Super. Smashing. Great. An audience with comic Jim Bowen
Last updated 14:20, Monday, 29 September 2008
It’s 1983 and it’s Sunday teatime. Sausage, chips and beans. It’s cold outside and there’s school tomorrow but in the living room the curtains are closed, the fire is on and the telly is burning bright.
“It’s a Bullseye, and here's your host... Jiiiim Bowen!”
Life really doesn’t get much better than this.
Phyllis Bowen carries in the coffees and puts them on the table. Husband Jim says “Thanks, love.” We are in the spacious and modern Bowen house, just over the Lancashire border near Kirkby Lonsdale, to discuss Jim’s visit to Carlisle next month. He will talk at the Sands Centre about his four decades in showbusiness, including 15 years hosting one of TV’s most popular gameshows, Bullseye.
The event is part of Age Concern’s Celebrating Age campaign and Jim is looking forward to an audience consisting largely of pensioners. “There might be a chance of someone being older than me,” he says in that familiar deadpan.
He’s 71 now. Still involved in showbiz but on its fringe rather than at its heart. This is partly through choice and partly because time has ushered in several generations of more fashionable comedians since Jim started on the northern club circuit in the 1960s.
“It wasn’t an easy scene to work,” he recalls. What were the worst places? “If you’ve got a bad act they’re all bad places. I’ve got it wrong a few times. Don’t buy a second-hand car off anyone who says they haven’t.”
The young Jim Bowen always enjoyed making people laugh but never considered doing it for a living until the night he saw Ken Dodd, and became one of 3,500 people begging him to stop – please! – to give them a chance to catch their breath.
Appearances on ITV’s stand-up showcase The Comedians prompted Jim to leave his teaching job in his native Lancashire and become a full-time comic.
Then, in 1981, came Bullseye. Jim admits he wasn’t the production team’s first choice for the darts-based quiz show. “I was the fifth name on a shortlist of four,” he quips. “They rang everybody else and they weren’t answering the phone so in the end the producer said ‘We’ve got to get somebody. Oh God... give it to Bowen.’”
It soon becomes clear that self-mockery is his default setting. Bullseye was watched by up to 15 million people but the host is quick to underplay his part in its success. “My whole career has been a series of accidents. It’s nothing to do with talent. When Bullseye started it was rubbish. Well, I was rubbish. The first two programmes were so bad the producer burned them. I’m serious! They cost £43,000 and they were never shown.
“The first series was on Monday nights. We inherited 13 million viewers from Crossroads and the idea was that we’d hand over to Coronation Street with 13 million. In the first six weeks we lost seven million viewers. The thing was, there was no remote control in those days. People couldn’t be arsed to get up and turn the telly off. But with us they could.”
Then something mysterious began to happen. Ratings suddenly rose and the series ended with the magic 13 million. Jim shrugs. “If we knew why we’d be millionaires. Now if something doesn’t work after two shows they take it off.”
Whether his modesty is a ploy to draw praise and raise laughs, or whether he really is blind to his own gifts, Jim Bowen was integral to Bullseye. Think of the show today and you don’t see darts but you do hear his voice.
“You can’t beat a bit of Bully!”
“Keep out of the black and in the red, you get nothing in this game for two in a bed.”
“Let’s have a look at what you could’ve won!”
“Super, smashing, great!”
He never actually said that last phrase, although all those words did tumble from his mouth at various points. Jim wasn’t the slickest of gameshow hosts. So he and Bullseye were a perfect match. Even the star prize was a national joke: all those weeks when the winners wondered how they would get their newly acquired speedboat back to Wolverhampton.
“The budget was tight,” says Jim. “Only £7,000 per show for prizes in the early days. The producer managed to get a good deal on speedboats from a company in Walsall.” He pauses for thought. “Why build speedboats in Walsall? It’s the most central point in the UK.”
But Bullseye needed to be creaky. Its working-class Sunday teatime audience demanded something rough and ready, or else. “I remember series six. The boss at ATV rang me and said ‘You’re getting a bit good now. Stop it.’
“People loved it for its fallibility and naivety and spontanaiety. It’s an innately British thing. They like people to trip up a bit and to think ‘I could do better than that.’ People used to stop me in the street and say ‘Why’s it still on?’ I’d say ‘I don’t know.’”
ITV executive Marcus Plantin had been asking the same question. In 1995 he cancelled Bullseye, Boon and Blockbusters in the same meeting. Jim’s friendly-uncle TV persona seems pretty authentic but a flash of steel shows through when he mentions Plantin.
