A laughing matter

Barry Cryer, defiantly old-fashioned in a dinner suit and red-velvet waistcoat, sits in a director’s chair and addresses his audience as if they are devoted friends. Most of them are: every joke he tells is met with affectionate laughter of a kind given only to national treasures. Butterfly Brain, which is currently touring, is structured around the alphabet, but each letter is simply a starting point for masterly flurries of unconnected comedy.

Some of these, such as ‘My Old Man’s a Dustman’ sung to the tune of ‘Heartbreak Hotel’, come directly from I’m Sorry I Haven’t a Clue, on which Cryer has appeared ‘since before sound’. Others are anecdotes collected across a lifetime of listening to backstage stories. Most are jokes he wrote for others. (The great irony of Cryer’s career is that audience members often mutter that he stole a certain joke from some iconic comedian — Tommy Cooper, Bob Hope, Eric Morecambe — for whom he in fact wrote it.)

Few of the jokes are new, but that is irrelevant. Cryer has a talent invaluable to old comics: the ability to make a punchline you already know seem surprising. Sighs of delighted recognition greet the opening words of his most beloved gags and, when he leaves the stage, the calls for an encore are loud and earnest. Cryer is now so old, he says, he no longer buys green bananas. There may be few chances left to see him onstage and on form. You should seize this one.