So what has Jasper Carrott been up to since his last tour 16 years ago? ‘What the hell did I do?’ the Brummie comedian asks CHARLES HUTCHINSON

JASPER Carrott has not toured for ten, 12 or 16 years, depending on which press release comes to hand for Monday’s Stand Up And Rock show at the Grand Opera House, York.

Let’s ask the man himself. “It’s 16 years.1998. When I look back, I’m thinking what the hell did I do?” he says in that puzzled Brummie accent that was once so familiar on the nation’s television screens.

“Well, I did corporate work; a fair bit of that in Birmingham; I played the NEC; hosted the Golden Balls game show for ITV; did a lot of charity work; but then the idea for a new live show all kicked off with my very best friend, Bev Bevan, The Move and ELO’s drummer, who I’ve known since school.

“We’d never toured but we used to have a group called Belch!: Bev, me, guitarist Tony Iommi and Phil Tree, who played in Roy Wood’s Wizzard. The original show we did was for a New Year’s Eve party, then a very close friend said could we do a show for him and it started to escalate from there.”

Jasper has known Bev for nearly 60 years and Tony, his next-door neighbour but one, for 50, and so Belch continued to “occasionally raise its ugly head” for shows. He branched out too, presenting Rock With Laughter shows at the NEC with big musical acts and last year he did 20 shows in Birmingham with a band going out under the name of Made In Brum.

“It was remarkably successful for all sorts of reasons and the band thought, ‘Come on, let’s do more shows’, but I said, ‘We can’t do that just in Birmingham again; let’s expand it to a Stand Up And Rock show.”

As the saying goes, It does what it says on the tin. “The idea came to me a few years ago. A show with a few of my talented mates that mixes my stand-up and fantastic music,” says Jasper.

And so Jasper Carrott and The Bev Bevan Band did six shows in February to try out the name. It worked: they sold out in record time. “Now we’re doing another 48 this autumn and when we get to York we’ll have about six still to do,” says Jasper, who can look forward to a full house in York too.

As much as 12 to 18 months have gone into preparing the shows. “I get very involved these days with the behind-the-scenes organising, which takes up a lot of time before they go live, and it’s great to be involved in the production of a show and see it develop,” says Jasper.

“I’ve had to publicise it well to let people know that I’m back and it’s not just me in the show.”

In the Bev Bavan Band are drummer Bev; Geoff Turton, lead singer of the Rockin’ Berries; Trevor Burton, founder of The Move, the first band played on BBC Radio 1; and Joy Strachan Brain the lead singer from the folk band Quill.

“I open it with half an hour of stand-up, then I introduce the band and any guests for their first set; in the second half, it’s half an hour of me, then more music with the finale of ELO songs, because Bev is there and the impact of Mr Blue Sky is always amazing. We finish with The Move’s Blackberry Way, which everyone knows, everyone sings.”

Jasper’s performing roots lie in folk music – he started his own folk club in 1969, where he performed songs and MC duties – and he reflects on those past days as he takes to the microphone again in his latest tour .

“Fortunately I was never very good at singing or playing; if I was 20 per cent better, I’d never be where I am now,” he says. “I was like the Birmingham folk club version of Tom Lehrer [the American satirist ], who was a massive influence on me.”

In past days, Jasper’s live shows would run to two and a half hours, but he has changed the format, giving his comedy a tighter focus. “It’s all new material; there’s a bit of everything, including a couple of old routines that I’ve re-scripted, such as a Sixties one I used to do. As I’ll be 70 on my next birthday, there’s a fair amount of talking about getting old. I have six grand children now; ten years ago, I didn’t have any.”

Jasper says the comic rhythm of his shows has changed too.

“When you do two and a half hours, you have to bring the audience up and bring them down, and bringing them down is the difficult part; you have to address more difficult subjects,” he says. “But now I do two half-hour slots, with no really gentle periods, so it has to be hard-hitting and it’s much more concise.

“I ramble less! It’s still the essence but a bit more immediate.”

Maybe he will just have to ride his old 1975 Funky Moped a little faster, but the new mix of mirth and music is definitely working, reveals Jasper. “The joke is, we could get 100 per cent standing ovations if 100 per cent of the audience could still stand.”

• Jasper Carrott and The Bev Bevan Band, Stand Up And Rock, Grand Opera House, York, Monday, 7.30pm; selling out very fast. Box office: 0844 871 3024.