By Roger Lytollis

Last updated at 14:37, Monday, 04 October 2010

He’s unquestionably old school, but Tom O’Connor is happy to acknowledge the new generation of comedians. His conversation is peppered with the kind of anecdotes Theatre by the Lake’s audience can expect to hear.

Tom O'Connor

“If you look at the guys now, Peter Kay, Lee Evans, Dara O’Briain, there’s a lot more intelligent people doing it. Lee Evans is the most creative person I’ve ever met. When he conducts an invisible orchestra... amazing.

“The old comics would kill me for saying this, but there’s a bigger percentage of good comics now than there used to be.

“When I started off in 1966, everyone was blue. And racist. I thought ‘I can’t do this’. And if all these other guys are doing the same thing, there’s got to be room for something different.”

And so Tom O’Connor became a family favourite. A swear word never passed his lips, on commercial as well as moral grounds.

“It works,” he says of his policy. “Look at Peter Kay. If there’s the odd swear word dropped in, that can have an impact. Bernard Manning would drop them in, like bombs. But with some of them it’s every other word. I always like to feel nobody’s going to be uncomfortable.”

He’s not sure about one new line. He thinks it’s a good one, but is it Tom O’Connor?

“‘My son is very intelligent. He’s learning Urdu so he can speak to directory enquiries.’”

O’Connor, still performing several times a week at 70, plays Theatre by the Lake at Keswick on Sunday, October 10. The audience is likely to consist largely of those who remember the Liverpudlian from his Seventies’ and Eighties’ heyday.

He was one of the most popular faces on TV, hosting his own show and presenting quiz and game shows including Cross Wits and Name That Tune.

He used to live a double life; maths teacher in Bootle by day, comedian by night.

Comedian by day as well, using humour to keep his classes in order. The years of teaching gave him plenty of material.

“A teacher takes a phone call one morning. ‘Jimmy Green won’t be in today. He’s sick.’

“‘Who’s this?’

“‘Me dad.’”

In 1974 O’Connor became a full-time entertainer. Within three years he was on the bill at the Royal Variety Show and the subject of This Is Your Life.

“It was a culture shock,” he recalls of the transition from ordinary life. “When the big time comes, it comes in a flash. You’ve got your own dressing room. ‘Would you like tea or coffee, sir?’ You feel like a Pools winner. But your friends think ‘I’d better not go near him because he’ll think I’m after his money’. I made sure I kept my friends.

“Some people get carried away but having four kids keeps your feet on the ground. If Elvis had had my family he’d still be alive! But he surrounded himself with sycophants.”

“There were a couple of disasters on Cross Wits. I had this guy on who collected epitaphs from headstones. He was once locked in a cemetery at night.

“I said ‘I didn’t know they locked cemeteries at night.’

“‘Neither did I,’ he said. ‘But they do. It was very scary. I got very panicky.’

“‘What did you do?’

“‘I had to go and knock up the vicar’s wife.’”

Life is made easier by people telling him jokes and stories, some of which are worth repeating on stage.

“I was having a coffee at Lime Street Station and this fella came up. He says ‘This fella’s buried up to his neck on Blackpool beach. A man says to him ‘What happened to you?’

“‘Some kids buried me and ran off.’

“‘I’ll bring a shovel.’

“‘You’d better make it a big one – I’m sitting on a donkey.’”

He agrees that there’s plenty of truth in the stereotype of Scousers as joke machines.

“They’re laughing at adversity, to prove they’re not afraid of it. I was in Bootle three weeks ago. The taxi driver said to me ‘Times is hard, Tommy. It’s eight months since somebody was sick in my cab.’”

He laughs. “How’s that for a yardstick?”

Once he was talking to BBC golf commentator Peter Alliss. O’Connor, a devotee of the sport, said to him: “I’d love your job. You’re so lucky, doing what you love to do.”

“And he said to me ‘I could say the same about you.’

“I thought ‘He’s right.’ It had never really occurred to me. I am lucky. I get up in the morning and I do what I like.”

An Evening with Tom O’Connor

Theatre by the Lake, Keswick, Sunday, October 10, 8pm.

Tickets £18.50/£17/£10/£8 students and under-16s. Visit www.theatrebythelake.co.uk or call 017687 74411.

First published at 14:16, Friday, 01 October 2010
Published by http://www.newsandstar.co.uk