I never met Barry Cryer, but I do have a memory of him, which seems characteristic of those generated by this great life-affirmer. One sunny afternoon about 20 years ago, I saw him on a ferry going to the Isle of Wight. He was smoking on the open deck and laughing with another white-haired gent. A few hours later, when I was walking past the pretty theatre in Shanklin on the island, I saw that the marquee proclaimed: “Tonight: Barry Cryer and Colin Sell.” I was a good distance away from the theatre entrance; even so, I could hear the laughter from within.
Sell – the other white-haired gent – is the pianist on the surreal and genuinely hilarious Radio 4 gameshow I’m Sorry I Haven’t a Clue, on which Cryer was a regular panellist. But I had recognised Cryer from earlier ventures: 70s TV shows such as Hello Cheeky and Jokers Wild – unpretentious, effervescent titles that echoed the names of the stage revues he’d written for in the early 60s: And Another Thing, On the Brighter Side.
Barry Cryer was never cutting-edge. He described himself as “between generations”, neither a “traditional variety comic” nor a “satire wunderkind”, and perhaps it was this mercurial quality, along with his great wit, that kept him in work for 60 years, writing for Morecambe and Wise, the Two Ronnies and Kenny Everett, among many others. An early break came in 1966 when he was recruited – alongside some future Pythons – to write for David Frost, who really was a satire wunderkind. Frost swanned around London in an open-top car, and Cryer said if it started raining, Frost pressed a button on the dashboard and it stopped raining.
The author of this book, Cryer’s son, Bob – an actor, who sometimes wrote comedy with his dad – cites this joke as a good example of Barry’s ability to “benignly skewer a subject without really landing a hurtful blow”. He was a kind man, who “hated confrontation” and went so far as to laugh at jokes he hadn’t written. He was also self-effacing, saying that of the two types of comedy writer – those that got it right and those that got it done by Monday – he was in the latter camp. He didn’t disdain to warm up for bigger names, perhaps announcing himself, “Hello, my name’s Barry Cryer, one of the better cheaper acts,” or “They say you only play Wilton’s twice in your career, once on the way up and once on your way down… It’s nice to be back.” He always preferred writing collaboratively and was “comfortable being invisible”. Eric Idle said: “It was really nice that he became famous, because everybody loved him.”
This is a joyous, uplifting book, studded with jokes Barry either wrote or perpetuated. (Most of the latter are too long to quote, but Google “Cryer archbishop of Canterbury” for a guaranteed laugh.) There are some darker moments, however. Cryer’s father, an accountant for Leeds council, died in 1940 when his son was five. His mother attempted to keep back the news for a few days, but a kid came up to Barry in the playground: “Your dad’s dead.” The bereavement left a void that Cryer tried to fill by connecting with and entertaining people, but bad eczema made him favour writing over performing. In 1960, when he was living in a Bayswater bedsit, a friend found him sleeping with the gas on. Cryer later told his wife, Theresa Donovan, a singer and dancer, that he had “experimented” with the thought of suicide because of the state of his skin. (And he claimed it was marriage to “Terry” that made the eczema go away.)
Being a performer himself, Bob is good on the technical side of his father’s comedy: his quest for the prized quality of silliness, his concern with speech rhythms. For his own performances, Barry wrote a series of bullet points or “beats” on the back of a cigarette packet, which he called his “File-o-Fags”. Aside from cigs, he carried with him liquorice allsorts, six colours of biro, a bent metal comb and indigestion tablets – all in a white plastic bag on which he’d written “Gucci” in black marker.
Ordinary life, he used to say, is badly written, so he infused it with jokes. Two days after he died, in January 2022, Bob received an anonymous tweet from somebody who’d shared a tube journey with Barry from Rayners Lane to Uxbridge. “It was one of the funniest 20 minutes of my life.”
I do wish I’d gone up to him on that Isle of Wight ferry.
Andrew Martin’s latest book, Metropolitain: an Ode to the Paris Metro, is published by Corsair
Barry Cryer: Same Time Tomorrow? The Life and Laughs of a Comedy Legend by Bob Cryer is published by Corsair (£20). To support the Guardian and Observer order your copy at guardianbookshop.com. Delivery charges may apply
