Like a wide-eyed fan a third of his age, Gyles Brandreth breathlessly scrolls through the VIP selfies on his phone.
‘Look, look. There’s me with Harry Hill,’ he says proudly.
‘Here’s me with the Iranian Ambassador. And that’s me with my very good friend Susie Dent from Countdown. And here I am again with Susan Calman from Strictly.’
Now 72 but still brandishing the energy of an over-excited puppy, the broadcaster turned politician turned jack of all showbiz trades is a force of nature; an all singing, all dancing (but mostly talking) entertainer who probably spins amusing yarns in his sleep. And he’s off…
‘So my wife Michele and I were in Jamaica on this beautiful, white sandy beach for our 45th wedding anniversary two or three years ago. The sun is setting, and this little wizened old lady comes teetering along the beach towards us,’ he regales, clad in an understated charcoal suit, the lurid day-glo jumpers apparently a thing of the past.
‘And it wasn’t until this little bent old lady got really close to us, almost within touching distance, that we realised it was actually Mick Jagger – so we started talking about touring,’ says the Oxbridge graduate, who is actually only four years younger than the Rolling Stones lothario.
‘You see Mick was on a world tour and I’m almost always touring,’ says Brandreth, whose rescheduled Break A Leg tour looks set to resume in the autumn once the coronavirus crisis subsides.
‘We started discussing the relative merits of pantechnicons – which are essentially enormous Winnebagos. I’m not sure how to spell pantechnicon. I must phone Susie Dent and ask, but the long and the short of it is that they’re the huge trailers that the stars retire to between shows.’
So does Gyles have to barricade his pantechnicon door between gigs to prevent groupies from getting in (after all, he is the Guinness World Record holder for the longest continuous after dinner speech – twelve and a half hours, in case you were wondering).
‘I do have a roadie actually. I’ve been married to her for 47 years and she gets people to line up with the Zimmer frames, so they don’t clash one against the other. The audience I attract is immensely varied but I do get people of riper years.’
His wife, writer and publisher Michele Brown, may be his real-life ally, but when it comes to on-screen couplings, his latest with legendary actress Sheila Hancock, 87, went down a storm.
The couple lit up the small screen last year on the celebrity version of Channel 4’s Gogglebox, an experience Gyles is still reeling from.
‘We sat together and watched Naked Attraction,’ he remembers, aghast at the concept of a late-night dating show where participants pick partners solely based on the lure of their nude nether regions.
‘We’d never seen anything like it. And then we watched Love Island too… It’s extraordinary when you find yourself sitting there having an 87-year-old woman telling you what a fanny flutter is. And you can imagine how that went down with my wife when I told her what I’d been watching.'
'She just said, “Oh yes, that sounds fun. I wish I’d come across one of those in the last 47 years.”’
Michele is also his driver, comedy barometer, and partner in crime on the road.
‘I’m afraid there are no crates of alcohol delivered to the room after a successful show. We tend to stop at an M&S on the motorway for a little packed meal then retire to whichever Holiday Inn we’re staying at and consume our boxed salads and watch late night TV,’ he says.
‘And during the shows she’s always waiting in the wings with her stopwatch making sure I don’t exceed the two-hour limit. She has a large sign, on which she has written, “You think you’re the thinking man’s Ken Dodd. You’re not. Get off”, and after two hours, this sign appears and the show comes to an end.’
Of course, tours are off the table for a while, due to Covid-19. Gyles lost a close friend to the virus, and began to self-isolate back in March – he is the same age as Prince Charles, who famously contracted the virus.
But, once things go back to normal, the show looks set to go on indefinitely for Brandreth – and he refuses to let age be a barrier to his continued activity.
‘My role models are people who carried on regardless. My friend Nicholas Parsons died at 96, but had all guns firing until the very end.'
And the Duke of Edinburgh is 98 and still going. I have written a biography of him – I have had a drink with him and he is very entertaining. He tells a very good story. He said to me, “If ever you see a man opening the car door for his wife it’s either a new car or it’s a new wife.’
