Dave Spikey reveals the truth about his fall-out with Peter Kay and Phoenix Nights movie

Jan 29 2012 by Roz Laws, Sunday Mercury

“We were always work colleagues and never best mates. Afterwards we went in separate directions and lost touch, although we have spoken since.

“The last time was when I bumped into him at a TV studio and we had a chat. But that was a couple of years ago.”

Dave has said that one bone of contention was the fact that only Peter was nominated for a Writers’ Guild of Great Britain award for Phoenix Nights when all three writers should have been credited.

Set in a working men’s club, the Channel 4 sitcom ran for two series and has been a DVD bestseller. Dave played hapless compere and licensee Jerry St Clair.

Now Dave is more interested in new projects, including a BBC series he has written with Neil Fitzmaurice called Glitterball, about ballroom dancing.

“It’s set in a Blackpool hotel and is all about the rivalry and bitchiness in ballroom,” he says. “Neil and I are fighting over who will play the main character, a hotel manager, because he’s the only one who doesn’t dance.

“I’m also drawn to a one-eyed ex-crime scene photographer, who’s a rubbish dancer. I’m hoping a lot of it will be filmed from the waist up!”

Dave, 60, is in the middle of his Words Don’t Come Easy tour, which plays Birmingham’s Glee Club on February 29, as well as dates in Stafford and Leamington.

One particular Midland gig stands out for him – appearing on New Faces, filmed at the Birmingham Hippodrome, in 1988. He was part of a double act with Rick Sykes, called Spikey and Sykey.

“That’s not such a happy memory,” he grimaces. “We’d only ever done three shows and never had a paid gig. New Faces came to see someone else on the bill and offered us a place on the show. We jumped at it but we were very naive and took bad advice. We were persuaded to do some material we hadn’t performed before.

“We pretended we were a double act from Vladivostok on an exchange scheme with Little and Large. We did the whole thing in Russian accents and did a Cossack dance after every punchline.

“My mate was going to come on with a kettle on his head, saying ‘You told me to put the kettle on’. But then we thought it would be funnier if we said it like ‘Put the cattle on’, so he came on with a massive pantomime cow round his shoulders.

“I cringe now when I think about it.”