An expert on Royal weddings and a roving reporter on The One Show, Gyles Brandreth is a very busy man. And now he’s gearing up for a stand-up tour. Kirstie Brewer finds herself engaged in conversation
Few people wear as many hats – or woolly jumpers – as Gyles Brandreth. Not only has he sashayed his way from show
business to politics and back again – he has also written for nearly every national newspaper, had a wealth of acclaimed
books published and broken a couple of world records to boot. Now he is about to bring his new stand-up tour, The One to One Show – a rollercoaster ride of anecdotes about the notable people he has met in the worlds of show business,
politics and beyond – to Surrey.
With so many competing interests, I was none too surprised when it took me three attempts to have a proper chat with the man in question. The first attempt was scuppered by the announcement of Prince William’s engagement to Kate Middleton. A frenzied phone call from Gyles confirmed that, as a confidant who has written several biographies on the royals, he had been drafted into The One Show to comment, and was speeding towards the studio that very second. “Such is the nature of the beast,” he said apologetically with a vaudeville flourish. 
Twenty four hours later, when we finally manage a proper conversation, Gyles tells me he is delighted by the news of the imminent union. “Kate and William are of the old school like Queen Elizabeth and Prince Philip; they do things properly and this could well be a royal marriage which doesn’t end in divorce!” he says.
“Winston Churchill said Queen Elizabeth’s marriage to the Duke of Edinburgh was ‘a splash of colour on the hard road we have to travel’. I think this befits Kate and William’s engagement
too.”
Never one to miss the opportunity to make a joke, he adds larkishly, “and Kate has waited so long that she knows exactly what’s in store – she knows she is marrying a man who will be bald.”
Brandreth could be considered the ultimate insider on Royal relationships; his biographies Charles & Camilla: Portrait of a Love Affair and Philip & Elizabeth: Portrait of a Marriage were the first of their kind and allowed Brandreth
unprecedented access. He now visits Buckingham Palace regularly but things weren’t always as comfortable.
“I used to think that when royalty leave the room it is rather like getting a seed out of your tooth – it can be a little bit awkward and a relief when it’s over. It isn’t easy to make small talk with the Queen. There’s an invisible moat around her. I talk more about that in my show.”
“Prince Philip is another character who appears in my show; I first met him some
30 or more years ago and have always liked and admired him enormously. I found him to be very different to the caricature people portray. He can be very amusing- he once said to me, ‘If ever you see a man opening the car door for his wife, it’s either a new car or a new wife’. He isn’t always easy but his story is fascinating.”
Suffice to say, the inimitable Gyles isn’t short on such tales and was only too happy to share them with an entralled public in his one man comedy act ‘The One to One Show’, at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival last year. Following a huge sell out success, Gyles is now taking his unique blend of wit, wordplay and outrageous name-dropping all over the UK.
Gyles celebrates the 1000th episode of Countdown
Brandreth has had varying success at pleasing crowds; he failed spectacularly in the 1990s as an MP for the city of Chester. Always quick to send himself up before somebody else does he explains;“I was a conservative MP- until the people spoke. And they spoke in no uncertain terms. My wife says at least when I lost my seat I managed to bring the entire community together.”
He was also a government whip and lord commissioner of the treasury – the last cheque he signed was for the princely sum of 136 billion pounds. The wicked ways of Westminster are all divulged in his show, as are his stories about David Cameron whom “he met at the treasury as a lad and liked enormously.”
Presumably as an MP he wore a different hat to the one which permits prancing about onstage in suspenders or showing Michael Jackson your moonwalk? “Oh yes, I was a respectable MP and in case you’re wondering I didn’t fiddle my expenses- I dug my own moat and my wife paid for all her own DVDs.”
Against my will, I am finding it hard not to warm to this debonair king of boardgames. Indeed, he has a charming gift of making me feel like I am the sole most important thing on earth. Contrived or otherwise, he certainly knows how to work an audience. I appear to be getting a sneak preview of the show; as he showers me with anecdotes about everyone from Michael Jackson to the Queen. And let’s face, it; he’s got a lot to draw on.
Gyles the teddy bear enthusiast
He is a former resident of Dictionary Corner on Countdown, a regular on Radio 4′s Just A Minute, a familiar face on QI and Have I Got News for You and a roving reporter on BBC1’s The One Show.
Never one to rest on his laurels, he is writing the fourth in his series of Victorian murder mysteries and overseeing their adaptation for TV. Oh, and did I mention he is the former Monopoly champion of Europe and President of the Association of British Scrabble Players?
In fact, Gyles Brandreth is so firmly imprinted upon the national consciousness that it’s hard to feel indifferent towards
him. For a man who achieved notoriety from a single term as a Tory MP and an inclination to wear comedy cardigans, he divides opinion like a river of Marmite. But it’s difficult to abstain from being at least a little curious about a man with such a colourful career history. Yet, he rejects the charge that he is a bit of a Gyles of all trades. “The three most potent words in the English language are ‘don’t dabble; focus’- I wear different hats on different days but I always do things properly,” he insists.
Debbie Reynolds with Gyles on The One Show
In fact it is this insistence on doing things properly that’s caused him to return to comedy; forty years after he gave his first, dubious stand-up performance. Having gained a little notoriety as a primetime television presenter, he fancied himself as “god’s gift to comedy” and asked his agent to book him a stand up gig. Age 20, he found himself walking into a Mancunian working man’s club – to support none other than Bernard Manning. The words ‘baptism of fire’ spring to mind.
“Bernard took one look at me and thought, this lad is wet behind the ears,” he tells me in his unmistakable, fruity voice. But his comedy routine wasn’t greeted with the boos or abuse he had anticipated; “The audience just gazed up at the stage, mesmerised. I was five minutes into my routine when I realised that Bernard had put two topless go-go girls directly behind me and they were gyrating slowly in time to my jokes.”
Did he learn anything from possibly the most offensive man in the history of British comedy? “Bernard Manning told totally unacceptable jokes… but he was very, very funny. I learnt the power of clutching an audience, looking them in the eye and feeling the fear but doing it anyway.”
To read the original article click the following link: Gyles Brandreth, Surrey Downs Magazine Jan 2011
Click here The One to One Show’s tour dates
