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Interviews
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Joe Pasquale - walking about with a dead cow Sheila Connor talks to the stand-up comedian now touring in The Producers Joe Pasquale is writing his autobiography, The Life and Times of a Stand Up Chameleon. Too young at forty five you might think to have enough experiences to write about, but he has packed enough into his life so far to fill several books – not to mention fathering five children – so far!
We met at Woking where Mel Brooks’ The Producers is soon to begin its national tour and Joe, taking over from John Gordon Sinclair, is to play the part of accountant Leo Bloom who points out to producer Bialystock that a well organised flop could make more money than a successful show. Their plans go horribly, but hilariously, wrong.
Joe has had no formal acting training “in any way shape or form” and seems a happy-go-lucky guy who takes life as it comes, but he is very serious about his work and makes careful preparation before embarking on anything new, so he is taking singing and dancing lessons even before starting rehearsals. He also prepared himself well in advance for his stint in the jungle. More of that later.
“I sing in my act,” says the comedian, “but I’ve never sung in a musical before – one of the few things I haven’t done.” There truly isn’t much that he hasn’t yet attempted - a clerical assistant, a ‘humper’ (meat carrier) at Smithfield meat market, spot welder for Fords at Dagenham, garage forecourt work, a labourer on a building site – the list goes on. It was while at Smithfield that he saw Russ Abbot in a show called Little Me and was inspired to begin his show business career. “I decided that’s what I wanted to do. I don’t want to cart a dead cow on my back any more. I want to get into show business, so I got a job at a holiday camp calling bingo and refereeing wrestling. For me, compared to carrying a dead cow it was brilliant, so that‘s what started me off, and twenty four years later here I am – in a musical with Russ Abbot, and the first time I’ve ever worked with him so I’m extremely excited. Perhaps it’s not as easy as that, but if I hadn’t seen Russ I might still be walking about with that dead cow. This is a lot more fun.”
Beginning as an immensely successful movie (Mel Brooks’ first) the musical show followed, in spite of Brooks’ misgivings that it wouldn’t work on stage. It not only worked, but there’s now a movie of the stage show…..this could go on an on!
Pasquale had seen the show several times even before he knew he was going to be in it, and obviously loves every bit of it. “Any comic worth his salt is a big fan of Brooks, so to be given a chance to do his words is just brilliant. He wrote all the songs, music, the lyrics – the lot. The show is so well scripted and well crafted and it has to be done the way it’s directed. They want me to sing to a certain standard and in a certain way. The script has to be the script – but you can put your own spin on it.” Brooks, with original director Susan Stroman, will be coming over to see the show so there’s an even bigger incentive to achieve perfection, not that I think Pasquale would be satisfied with anything less.
As well as singing and dancing lessons Joe is working on his American accent: “…because it’s all based in New York and you can’t go out sounding like a South Londoner”. It is his voice, however, (slightly squeaky) that appears to be his trademark, although he can see nothing unusual about it, and certainly in general conversation it is perfectly ordinary. It must be in the excitement of performing that he goes up an octave, and it was probably the voice which first attracted attention during one of his five Royal Variety performances.
“It was at my first performance in ninety three that I met the producer of the Henson Company (The Muppets), and it was ten years later that he rang me up out of the blue and said, "What are you doing next week, and can you get out of it for a couple of days?....... We’re doing the twenty fifth anniversary of the Muppet show. I’ve shown them your tapes and they think you’re a human Muppet."
"I asked who’s in the show and they said ‘a couple of locals’. Well, this is Hollywood and the locals are Brooke Shields and Jon Voight. You look back at the stuff you’ve done and you go from calling bingo to sharing a trailer with Jon Voight. It’s amazing really!
“In this business people say ‘look at the pressures – all that drink and drugs that’s available to you’, but that’s not pressure. Being a brain surgeon and trying not to sneeze when you’re operating – that’s pressure!”
It was in 2004 that his agent talked him into taking part in the reality TV show I’m a Celebrity – Get me Out of Here, at the end of which he was crowned King of the Jungle, so his advance preparation paid off. He began by going on a strict diet for several weeks beforehand, so his system would be used to the meagre rations doled out on the programme, and he even went to a psychiatrist to discover his strengths and weaknesses to help him get along with the diverse people who would be sharing his life for a few weeks. “I absolutely loved it……..it was like being in the scouts again, and it was great to be away from ‘phone and computer for a few weeks. The worst thing was being in a coffin with forty rats – I didn’t enjoy that at all, but you get a great three course meal at the end of it.”
After all the changes in his life I asked if he had finally settled on his career. “No, no, no. To be honest I learnt to fly last year and if I could go back twenty years I would have done that. I would do that for a living at the drop of a hat.” It could be a case of - watch this space!
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