This Is Your Life: Barry Cryer

Barry CRYER (1935-2021)

THIS IS YOUR LIFE - Barry Cryer, writer and comedian, was surprised by Michael Aspel at Thames Television's Teddington Studios, having been led to believe he was there to record a television programme with Barry Took and Willie Rushton.

Barry, who was born in Leeds, began performing while still at school and, having been spotted by a London agent, was offered work in variety theatres across the country. After moving to London, Barry found work at the infamous Windmill Theatre and was soon combining performing with comedy writing.

He wrote for radio and theatre reviews before becoming head writer at Danny La Rue's London nightclub, where he met David Frost, who employed him to write material for the BBC's The Frost Report. Throughout the 1970s and 1980s, Barry became a household name, appearing regularly on television and radio, while continuing to write for practically every top comedian in the country.

"You swine!"

programme details...

Edition No: 904
Subject No: 887
Broadcast date: Wed 18 Jan 1995
Broadcast time: 7.00-7.30pm
Recorded: Sun 20 Nov 1994
Venue: Teddington Studios
Series: 35
Edition: 12
Code name: Tag

on the guest list...

Barry Took
Willie Rushton
Terry - wife
Tony - son
David - son
Bob - son
Ruby - granddaughter
Jacqui - daughter
Gary - son-in-law
John Gledhill
Richard Price
Brenda Bishop
Denis King
Ted Dicks
Bernard Cribbins
Danny La Rue
Jon Pertwee
Tim Brooke-Taylor
Humphrey Lyttelton
Graeme Garden
Ronnie Corbett
Colin Sell
Russ Abbot
Rory Bremner
Jasper Carrott

production team...

Researcher: Mandy Nixon
Writer: Simon Booker
Director: Brian Klein
Associate Producer: John Graham
Executive Producer: Peter Estall
Producer: Malcolm Morris

names above in bold indicate subjects of This Is Your Life

related pages...

putting pen to paper

Barry Cryer recalls his experience of This Is Your Life in an exclusive interview recorded in May 2015

Screenshots of Barry Cryer This Is Your Life

Barry Cryer recalls his experience of This Is Your Life in his autobiography, You Won't Believe This But... reproduced here with kind permission of the author...

Not everyone wants to be caught by This Is Your Life. Danny Blanchflower, the footballer, walked away when greeted by Eamonn Andrews. Richard Gordon, the author of the Doctor in the House books, uttered an expletive, but was persuaded to stay. Tommy Cooper, on the programme for the actor Bill Fraser, behaved as if the victim was Joe Frazier, the boxer. Much mirth ensued.

I appeared on it some seven or eight times, in a friend and colleague capacity, but I realised that I was beginning to look like rent-a-guest. When Bernard Cribbins was targeted, my wife and I were invited to be in the audience, but not on the programme. Afterward, Eamonn told me that, when my name was mentioned at a meeting as a possible participant, it got a laugh and I was barred from then on.

The phone rang; it was Willie Rushton. (He used to do an impression of a phone.) 'They want us to do a programme about double acts with old Tooky,' he said. I knew he was referring to my doppelganger, Barry Took. Nearly every day of my life, I am taken for the other Barry, on one occasion by Princess Anne – but that's a story involving heads of state and an international conspiracy that must wait for another time.

'That's fine,' I said.

'Do you really think so?' said Willie. He was playing his usual game of going against the tide.

'Yes, why not?' I said.

'Ah well, I'll do it, if you do,' he said.

I realised later that this was all an act: he knew that if he seemed too enthusiastic I would have been suspicious. I also realised that if I had agreed with him and said no the programme would have to be rethought or scrapped.

On the Sunday in question, we turned up at Teddington Studios to meet Barry. All that afternoon, my wife had been saying, 'You're not wearing those trousers are you?' As I was, it was a baffling question. We went into the studio. There was a simple, not to say awful, set. Willie and I sat on a settee. Barry began to introduce the show to the audience. He was reading from cards and I remember thinking it was all very offhand. But, then again, it was only a pilot for a proposed series. Suddenly, I became aware that someone had joined us. I thought at first it was the floor manager, but it was Michael Aspel with the red book. My second thought was that Willie was the victim, but then recalled that they had already done him and I had been on it. My third thought was apparently confirmed – it was going to be Tooky.

Michael said, 'Barry...' He paused and then said my name.

It's a strange out-of-body experience – totally unreal.

Jokes about my trousers proliferated; family and friends came on; Brenda from Leeds University all those years ago, now a postmistress in Suffolk, came back into my life and, glory of glories, I noticed a piano with a trumpet on top. Piano? Trumpet? On came Colin Sell, the definitive pianist, and then Humphrey Lyttelton. Colin announced that I was going to sing 'Show Me the Way to Go Home' accompanied by himself and Humph. My cup runneth over. I would sing with Humph before shuffling off this mortal coil.

Barry Cryer recalls his experience of This Is Your Life in his book, Pigs Can Fly...

I have, on more than one occasion, been asked, as a sort of ersatz Michael Aspel or Eamonn Andrews, to burst into a restaurant and confront an amazed man or woman with a red book and then proceed with This Is Your Life. I did it once in a restaurant that had two rooms, and I burst into the wrong room to the astonishment of all concerned. They asked me to stay for a drink but I had to move on to the right room.

My acquaintanceship with This Is Your Life has lasted many years and I think I'm a friend of the family now. I only ever appeared when I was genuinely a friend and/or colleague of the subject of the programme. I actually turned down one or two because I didn't want to look as though I just wanted to be on television - that is, when I didn't really know the person concerned - because that's painfully apparent on that programme.

