FIRST TOUR IN
HARRY Enfield and Paul Whitehouse have missed a trick in the marketing of their first ever live tour. The comedy duo are hitting the road for a gruelling series of shows, marking their 25-year TV partnership and re-creating their most iconic characters.
But after chatting to Harry and Paul over a cuppa, I realise the Legends! Live Tour doesn’t really get across what they consider to be its unique selling point... the fact that they might die, live on stage.
“There is genuinely a chance one of us might cark it on stage,” says Paul, 56. “That’s gotta be worth the admission charge alone. We should probably have that up on billboards, ‘Come and watch them die!’.”
“Yeah,” adds Harry, 53, in a Loadsamoney voice, “Well worth the money, innit?”
Paul – who created talking corpse Mr Dead in their 1990s TV show – clutches his chest, feigning a heart attack.
“It’ll be ‘aaaaaaagh....!” he gasps, toppling over in his seat, “Thump. Brown bread.”
Listening to the pair is like a comedy masterclass but knowing Paul actually has had a dodgy ticker – he’s got three stents fitted to widen his heart arteries – I’m a bit worried this banter is tempting fate.
He and Harry, whose first TV characters were the cantankerous Old Gits, talk of death so frequently I expect the waiter bringing our drinks will have a scythe and a hooded cloak. Earlier this year, launching his BBC2 series Nurse, Paul joked that he’d been “toying with heart failure”. He explained then: “I’ve got three stents, four kids and five Baftas. I think one’s led to the others. But I don’t worry about illness.”
This new tour schedule is tough though, so seriously, Paul, are you up to it?
“Look, we are reasonably fit for our age,” he says, momentarily pausing my personal Harry and Paul Show.
“I don’t want to make a big deal out of the heart stents. When the guy did it he said, ‘I didn’t put them in just so you can sit by the fireplace’, know what I mean?
“And these days people don’t just knock it on the head in their 50s and retire. We do more exercise, less fags and are more conscious of what we eat.”
Harry is sipping a peppermint tea and Paul looks at him in mock disgust. “He claims he’s not even going to have a drink after shows. So much for rock star riders – it’ll be bio-live yoghurt, fruit and sparkling water. And the heroin and cocaine for me, obviously. And endless prostitutes.”
Harry nods: “He’ll find me really annoying and boring.”
BIt’s a laugh at my age. Kevin is now three years younger than my son
HARRY ON PLAYING THE STROPPY TEENAGER
ut the tour is the fulfilment of a dream for Harry and Paul, who met in a pub in Hackney in 1978. Paul had dropped out of university to become a punk rock star but was actually working as a plasterer with his mate and future Fast Show co-star Charlie Higson.
Ex-public schoolboy Harry was working as a milkman while inching his way into comedy, doing Spitting Image voices and getting on Channel 4’s Saturday Live.
Paul says: “Harry did a very funny Prince Charles. Made me laugh a lot.”
“And he made me laugh,” says Harry, who asked Paul to write material for him.”
But it soon became clear the pair had a chemistry on screen as well as off – and they began creating the characters that have made generations laugh, first on Harry Enfield’s Television Programme and then with Harry and Paul.
Their catchphrases entered the national conversation and are still familiar favourites today: “Calm down, calm down” (The Scousers), “Ooh! Young man!” (The Lovely Wobbly Randy Old Ladies), “Only me!” (Mr You-Don’t-Wanna-Do-It-Like-That), and “What an absolutely, thoroughly bloody nice bloke” (Tim Nice-But-Dim).
Now, the pair can’t wait to take them on the road. “We always wanted to tour so when our 25 years came round we thought we’d best do it before we die,” says Harry.
“We’re doing the greatest-hits characters and trying to make them relevant today. I haven’t done Loadsamoney since 1988 but he’s even more relevant now, isn’t he? I read