Day the laughter almost stopped for one funny man

There are fewer than 15 minutes to curtain-up; costumes to be pulled on, make-up to be applied.

But it's all right: The Grumbleweeds still have time to chat. After 37 years in the business, this is another normal day. Besides, says Graham Walker, the one with the least hair, "we're celebrating - we've just been voted the best pantomime in the street".

These are good times for the perennial Yorkshire comics. Not only is theirs not the only pantomime in the street (Cannon and Ball are playing a few hundred yards away) but after several years in which they have been put through the proverbial showbusiness mill, they have finally come out smiling.

No-one is more glad of this than Graham - because last summer they told him he had possibly come within two days of losing his life. As it was, he needed a quadruple heart bypass. "Two days off it, that's what they reckoned," he says, his voice not now betraying even a hint that anything had been wrong.

The scare came during the Grumbleweeds' summer season at entertainment's holy grail, the Grand Theatre, Blackpool. Graham was forced to duck out for five weeks - a life sentence by his standards.

"I'm not just steeped in showbusiness, you see - I'm poached in it," he says.

His lunch today has consisted of eight oat cakes and half a pound of cheese: proof, he says, that at 54, he's taking his new, healthy regime seriously. His colleagues concur. "He's as fit as a butcher's dog," says straight man Tony Jo, with characteristic straightforwardness.

Jo's arrival as third Grumbleweed, a couple of years ago, had followed another blow.

Maurice Lee, the bearded, Guiseley-based guitarist who had been an essential part of the act since 1963, had given his partners a year's notice that he planned to retire.

"I'll be honest, I didn't see it coming at all," says Robin Colvill, the trio's impressionist, famed for his remarkably lifelike Jimmy Savile takeoff.

"But showbusiness was never in Maurice's blood, although he enjoyed it and he was brilliant at it. He was always happy just sitting and painting, and walking. Whereas if Graham and I have a week off, we're tearing our hair out to get on to a stage."

Maurice was 52 when he decided to quit the road and turn his attention to producing water colours. He acquired premises at Hawes in the Dales and hung up his spangly band jacket for the last time.

The 'Weeds had survived changes of line-up before: brothers Albert and Carl Sutcliffe had gone in 1988. But this was different. Maurice had been, in Robin's words, "the hub of the wheel", without whom the others could not work.

"Even so, there was never any question that Robin and I would carry on," says Graham.

In truth, Maurice had made the decision for them, by lining up his own replacement. Tony Jo had been the band's road manager in the early Seventies, but had yearned for a career on the other side of the footlights.

Maurice offered to manage him and launched him as a stand-up comic. He made his television debut on a revival of The Comedians in 1983, exactly half an hour before the Grumbleweeds' own TV series was launched.

"The big jump was going from being funny to being a straight man," says Tony. "At least I had the best clown in the business on one side of me and the best impressionist in the business on the other."

Robin was clearly shaken by his old friend's decision to quit. "I must confess it was very strange for a long time not working with him and getting used to someone different," he says. "But there was never any question of me following him into retirement."

In fact, Robin had already decided as much a few years earlier, when, in what was to be the first of the dark clouds to gather over the band, he fell dangerously ill with Legionnaire's Disease. He had contracted it during a stint entertaining the troops in Central America, and the prognosis upon his arrival back in Britain was not encouraging.

"They told me, 'If you survive at all, you won't work for a year'," he recalls.

Back home in Calverley, however, he turned his self-taught hypnotist's skills on himself, and was back on stage in eight weeks.

Today, as they drop the curtain on Aladdin in Stoke, and look forward to another summer headlining in Blackpool, the 'Weeds are prepared to resume their familiar life on the road.

They've probably traipsed a million miles around Britain since that first gig in a Headingley cellar, 37 years ago. Next Friday they'll dock close to home at the Victoria Theatre, Halifax.

"We're on our fourth generation of audience now," says Robin. "And I'm pleased to say we're still drawing big crowds and making good money. Which is good, because I'd hate to be on a downward spiral, playing the clubs where we learned our trade in the first place."

Television, says Graham, is the next hurdle. It's more than a decade since their Saturday night series on ITV ended, a period which has seen a marked change of style in television entertainment.

"But there's a lot of variety shows coming back," he says. "We did Jim Davidson's Generation Game the other week and that won us a few friends at the BBC.

"It's all to the good, because if you've got regular exposure on TV, you can put bums on seats in the theatre.

"People think that just because you're not on the box you've retired."

But retirement, he repeats, is not an option for the Grumbleweeds just now.

THE Grumbleweeds Laughter Show is at the Victoria Theatre, Halifax, next Friday, February 11. Tickets are bookable on 01422 351158.

David Behrens

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