A Singular Combination

On Sunday, Peter Hitchens will no doubt refer to “Roderick Liddle”, but take the paper back to the shop for a refund if he did not also refer to “James Cricket”. Neil Clark writes:

‘I used to be afraid of the dark. Yesterday, I got my electricity bill. Now I’m afraid of the light’. One more: ‘I went to the solicitor’s and said: “I want to make a will”. He said: “Fine, leave it to me”. I said: “But I hardly know you”.

These are just two jokes by the late Jimmy Cricket, the Northern Irish comedian who died yesterday, aged 80. Jimmy’s death has left me feeling profoundly sad. Sad for Jimmy, his beloved wife of 52 years ‘Lady’ May, and his dear family, but also about the way comedy has changed in recent years.

We used to have the balance just right. There were always ‘blue’ comedians, comedians who were ‘near the mark’, comedians who swore, comedians who loved to shock. But don’t we have too much of that nowadays? And not enough of the old-school comics who just simply wanted to make us laugh and not lecture us? Jimmy Cricket’s humour, with its blend of clever word play and hilarious visual gags, never set out to cause offence. This ironically made him quite ‘alternative’ in the current climate, where offending people is seen (wrongly) as the essence of good comedy.

‘I try to keep my act topical, but I never want to offend anyone. I’d run a mile before I’d do that’ he told me in late 2022 when I interviewed him to mark his 50 years in show business. He went on: ‘My comedy is genuinely inclusive. I don’t want anyone to feel uncomfortable.’

No one felt uncomfortable watching Jimmy. His humour was, in the words of television producer John Fisher, ‘underpinned by a warmth and kindness that is rare in comedy today’. A working-class lad from Cookstown with no family links to the entertainment business, Jimmy came up the hard way, graduating from working in holiday camps to the northern club circuit in the 1970s. His big break only came in 1980 when he reached the final of Search for a Star, but his trademark costume of floppy hat, tailcoat, cut-off evening trousers and Wellington boots marked ‘L’ and ‘R’ (invariably worn on the wrong feet), only came after he was asked to wear the outfit for an appearance on the BBC’s music hall celebration programme, The Good Old Days.

It’s easy to forget today just how big a star Jimmy became in the mid-to-late 1980s. He had his own prime time Saturday night ITV series, in an era when Saturday night TV was all about family entertainment. In the 90s though things began to change. Variety shows were seen as passé, and acts like Jimmy’s began to disappear from our screens.

Comedy became a lot crueller, with satirical shows like Have I Got News for You and later, Mock the Week representing the new zeitgeist. But there should always have been room in the schedules for the likes of Jimmy Cricket. That there is public demand for gentler, less abrasive comedy can be seen by the enduring popularity of shows like Dad’s Army, which still gets very decent ratings when repeated on BBC2. I saw Jimmy perform in Crosby in 2022 at a Talking Pictures TV event and the audience loved him. I stayed friends with him afterwards and discovered what a genuinely kind man he was. It wasn’t just the lovely, humorous Christmas cards he sent each year. When he learnt my father had died and I was feeling bereft he rang me up and spent a good 20 minutes on the phone trying to console me. That meant so much to me when I was at my lowest ebb.

Underpinning everything Jimmy did was his Christian faith. I was reminded by a friend yesterday who used to work in television that on the 1987 edition of This is Your Life featuring Jimmy, Roy Hudd, another great comic, said by way of tribute: ‘It’s an awfully old-fashioned word to use these days, but he’s a real Christian.’ Indeed, Jimmy received a Papal knighthood from Pope Francis in 2015 in recognition of all the work he did for charity. But going beyond that, he was the friendliest and most approachable of men. RIP Jimmy, and thanks for all the laughs. Let’s hope your style of comedy returns to our TV screens again.

And Toby Hadoke writes:

“I’m sorry I’m late – I couldn’t find the M6 motorway … I had to go up the M3 twice,” was a line typical of the comedian Jimmy Cricket, who has died aged 80. He became a household name in the 1980s thanks to his barrage of daft jokes, trademark catchphrase of “And there’s more!”, and unmistakable outfit – floppy bowler hat, tattered evening dress, fingerless gloves and askew welly boots with the R and L demonstrably on the wrong side.

