Nothing more to add at the moment except to say that I am saddened far more than I thought I would be.
Such sad news.
Barry Cryer has left the building.
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Musings on the byways of popular culture
Dick Jaws in The Rutles. “Well, I liked their trouser’s straight away. I’d been in the garment trade myself and these were winners”. RIP Barry
Just before Christmas, he started a series of weekly podcasts with him and his son Bob chatting to old friends, including Stephen Fry and Danny Baker, which you can find in the usual places. I noticed that there hadn’t been a new one for a week or so, and thought he might not be well, which sadly turned out to be true.
Is there anybody in the world of comedy he didn’t know? If another comedian had died, he would have been the first person the media would have to turned to for a tribute. Always a laugher at others’ jokes and seemed admired by younger generations of comics as they came up because of his freely given advice and generosity.
“Anything I do after this will be a comeback”….
Here’s the great man, smoking for England in 1969. Warning: contains everything-ism.
I love Barry unreservedly- a comedy Titan & extraordinarily generous with his time & advice to younger comics over decades.
The number of people did he made laugh is incalculable & I can’t imagine a finer tribute.
Mr Cryer is one of the few famous people I’ve met – Had the pleasure of meeting him at a formal business dinner, where he was “the act”. I left the room for a smoke and he was out there in the lobby (this was the days when you could smoke indoors) and asked me for a light so got chatting. He was visibly nervous as hell but was a lovely man and generous with his time, we chatted for about 15 minutes before it was time for him to go on.
He went down a storm when he did his “piece” having researched the subject matter and tailored an number of jokes & quips. (Business Continuity & Risk Management – there can be no less boring topic I’m sure) Unlike other “star turns” in the years before and after him, who clearly just turned up and painted by numbers. He checked in with me after, even asking “how did I do?”
Very fond memories. RIP
That was my experience with him too. He did a spot for a lunch organised by people in the pensions industry – even more boring than yours!
But he’d clearly done some research, made jokes about people and recent pensions industry issues. Went down a storm. RIP.
We saw him in a local theatre doing standup about 20 years ago. He was superb. I wish I could remember the lead up to the punchline of one of his gags: “…and suddenly, for hundreds of yards around, it was Wednesday”
I always think it’s unfair when someone who brings joy to the world passes that there are loads still with us who… don’t.
RIP.
A national treasure.
Saw him do a stand-up set once – although he was actually sitting down throughout – in which he trotted out a series of old jokes and showbiz stories and had the audience laughing from beginning to end.
Easily the best comedian I have seen so far. I remember just being hit by joke after joke, each one getting funnier and lots of cross references.
On shows where he was a scriptwriter, you could often pick out his distinctive laugh if it was recorded with an audience. He obviously enjoyed comedy a lot.
One of the driest, self deprecating wits and scriptwriters of recent history.
Always seemed to have a line for everything.
And he had a number 1 single in Finland
I know he did so much more besides but ISIHAC has been “never miss” for me since I was at school and catching it in my dinner break in the 70’s and more recently I have loved Hamish and Dougal. The man has always been nothing less that a joy. Great shame.
This is where I’ll miss him most, he’s been a fixture of ISIHAC forever. Like Jack in the OP, I’m surprised how sad this news has made me. RIP.
I can’t really think of a person who has bought more joy to a larger or wider group of people. Always funny. Always really funny. A sad day but a life giving that much pleasure is a life well lived. He will be missed.
It’s nice to know that he knew that as well. I can’t recall ever hearing a bad word said about him by his friends and colleagues.
He was a total legend. Aside from his own podcast I’ve heard recent interviews with him on Richard Herring’s RHLSTP and Michael Fenton Steven’s My Time Capsule podcasts. He was great value and full of wonderful anecdotes. I hadn’t previously known about his tradition of ringing comedians up on their birthdays to tell them a joke. How sweet? He was obviously loved by all and stayed relevant to the end. He’ll be a great loss.
One of that rare band of people you thought – and hoped – would be there forever.
Lovely comment in the readers’ comments beneath his Guardian obit.
“This is the only thing he’s ever done that didn’t make me laugh”
Though as others have said there is every chance he laughed the day he died. He was telling a nurse the one about the Archbishop of Canterbury shortly before he died.
Not the number one song in heaven, but a chart topper in Finland
BC also served (see what I did there?) as the waiter in the original (At Last the 1948 Show) version of the Four Yorkshiremen sketch most people credit to Monty Python’s Flying Circus
As you say, often credited to Python. I was stunned a few years back in a BBC documentary when Tim Brooke-Taylor was identified as the writer.
See also the book-shop sketch. Cleese and Feldman.
“The one without the gannet”
@Kjwilly
Co-writer with Cleese and Chapman, plus the criminally forgotten Marty Feldman (who was also one of the many comedians who co-wrote stuff with BC)
@Jaygee
Not according to the documentary I referenced. Cleese gives the writing credit to Brooke-Taylor who bashfully admits it was his.
It appears it’s National Kazoo Day, having to much time on my hands I produced this last year. It seems appropriate to post it today. A very fine and funny chap and he signed my courgette once.
https://imgur.com/gallery/rJbCOlA
Nice product placement for Tubular Kazoos in the background!
@hubert-rawlinson
Kevin Rowland’s proposed look for the upcoming Dexy’s Too-Rye-Ay 40th anniversary tour fails to do justice to his more dandyish past image
Something I have just remembered. When the Light and I first got together her daughter had just turned 13. A week or so after she had been told that her mother had embarked on a new relationship the Light called me and said, ‘Gatz? Megan has got something she wants to ask you.’
There was a pause as she passed the phone over, then without preamble Megan said, ‘Bond Street.’
‘Mmm … Baker Street.’
‘Camden Town.’
‘Oh, that’s clever … ah, Finsbury Park.’
‘Mornington Crescent!’
That’s very good…
His Archbishop of Canterbury joke:
Wife to husband, walking down a street. “ That bloke at the bus stop…is it the Archbishop of Canterbury?”
“Nah…why would the Archbishop of Canterbury be waiting for a bus? Ridiculous….”
‘I’m telling you – it’s him! Go and ask him….”
So, reluctantly, the man crosses the road and politely asks the man if he is in fact the Archbishop of Canterbury.
The man replies “You…and your wife can go fuck yourselves!”
On hearing this response, the wife says “oh dear! Now we’ll never know!”