Thursday 21 May, 2009

Arts
UK

Tommy with his wife Hazel.

By Charles Gardner

LIFE’S a laugh with star comedian Tommy Cannon, who refuses to let his Christian commitment turn him into a religious misery.

Though passionate about the gospel message which changed his life, Tommy still believes in having a good laugh and the odd pint.

He and comedy partner Bobby Ball – the other half of Cannon and Ball – still tour the country with their show and also go round churches giving concerts mixing jokes with the stories of how they both became born-again Christians.

Bobby had already been a believer for seven years when Tommy, apparently unaffected until then, was invited to the dedication of Bobby’s grandson Christian at a church in South Wales.

“I didn’t want to go to the church in the first place,” 70-year-old Tommy told me at his home near York.

“I would sooner have played a game of golf. I had always found churches a bit religious – where you worry about coughing in the wrong place – and most of them did themselves no favours for me.

“But when the pastor said he felt there were people there who wanted the Lord in their life, I found myself putting my hand in the air in response to his appeal. I don’t know why. We were then asked to come forward to confirm our commitment and I don’t know how I managed to walk down, but I did.

“I went home not feeling any different, but two or three weeks later I did feel a bit different on the inside.

“Being a Christian is not being religious; far from it. You can still have a wonderful life; and you still make mistakes, but we have to rectify them.”

He recognises that many turn to God because they are going through bad times, but said: “My path to the Lord was splattered with laughter and funny moments.”

And even when he made his commitment that day in church, he didn’t cry – he laughed!

One of the effects of his conversion was that it helped mend a temporary rift with Bobby that resulted from the “mad, mad world” of being at the top with their television show.

They had been together since working on the shop floor as welders and, after struggling for 15 years on the club scene, they hit the big time. “At the height of our career we were virtually destroying it. But we came out of it and we’re closer now than we ever were.”

He feels the Lord may well have kept them together to do gospel work.

Tommy reckons double acts don’t get on in 75 per cent of cases, but it was different with them. “It was only a few years we had a difficult time together. Egos took over maybe. It became a mad, mad world when we hit TV and for some reason it took us the wrong way.”

But none of their guest artists ever knew this. “We knew we had to work together regardless.”

Bobby lives in Lytham St Anne’s, a golfing paradise which seems wasted on him. Tommy is the golfer, still a 14-handicapper, though he used to play off ten.

He reckons golf and snooker are the hardest sports (with darts possibly in there as well) as most others are dependent on reaction, rather than being pro-active. For the golfer, for example, everything depends on the individual player. But Tommy has never been able to get to grips with snooker, and has tremendous admiration for those at the top of the sport.

Meanwhile Cannon and Ball are as busy as ever, with a UK tour of seaside resorts coming up in July and a Jack and the Beanstalk pantomime in Lincoln later on.

When he is not treading the boards, Tommy and wife Hazel have their work cut out with their dog kennel business – Ridge House Kennels – which has been running successfully for the past five years.

“We’ve always had dogs and, with having all this land (14 acres) we felt it was silly not to make it pay. Most of our business comes from word of mouth.”

Born in Oldham, Lancashire, Tommy moved to Yorkshire with his wife Hazel many years ago and they have three children – Kelly, 18, Zoe, 16, and Luke, 13, with Tommy also having two daughters from a previous marriage.

Photo: Charles Gardner