In the 13 years since Bullseye’s demise Jim has had comedic and straight acting roles, including parts in Last of the Summer Wine, Jonathan Creek and Phoenix Nights. For the past few years he’s spent August in Edinburgh doing Fringe shows with titles like Look What You Could Have Won and You Can’t Beat a Bit of Bully.
It’s August when he feels the heat of change most fiercely, mingling with comics half a century his junior. He says of today’s stand-up comedy: “For me it’s far too aggressive. And, I have to say, too rude. I watched some of the acts in Edinburgh this year and I found the language quite appalling.
“Comediennes were worse than the fellas. The days of the Roy Hudds and the guys we’ll be talking about in Carlisle – my era – are gone. It’s just progress, but it’s not my cup of tea. Who’s this lunatic they’ve got now?”
“Er...”
“Long hair.”
“Russell Brand?”
“Yeah, him. You put him in Carlisle for Age Concern and they’ll throw their Zimmers at him. That’s not to say he’s bad. It’s such a subjective thing. Everything develops. Tastes change. If I was 20 today I’d probably be doing what they’re doing.
“But I’ve never tried to change. It’s like an old pair of slippers, you’re comfy with what you do. I know where I can bat and get a good score, with audiences of 50-plus.”
It’s not just the oldies who love his stuff. Jim takes his anecdotes to universities where teenagers brought up on digital TV repeats of Bullseye lap them up. How much of his world view they would share is debatable. Jim was reared in an age when comedians told jokes about race and routinely used what is now referred to only as “the N-word”.
He bemoans political correctness and denies that old-school comedians were racist. “We were only comics. Bernard Manning was one of the finest of all. But there’s no point alienating audiences so you back off. I’m there to entertain, not to offend.
“But if you take political correctness to its ultimate you can’t tell a joke about a Scotsman. Like the Scot who makes it to the gates of heaven and St Peter says ‘Sod off – I’m not making porridge for one.’”
Bullseye was resurrected in 2006 by digital channel Challenge, presented by comedian Dave Spikey. The new-look show lasted just one series. Jim was not asked to take part. He seems a little hurt by this but prefers not to dwell on it.
You sense he’ll get over the disappointment. Four or five times a year he has a couple of weeks working on cruise ships, giving a couple of talks, playing his trumpet, “and if they’re really awful I might sing a song.”
There he is again, hurling the custard pie in his own face. Jim started life in a Liverpool children’s home before being adopted. Is that where the comedy comes from: hiding behind a smile; tears of a clown?
“I know what you’re saying but no, it’s not like that. I just love making people laugh. I’ve been incredibly lucky – I was emptying dustbins in Burnley in 1958.”
Can it really have been that long ago? He reels off some more numbers. Twenty-four years since Tommy Cooper died. Twenty-seven years since Bullseye started. Thirty-seven years since The Comedians began. He shakes his head. “Time just disappears.”
One Thursday a couple of weeks ago Jim was booked to perform at a corporate event in Suffolk. There he was, 300 miles and five hours from home. Tired, nervous, “feeling rotten”.
“It was lunchtime; not great for comedy. People won’t have been drinking; maybe one glass of wine. I thought ‘This is going to be awful.’ When you stand up in front of 500 people you think ‘I’d really quite like to get it right here.’ The alternative is verging on the suicidal.
“Anyway, I tore the place to pieces. I thought ‘Bloody hell, I’m working well here.’ I realised I was working slowly, believing in the material, leaving a space, letting it breathe.
“Every time you go on, however long you’ve been doing it, it’s a walk in the dark. If you get it right it’s instant gratification. There’s no better feeling. Watching Doddy, being so envious of the man, 3,500 people aching. I’ve never been as good as that. But now and then I get close.”
And in that instant a nagging question is answered. Seeing him here in his lovely home with his lovely wife, two children, two grandchildren, 71 years old, public’s affection guaranteed: why spend every August scrapping it out with the rabid young things in Edinburgh? Why spend a Thursday lunchtime feeling sick with nerves in Suffolk?
Then you hear him talk about the utter joy of winning a big laugh, see him sit forward as the lights in his eyes snap onto full beam, and all becomes clear. The man who emptied bins in Burnley is living a dream which remains as beguiling and bewildering as ever.
“I once said to Eric Morecambe ‘What makes it all tick?’ Eric was wonderful. He said ‘Once you start asking what makes it all tick, the clock stops.’”
It’s 2008 and it’s Monday lunchtime. It’s cold outside but in Jim Bowen’s living room the fire is still burning.
- An Audience With Jim Bowen is at the Sands Centre on Thursday October 16 at 4.30pm. Tickets cost £6, from www.thesandscentre.co.uk, in person from the Sands or by calling 01228 625222 or 08448 472276. All are welcome, young and old.
