CityLife

Interview: Clive Mantle

Clive Mantle

Listening to Clive Mantle, star of Casualty, Holby City and The Vicar of Dibley, talking passionately about Jus’ Like That! A Night Out With Tommy Cooper you get the distinct impression that, for Clive at least, this is more than just a hilarious evening featuring all Tommy Cooper’s best gags and magic tricks.

It’s a vital mission to keep a great British entertainer alive, 25 years after the comedian died on stage at Her Majesty’s Theatre in London’s West End.

“I can’t tell you how many hours I’ve spent studying the tapes of Tommy, reading the books and talking to people who knew him,” Clive tells me. “You’ve got to deliver all the gags people remember so well, as well as the physical mannerisms and all of that, especially for people who actually saw him on stage or TV.

“More than that, you’ve got to convey the spirit of the man, who was a bit of an imp, who could be difficult, especially when he’d had a drink.

“And you have to get the magic right – or, actually wrong, which you can only do if you know how to get it right, if you see what I mean.”

That last part of the mix seemed most daunting at first.

“I was filled with trepidation as I approached the house of Geoffrey Durham, or The Great Soprendo, who was going to teach me to do the magic,” he admits. “But within quite a short time, Geoffrey had taught me two or three basic tricks. Then we tried the famous eggs into glasses trick and I flooded Geoffrey’s kitchen!” Two months later, though, and Clive thinks he’s just about got the magic sussed.

“I spent Christmas entertaining my children with it,” he recounts proudly. “But I think they might be glad I’m actually out on tour now!”
Clive, who brings the show to The Lowry next week, shot to fame playing Dr Mike Barratt in Casualty and Holby City, but is known in theatrical circles for his role, several times over, as Lenny in Of Mice And Men.

“I’m hoping that Tommy will be just as important a part of the second stage of my career, perhaps one I’d return to, after this tour where we seem to be going everywhere, for two or three months in each year,” he muses. “After all, parts for very tall chaps are few and far between!”

'Poignant'

At 6ft 5ins tall with size 13 feet, Clive is actually an inch taller than Tommy.

“I’m over qualified physically and under qualified in talent,” he laughs.

“But the show is genuinely funny stuff, the best of Tommy’s act distilled into two hours. Most of the show is his act and Tommy’s gags alone are great, but we invest it with a lot more than that.

“There was drink and rages and illness and pills of all sorts in his life and I don’t think we shy away from that. There is one poignant scene in his dressing room when he’s had too much to drink and they’re trying to get him back on stage.

“Once, in one week he did 52 performances and, in between each of them, he’d knock back a few gins and an assortment of pills. Of course, he was a very funny man but he could be difficult and he was physically falling to bits.”

Notoriously, when Cooper died, in 1984, he collapsed from a heart attack in front of millions of viewers on a live TV show broadcast from Her Majesty’s Theatre. The audience laughed as he fell to the floor, thinking it was part of the act.

“On one level he would have loved that, dying on stage and getting one last laugh out if it. But I feel uncomfortable that the actual moment of anyone’s death should be such a public thing,” feels Clive.

He trained and researched for months for this punishing, 60 date tour but feels that, in a sense, he’s been preparing for it for nearly 10 years.

“I auditioned with Alan Ayckbourn in Scarborough to play Tommy back in 2001,” he recalls, “and I can tell you the exact day it was because, half an hour later, the first plane flew into the Twin Towers and I heard the news on my car radio.

“Alan didn’t end up directing the show and then they got Jerome Flynn to play Tommy. It didn’t work out for me then, but I’m delighted it’s finally coming together. I’m nine years older and have a bit more experience and gravitas, and I hope that will stand me in good stead.”

There’s just one bit of business that fans won’t find in the show, he points out. “Famously, there was a routine he did with a white gate. We looked high and low but we just couldn’t find any footage of it anywhere and so we didn’t want to do it, without being able to make sure it was exactly right.

“But if anyone’s got that footage, I’d love to see it!”

Jus’ Like That – An Evening With Tommy Cooper is at The Lowry from February 22 to 27, 2010.