I was bingeing Danny Baker at Blackheath Halls over the weekend with Saturday spent at his From Cradle To Stage show, followed by Good Time Charlie’s Back on Sunday, both evenings being a humorous look inside the world of Bermondsey’s greatest showman, writes Michael Holland…
Anyone who has read the books or listened to any of his radio shows will have heard many of the stories he recounts on stage, but that does not lessen their hilarity. Hearing him tell about being shot in the bum in a drive-by incident has tears rolling down my face every time whether I’m reading about it in Going To Sea In A Sieve or watching him re-enact the scene in a theatre.
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A Danny Baker show is not the slickly performed and timed affair you will see a stand-up comedian do, where every ad-lib has been painstakingly rehearsed and the act, for that is precisely what it is, ends right on the button with a wave goodbye as they exit the stage.
There is no encore. That is it. Goodnight.
With Baker, he can talk and talk and talk with just a projected photo prompt to set him off. Many an audience member has missed their last train home because of a show over-running or had their car locked in the car park.
He is a tad more disciplined these days and has a clock guiding him, but the show is punctuated with so many diversions as his racing mind takes off on another entertaining tangent, the finale is often a rush through of the remaining photo-prompts.
From Cradle To Stage is basically a journey through his life from growing up on Silwood Estate in Rotherhithe to him now sharing all his thrills and spills on stages around the land; something that he never planned to do but now loves. And especially at Blackheath Halls as, ‘it’s the only gig I’ve ever done where I can walk to work!’
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He enters at a pace and immediately spends the first 30 minutes talking about a family photo on a screen, and every so often reminding us – and himself – that he is already falling behind time. He patrols the stage, going from left to right, never stopping walking and talking, which was murder for me in the front row as it was three hours of non-stop neck-turning, like watching tennis at Wimbledon, but with laughs instead of breaks every few minutes.
This man of many talents worries not about dressing up. He sports a shirt that only one button can find its matching buttonhole, and explains it away with him doing a lot of sitting around during the pandemic. His trademark Fez is headwear that very few people could get away with. He is not trying to create an image of fame and stardom, he is just being Danny Baker. He is still surprised at all the famous people he has met or worked with and laughs at his luck.
Danny caries a pool cue as a pointer to show who is who in each image and could do a whole show on each and every aunt, uncle, grandparent or sibling, which is why he sidetracks a lot.
But it is Danny’s dad, Fred ‘Spud’ Baker, who is the foundation of most of the anecdotes, or the reason for the diversions. The son’s love for his late father shines through the comedy, although that is not what the show is about, it just happens that way.
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As he rushes into another story he often prefaces the tale with, ‘Some of you will have heard this’, because he knows that his fans attend several times during a tour, safe in the knowledge that each show will be unique and only one or two stories will overlap. Danny’s memory is as large as the iCloud, so he can home in on just about any topic or tale in a split second.
The following evening – Good Time Charlie’s Back – was introduced by an old 1930s’ song, Who’s Been Polishing The Sun, that tells of a life getting better and better after a man meets the love of his life. This sets the stall out for the night’s entertainment. Mr Baker then began with a 20-minute recap of what went on the previous night before taking us back to his schooldays then leaving at 14 to work in a record shop. Nothing too exciting about that except this shop was where the biggest stars of the day came in to buy obscure imports: Jagger, Bolan and Elton John were regulars.
As that job came to an end so a former classmate asked if he would help him write a Punk music fanzine – Sniffing Glue – which led on to being head-hunted by the NME, who sent him all around the globe interviewing the planet’s biggest artists, which opened the door to television, which had radio calling…
Of course, each section was accompanied by a trove of tales and photos.
Once again the finale was rushed through with the last images getting only a quick soundbite of the anecdote attached to it. The audience, as one, were all willing to stay as long as it took, but Danny was concerned with the staff getting home.
How true is Cradle to Grave’s portrayal of by-gone Bermondsey and Rotherhithe?
But we know we will see these stories completed on another night in another show because we are repeat offenders. I was not the only one there for both nights because we all know that no performance is the same as any he has done before; this is the second time I have seen these two shows, and even those stories I had heard previously sounded fresh with this retelling.
Will I be back in March for The Sausage Sandwich Tour? Of course I will.
Tonight’s show, although supposed to be about Danny Baker’s life in the limelight, I think we all came away feeling the love he has for his wife, for his family, for his background and for the work he has done. His life got better and better. Yes, he had the good fortune to be in the right place at the right time, but he had to say yes to those opportunities and then had to produce the goods to make a success of what he was expected to do, and he did that every time.
The final photo was of a forlorn Fred Baker looking over the demise of the docks just before the developers moved in, while Danny Baker gave us a rendition of, ‘All My Life I Wanted To Be A Barrow Boy’.
Endings don’t come much better than that.
See website for tour details: https://www.dannybakerstore.com/
