Harry Enfield And No Chums! King's Theatre, Glasgow. Wednesday 25th March, 2026

I attended this gig on my own. The irony.

I expected a nostalgia-filled trip down memory lane, with Harry sharing clips from his various series, but that wasn't what we got. Yes, there were a couple of videos, but the screen was reserved mainly for photos of his family and his various comedy creations to illustrate the narrative of his life. Maybe he didn't want to pay the TV companies for the footage.   

He opened the show as King Charles III, wearing a crown (as per his merch). He thanked us, his subjects, for coming along, setting the tone with a joke about his brother Andrew. Then, having removed his headwear, he began recounting the tale of his life, from foetus to the present, peppering the show with stories about his characters, the people he worked with and the celebrities he encountered along the way. He also performed new sketches as some of his favourite creations. Harry's vocal mimicry is superb. He surprised us with a perfect Bob Mortimer and a snivelling Ricky Gervais, transforming the latter into Gollum, who fawned over Harry's talent. 

Things I learned:

He was one of four siblings, the only son. His mum developed post-natal depression after the birth of his youngest sister, and he took to gurning to try to lighten her spirits whenever she took one of her turns. He also ate coal and was a late developer.

He got sent to boarding school until age fifteen, being transferred to a regular comprehensive after he admitted to his parents that the Benedictine monk teachers regularly beat him.

Having passed his O Grades early, he got moved up a year, so he got to hang around with the big boys, who would take him to punk gigs in London, where he could nervously approach the likes of Joe Strummer post-gig to tell him how good they were.

At York University, he reluctantly went to the theatre with his girlfriend and had his eyes opened to the possibility of performing comedy. The double act they saw blew his mind with their Monty Python-style humour. He went on to form a double act called Dusty and Dick with Bryan Elsley (who later co-created Channel Four drama, "Skins"), took the show to Edinburgh, then headlined on the London comedy scene, with the likes of Paul Merton and Mullarkey and Myers in support (as in comedy legend Mike Myers). 

Paul Whitehouse was a mate who lived nearby on the Hackney estate (Charlie Higson was his next-door neighbour). Originally, a plasterer, Paul would latch onto character catchphrases, wringing the comedy from them. Harry would nick the best ones, writing them up into sketches. He paid Paul back by inviting him onto his show, and the rest is history.

Harry was friends with George Harrison. Once, when he was over at George's house, Paul McCartney popped over, and they all had a few drinks. The conversation devolved into bitterness as George related how his business manager had swindled Handmade Films out of millions, the ippy trippy hippy turning more scouse by the second, requiring Harry to step in with his "Calm down" catchphrase in the style of his Scouser character. Whether that actually happened is debatable, but it made a good story.

Harry had a home in Cornwall, but much as he loved the beautiful views, the village was full of London hoorahs. One day, driving through the village to visit a friend, the road was chock full of these posh snobs, so in the car, Harry shouted, "Get out of the bloody way", a phrase his young daughter repeated with the window wound down as they passed by, only to realise one of the poshers was the then Prime Minister, David Cameron. They had a right laugh until David also turned up at the friend's house. And that was how Harry became friends with David.

The follow-up to that story came when Harry wrote the poshers' sketch, in which the pair of gentlemen surmise that David is queer. The next time David phoned Harry, he introduced himself as "Hi, it's Queers". Lovely man, terrible politics.

They hired Kathy Burke for the TV show because her acting was so bloody good.

He wrote a series of sketches for a character called Patrick the Paedo Priest, but bottled it when it came to using them on TV. His then-ten-year-old son even suggested a sketch for him, using the character.      

  

The Q&A led to a wonderful anecdote about working with Vic and Bob as minor characters on a Comic Strip film. Bob wanted to leave for the day because he had no lines and was only required to be in the background, so he asked Harry to ask the director, Peter Richardson, for permission to leave. Peter declined, so as revenge, Bob placed a turd of his own making on top of the privet hedge that divided the two leads' trailers. The turd was allegedly visible in the shot during filming. If that's true, I wonder how long it will take for Bob to share that story on "Would I Lie To You?"

      

Harry is now sixty-five, too old to perform as Kevin the teenager, but not too old to give us a really funny night. 

"Loadsalaughs!" 

Ticket Price: £47.50 plus fees = £54.25 from GICF (on presale)

Blurb

From the meteoric rise of Loadsamoney, a Thatcherite Visionary, to the fury of Kevin the Teenager, Harry will reflect on 40 years of being in comedy and bring some of his favourite characters vividly back to life on stage.

Then it’s over to your questions: your chance to ask how it all works for him, what he’s most proud of, and what he says to the many who ask, “You wouldn’t be allowed to do your stuff today, would you?”

Don’t miss an unforgettable evening with a brilliantly silly and strikingly insightful comedian