As well as sharing a drink with the Queen’s husband Gyles has also shared a tailor with Princess Diana.
‘I used to get all my jumpers made by a man called George Hostler, who was the head of design at Leicester Polytechnic. I became great friends with him over the years and he only ever made jumpers for a very select clientele including me, Elton John, and Princess Diana.
‘I’d go and pick my jumpers up, but he’d post them to Elton and Diana… he treated them properly, they pay properly. I went to an event once and Diana was a guest there and the first thing she said to me, like so many people do, was, “Where’s your jumper?”'
But I actually haven’t worn a jumper in public since 1994 as I gave up wearing them when I entered politics,’ says Gyles who served as the Member of Parliament for Chester between 1992 and 1997 in addition to appearing on more than 300 episodes of Countdown between 1983 and 2015.
‘On one of the first occasions I was in the House Of Commons John Prescott barracked me going, “woolly jumper, woolly jumper”, whereupon I had to point out to Mr. Prescott that the joy of a woolly jumper is that you can take if off, whereas the blight of a woolly mind is that you’re lumbered with it for life.’
Gyles hasn’t just rubbed shoulders with politicians and royalty, he’s done his bit in comedy clubs too, mixing with men who were known to be quite rough and ready…
‘The first time I did a comedy gig was 50 years ago at Bernard Manning’s club in Manchester and as a debut it was the worst experience imaginable. I didn’t survive the first night, which was sheer hell.'
'I shared the dressing room with a stripper… the punters liked her. But when I came on they literally ignored me. Bernard then went on with his material – which would get him arrested today – and went down a storm.'
‘He came into my dressing room afterwards, just in his underpants – the stripper was dressed by then – and told me what to do.'
'He said, “Don’t say a word until the crowd are quiet”, which is a good starter. Then he said if they do applaud, raise your arms and they’ll applaud more, sort of in rhythm with you. Then the clincher was that he said, “Halfway through, say to them, ‘I could murder a gin and tonic,’ so they’ll see you’re a boy and they’ll like you.”'
'So I did that and by the time I came off there were 60 G&Ts on the table, which Bernard, as the owner of the club, liked very much. Then he said, “Well done Gyles, now f*** off”.’
Which he did, but with a spring in his step. And that positivity shows little sign of subsiding as Gyles tries to emulate those older role models he so admires.
‘They are not thinking about themselves, they are thinking about the world around them and they are just getting on with it.’
How do you spend your Sunday
Work or rest?
Work never stops. I need to work, I need the money. I have three children and seven grandchildren…
Sunday paper or TV?
I love the Sunday papers. I’m an occasional reporter on The One Show so I like to keep abreast of current affairs and on the lookout for quirky stories.
Pray on Sunday?
When I was touring I liked to wake early on a Sunday – before 8am – and the only place usually open at that time is the church. Every church in England has a Holy Communion using the book of common prayer dating from 17th century. It’s old language and where many of our beautiful terms and phrases come from, and life is all about words.
Sunday lunch or lunch on the go…
As I’m usually working it tends to be lunch on the go. I like a pasta salad followed by a chocolate mousse.
Sunday beer or steer clear?
I don’t drink, so I’ll have a ginger beer. My wife will have a glass of wine but I gave up 20 years ago to lose weight and the next time I drank I got a migraine. It may also be because I’m a bit of a control freak.
Have you been using self-isolation to organise your work?
I store all my books and my work in alphabetical order in a single room. When you see the room, you might say this man has strange habits, but I like to impose order on the bookshelf so it can’t impose order on me.
Sunday night in or Sunday night out, under normal circumstances?
Sunday evening is cinema night. We loved going to the movies on a Sunday night although I can’t bear people making noise in the cinema, munching and crunching away. The last films we saw were Emma and David Copperfield, and we loved them both.
– Gyles Brandreth’s Break A Leg UK tour is at venues from September 2020 to April 2021. For updates and information click here
