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.

Paddy McGuinness

October 2011

HIS career started playing a doorman on his buddy Peter Kay’s hit Channel 4 comedy Phoenix Nights. These days Patrick McGuinness is a prime-time TV show host, occasional This Morning presenter, adventurer, author and stand-up comedian.

“It keeps me out of trouble,” says the 37-year-old, who admits that it’s the ITV show Take Me Out that has been his biggest gig so far.

“It usually attracts between four and seven million people, which is mad,” he laughs.

Even though he’d been on our TV screens for around 15 years, he noticed a significant change in the amount of attention he was getting after the first series of Take Me out.

“I’ve been used to it around where I live in Bolton but when it started happening in London, that really hit me.”

Why has he never made the move to London?

“Yes, it’s where the work is so you’ve got to go down to London but it’s only two hours on the train. You can do your work and be back for teatime.”

Unlike Kay, when McGuinness left school he had ambitions to be a lab technician.

“The subjects I was only any good at in school were science but I did a diploma at college and realised it was the most boring job ever. So I worked on a building site, I was a silver service waiter, in an engineering factory, a bread making factory, leisure centres...

“You learn a lot of good life experiences doing jobs like that so I’m glad I did all that.”

While still doing odd jobs around Bolton, his school friend recruited him to appear in his series of comedy dramas for Channel 4 called That Peter Kay Thing. That led to two series of Phoenix Nights.

After its huge success, he and Kay co-wrote and co-starred as the club doormen in the spin-off series, Max And Paddy’s Road To Nowhere.

Rumours that Kay had finished writing two more series of Phoenix Nights are, as far as McGuinness is concerned, false.

“These rumours come about because Peter starts them for his own amusement,” he jokes.

“I know nothing about that.”

Since then McGuinness has mixed stand-up comedy with a varied career on the small screen.

He’s fronted an advertising campaign for Greggs, appeared on Sky’s The Match and Inside Wayne Rooney, played the lead in E4’s Chuck Stryker: The Unknown Stuntman, guest hosted The Paul O’Grady Show and This Morning, presented Raiders Of The Lost Archive on ITV1, joined Rory McGrath on a roadtrip for Rory And Paddy’s Great British Adventure and even partnered Keith Lemon on Let’s Dance For Comic Relief.

But nothing has given him as much exposure as Take Me Out.

“I even get a game of Take Me Out going on stage during the show,” he says of his latest tour, which comes to the Capital FM Arena on Friday.

“Because they are big venues I want it to be visually good to look at, so it’s a bit special in that respect.”

Such as?

“Let’s just say there are a few tricks up the sleeve.”

It’s his biggest tour and he admits the nerves are there.

“If you’re not nervous then there’s something wrong.

“On the last tour I did about 60 nights and when I went on stage totally relaxed I just couldn’t remember what I was saying.

“Once you lose that nervous energy you can become a bit complacent. It’s good to be nervous.”

He married Liverpool model Christine Martin in the summer but resisted the magazine deals which were offered.

“Some things are private,” he says, simply.

“And you can’t tell your nan that she can’t take a photo because of the contract you are under, she wouldn’t understand.”

He adds: “Although one magazine did superimpose our heads on to someone else’s bodies at a wedding for their front cover.

“So a lot of people will have thought ‘Oh they’ve done a magazine deal’”.

It was a big family occasion in Cheshire and married life is all right with him.

“Everything’s just the same, really. I don’t feel any different. We’ve been together for years.

“The only real difference is the ring on the finger. It’s nice. I like it.”

The Paddy McGuinness Saturday Night Live Tour comes to the Capital FM Arena on Friday October 14. Tickets are £25, call 08444 124 624 or visit www.capital.com

The Proclaimers

October 2009
My Weekend: Charlie Reid

THIS weekend I'll be working, as we're playing in Nottingham, then Southampton tomorrow and Exeter on Sunday.
When we're around the country I will see what's going on. Maybe have a stroll around a local castle or a stately home or see a football match – just something that breaks up the day, so I can say that I did something while I was there.
When I'm not touring, my Friday night will start with a dinner around the table with my family.
I really like just sitting around the dining table and talking for a couple of hours. I believe in it. Obviously, after three-quarters of an hour, the kids disappear to their computers and you don't see them for the rest of the evening but at least you make the effort to engage them in conversation.
They don't watch much TV, apart from football or maybe the X-Factor. It's generally the computer and I think it's killing TV.
I have three kids. My eldest boy lives in Inverness and he's in his last year at university.
The youngest is still at school and the other is in his lead-up year to university, where he'll be doing engineering.
We'd also get my mother round to the house on Friday night or go and see her.
My dad died about a dozen years ago now and she's on her own but she keeps pretty good.
Then I'll maybe take the dogs out for a walk.
On Saturday morning, I'll go for a run. I try to get out three or four times a week and run three or four miles. The knees and the ankles play up if I do it every day. With the type of job I do, it's not like an athletic level of fitness you need but you do need a lot of puff when you do a performance. And running is best for that.
I'll also take my youngest boy to judo. We go to the occasional gig because he's really into his music. The older two are more into football and we'll go and watch Hibernian. We all have season tickets but I tend not to use mine so much because I'm never there.
Saturday night we'll go out for a meal or watch the TV or a DVD. I like good comedy, like Phoenix Nights or The Office, or a good drama. I do watch the news channels and I'll keep them on whether I'm at home or in a hotel somewhere.
In America, I watch Fox News just for the entertainment value – it's so far to the right. There's that guy Glenn Beck, he's like some crazed preacher. You laugh and then realise some people actually watch it as a news programme.
It's like watching Star Trek as a science programme.