Comedian Dave Spikey is performing at Newark Palace Theatre on Thursday.
AFTER an impressive 32 years in the business, top stand-up comedian Dave Spikey is coming to Newark with his new tour next month.
His new tour, Juggler On A Motorbike, is a nod to Dave's juggler on a motorbike routine that shot him to stardom when he won national talent show Stairway To The Stars in 1987, and Dave said that he is looking forward to coming to bringing his show to the Palace Theatre:
"Newark is a great place and the Palace Theatre is quite an intimate venue so you can reach out to the audience," he said, "I always ask for a local newspaper to pick out local stories and make a local connection with the audience, plus it paints a picture of the area. "There's always something funny to be found, so try to stay out of the news if you don't want me reading about you."
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Dave's latest tour has been an autobiographical one, reflecting on his early days growing up in working class Lancashire to his career goals to be a doctor and working in biomedicine before discovering he was funny and winning Stairway to the Stars. He has also appeared on hit TV show Phoenix Nights and presented Bullseye and Chain Letters.
he said: "I thought it would be a good time to look back on the last 30 years and analyse how it all happened. I never planned any of it and I came to a cross-roads, or in my case a T-junction, and had to decide whether to stay in the lab or enter the talent show. Stairway To The Stars was a springboard for me and I'll be examining how it all happened, and I've had a lot of laughs on the way."
There is a lot of personal material in Dave's tour that he's never shared before, including losing his dad and his brother to cancer and how it impacted him and changed his approach to comedy. "A lot of it is about the journey I've been on, I've been so lucky as most people are lucky to get one happy job and I've had two, and I've loved every minute.
"I think you get rewarded for hard work in life, that was drilled into me at a young age. Even now I want my shows to get better and better and I want to keep improving all the time."
Much of Dave's humour stems from amusing things that have happened to him or his loved ones, the kind of observational humour that Peter Kay is also known for. "You often see audience members turn to their other halves and say 'that's you,' it's comedy people can relate to."
"If you find something funny has happened to you, then other people will undoubtedly find it funny too. And once a story has been told a few times, it's always been exaggerated and embellished which makes it funnier. As a comedian you see things differently to other people and whenever something funny happens, it goes into a filing cabinet in my head for the future."
One story Dave recalls, as an example of funny things happening in normal life, was a conversation he overheard between two young women in Chorley market place and they were discussing a baby that had just been born, and it was mentioned that his name was "Mark with a C", to which the other girl replied: "What, Cark?"
"You couldn't write that conversation!" Dave laughed.
Dave's touring days continue next year with his new show A Funny Thing Happened, so-called because funny things happen all the time. "Just the other day in the supermarket I was at the check-out and someone in front of me has a Krankies DVD and a box of tissues, I just started giggling."
Dave Spikey will be performing at the Newark Palace Theatre on June 6. For more information and tickets, call 01636 655755 or visit www.palacenewarktickets.com
