Barry Cryer

A man accidentally runs over a cockerel on a country lane and kills it.He goes to the farm and says to the farmer’s wife ‘I’ve killed your cockerel - I’d like to replace it.’ The woman replies ‘Please yourself - the hens are round the back.’  Barry Cryer’s favourite joke, and typical of the hundreds and hundreds he wrote in a long career as a writer and performer.

Barry was born in Leeds in 1935, and studied English literature at Leeds University - but he dropped out after a year..his frenetic social life caused him to fail his first-year exams.

But his comedic talents in a student show had been noticed ,and was offered a weeks’ work at the famous City Varieties music hall in the city, before heading to London to work at the Windmill theatre - doing six shows a day, telling jokes between the legendary nude revues.

He suffered bad bouts of eczema though, and unable to perform he moved into writing, first for Danny la Rue, then for David Frost where he worked alongside John Cleese and Marty Feldman.

Barry soon established himself as one of the country’s top comedy-writing talents - providing material for Dave Allen, Les Dawson, Frankie Howerd and Kenny Everett.

He was one of the main writers for the Two Ronnies and with John Junkin he wrote 12 Morecambe and Wise shows during their time on ITV.

And he returned to performing in theatres all over the country and on tv shows such as the Good Old Days; he presented the ITV quiz show Jokers’ Wild and was a regular panellist on radio’s I’m sorry I haven’t a clue.

Barry died in 2022 at the age of 86 - and in his later years there were two moments of poignancy - the student who flunked his exams was given honorary degrees by Leeds’ two universities…a tribute to a man David Mitchell described as ‘ a bringer of joy, who never stopped being delighted by comedy.’