CityLife

Interview: Justin Lee Collins

Justin Lee Collins is looking forward to his Channel Five projects

BESIDES the bushy beard and perfectly coiffeured Noel Edmonds-esque hair-do, one of the most endearing features about Justin Lee Collins is the way he still reeks of the up “close and personal” bonhomie of the stand-up comedy circuit.

The West Country’s answer to Chewbacca remains that rare example of a shiny celebrity type who hasn’t had time to forget that he’s still a humen being, not that long ago seen propping up bars at the end of his live shows.

Ordinary men offer a firm handshake, Collins dives straight in for a hairy hug.

It was actually way back in 2002 that he stopped doing stand-up full time and turned his talents to TV and radio presenting.

For a spell we loved him as co-host alongside Manchester-based Alan Carr on Channel 4’s Friday/Sunday Night Project series.

But their partnership ended with an exclusive – and no doubt lucrative – deal with Five which now brings him to Manchester as the host of a brand new game show based on the ridiculously simplistic concept of Heads Or Tails. The twist here is that the winner could take away a cool £1m.

And if lady luck continues to shine on Collins, the pay-off could be every bit as spectacular... even if he is planning to quit showbusiness what feels like only five minutes into his career.

“Sadly, it’s unlikely that I’ll ever work with Alan again, me being at Five and him being contracted to Channel 4,” Collins says during a break in a swanky green room at the Manchester studios where Heads Or Tails is recorded.

“If things go according to plan, I’ll retire in three years’ time and I’ll still be watching Al going grey on screen in front of me,” Collins says.

Notoriety

I’m not sure where he’s joking or not, but he is a genuinely funny man in the flesh. And if he does call it a day so soon, it will come as a shock for his many fans.

His big telly break came with a companion show for the earliest appearances of Strictly Come Dancing on the BBC. It didn’t work out, he says, because “the BBC hated him”. The job went to Claudia Winkleman.

Alongside the Friday and Sunday Night Projects, his other big hits have been the Bring Back... features, which saw him attempt to reunite the A Team amongst others, followed by a Sky series where he became a Mexican wrestler, surfer, ballroom dancer and high diver. It earned him increased notoriety – and a burst ear drum.

It’s early days at Five, but the 35-year-old has similarly eclectic plans, even if he does baulk at my suggestion that he’ll be up to all manner of “wacky” things at the channel.

“Oh, I don’t do wacky,” he cautions. “That’s not a good word. We’re going to do this (Heads Or Tails) and we’re going to do a chat show next year and some more documentaries as well.”

He’s clearly loving Heads Or Tails and his time in Manchester and will be hoping it is recommissioned after its run of 11 episodes. It could well be the the vehicle which transports him towards the kind of household name status attained by his own heroes.

“The man who does the best job on telly for my money is Noel Edmonds,” he says, graciously name-checking possibly his closest rival.

“Deal Or No Deal is completely random and yet you still get that tension. Noel does all of that.

“But my favourite host of all time is Larry Grayson. People always talk about Bruce Forsyth on the Generation Game, but in our house it was Larry Grayson. He was so funny.

'I want free reign'

“He wasn’t a game show host in the traditional sense. It was all so ramshackle. It was hilarious. He had funny bones. It was like taking a funny guy home from the pub and plonking him on a game show. He was a very camp man and he would talk endlessly about characters like Everard and Slack Alice.”

But not all of his heroes have lived up to their billing.

He met Bruce Forsyth and the star wasn’t what he’d hoped.

“Bruce upset me,” he adds. “They say never meet your heroes and I did and he wasn’t nice to me.

“I grew up loving that man and so did my parents. My gran was dead by the time I met him, but if I’d have gone home and said ‘I met Bruce and he wasn’t very nice’, she would have been crushed.”

His own unique selling point, he says, is all about being up close and personal. He goes as far as to say that his ill-fated ITV chat show failed because he wasn’t within knee-touching distance of the invited guests.
On Heads or Tails, he’s there for the contestants.

“I'm hoping to bring a personal touch,” he says. “I actually did the pilot for The Cube and one of the funny things about it was the part where you’d send the contestant away and say ‘right, now you're on your own’.

“At no point in this show do I say you’re on your own. I’m always with them. I want free rein. I want to be able to hug them – I want to be able to give them a pat on the bum.”