EastEnders and Extras star Shaun Williamson brings 'Barrioke' to Farsley and Holmfirth

Shaun Williamson is on good form.

He is known to TV audiences for his role as Barry Evans in soap EastEnders and for gamely sending himself up, among other famous faces, in Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant’s hit show Extras.

These days, he can be found whipping crowds up into anthemic sing-alongs at venues and festivals across the country.

Williamson brings his latest live show, Barrioke, to the Old Woollen in Farsley, Leeds, on Friday this week and to the Picturedrome in Holmfirth on Saturday April 16.

Names are taken before the show and people get up on stage with Williamson to sing rousing crowd-pleasers such as The Village People’s YMCA or I’m Gonna Be (500 Miles) by The Proclaimers.

“I know it sounds fairly straightforward but people just have a really good night,” says Williamson, 57, whose son Gary works in the Leeds pub trade.

His performance career actually started with a lot of singing – he was a blue coat on the Isle of Wight in the mid-1980s at roughly the same time as fellow EastEnders star Shane Richie.

Eventually Kent-based Williamson found himself to be a “penniless drama student” in the capital between the ages 27 to 30, and started singing again to make money. “I invested in a karaoke system and basically I’d go around the pubs and clubs in north London, doing singing to backing music,” he says.

He picked it up again following his departure from EastEnders in 2004, when his character was killed off after nearly 10 years on the soap.

Since then, he has enjoyed theatre work but also appeared in Extras between 2005 and 2007, playing a caricatured version of himself and sidekick to agent Darren Lamb, played by Merchant.

His singing was referenced in the show, in which he bellows lines from Mustang Sally and impresses Lamb by claiming that “microphones are for wimps”.

Subsequently, he was also in their show Life’s Too Short and the Gervais-penned film The Invention of Lying.

Reflecting on his career so far Williamson, who remarried to his wife Adele in 2018, says: “I think it was 1991 when I was stacking shelves in Safeway – there’s nothing wrong with that (but) 10 years later, I was on This Is Your Life. I know my skillset and I know I’m never going to win an Oscar. I know I’m never going to work for the Royal Shakespeare Company. But I can do certain things that other people can’t and you have to play to your strengths because as soon as you stop (doing that), there are people better than you, and there’s no point.”

It tends to be fans of Gervais and Merchant’s comedies that now come to Williamson’s shows, he says.

“I do find that the further north you go, it’s slightly more difficult to trade off the EastEnders thing. I’m getting a feel now that a lot of people who come are guys who love Ricky Gervais.

“I did one Billericay last year and we’re going back there this year. It was almost like a stag night. I mean, it was literally all nearly young guys in between the ages of 20 and 30, which was quite extraordinary, really. So there’s a still a very strong Ricky Gervais, Stephen Merchant thing going on there.”

He adds: “They’re great guys, and they did me a lot of good because when you leave a show you need to keep the ball in the air, otherwise you are a one hit wonder. To do Extras, Life’s Too Short and The Invention of Lying really helped and it’s helping to this day.”

Is he happy to lean into those appearances in his live shows, given he was sending himself up? “It’s called Barrioke, what more can I say?” he responds with a laugh. “I might as well put it on my passport now.”

Tickets for Barrioke can be bought at https://www.seetickets.com/tour/barrioke