Yorkshire Post audio programme: Barry Cryer and Graeme Garden on life without Humph »

CHARLIE Chaplin once said that all he needed to make comedy was a park, a policeman and a pretty girl.

It's something you suspect Barry Cryer would agree with, having himself spent the past 50 years making people laugh. The list of comedians he's worked with during his illustrious career reads like a roll call of the cream of British comedy – Spike Milligan, Peter Sellers, Peter Cook, Tommy Cooper, Les Dawson, John Cleese, Frankie Howerd, Kenny Everett and Morecambe and Wise, to name just a few.

Given such associations, it's little wonder that Cryer's been described as an "anecdote jukebox" and his memories of working alongside such comic legends form the backdrop to his new, loosely autobiographical book, Butterfly Brain. He describes it as "a decorous orgy of nostalgia" and says like much of his career it's the result of happenstance. "I was nagged into doing it by my publisher and then my son said, 'Dad, you're always writing about other people, why don't you write about yourself?' So I did."

Cryer was born in Leeds and brought up by his mother. "My dad died when I was five and my brother was in the Merchant Navy so it was just the two of us for most of the time," he says. Despite the trauma of losing his father so early in his life, he has fond memories of his childhood growing up in Harehills.

"There was a gang of us and we would go on our bikes to Otley and Ilkley, which was great because I doubt I'd be allowed that kind of freedom if I was a kid today. I don't want to romanticise it, but everyone on Mount Pleasant Avenue where we lived knew each other, I'm not saying your back door was always unlocked but people looked out for each other."

He went to Leeds Grammar School, at the same time as the poet Tony Harrison, before going to study English literature at the city's university. Although he admits his prowess lay outside the classroom. "I had some half-baked idea of becoming a journalist and writing certainly interested me, but I spent more time chasing girls than reading books."

By this time he was involved in student shows which revolved around song and dance routines with a scattering of jokes thrown in for a laugh. On the back of this, he was offered a week at Leeds City Varieties in 1956. "I looked at my first year results and then at this offer and it was no contest," he says.

However, being thrust on stage as a professional comedian for the first time in his life was a daunting experience. "It was a baptism of fire because most the audience had come to see the strippers, not me prancing about on stage."

He realised that if he was going to carve out a career in comedy writing, then he needed to try his luck in London. "I got the overnight train from the old Leeds Central Station and turned up at this bedsit. I had a 17-day return ticket and on the day before it ran out I passed an audition," he recalls.

He was given a job as a bottom-of-the-bill comic at the
Windmill Theatre in Soho, where the likes of Tony Hancock, Peter Sellers and Harry Secombe started out. "It was tough, you were doing 36 shows a week. I remember working with a young man called Bruce Forsyth and I often wonder what happened to him."

He then got a job writing for Danny La Rue which, in turn, led to his big break. "David Frost came in one night and I met him afterwards and that's how I got to write for The Frost Report. That was a big deal because writing for The Frost Report opened doors for you. Suddenly people wanted to know you."

The Frost Report used material from an eclectic bunch of writers from Marty Feldman and Keith Waterhouse, to Denis Norden and Bill Oddie. It was through the show that Cryer met and began collaborating with David Nobbs, Dick Vosburgh and future Pythons Graham Chapman and John Cleese. He admits he's always preferred writing in a partnership. "If you have a mental block and you're writing on your own then you're in trouble, but if you've got someone to work with you can bounce ideas around. But you have to respect each other, it's a bit like a marriage."

Perhaps surprisingly, given the array of British talent he has worked with, his hero was an American. "Jack Benny was my absolute idol. He was great to work with and a real gentleman. He was happy for other people to get the laughs, which is unusual for comics. He was it for me."

Despite working with the biggest names in show business, Cryer is reluctant to single anyone out.

"Kenny Everett was the only non-comedian I wrote for, he was just a one-off, and Eric Morecambe had the quickest brain." In his book he recalls an occasion when Morecambe was cornered by a man in a pub who began pontificating about show business. "Eric sucked intently on his pipe as the man wittered on, waiting for his moment. Eventually it came. 'I always think,' said the man, 'that to be in show business you need three things ...' 'If you've got three things,' interjected Eric, 'you should be in a circus'."

Many people look back on the 1970s as the "golden age" of
British TV and comedy, but Cryer isn't one to wallow in misty-eyed nostalgia. "It was an amazing period with Tommy Cooper, Frankie Howerd and Eric and Ernie. But we only remember the best, there was a lot of rubbish about, too. I remember Arthur Askey saying that every
generation was the same, 'a lot of crap and a few greats'."

He believes there are some great comedians around today. "Ross Noble is astonishing, he's as good as anyone and so is Bill Bailey. I don't like it when people my age have a go at the younger stand-ups. You've got to keep in touch with the new blood which is why I make a point of going to watch them, they all call me 'Uncle Baz'."

Cryer sees himself as an entertainer and archivist rather than a comedian like Peter Cook or Tony Hancock. But he concedes that many of the greats wind up in an early grave. "The idea of the sad clown is a cliché, but I think some comics do wear themselves out. Les Dawson was the same off stage as he was on. When David Nobbs and I were writing for him, we had to drag him away from the bar because he was always working and making people laugh."

When it comes to his own career, he says he's been blessed. "I've been dogged by good luck all my life. My only ever ambition was to get married and have a family."

As a stalwart of Radio 4's ever-popular I'm Sorry I Haven't a Clue, he's become a household name, although he says this isn't always as glamorous as it might sound. "A woman came up to me recently in a supermarket and said, 'You're the one I've seen on telly who talks about dead people.'"

At the age of 74, he continues doing his stand-up shows and
has just finished a whistle-stop UK tour of I'm Sorry I Haven't a Clue that involved 23 shows in just 19 days. "We were exhausted, but it was great fun. We had 2,000 people come to listen to us in Birmingham."

Why, though, when he could be at home with his feet up, does he keep pushing himself? "I enjoy it," he says. "It's as simple as that."

Barry Cryer's Butterfly Brain is published by Orion, priced £14.99. To order a copy from the Yorkshire Post Bookshop, call free on 0800 0153232 or go online at www.yorkshirepost bookshop.co.uk. Postage and packing is £2.75.