Julian Clary on 'lowbrow' entertainment, audience participation and why Yorkshire crowds are 'perfect'

Fans of the comedian and actor will know that there’s an element of the unknown in his performances, thanks to his improvised interaction with members of the audience.

His latest tour, Born To Mince, which begins its extended run of dates in Yorkshire this week after a postponement from 2020, is no exception.

“I do it because it’s dangerous,” he says, of the audience participation elements of his comedy. “I like the danger.

“Over the years I find I have got quite good at picking the right people. You just have a bit of eye contact and you can tell if they’re going to be fun, or if they’re drunk and you can avoid them.

“I also get quite a lot of people on stage then I can whittle it down to who is going to be the best value. It’s fine as long as they go along with it. Nothing awful will happen, it’s just fun and it’s a means of improvising comedy.

“I wouldn’t want to be in the audience of one of my own shows but I quite like doing it myself.”

Clary first hit the road with his Born to Mince tour back in 2019 and scheduled an extra run of dates for spring 2020. The Covid-19 pandemic took hold forcing a delay and the rearranged run of dates now begins in Halifax on Wednesday.

“The original tour was great fun and we decided to do some more dates,” Clary says. “But now it’s almost three years ago. It’s a funny thing that has been in the near future all this time and now suddenly I’m going to be doing it again.

“It will be lovely, I’m looking forward to it. I’m chomping at the bit after it taking so long to come to pass.”

“It was a success in terms of audience numbers and in terms of me just having a good time which is why I wanted to do more,” he elaborates. “It’s taken this long to actually deliver it. But it’s one of those shows that was quite easy to put together and it has a life of its own.”

In what is marketed as “an outrageously camp show”, Clary, who is known for speaking frankly about gay life in his material, will continue to bare his soul in the interest of light entertainment.

“The world is a bit of a dark place at the moment,” he says. “I’m hoping to give people permission to laugh and be silly for a couple of hours.

“The first half is just me chatting, getting to know the audience, telling a few stories and singing a few songs.”

With the second half comes audience participation, in a sequence called ‘heterosexual aversion therapy’ that sees Clary ‘wire up’ a handful of his fans.

“I’m interested in proper big old belly laughs,” he says, when asked what inspires him. “I like being rude and talking filth and that makes people laugh - the people who come and see me anyway.

“The inspiration is just to have fun. Obviously there’s a kind of subliminal message about gay aversion therapy in the heterosexual aversion therapy part, that’s there if you want a message. But it’s very lowbrow entertainment. I don’t aspire to anything too intellectual.”

It has already been a busy few months for Clary, who has been touring on stage in Ronald Harwood’s play The Dresser, which came either side of a return to The London Palladium over the festive period for Pantoland. He was inducted into the theatre’s Wall of Fame by owner Lord (Andrew) Lloyd Webber at the end of 2019.

Variety is what keeps him “artistically satisfied”. “It’s all a means of expressing yourself. It’s all me but in different guises. They are really different,” he says.

“The whole acting thing was quite a challenge because all the things I’m used to - picking on the audience, responding if anyone coughs or whatever, you can’t do.

“Panto you have to tread very carefully because there’s children around so that’s another discipline. It’s all just a way of keeping myself interested really.

“I think if I did just one thing all the time, we’d all have had enough by now. I think if you rotate things, you manage to keep going.”

“But this is me, the proper me on my own on stage which is what I like more than anything,” he adds. “Let me at them I say.”

Clary, who last year released his second memoir The Lick of Love, detailing his life alongside his beloved dog companions, will visit 16 venues during his time on the road, culminating in six nights at London’s Bloomsbury Theatre.

He says he doesn’t visit places he doesn’t like - and describes Yorkshire audiences as “perfect”. “They’re not too self-conscious, quite outgoing, chatty, all the things that make a good night for me.

“The further south you go, people are a bit more arms crossed and uptight but the further north you go, that relaxes a bit. It’s a happy place is Yorkshire.”

He’s glad to be busy again after a quieter period during the pandemic, though life never completely slowed - he wrote his book and a script during that time.

“I quite liked the whole slowing down and being at home, everything quiet, for a while. I had a creative outlet and a routine, dogs to walk, dinner to cook. It was alright actually.

“I felt sorry for young people who wanted to be out and about having fun. I guess I’m of an age where that’s less of an imperative now.”

Clary is now 62 and has previously said he found 60 to be a “sobering age”. Speaking in 2019, he said: “I often think this is the last tour because no-one will want to see me any more or I won’t want to do it and I like being at home with my husband and the dogs.

“But once you’re actually on the road, I really love it, and this is my main function – to travel round and doing this. There is a lot of job satisfaction in touring.

“But how long? I don’t know, I don’t know if it’s unseemly after a certain age, given my main subject matter is so graphic, whether you can do that into your 70s.”

Clary admits he worries about offending people. “I used to be obsessed with shocking people and causing that sort of sharp intake of breath,” he says.

“But that was in the Eighties, when it seemed appropriate to do that and shake things up. It doesn’t work like that now, and it’s more about playing with words and making people laugh.”

Born To Mince is at Halifax, Victoria Theatre on Wednesday, March 23 and Chesterfield’s Winding Wheel Theatre on March 24. Visit julianclary.co.uk.

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