I have many fond memories of This Is Your Life. One was sitting in the stalls with Bob Todd, the legendary bald man from the Benny Hill show who I worked with a lot, when we'd both been invited to the show, and I knew for certain it was him but they'd told him it was me, which was a very strange sensation. It transpired that this comic actor, a former farmer and no stranger to the grape, to put it delicately, had been something of a hero during the war - not that he'd ever told us. He'd landed a burning plane. That was an amazing day.

Earlier I'd done one with Pam Ayres, back in the days when Eamonn Andrews was presenting. He mentioned her very first boyfriend and then there was the burst of music and we heard the voice, and sure enough they'd found him in America and they'd flown him over. On he came and he embraced Pam, and she burst into tears and the audience were very moved. At the drinks party afterwards she said, 'They were tears of rage. I never wanted to see him again!'

Bernard Cribbins was done by This Is Your Life years ago, and my wife and I were invited to be in the audience. Old friend that I was, I wasn't invited to be on the programme, and at the drinks afterwards Eamonn Andrews told me, very cheerfully, that I was now barred. I think I'd equalled Lionel Blair's record or something - I'd been on eight or nine times - and Eamonn said, 'The mention of your name got a laugh at the meeting.'

I realised, to my dismay, what a good liar my wife Terry was when I came home one day and there was a piece of paper by the phone with a phone number on it and the words 'This Is Your Life'. One of our dogs had crapped on the stairs, so I went away to attend to that and when I came back the piece of paper had gone, so I challenged Terry about this, saying, 'What was that all about?' and without a pause she said, 'Oh, they rang up about a This Is Your Life but they said don't worry, it's gone away, you're not needed.'

There are moments in This Is Your Life which are like an out of body experience, as if it's happening to somebody else. I couldn't help noticing on mine that there was a piano there and on top of the piano was a trumpet, and while I was concentrating on the show, obviously, and greeting the guests and talking to Michael Aspel, I couldn't take my eyes off this piano with the trumpet on top of it and, sure enough, my old friend Colin Sell came on. We'd known each other for some years through I'm Sorry I Haven't a Clue and he and I tour all the time doing a theatre show called The First Farewell Tour. Then Colin suddenly announced, without consulting me, that I was going to sing 'Show Me the Way to Go Home', and Humphrey Lyttelton appeared and was hilarious, and then I did sing 'Show Me the Way to Go Home' accompanied by Colin Sell at the piano and Humphrey Lyttelton playing obligato on trumpet. These are golden moments. You can't substitute anything for those.

Barry Cryer recalls his experience of This Is Your Life in his book, Butterfly Brain...

If were talking about honours, then I guess that I've fulfilled the showbiz clichés of appearing on both This Is Your Life and Desert Island Discs. The latter was during the short reign of Michael Parkinson on the show, before Sue Lawley took over. I was invited to a reunion of 1,000 'cast-aways' at the Reform Club in London. Bamber Gascoigne came over to speak to me. 'You did it during the Parky year,' he said, 'and so did I. We're the unfashionable ones here.'

I can blame Willie Rushton for This Is Your Life. He rang me one day to tell me that he and I had been asked to take part in a pilot show about double acts, to be presented by Barry Took.

'I don't really want to do it, to be honest,' Will said. 'How about you?'

'Oh come on,' I said, ever keen to try something new. 'Why not? It might be fun, and besides, it's Tooky.'

'OK,' he said, 'I will if you will.'

Will had lured me in by getting me to persuade him to do it. It was a typically brilliant Rushton psychological trick and I fell for it straight away. The alarm bells didn't even ring when, a day or two later, I discovered a note by our home phone that read, 'This Is Your Life' with a number next to it in Terry's handwriting. I tackled her about it and she said,

'It was nothing. Besides,' she said enigmatically, 'it's not relevant any more.'

I thought no more about it and on the day of the pilot show a car came to pick me up. All the way to the studio, the driver kept answering a stream of calls by saying, 'We're on our way,' and I must confess that I thought a big deal was being made of me heading to a pilot show. Little did I know that following behind was another car with Terry and all the kids in it.

We arrived, and there was the studio, an audience, and Tooky, just as expected. Barry started talking about double acts and I was mentally rehearsing a few anecdotes when on walked a guy carrying a book. At first I thought it was the floor manager until I realised that the book was red and the guy was Michael Aspel.

The music started and I thought it was for Will, until I realised that he'd already been on the show. Then, Michael came over and said, 'Barry?' Even at this stage, I thought it must be Tooky. Suddenly, the curtain went up and there was the 'This Is Your Life' set. I was ushered into the chair and Terry and the kids joined me. Of course, she was a prime mover behind the organisation of the show and she'd compiled a fantastic list of people she thought I'd like to see. Most of my friends were on and when Humph appeared with his trumpet and played 'We'll Meet Again' with Colin Sell at the piano, I could've died and gone to heaven.

This Is Your Life was a great experience but it wasn't asked for and if it hadn't happened I wouldn't have been any different. I was on a high afterwards, but as usual, it didn't last long. Besides, I had to work the following day. I'm lucky that I've got the family to keep me busy and I hope this means I maintain an offstage life. Many people I worked with wore their public persona all day long, and that can't have been easy at all. Still, I like working, and while I'm happy to read, go to the theatre or cinema or go for a drink in the local with my mates, I'm always very happy when a bit of work is thrown into the mix. I can go without writing or working in general for a while, but after that I become itchy and need a challenge.

Retiring or, as it so often happens in this business, being retired by the lack of phone calls, wouldn't sit very easily with me. I think I'd hate it. Ronnie Barker opened an antiques shop after retiring but I just can't walk away from it.

Series 35 subjects