You can stick your “as seen on Live at the Apollo” boasts on your flyers, up your little GenZies, kids, Bobby Davro has been “Live at the Palladium”. In fact his credits would require a flyer all to themselves.
He was taught stagecraft by Les Dawson, how to take a round of applause by Frankie Vaughan, got writing advice from Bob Monkhouse who, he reckons, was, technically, the greatest joketeller who ever lived and played rough stag nights with Michael Barrymore.
For more than a decade he ruled Saturday night TV, he has wandered Albert Square, danced and cooked his way to reality TV adoration and now ? Well, now this proudly self-proclaimed “old school entertainer” is coming to Edinburgh, playing a two week run at Frankenstein’s Pub, in a city which becomes, for the month, a wonderland of woke comedy where pronouns can have more power than punchlines.
Why on earth would he risk this ? Did the stroke he had, onstage, in January affect his thinking ?
“I really do love stand up so it’s no risk at all.” he says.
“I’ve been doing stand up for 46 years and anyone who has ever seen me do it will know it’s because I love it and the buzz it gives me.”
Even if the buzz is from a cattle prod wielded by an outraged feminist from the front row ??
“I can be a bit sexist” he has admitted in the past. To be fair, one story he tells against himself involves a smartly funny joke. He was doing a gig for a sofa company and was asked to present a birthday present to a female employee the night before. “I said “I won’t ask how old you are, because that would be rude. COMEDY BEAT. How much do you weigh ?” Smart. Should have got at least a laugh. He lost the gig.
But performing is, it seems, what has got him through all the hardest times in his life. Even the prolonged illness and death from pancreatic cancer of his much loved girlfriend, which was just last year. Performing got him through.
“I worked probably better than I had ever worked before because I needed that, that’s my medicine – making people laugh, getting out there and working. I need that, when I am not working it upsets me.”
And now, on the comeback after his stroke, it is comedy that Davro knows will see him through again.
“I have a view about the telling of jokes…” he says, as he heads into the temporary cancellation capital of the world,
“I am well aware of how easy it appears to be nowadays to offend someone with a joke, and those that are offended have every right to be. However,others have the right not to be offended. Offence isn’t given, its taken.”
He pauses for thought
“I’m out there just trying to make people laugh. If you don’t find it funny, don’t laugh. You can get up and leave.” Davro says he genuinely would not mind. But he would rather you just “come and have a bloody good laugh.”
Bobby Davro, Everything Is Funny If You Can Laugh At It, 21.00, Frankenstein Pub, until August 25
https://tickets.edfringe.com/whats-on/bobby-davro-everything-is-funny-if-you-can-laugh-at-it