With a cherubic, beaming face and innocent demeanour he was really an old-fashioned clown: stooped, guileless, gazing around on stage as if he might find the answer to life’s imponderables in the wings. He was a singular combination: a madcap humorist with totally clean material; an uncynical, abstemious family man of deep personal faith who succeeded in a sometimes coarse trade.

His act was not merely silly wordplay though – he juggled, did prop gags and threw in whole-hearted physicality when required. And he could disarm the toughest audience – gesturing at them to “C’me ’ere” as he delivered his jokes with conspiratorial bonhomie and open-eyed wonder. His comedy had no victim and no agenda bar the joy of making people laugh. And if his material was decidedly old-fashioned, his work ethic was such that he constantly tried new things and updated his routines with modern references.

In his heyday he was rarely off the nation’s television sets, performing at the Royal Variety Performance in 1984 and seven times at the Children’s Royal Variety Performance (1983-93). He headlined his own ITV show, And There’s More (1985-88), which ran for four series, a tally matched by his 1990s BBC Radio 2 series Jimmy’s Cricket Team.

He was born in Cookstown, County Tyrone, in Northern Ireland, the last of six children of Philomena (nee Conlon) and Frank Mulgrew. Frank was an undertaker, publican, taxi driver and part-time auctioneer – after his death in 1953 Philomena took on a number of jobs to make ends meet, including working at the local Lucozade factory.

Jimmy left St Patrick’s college, Bearnageeha, in Belfast, aged 15 with no qualifications but the knowledge that, as the classroom clown, he could make people laugh. He undertook odd jobs – supermarket delivery boy, labourer, betting shop cashier – while entering talent shows doing comical dances or miming to pop songs.

In 1966, having performed standup with some success around the local clubs, he became a redcoat at Butlin’s holiday camp in Mosney, County Meath: it was a perfect environment for him, engaging in friendly chit-chat with holidaymakers, organising games, honing his craft on stage and learning from experienced comics.

The next decade was spent either at Butlin’s or Pontins, mixing odd jobs out-of-season with gigs on the northern comedy circuit. While the gags were sometimes old and pilfered (a common practice then), he perfected his persona until it was unique, adopting a stage name inspired by the Walt Disney character Jiminy Cricket from the animated film Pinocchio.

His TV breakthrough came in 1980 when he was runner-up in the final of LWT’s Search for a Star. He did not look back, appearing in programmes including Crackerjack! (1982), Blankety Blank (1985) and The Generation Game (1996), as well as many more. He felt the skew-whiff Edwardian music hall costume provided by the BBC for his first appearance on The Good Old Days (1981) suited his act so well that he bought it and wore it thereafter. By 1983 he was well known enough to turn down a Blackpool season in favour of headlining his own sell-out shows on the Isle of Wight.

Come the 21st century, when comics like Jimmy were deemed outdated by television producers, he was still busy with live work. His humour being multigenerational in appeal, he was also perfect for pantomime, and played a variety of roles – from Buttons to Muddles to Baron Hardup – over the decades.

Latterly he was warmly embraced by the next generation of comics – featuring on Peter Kay’s (I’m Gonna Be) 500 Miles Comic Relief video (2007), John Bishop’s Only Joking TV show (2013) and Richard Herring’s Leicester Square Theatre Podcast (2019).

No dinosaur, he supported emerging talent, was quick to praise other comedians (he greatly admired Milton Jones and Tim Vine) and played alternative comedy venues with the same enthusiasm as he did the clubs and cruise ships.

In 2012 he and another veteran stalwart, Mick Miller, took a show to the Edinburgh fringe, proving that their brand of unstinting punchlines and hard-wrought stagecraft could work with modern audiences. Cricket was, according to one critic, “disarming charm personified”.

He was awarded a papal knighthood by Pope Francis in 2015 for his services to charity – Cricket, who made his home in Rochdale, would frequently put on shows to raise funds for Francis House children’s hospice, in Manchester, and a portion of the profit from his 2023 autobiography, Come ’ere There’s More, went to Mary’s Meals, which provides nourishment for children in poverty worldwide.

Still working hard in May, he was fully booked for 2026 and had a joke book planned for Christmas, but was recently taken ill and ultimately unable to heed his own advice: “If you want to live longer, find out where you’re going to die and stay away from there.”

While working at Pontins, Morecambe, in 1972 he met May Tweedie, a waitress who also had a singing act with her sisters, and they married in 1974.

She survives him, as do their children, Dale, Frankie, Jamie and Katie – who is also a comedian – and four grandchildren.