Comedian Julian Clary: TV is a ruthless world
The camp comedian talks about cancel culture and his ups and downs in the cut-throat world of television.
“You need to write about what you know,” says camp comedian Julian Clary who sets his latest crime caper, The Midmorning Murders, in the cut-throat world of TV, something with which he is painfully familiar.
“There are awful people in television,” he claims. “It’s a ruthless world, and I thought, how far would someone go for the ratings? I think you’d be surprised.”
The book, a sequel to his previous comedic crime novel Curtain Call To Murder, centres on a tired morning show, Morning All!, and its callous, brutal female TV executive desperate for new ideas to boost ratings.
Jayne, a lowly researcher, pitches a cold case murder segment that dangerously boosts viewing figures and the plot develops into a ridiculous crime caper from there.
Clary, 67, pulls no punches about the fickle world of TV at the beginning of the novel, describing the “dull and far away eyes” of television producers and the “foetid corrosion of their souls”.
“That’s quite extreme, isn’t it?” he responds when the quote is read back to him. But he says he still encounters those types in television.
“I met one the other day. I won’t tell you what show I was on, but I thought, oh God, you’ve got that awful look. I stand by what I wrote.”
The novel is obviously an exaggeration of real life, showing the outlandish lengths the TV executive will go to in a ratings war she’s determined to win and demonstrates how the industry will spit you out on a whim.
Did that happen to Clary, whose comedy career and risque, camp style of humour began on the cabaret circuit in the early 80s as The Joan Collins Fan Club, then, following an appearance on Saturday Night Live, progressed to his own Channel 4 show, Sticky Moments?
“Well, I think I did quite well in that I lasted longer than some, but television is voracious and needs new and exciting. So you know, your time comes, and I think I say in the book that it’s upsetting at the time, but in retrospect I can see that it’s fine because actually, you know, I had a level of fame whereby I could then go on tour.
“What I love doing is being in theatres, so I can go on tour and I can write books. But if I hadn’t gone through all that process, it wouldn’t have been possible. I don’t think I’m bitter about it.”
He says he’s played up the cold-blooded heartlessness and extreme, unethical behaviour to make the book more dramatic, but his own life seems to be a calmer environment.
“I’m of an age now where you just breeze along. I only really do things that I think I’m going to enjoy. I don’t have all that ambition and the need to prove a point.”
Some will remember that Clary was cancelled for a while at the height of his comedy career, before the term had even been invented, after making a lewd, unscripted joke about then Conservative politician Norman Lamont at the British Comedy Awards in 1993.
There followed hostile, highly sensationalised campaigns by the tabloids demanding a complete ban on Clary appearing on television and his career stalled for a couple of years before he returned to the BBC with his show All Rise For Julian Clary in 1996.
“The Norman Lamont incident was a jolt,” he remembers. “Everything was kind of on the up until then, and then it stalled a bit. But a couple of years after that, I did All Rise.
“It (the TV career) probably petered out a bit. I worked with less and less talented people, so the shows weren’t so good.”
In his TV heyday, at times he was a victim of those power-hungry, ruthless TV bosses, he recalls, and didn’t cope very well.
“I’ve always been very sensitive and I found it difficult having to deal with these awful people. Everything collided at the same time, a former lover dying of Aids, and the Norman Lamont thing. It all mixed up together in my mind, really.”
These days, he still tours – he’ll be embarking on a 40-date tour of his hit one-man show Fully Dilated next spring – and makes appearances on shows including Gogglebox, Have I Got News For You? and Taskmaster.
“It’s quite nice to pop in, and you know, be a guest on something,” he says of the television world. “But I wouldn’t want to be in that world now.”
He is also a panto king, having been inducted into the London Palladium’s Wall of Fame and is currently in rehearsals for Cinderella, in which he plays the glittering Fairy Godfather alongside Dawn French and Jennifer Saunders as the Ugly Sisters.
“I can’t complain about my lot. I’m not all bitter and twisted about the world of television because I find myself at the Palladium for five weeks every year, and you have to be grateful.”
Clary, who is married to long-time partner Ian Mackley, has also found success as an author, having written a series of children’s books, The Bolds, two memoirs and five comedy crime novels.
A much embellished version of Clary appears in several of them including his latest, as the friend of Jayne, the researcher who came up with the cold case idea.
“It’s a comedy version of myself,” he says of his fictional alter ego. “He’s a sort of awful, self-obsessed, vain, failing comic. So that all seemed funny to me. It’s a bit like my onstage persona, I suppose.”
Comedy has changed since he came up through the ranks, he agrees.
“There’s a lot of blokey comedy around. When I started, it was people that were a bit eccentric. The alternative cabaret circuit was people who didn’t fit in to any other world.
“I don’t know what we would have done, the likes of Jo Brand, Paul Merton. We found our tribe. Then it was just rooms above pubs. Now it’s more of a career thing. It’s tricky. People can get cancelled if they say the wrong thing, so they have to be careful.
“I don’t really care myself. I’ve never really had a filter, which unfortunately got me into trouble. I seem to say things, they bypass my brain, they just come out. So live television is always quite dangerous.”
There are hilarious passages in the book in which the fictional Clary has all sorts of extreme cosmetic surgery, but that’s something the real comedian and author hasn’t considered.
“The fictional me would be mortified by sagging skin and all of that, but I’m not.”
He gave up drinking a year ago, which he blames on the vodka martinis his pal and fellow panto star Nigel Havers would ply him with after each performance – a custom which had gone on for 10 years, until the glasses became too large.
“I’m quite abstemious, certainly compared to my youth. I don’t drink, don’t smoke, don’t take drugs and that’s because I don’t need them. I don’t need to block anything out or escape. I just like feeling in control, I like feeling the best version of myself that I can.
“I’ve got a whole wine fridge and it’s full of different varieties of mineral water.”
For all the books, the TV guest appearances and other events, Clary is still happiest when on stage in front of a live audience.
“I’m very comfortable on stage. That’s my happy place. I can’t wait, and don’t have that fear of failure that I used to have. It’s delightful.”
The Midmorning Murders by Julian Clary is published by Orion, priced £22. Available now
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