Comedian Jimmy Cricket shares a secret about his famous wellies......

But ever wonder how he can glide so effortlessly across the stage in such cumbersome footwear? Jimmy shares a ‘trade secret’.

“I’ve gone through lots of pairs of wellies. I go to a local shoe mender and he puts an actual shoe sole onto the bottom instead of the rubber. That means I can slide across the stage when I'm doing the funny walks,” he says, speaking from Birmingham.

His iconic garb, he says, came about as his character evolved.

"I wanted to get a visual laugh at the start. Clubs could be discerning in the north of England, and a lot of acts at the time were dressing the same in the 70s, with the frilly shirt. It was important to make yourself different from the herd.”

Jimmy Cricket (real name, Jimmy Mulgrew, his stage name is inspired by the Disney character Jiminy Cricket) first came to fame in the 1980s with his Central TV series And There’s More.

Back in the day he also had his own radio series for BBC Radio 2 called Jimmy’s Cricket Team, written by Eddie Braben. He appeared in numerous Royal Variety Shows and starred in comedy skits with a plethora of other artists including Rory Bremner, Brian Conley, Sherrie Hewson, Joan Sims, Nicholas Smith and Hugh Lloyd. He also appeared on comedy variety show The Good Old Days and The Krankies Klub alongside the Krankies and Bobby Davro.

And he’s still going strong, performing up to four times a month. He’ll be appearing with the aforementioned fellow Ulster comedians at McNeill Theatre, Larne on March 21, on March 22 at Belfast’s Grand Opera House and on March 23 at the Riverside Theatre, Coleraine.

Born in Cookstown, but raised in Belfast, Jimmy, who lives in Rochdale, Greater Manchester, says he loves performing here.

"Yes, I’ll be back in Northern Ireland – the prodigal son – well, actually, there’ll be four prodigal sons,” he laughs. “We all love performing together and there’s so much banter. Northern Ireland audiences are the best.”

Jimmy is particularly chuffed to be performing with his pal, Banbridge comedian, Gene Fitzpatrick.

"Gene had a stroke in 2021, so it’s great that he’s appearing and doing a short set with us.”

Alongside the aforementioned comedians, there will be musical accompaniment and laughter from the comedy showband legends, Clubsound.

He adds: “March is quite busy because we've got the tour at home and then I'm doing a show in Glasgow and then another one. I have a mini residency in a hotel at Blackpool, and this is my ninth year there.”

Jimmy left school at 16 and spent time working in a betting shop before becoming a Red Coat in a Butlins holiday camp at Mosney, Co Meath. He spent the following two summers at Butlins in Clacton, Essex; he also worked at Pontins holiday camps in Southport and Morecambe. It was while working in such a role that he discovered his comedic talents and began playing men’s clubs in Manchester and Liverpool. It was also at Pontins, that he met his future wife May.

“She’s from Dundonald. She was with her sisters, all working as waitresses. They can actually sing, two of them learnt to sing in harmony, so when we hooked up, and the summer season had finished, we went to Manchester.

“Manchester was one of the three areas in the 70s where there was so much work. There was cabaret work, which is to say, weekly shows with the great entertainers of the time like Tommy Cooper and Freddie Starr and Dave Alan. I learnt my trade warming up for those acts.”

Jimmy wrote his autobiography, Memoirs Of An Irish Comedian 'Come 'Ere There's More' - The Jimmy Cricket Story, during the pandemic and in it he takes readers on a journey through those years.

“It was just an amazing time to be learning your trade. They were the golden years, there's no question about it."

He also has fond memories of performing in America.

“I did two weeks in Branston, Missouri. I love the Americans .I think they love clean humour. They love visual humour and they love the Irish. I do a gag in my act. I say, ‘now folks, I'd like to sing a song about a plumber who says goodbye to his girlfriend. It's called ‘It's overflow’ When I did that over in America it got a roar. After the show I rang Mrs Cricket and I said ‘Darling, it's official, the plumber gag is global’.’’

Audiences, wherever they are, love Jimmy Cricket’s tomfoolery and clowning, his funny mannerisms, those letters from his mammy and relentless nonsense. His simple one-liners, easy slapstick and juggling impressions mean his comedy has always been massively inclusive and accessible.The material seems timeless - many of the quirks and gags he used in his heyday are still part of his stage show. His fans still find his jokes unashamedly funny and it takes a particular knack to pull this off after so many years. So what is the secret to his longevity?

“I put it down to my visual humour. That got me through the club days when audiences could be quite discerning. And the great thing about over here (England) is having the accent. For instance, up in Newcastle and Sunderland there was loads and loads of work, but they obviously love their own comedians and sometimes a Cockney comedian may not go as well, and maybe even a Liverpudlian, but because Irish is universal, the blarney, the illogical logic, you know, us Irish comics always did well, we never had that dialect problem.”

So has he ever been heckled? “I remember once in a club in Liverpool and I was setting up a routine and I said ‘you know there’s a lot of crime about’ and this fella shouted, ‘Yes. How much are you getting?’ I just thought well, what a great line.”

Does he have a routine before he goes on stage? "Yes, I pray. I suppose it's my Christian ethos. I just want the audience to be happy and if anybody's worried, or they’ve had a bereavement or something, I hope the show will lift them a bit. ​It’s great to be able to make people happy and laugh and forget their troubles for a while.”

Jimmy has four children, ‘Yes, I've got two of each – two Catholics and two Protestants’, he jokes, and four grandchildren. .

He says if his career in showbiz hadn’t worked out he’d probably have been a salesman.

“I do think I’d have been a salesman of some sort, I just like people and I would have enjoyed chinwagging. Or, maybe I would have owned a wee shop. I used to love going to the local shops in the 1950s. My mammy would send me for a loaf of bread or a bottle of milk. I'd always hear jokes on the radio and tell them to be shopkeepers and they would encourage me, they would laugh uproariously and say, ‘you should be in the stage, Jimmy’. That's all the encouragement I needed!"

And, he admits he was the class joker.

“I could do a few impressions of the teachers or fall over and that. You want to be popular, don't you? And if you can scare the bullies off as well with a joke, that's always a bonus.”

Outside of comedy and performing he enjoys walking and doing keep fit videos. He also loves lisenting to music. And every Monday morning he posts a joke on Twitter for his followers, just to cheer them up at the start of the working week.

The one I posted last Monday was ‘If you can't spell Armageddon, don't worry. It's not the end of the world!’. Yes, it’s a ‘groany’ one, but that's all part of the package,” he laughs.