Born in Grays, Essex, in 1961, Joe Pasquale is a comedian, actor and author. His career began as a runner-up on TV talent show New Faces in 1987. Since then, he has toured his absurdist slapstick standup, as well as winning I’m A Celebrity in 2004, performing in panto and lending his signature high-pitched voice to animations such as Garfield 2. He also writes horror fiction – his latest, Of Mice and Wolfmen, is out now. Pasquale begins his tour of The New Normal – 40 Years of Cack! on 28 July.
This photo was my first TV appearance on New Faces in 1987. I came out to the Rocky music and was wearing very baggy boxing shorts. I would punch the punching bag and it would bounce back and hit me in the face, and I’d fall on the floor. That was the opening of the act. I had no idea what I was doing. I didn’t feel self-conscious being half-naked on TV, or about anything, ever. That’s one of the things you have to get over, being a standup. If you’re vain, you shouldn’t be going out in front of people trying to make them laugh. You have to get rid of every piece of insecurity and just go mentally and emotionally naked.
Ironically, I was a very quiet and insipid little boy. I was the least likely to succeed, one of those kids who never excelled at anything. I was very unnoticeable at school – not even my voice stood out. Everybody in Grays had the same one! It was only when I started working in the entertainment business that I realised: “Oh, this isn’t right.” I’ve never felt insecure about it because I sound like my mum. She was a very gentle soul and I take after her. I’m an introvert trying to be an extrovert, as most people on stage are.
I wasn’t regarded as funny at school – but being silly was very important. When I was seven, my mum had a car accident and went through the windscreen. After that incident she started having epileptic fits. That’s when her depression started. I decided at that moment that it was my job, until the end of her life, to make her laugh every single day.
I’d do stupid things like pretend she was on This Is Your Life and act out the parts of the presenter and everyone in our family. She had terrible bladder control, so before I even opened my mouth, she’d say: “Wait! Don’t you say anything, wait!” This was way before the times of Tena Lady, so she’d get a magazine and sit on it in case she’d wet herself as she didn’t want to stain the sofa.
We lived in a council house until I was seven, and then my dad – who had three jobs – paid £5,000 for a three-bedroom bungalow. I had two older sisters and a younger brother, so Mum had her hands full. I could quite happily look after myself: if I had Plasticine or a pen and paper, I’d just sit and play in the corner. It sounds isolating, but that was when my imagination came alive.
As a kid I was always very conscious of mortality, and I thought I wanted to be a priest, but that was because I’d been to a Catholic school. When I went to my secondary school, a normal comprehensive, I had a real awakening and decided I wanted to be a geologist. I did the Duke of Edinburgh’s award and was very active, but it all came to an end when I was 13 and I got run over and broke my leg very badly. I missed a year of school and skipped my exams. I ended up just doing home economics.
Because of that, I never stuck my head above the parapet during my education. Then all of a sudden, this other part of my personality turned up. I was in my 20s when I got a job at a holiday camp hosting bingo and refereeing wrestling. A new side started to emerge.
That was when I auditioned for New Faces. The director of the show was Richard Holloway, who is now an executive producer of Britain’s Got Talent. I went to the audition as a bet with a friend, and every time I answered one of Richard’s questions, the panel of judges laughed even more. A week later, the secretary who worked at the holiday camp said: “I’ve just had somebody from Central Television who wants to speak to you, Joe.” I phoned them back and they said: “We’d like you to come on New Faces.” I said: “But I haven’t got an act!” And they went: “Doesn’t matter, just do what you did at the audition. You’ve got a 30-piece orchestra to take the mickey out of.”
I remember smashing up a guitar. And I did a trick with a handkerchief, where I set fire to it, and then my shoe set on fire, then my sock set on fire, and I stood there for about 30 seconds on live television letting it burn. To make parts of the act work, I had to use this special kitchen glue – but unbeknown to me, the top of the glue had come off and I’d been sitting in my dressing room inadvertently sniffing glue for six hours, so when I eventually went out on stage, I didn’t have a clue what I was doing. Fortunately, I’d met Ken Dodd earlier that day in makeup. I was in awe. He said: “Hello boy, are you nervous?” And I said: “Yeah.” So, he said: “Can I give you some advice?” He gave me a couple of jokes to do and rewrote the whole act. I followed everything he said, and I won that round. It was amazing.
In the early days, I used to die on my arse a lot. But something inside you says: “OK, what have I got to do to improve that joke? What is the psychology behind that line not working?” After a while, you get better, but even now, after decades of doing it, I still suffer from impostor syndrome. Everybody in the business feels that – they just don’t show it. The most important thing to me is that I keep things silly. I don’t do anything political, I don’t do anything that’s going to change the world. There’s nothing adult about me. It’s as if I’ve been preserved in time from when I was a kid.
Mum died in 1999. It was sudden. I was in Great Yarmouth, working. She was staying in the holiday camp as she’d come to visit, but she fell out of bed and broke her collarbone. She went to hospital and got pneumonia, and went within five days. Her funeral was the hardest day of my life. It was weird because it felt like a lot of people were there because I was on the telly, and people wanted pictures at my mum’s funeral. I had cancelled all my shows that week, but on the day I said to Dad: “Sorry, I can’t stay here any more.” I left the wake and did a gig that night. It gave me a sense of purpose and was the best thing I could’ve done.
After my mum went, my dad had another 20 years without her and he just let himself go completely. He never looked after himself. He’d go to Lidl and buy 48 sausage rolls and sit there eating them, and that was it. I wasn’t going to let that happen to me, so I started running and weightlifting, and I got a six-pack – although it’s more of a wine gum-pack now.
All I want from the rest of my life is to still do panto and standup until I am 80. It’s what keeps me going, what keeps me happy. Forty years later, I still don’t know what I’m doing, but I’ll never retire. The worst thing in the world would be for me to stop.
