Ahead of his new show, Good Time Charlie’s Back!, broadcaster and writer Danny Baker stopped for a chat about getting back on the stage, selling out, and being funny without being a comedian.
“When I was promoting my last book, I did a couple of festivals and they sold out really quickly. I did them, and I enjoyed them, and people turned up,” he begins, explaining how his plans moved away from retirement in Portugal with his wife. “I said, ‘Do you know what? Let’s do a couple of them in London, just telling the stories out the books.’
“The books are fine and great, and the TV series were fine and great. But I still tell the stories first hand, and that’s how they work best. Anyway, the shows sold out immediately. So the two dates become 5, 10, 20, 30, 40, 50. I did two nights at the Shepherds Bush Empire last week. Bang! Again, same thing – sold out.”
Referring back to his first show, Danny says: “I hadn’t even left school by the end of the three-hour shows. I had 48 photos to show people. We got through six.”
And despite the calling to continue doing shows, Danny wasn’t sure. “The promoters asked, ‘Do you want to go again?’ I replied, ‘I’m not so sure.’ Then the first cheque came in from the tour, and I said, ‘Let’s go again’.”
So Danny’s back with his hilarious new show, Good Time Charlie’s Back! – and tickets are selling quickly.
Described by The Mail on Sunday as: “a delightful nostalgia fest. An ‘evening with’ like no other… A raft of cracking anecdotes.” and with The Evening Standard saying: “boy, can he sell a story… a compelling, evocative account of his south London roots”, it’s clearly a show that’s not to be missed.
And Danny remembers his last tour well. “God, it was something. They were great nights, those shows. And there is no record of it. It wasn’t filmed, it wasn’t recorded. But that’s fine. That’s half of the shine of it as well, I think. About ten minutes into it, you could really see the audience think, ‘Wow, he won’t be able to keep up this!’”
Danny goes on to talk about how he feels on stage: “I don’t have a fear of public speaking. On stage, I like knowing that I’m heading into a really good story. Along the way they’re funny, but I like to know that they pay off.
“I’m having a terrific time myself, and I hope that is infectious. I don’t laugh at my own jokes, but I do clap my hands and think, ‘Oh, you’ll like this, here’s something, this is great, let me tell you’.”
The danger of being a naturally good storyteller? You can’t always remember everything. “If you asked me now, ‘What shape are the shows and what stories did you tell last time?’, I wouldn’t know. People say, ‘What’s your favourite subject you’ve done on the radio?’ But I don’t know,” Danny admits. “I don’t know what kind of reverie I go into when I’m on the radio. I can’t remember. No idea. Which is how it should be. You’d be like a mad person if you talked like that all the time!”
Yet ironically, Danny never writes his material down. “There’s no structure to the show, but there is an absolute power house of stories. And why deny telling people those? Yes, I’ve got 61 new stories to get through in the new show. But I will get through about, on any given night, … 15.
“They’re not written down. I’m like the Navajo; it’s all an oral history, passed down through the generations.It’s not a written language. But that’s the fun of it. If it were written down, the audience could tell, and it would take some of the vim out of it. I don’t ever work to a script in radio or anything else. People think there must be a script. There isn’t, and whatever facility I may have, that is it. Minor though it is, that’s what I can do.”
Danny adds that: “Even people in the audience who had heard it before nudge their neighbours and say, ‘This is a great story’. I’m not a comedian. It’s not like, ‘Oh, I know this joke.’ It’s all in the story. The devil is in the detail, and it forms an overall patchwork on the night – another thing I’ve got in common with the Indian Nation. I had no idea that me and Sitting Bull and I were actually related.”
Danny went on to remember his time presenting TV series The Bottom Line – with great humour. “The theme tune used to go, ‘It’s the bottom, it’s the bottom line’. And we used to run onto the set going, ‘It’s the bottom of the barrel.’ The Bottom Line only lasted one series. It was an absolute stinker.
“But that’s the thing, though. After 40-odd years doing this, you know this is all good stuff. You think, ‘I’ll husband this.’ You go through disasters like The Bottom Line and they become great stories.”
Danny feels very strongly about storytelling, and has always taken an interest in it. “I have an ebullience that some people find annoying, but I’ve said it many times, I’m very shallow. That has become a bad thing, but it’s not in my book.
“Too many people today affect a darker side. I can’t bear the word ‘dark’. I’m a euphoric, and that’s all there is to it. I’m stuck with it. I had loads and loads of uncles and aunts. My wife is one of 10. Our house was always full of pushchairs and bikes and you had to be competitive to be heard. Our family was noisy. But even before I left school, I was fortunate enough to realise that when something funny happened, it would make a great story.”
And Danny’s stories are often quite relatable. “One of the myths about me is that I’m ‘very London’. But on the last tour, I went to Yorkshire four times, Manchester three times. I went right up into the North East – and we sold out everywhere. I think my stories are unique and universal.”
Finally, speaking of his career, Danny says: “The books and the stage shows are the culmination of a pretty peculiar life. Fortunately, I’ve never hitched my career to any one style – you can say that again!
“But I’ve always had – if you will forgive the Noel Coward reference – a talent to amuse.”
Danny Baker’s show ‘Good Time Charlie’s Back!’ is on at the Grand Opera House York on Monday 29th April. Click here to buy tickets.
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