‘Out of touch’ comic to go down memory lane

TONY HAWKS is known for many things, chief among them Eighties hit song Stutter Rap by Morris Minor and the Majors, appearances on panel shows including Have I Got News For You, Just A Minute, his Radio 4 show Comedy Controller and his book (and later film) Round Ireland with a Fridge.

However, the comedian, who will perform at the Honk! live comedy night at the Relais Henley next month, finds he is repeatedly contacted by people mistaking him for his near-namesake, the American skateboarder, Tony Hawk.

Luckily, he can see the funny side and has built it into his act.

“I’ll start off with a little section talking about how I get confused with Tony Hawk the skateboarder,” he says, “so there’s a little section there where I read out various replies I’ve written to various people over the years.

“So, I’ll do that and then I’ll do a chunk of stand-up and I will bring my guitar and do a little bit of musical comedy as well.

“I still get two or three messages a week that are meant for Tony Hawk and, sometimes, surprisingly from television researchers trying to book him. You kind of think, how good are you at your job that you haven’t noticed that I’m not that man?”

Tony’s birth surname was Hawksworth.

“It’s a strange story,” he says. “When I was joining Equity, round about that time, I had a record that I was bringing out in Germany and the bloke from the record company could not say ‘Hawksworth’.

“So, as I joined Equity I joined as ‘Hawks’ and the record never even came out in Germany but I was kind of stuck with it.

“I got used to it, in a way. I started to quite enjoy the fact that you had another name for when you were being professional, because there are two sides to people in a way — well, we’re multi-faceted, but this is me when I’m arsing around and pretending to be whatever and then there’s the person that settles the bills and does the boring stuff in life.”

The 64-year-old, who splits his time between living in London and Bridford, near Exeter, Devon, recently came back to doing live gigs after a bit of a hiatus.

Tony says: “I hadn’t really been doing much stand-up and then I was asked to do something about six months ago, to do an hour.

“So, I went through everything that I’ve done over the years and found that I rather enjoyed it.

“Some of the stuff I hated, but I changed it round and practised it, what I used to do years ago, pace around the living room like a lunatic, and then went and did it and it went well. It then started me thinking about writing new, up-to-date bits.

“In the old days, I carried a little notebook around with me and any time anything popped into my head that you thought could work from daily life, you’d then try it out somewhere and then work it in.

“Now, of course, you’ve always got a phone on you so your notes fill up on that and then a little bit happens on the night.

“If you get off to a great start and you’re really enjoying it and you think the audience are right on your wavelength, you’re more bold and you do all the things, try the things out that you’re not 100 per cent sure of.

“If you’re not, you drop them all, like a coward.

“I suppose it’s like being on a little wobbly boat and if you overdo it, you’ll just fall in and then you’ll drown, so you learn. If everything feels secure, you go for stuff, then the boat gets a bit wobbly and then you go back to the middle again.

“When I was invited back to do a show, I hadn’t done any comedy in a comedy club for, I don’t know, 20 years. Then this girl that went on before me was doing material about how difficult it was turning 30 and my first line of the night was to come on and say that she’d nicked all my material, but it was a bit sad.

“To be honest, I think me being on the bill had made it a little bit difficult for her because a lot of people came that liked listening to Radio 4 and they’d all completely forgotten what it was like to turn 30 as well, so she was thinking, this usually goes better than this, what has gone wrong? When I first started doing comedy, the mainstream comedians were your Bob Monkhouses. It was new to be getting up and doing material and things that you’d thought of and you were talking about.

“Everything was just a string of old jokes. They were good, a lot of them, and the people were funny, but it just didn’t exist. It existed in America but it didn’t exist in the UK.

“I imagine that if I’d gone to a comedy club and seen somebody my age as I am now performing, I would have thought, why have they let this 104-year-old on the bill? But I think it’s much broader.

“Funnily enough, I did a television show, must have been 25 years ago maybe and Bob Monkhouse and I were both on the same panel of this thing.

“He was really nice, I have to say, but he said to me at one point, ‘You’re all really lucky, you can be you’, and I said, ‘What do you mean?’ and he said, ‘Well, I’m not me. I go on and I’m this sort of slick customer, whatever, and I’ve got this glib thing, I mean it’s not really me’.

“A lot of people when they’re on stage do have a bit of schtick, like Jack Dee isn’t really as morose as he pretends to be. Generally speaking, what we started to do was kind of wander on and say, ‘Life’s **** at the moment and I haven’t got any money’ or whatever and just tell the truth and try to find the humour within it, rather than pretend to be married and then moan about your mother-in-law.

“I think what happened was it was pretty politically correct when I started and then it lost all that, then it started to come back again.

“I’m a bit out of touch with what’s been going on, so I’m just going to try and come along and do the funniest things that I’ve thought of over the last 40 years.”

While this is Tony’s first visit to the town, he is hoping he might see a familiar face.

“I’m not sure I’ve even ever been to Henley but I worked quite a bit with Tim Rice a while ago and I know that he’s moved back there, I think he’s in Hambleden.

“Whether I can get Tim to come along, he might just feel a little bit conspicuous in the comedy club now that he’s hit 80…” Also on the bill at Honk! are Kate-Lois Elliott, Evaldas Karosas and Henley born and bred comic, Kitty Pilgrim-Morris.

Kate-Lois Elliott was nominated for a British Writers’ Guild award in 2022 and is one half of The Real Witches, with co-writer Chloe Partridge (and she insists her name is not double-barrelled).

Lithuanian comic Evaldas Karosas has won many accolades since moving to the UK, including Beat The Frog world series 2019 winner.

Kitty Pilgrim-Morris, theatre-maker and founder of Red Patch Productions, was critically acclaimed for The Trying Rooms, a double bill at this year’s Camden and Birmingham Fringe festivals, comprising tragicomedy The Agony of Definition, as well as DAUGHTERED, where she was joined on stage by her mother.

• The Honk! February live comedy night takes place at the Relais Henley, on Thursday, February 27 at 7.30pm (doors open at 7pm). Tickets cost from £11.55 via linktr.ee/honkhot