Dave Spikey

February 2012

My Weekend

I’M working tonight so I’ll be taking it easy today. I would normally go to the gym on a Saturday morning but I won’t because I’m injured. I broke a few ribs falling on the ice.

I hate the gym but I’m trying to lose weight. I always end up sat opposite the bloke on the thigh-buster with the perished shorts.

If the weather’s OK I’ll go biking, which I’ve got into in the past couple of years.

We live in a lovely part of Lancashire, so if it’s a nice day we’ll bike out for breakfast or lunch and do a few miles along the canal or over the moors.

Then to get me in the mood for the show tonight I’ll probably be watching Sky Sports to see how Bolton Wanderers have gone on against Chelsea.

On Sunday mornings I’ll get a paper, then we’ll have a walk to one of the local pubs. We have some lovely local pubs around here that do real ale.

We have three grown-up children between us but none together, even though we’ve been together for 30 or so years.

I’m not a grandad yet. None of them have shown any interest. My son’s a musician, my daughter is a deputy head teacher and my step-daughter is the head of cardiology at the Royal Albert Infirmary in Wigan.

I’m no good in the cinema because I get irritated and it gives the wife a headache. Something ridiculous will happen and I’ll lose my temper. Like George Clooney in Ocean’s 11 when he said he won’t go on the heist. Of course he’ll go. At the end he takes his mask off to reveal it’s him and I’m standing up in the cinema: ‘You see, I told you!’ I’m a nightmare.

I’ll go on Sky Movies now and again usually to watch the old films, with Spencer Tracy, Jimmy Cagney and Cary Grant.

I prefer to read. Which is good because I present The TV Book Club (on More4) and I’ll have ten books to read. I love crime thrillers. Harlan Coben is my favourite. Lee Childs is another. The hero in his books is a guy called Jack Reacher and he’s a mountain of a man but they’ve just cast Tom Cruise in the film.

Because of The TV Book Club I get all types of books to read, some I’d never normally pick up. In the last series I had one called Scared Hearts, set in 16th Century post-renaissance Italy where a girl has been imprisoned in a convent. Will she get out? I don’t really care.

But I had to read it for the show and I couldn’t put it down. A brilliant book, like The Shawshank Redemption in a convent.

I’ve lived in my village since before I started doing comedy and I’m still mates with the same people. They’re builders and painters and decorators and they go in the pub early doors for a couple of pints after work. Me and the missus will meet up with them and have a couple of drinks, then come home about eight o’clock and read.

There’s nothing much on the telly. Although we do watch Holby (City) and Casualty because we like shouting out at all the medical inconsistencies. The missus worked in blood transfusion while I was in haematology.

We have a bit of a quiz and guess what is going to happen to the people at the beginning. There are some easy ones like the bloke in the long scarf mending the combine harvester. Then there’s the bloke trying to get rid of a wasp nest with a firework. But there’s always an old woman with a sponge and we never know what’s going to happen there.

I like all sorts of music but contemporary jazz sounds like a one man band who has fallen over and he’s trying to get up again. I do like swing jazz, reggae, ska, classical, Cee-Lo Green, Adele, Gladys Knight and the Pips... I always wanted to be a Pip.

A perfect weekend? I’d take all my mates down to Bolton Wanderers in one of the suites and we’d have a slap up meal watching them beat Arsenal three-nil.

Dave Spikey appears at Just The Tonic at The Forum in The Cornerhouse on Thursday April 19. Tickets are £13 and £16.50, call 0115 910 0009 or www.justthetonic.com.

The TV Book Club is on More4 tomorrow at 7.10pm.