Harry Enfield And No Chums

Horsham-born Harry Enfield is back on the road with Harry Enfield And No Chums, his first tour in around 11 years and a great chance to look back on all those characters he created.

Along the way he will be at the Mayflower Theatre, Southampton on November 9; and G Live, Guildford on November 16 – an evening which is part autobiographical exploration and part character comedy, offering a behind-the-scenes look at character development and the art of performance plus his reflections on British culture over four decades.

“I was born in Horsham Hospital,” he says, “and I was run over outside Horsham Hospital when I was 16 and ended up back in Horsham Hospital having my head stitched up. It was entirely my fault. I thought I could cross the road and that the cars would screech to the halt just in time and not hit me. But this one did! I did feel really sorry for the driver. I was unconscious, but the poor guy…

“Usually it would work and the cars would stop and come screeching to a halt in front of me and then the driver scream something at me as I just walked on in that slow teenage fashion. But not this time!

“I grew up just outside Billingshurst. I didn't like it much at the time. I prefer it now. At the time it was a bit cut off, and all my friends were in town. They were all yobs and my dad loathed them and he loathed me,” Harry laughs.

“But I was horrible – or he said I was horrible! But I was just being a punk.”

And it was out of the punk that the comedy emerged for Harry: “When punk happened, it made you think that everything was possible. There were all these bands with really good tunes even though they couldn't really play their instruments but it just didn't matter. I just found it so exciting compared to the really, really old men of about 30 that were making albums like Pink Floyd or Genesis where you would have to wait two years for their next record.

“And what was so exciting was that all these bands were not that much older than me.

“When I was at university, I saw these people called the National Theatre of Brent and I just thought that they were so funny. It was in a tiny space, and afterwards one of my more punky friends said why don't we try and do something like that. Had it not been for punk I would never have thought that I could do it.”

Plus it was at a time when there was alternative comedy going on.

“We went to Edinburgh and did a show and it went really.”

A message came through from John Gorman from the band The Scaffold: “He said ‘I came to see your show in Edinburgh and I want to give you £75 for one of your jokes.’ That was like £3 billion in today's money. I thought that's good so we might as well carry on doing it for a bit.”

One thing led to another and Harry started writing jokes for Lenny Henry and jokes for Spitting Image and then started doing his own stand-up. And so emerged Loadsamoney, Stavros, Mr Don't, the working-class Wayne and Waynetta Slob and co.

A fair amount of the comedy at the time was a reaction against Thatcher, but Harry wanted to do something more subtle: “A lot of people were saying ‘Isn't Thatcher awful!’ and the audience were all lefties and agreeing and I just didn't see the point of that. When I was doing Loadsamoney, of course he was a complete Thatcherite but if you read between the lines you see that he had no soul and that he was completely materialistic. It is even worse now. Since then the rich have got richer and the poor have got poorer and Loadsamoney absolutely loves that. He thinks that's brilliant.”

Harry says he never worried about being PC: “For me it was always about mischief rather than malice and just whether something was funny or not.”

The characters have stood the test of time: “And there are still some really good satirists around but I think TV is a bit safer now than it was. It is a bit more controlled. It's a different era. But when I was doing shows we had Alan Yentob as controller. And it was like he was the owner of an art gallery. He would think who did he want on his channel and then he would just leave you to your own devices. He was like a curator but I think things are so much more controlled now than they were back then.

“He would just let you do something, and I loved that. He just had faith in people. He was from the arts and he was really great at letting people grow in their artistic endeavours. I guess things are just a bit different now.”

As Harry says, he hasn't toured for a while: “I've done bits and bobs and I've done other things and I really enjoyed those but these nice people came along and said do you fancy doing a tour talking about your life. I said I didn't want to just talk about my life. I'd talk about the characters and how they came to be and I would also do those characters.”

The tour kicked off earlier this year: “It's been great. I've really enjoyed it.”