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The notoriously politically-incorrect Mancunian
comedian, lights up.
JL: When did you start smoking?
BM: At school in the days of about 1939, just
before the war…in the school playground, and all that carry on. It
were the done thing. Everybody used to get a fag – you could buy
two cigarettes and a match in the local shop for about a halfpenny.
JL: When was the last time you smoked – for
you’ve given up smoking recently, haven’t you?
BM: About 2-3 years ago, the diabetes had
overtaken me, and me blood was out of order, and the doctor said,
‘You know, you can’t go on like this.’ I was getting dizzy spells –
well, I was in a right mess. So I just stopped, just like that.
Just like that - and I were doing 40 a day. And when the racing was
on - and I’ve had a few thousand pound on the horses in me time – I
used to smoke a packet of cigarettes in a race meeting.
JL: Do you still wave a
cigar around when you’re on stage?
BM: I use it as a prop –
it leads me in to a couple of gags about cigarettes. I say that,
‘They give Roy Castle six months to live. He said ‘I’ll do it in
four.’
(the late Roy Castle, who
died of cancer and blamed it all on passive smoking, hosted a show
on BBC childrens’ television for many years, attempting each week to
surpass the Guinness Book of Records in various activities, and was
known for saying he would attempt each feat in less time than
originally taken by the current record holder, i.e. ‘He did it in
five minutes, I reckon I can do it in four.’ JL)
JL: If you did smoke a
cigar now, would you to put it out if someone objected to your
smoking?
BM: I wouldn’t, because it’s my prerogative to
smoke – it’s my choice. And there’s nothing more enjoyable than a
nice cigar. You twiddle it around in your fingers, it’s a
confidence feeling…It’s a nice little prop on the stage to twiddle
round your fingers. It’s a funny thing, I don’t know… It’s like ‘The
Caine Mutiny’, remember that film with Humphrey Bogart, he had these
two balls in his hand and was rubbing them around – he was the
captain of the ship, you remember? And it’s like that. I think
most people enjoy it. I know you might think I’m crackers, but a
cigar or a cigarette is a nice thing to hold, and twirl round in
your fingers.
JL: I suppose it’s better than playing round with
your balls on stage. Is your club – the Embassy Club in Manchester –
a good place to smoke?
BM: There’s an ashtray on every table and people
use their own sense. If they wanna smoke, they smoke. If they
don’t want to smoke, they don’t need to smoke. And that’s it. Over
50 years in show business, I’ve worked in places – well, when I
first started there was no such thing as extractor fans and air
conditioning and smoke things – you just worked. You could cut the
smoke with a knife. There’s nothing wrong with me now, I have no
problems with me chest. The diabetes was caused by being mugged. I
was mugged outside the Embassy Club (his club in Manchester) for
£7,000 one Monday morning about 15 years ago. As a matter of fact
they’ve just caught them, and they’ve all got big sentences – and
that’s 15 years ago – and one of them’s grassed them up. So they’ve
caught them all. They was watching me and they set about me with
guns and masks and pickaxe handles – I had the money bag. And Harry
Dowd, Manchester City’s ex-goal-keeper, was there. He was coming
out of the club with me. And I even got a laugh out of that. I
said, ‘I threw in the bag and he dropped it.’ I’ve had no trouble
with me chest and I must have been in a million places a million
clubs – the London Palladium, MGM Grand in Las Vegas - and I’ve
worked in atmosphere that’s just been thick with smoke and I’ve had
no trouble with me chest whatsoever. I’m 71 and I sing like a bird.
JL: And there’s Roy Castle, non-smoker, singing
like an angel. I know it’s awful but he did blame his cancer on
passive smoking…
BM: He never smoked. And it killed him! Which to
me is a load of rubbish. I think cancer’s in ya, or it’s not in ya.
I do, honestly.
JL: If you had to smoke
in a doorway, whose doorway would you like most to smoke in?
BM: Tony Blair’s. Waiting for that lovely wife of
his coming out in that dressing gown. You remember that picture?
JL: I do, yes.
BM: Yep. Fucking hell!
JL: That was about the only time he gave us a bit
of a thrill, really. What’s your most memorable smoking experience?
BM: I remember the days when I worked on ‘The
Comedians’ with Johnny Hamp, who made us all stars overnight,
household names…unknowns who people’d never heard of. I was working
in the clubs for a tenner a night, and now I can command £3-£4,000.
I’m doing adverts – I’ve just done an advert for Kit-Kat. And I’ve
worked all over the world. And the man (Hamp) made me a household
name. I used to work on stage with a ciggie in me hand banging out
the gags, one after another, people falling about with laughter.
Wonderful, wonderful.
JL: What do you think of
the British government imposing bans on tobacco ads, and
particularly on smoking in clubs like yours?
BM: It won’t mean a thing. If people want to
smoke, they’ll smoke. I don’t think you’ll ever stop them smoking.
Not at all. Which is a sad thing, really. If smoking is killing
people it’s a sad thing. But if it isn’t, then people are just
gonna carry on smoking anyway.
JL: If there was a button
that, once pressed, would stop everybody smoking – would you press
it?
BM: Yes, I would. It’s a thing you can do
without. You can’t do without breathing, you can’t do without fresh
air, and you can’t do without food and you can’t do without water.
But you can certainly do without smoking.
JL: What’s your favourite
smoking gag?
BM: Winston Churchill was
at the Cup Final, and this fella kept jumping up and down and
annoying him. And Churchill says, ‘Would you mind sitting down,
please.’ And the fella says, ‘Aye, well I always like to keep on the
move – I’ve got 14 children.’ And Churchill says, ‘Well, I smoke 20
cigars a day, but I take it out now and again.’
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