During the first night of the stage show Early Doors, a wonderful, rib-rattling joke about Viagra had the woman sitting behind me in the Lowry in Salford laughing so hard I feared she might be in need of the theatre defibrillator. She was by no means alone. This is a two-hour cascade of comedy, a brilliant laughathon that left the entire audience wearing the broadest of grins.
For Craig Cash, the co-writer and one of the show’s stars, such a response is a mighty relief. Make others laugh is all he has ever wanted to do. But after losing the three people who had inspired his comedy, he was not sure he was still capable of raising a smile. Across a traumatic 18-month spell between 2014 and 2016 his father, his father-in-law and his long-term writing partner Caroline Aherne, with whom he had created the television institution The Royle Family, all died. And he was left emotionally shell-shocked.
‘It was hard to laugh again for a good while, never mind write anything that would make others laugh,’ says Craig Cash about the loss of his Royle Family co-star Caroline Aherne
‘My dad and my father-in-law had both really informed my writing. My dad was basically Jim Royle,’ he says. ‘And Caroline was, well, Caroline. It was devastating they’d all gone. It was hard to laugh again for a good while, never mind write anything that would make others laugh. That’s why it feels so good to hear the reaction tonight.’
He pauses, his soft, lugubrious voice, so familiar as the narrator of Channel 4’s Gogglebox momentarily cracking with emotion.
‘She’d tell you if she thought something wasn’t working. She was never one to hold back. To have heard her laugh would have meant we’d got it right.’
Cash first met Aherne while working on a Manchester pirate radio station in the late Eighties. She would appear on his show as a variety of unlikely characters. And when her chat-show character Mrs Merton was picked up as a television series in 1993, Aherne asked him to help with the script and their friendship grew.
‘She was godmum to our kids and she’d take them to the pound shop, get a basketload of items, then make them go up with each one in turn and ask how much it was.’ He chuckles at the memory of Aherne’s mischief.
It was the process of watching telly – Cash says Aherne liked nothing more than sitting down in front of Jeremy Kyle – that had sparked The Royle Family, the story of a working-class Manchester family who were permanently glued to the box.
‘It all began because Caroline loved the stories I’d tell about my dad, how tight he was, how he was obsessed by the immersion heater, terrified of someone leaving a light on in the kitchen. She was fascinated with the minutiae of that, the way he’d boss the telly, make my mum’s life a misery. But the thing about Dad was that however miserable he made her, he’d always be able to laugh my mum back into liking him again. Which was the same with Jim Royle. God, I miss him.’
Not that it was easy to convince others of the idea’s value. After being turned down by every TV channel, it needed Aherne to issue threats of not doing another series of The Mrs Merton Show for it to be finally commissioned. ‘Basically she blackmailed them,’ he smiles.
Cash made his performing debut in the series, playing Aherne’s put-upon boyfriend Dave, and despite the broadcasters’ reticence, the show proved hugely popular. The episode in which Nana (Liz Smith) dies is frequently cited as one of the finest moments of British television comedy. And it was that episode Cash feels best exemplifies his approach to humour.
‘I do like a minor chord, I kind of enjoy a bit of sadness,’ he says. ‘When you’ve had pathos you’re ready to laugh. You need to feel people’s pain in order to be happy for them when things go right.’
Early Doors first screened in 2003 and is a gentle, kind-hearted character comedy – all distilled from Cash’s drinking experience – and love letter to a lost institution: the local
Craig Cash and Phil Mealy in a new stage version of Early Doors. Cash says: ‘When I was growing up, the local was a really important community asset’
As Cash embarks on the play’s sell-out tour, he wishes there was one laugh audible above all the others: that of Caroline Aherne
‘I do like a minor chord, I kind of enjoy a bit of sadness,’ Cash says. ‘When you’ve had pathos you’re ready to laugh’
Only 25 episodes of The Royle Family were made before Aherne left for Australia in search of a new start. While she was gone, Cash pursued an idea with his old mate Phil Mealey about a pub in Manchester and Early Doors was born. It first screened in 2003 and is a gentle, kind-hearted character comedy – all distilled from Cash and Mealey’s drinking experience – and love letter to a lost institution: the local. ‘I’d love to encourage people to drink more,’ he says. ‘Well, be more sociable in their drinking. When I was growing up, the local was a really important community asset. And it’s a brilliant setting for comedy. It’s at the heart of every soap – Coronation Street, EastEnders – it’s where your characters gather.’
As he embarks on the play’s sell-out tour, he wishes there was one laugh audible above all the others: that of Caroline Aherne.
He says: ‘I comfort myself by thinking of her watching us from heaven with a packet of 20 Bensons and a bottle of champagne, heckling.’
‘Early Doors’ is on tour until October 7. Tickets available at britishtheatre.com