Larry Dean: My new show Dodger features my late granny, Elvis Presley and my autism diagnosis

“When a grandparent dies, it’s like saying goodbye to childhood. It tends to be the first grief you have to deal with – losing a grandparent. My nanny dying, and now not having any grandparents left, I think it’s natural to start reminiscing about old times.”

He does so in Dodger, which sees Dean contemplate his heroes and his identity in the context of both his granny’s experience of dementia and his own recent diagnosis with autism. The title comes from the affectionate nickname that Elvis had for his own grandmother, Minnie Mae Presley. To him, she was Dodger – for no matter what life threw her way, she always came through it in the end.

“(My) nanny was absolutely hilarious,” Dean says fondly, though she was more of a fan of Abba than Elvis, he admits. “I don’t actually do her voice on stage, I do a different version of her. I was worried if I impersonated her too much, I would only remember my impersonation of her and not her real voice.

"She was very softly spoken, really sweet, very mumsy - always making sure everyone had enough to eat and always making sure everybody was happy.”

In the show, Dean, who appeared at The Royal Variety Performance last year, reflects on his grandmother’s dementia and how he knew “nothing” about the condition. It has so many negatives, he says, but it “can be funny”.

“I like making jokes about things that are hard to make jokes about,” he says. “I found people who actually had experience of dementia were actually more willing to have jokes made about it than people who haven’t...I think it’s natural when something horrible and serious is happening you do try to find something funny about it to try and lighten it.

"I found a happy medium, a certain level of joke I could go for when it came to my nanny having dementia. It has to all be personal, there’s no jokes about dementia, it’s about my nanny having it and there are no jokes that make fun of her.”

Helping to look after his nanny opened Dean up to reflect on his own mind since being diagnosed as autistic. He is beginning to make sense of who he is and what that means for the people around him, including his boyfriend Mikey.

"The point of the show isn’t how I got diagnosed or nanny’s dementia. The point I've ended up stumbling on is that the best way of summarising my personality isn't autistic, it isn't gay, it’s not Scottish… it's literally that I'm a nanny's boy.”

- Larry Dean brings Dodger to The Studio, Bradford on May 13 and The Crescent, York on May 15.