Joe Pasquale promising a lot of old "cack" in Horsham!

Joe Pasquale is promising a celebration of his best 'cack' plus some surprises along the way as he launches into his 30th-anniversary tour.
Joe PasqualeJoe Pasquale
Joe Pasquale

A Few of His Favourite Things comes to the Capitol Theatre, Horsham on Wednesday, October 17 – Joe’s way of marking three decades in show business.

Joe first burst onto our TV screens 30 years ago on ITV’s New Faces, and, no, he has got absolutely no intention of ever growing up. As he says, this show may contain nuts and he might just say the word “fart”.

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“30 years later, and I am still making it up as I go along,” Joe says. “People take comedy far too seriously. Comedy isn’t a serious business. It is just about making people laugh, and if you aren’t having a laugh, then how are you going to make other people laugh.

“I just go up there and enjoy myself. I am going to get all the old pants from my garage and I am going to stand there and give the audience a load of all pants. That’s all it is. It’s just a job, just something I love doing, just something that pays my bills.

“Comedy is so diverse and there is so much out there. I love Frankie Boyle and I love Noel Fielding. There is so much stuff around that I love watching. Everybody wants to be a stand-up now, and that’s great. There is room for everyone.”

Joe broke through in the 80s comedy boom, a time when alternative comedy was the big thing. But Joe resists the labels. “You don’t really want to go putting comedy in different boxes. There is only one type of comedy, and that’s the comedy that goes into the box marked funny.

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“I have been going with this tour for a couple of weeks. It is just me and no one else, just me throwing all the old cack at the audience, doing what I do. I am 57 now. Why would I ever want to grow up. And no, it’s not pressure being on stage. It’s what I love doing. Being on the stage is the only point of my day where I am in control. The rest of the day I am driving around trying to avoid all the angry drivers. That’s the pressure. We think we are in control, but none of us are in control of our lives. But when I am on stage, that’s when I am in control.”

Joe returned to stand-up in the summer this year after a year away, during which he’d been touring in a new stage version of Some Mothers Do ‘Ave ‘Em.

“It was fantastic. We did 26 weeks and we got 35 five-star reviews and 17 four-star reviews.

"Number one, it was a great script, and we worked for two years getting the script right. And we also did three workshops. Michael Crawford was so funny in the character because he put so much of himself into his version of Frank Spencer, and I realised I had to do the same. The most important thing was realising that I shouldn’t be doing an impersonation of Michael Crawford.

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"I had to try to put a lot of myself into my version of Frank Spencer, and that’s why it worked. We are looking at more dates.”

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