You could ask the question of any comedy show: how much is truth and how much is performative topspin? It’s particularly relevant for Danny Baker’s second live show, Good Time Charlie’s Back!, which takes us from the 14-year-old school-leaver to the household name and family man.
Baker tells us what a chancer he was, faking an injury to become an NME staff writer (long story, as they mostly are) and how he “played the piano with the till” at a Soho record shop, making a tidy sum on the side. And he implores us to believe his every word: truth is stranger than fiction, he says. Most of all, he wants us to know he’s a “lucky git”, a music superfan who somehow made it, and not your typical showbiz Machiavelli.
But I don’t care how much spin Baker deploys. This is a show of such warmth and lust for life that the only correct response is to sit back and enjoy it. There’s no score-settling, no stoking of culture wars about “the good old days”, no superiority, no victims (except his long-suffering colleagues who covered for him while he gallivanted around Europe’s music venues). It’s rollocking storytelling with big scoops of generosity. And boy, does the world need a bit of that.
Thus we hear of his unlikely rise from wrapping up mouldy tangerines for a few bob to getting a global scoop on John Lennon, being effectively kidnapped by Ian Dury and annoying Paul Weller by making up quotes. Obsequious it’s not. Rather, it really does seem Baker can’t believe he got to hang out with his heroes.
His domestic tales are, arguably, more interesting. How he and his wife, Wendy, got together is Mills and Boon in leather jackets, and he gets 20 minutes of gold out of his low-intelligence, high-aggression pet dog Twizzle (who savaged Paul Gascoigne). As with Baker’s semi-fictional sitcom Cradle to Grave, his dad, “Spud”, is richly drawn and looms large – an imposing docker who bollocked the pet lizard for not pulling its weight, and who was baffled by his boy’s starry career.
There is a touch of Ken Dodd, not just in his uncynical good cheer but in his stamina. The show lasts nearly four hours, with Baker gathering energy as he proceeds, a storm coursing over a sea of banging anecdotes. You wonder how anyone ever winds up a phone call with him.
There has been trauma in Baker’s life: losing his brother, who was only 29, surviving aggressive cancer, the deaths of his parents. But he barely mentions these. Instead, he chooses to be a good news gospel, preaching about what a ride life can be if you’re open enough. And that, in its own way, is heroic.
At Theatre Royal, Nottingham, 12 May. Then touring until 4 June.
