at the Grand Opera House. “I collapsed there once,” he says, putting into my head thoughts of first aiders, doctors and, perhaps, even an ambulance rushing to his rescue.

It was nowhere near as dramatic as that – more of a fashion faux pas resulting from too much dressing up. “I was performing in a big peacock costume, with a big piece of scaffolding on my back holding it up. I spun round and fell over. They had to bring down the safety curtain,”

he explains.

Happily, he was retrieved beneath the pile of feathers and finished the show. His latest stage extravaganza is much simpler. Just Clary and not, from what I can gather, too many elaborate costumes.

He reached 50 this year and dresses as befits a man his age. “I don’t wear short shorts, or expose my nipples any more,” he assures me.

“I still like dressing up, wearing a lot of makeup and looking like a vision of how showbiz is in my world.”

Nice to know not everything has changed.

The innuendo is still flowing freely. His manifesto for his show, Lord Of The Mince, declares that Clary has done for mincing what Michael Flatley did for Irish dancing.

In his latest show he minces through a 25- year career that those with long memories may recall began as The Joan Collins Fan Club, with his faithful sidekick Fanny the wonder dog.

He felt it was time to get back on stage. “I’ve spent a few years doing other things and writing books – and I was 50 in May,” he says. “I thought I’d rather enjoy touring again. I think it’s the time of life where you should only do what you want to do. And that’s what I talk about on stage, looking back over the last few years.”

Life evolves, he continues a tad philosophically.

He’s never really planned his career “such as it is” and “it’s all a bit unexpected, frankly”, he confesses.

“There are things you can never plan, like appearing on Strictly Come Dancing, although I always wanted to write as I got older, so I have achieved that.”

His show is half stand-up and half “more daring and some audience participation”. He’s never lost his love of rifling through the handbags of women in the audience. He did it as the Joan Collins Fan Club and continues to do it now.

“It’s really a means of improvisation and you don’t know what you’re going to find in a handbag,”

he says. “Diaries are always good and I notice that a lot of women have hundreds of dirty hankies. I go for bulging handbags because they always have plenty in them.”

There is a script, although not always apparent, and areas he knows he’s going to visit and needs to do in a certain order for technical reasons. There’s a structure, not a completely aimless ramble, he assures me.

“I found it tough being back on tour to begin with because I’m not working on the cabaret circuit. There’s no way of trying out new material.

It’s two hours of new material, and it’s sink or swim.”

The difference this time is that there’s only him on stage “so I’m a bit more exposed and I think it’s grown up a bit”.

AWAY from the spotlight, he’s moved from the city to the country, a subject that features in his stage talk. “The rustic life, having chickens and just going a bit feral, really,” he says.

He doesn’t have a farm so much as a house with a garden and animals. “I’m surprised I didn’t do it before because I’m not that sociable.

I’m not out on the town every night. I suppose I was in my 20s and 30s.

“But living in the country has improved my quality of life. That’s a benefit of getting older, you do what you want. It all just happened at the same time – just when you feel like doing something, you can.”

Those who go to see his stage show have grown up with him. “What I’ve noticed is there’s a real history between me and the audience.

They’ve been before and say, ‘you picked me out of the audience in 1985’ and now they’re there with their children. I feel an amount of warmth coming from the audience,”

he says.

His appearance on BBC’s Strictly Come Dancing did more than anything to bring him to the attention of a wider audience. They saw him overcome his nerves – he suffered panic attacks – and do well in the competition in which he partnered Lilya Kopylova. People who wouldn’t normally have come across the camp comedian became acquainted with him through the dance contest.

“I can spot a Strictly punter in the audience because they’re slightly wide-eyed when they leave,” he says.

Like many celebrities who try their hand – and feet – at Strictly, he was very nervous at the start. “The first few weeks you are rigid with fear and when you’re nervous your legs won’t do what they are told to do,” he admits.

“It’s completely terrifying, but you’re learning off a fabulous teacher five hours a day, so you do make some progress.”

“Doing that show has comedy possibilities, it’s not like going into the jungle. You can learn quite a lot. I still couldn’t get up with some old dear at a wedding and do a foxtrot, but it made me more daring, made me think I could write a novel or be in the West End.”

He did both following his Strictly dancing.

He wrote his autobiography, A Young Man’s Passage, and then a fiction book, Murder Most Fab. And he played the Emcee in the London revival of the stage musical, Cabaret.

Once he has minced his way through the current tour – with dates in Newcastle and Harrogate, in addition to York – he’s off to do pantomime in Crawley and then, in the New Year, “become a recluse in the country”.

He has a third novel to write. “I should have got the hang of it by now and feel I should write something that will last and be important to me. I’m gestating…” he says.

■ Julian Clary: Lord Of The Mince is at York Grand Opera House on Wednesday.

Tickets 0844-8472322 or online grandoperahouseyork.org.uk

■ He also plays Harrogate Theatre as part of the first Harrogate Comedy Festival, on October 30 (sold out), and Newcastle Tyne Theatre, on November 8, (tickets 0844-4939999).