Is that a look of pleasure or terror within the eyes of the solid when Ricky Tomlinson takes to the stage? He's the large draw on this patchwork present (I hesitate to make use of the phrase play), by which the regulars at a pub known as Irish Annie’s take turns to interrupt a jolly set of singalong favourites by the band on stage.
Tomlinson is nominally a personality known as Scouse Pete, however is definitely simply Tomlinson. Dressed like Jim Royle in The Royle Household, mustard T-shirt, slip-ons and lank gray hair, the 82-year-old is in full-on anecdote mode.
As we're in St Helens, he offers us the one about native boy Johnny Vegas needing a therapeutic massage on the set of Grimsby. As author Andy Lynch is in the home, he recollects his Brookside breakthrough as Bobby Grant. And as he's Ricky Tomlinson, he reminds us of his run-ins with Cilla Black, his assembly with Norman Knowledge and his imprisonment after a 1972 strike. The overturning of his conviction in 2021 will get a cheer.
He may go on with these items perpetually, which appears to alarm singer and director Asa Murphy, watching from stage left. He is aware of it’s time for Tomlinson to do the pub quiz and urges him to get on with the present. The quiz seems to be a collection of Christmas-cracker jokes enlivened by Tomlinson throwing sweets into the viewers as prizes.
It’s feeble stuff, however due to Tomlinson’s beneficiant bark of fun, the exertions of host Catherine Rice, who has extra enthusiasm than script, and spirited renditions of The Wild Rover, Brown Eyed Lady and Danny Boy, they only about get away with it.
At Epstein theatre, Liverpool, 19 March and Joe Longthorne theatre, Blackpool, 1 July.
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