Dave Spikey: Overnight Success Tour: The Sands Centre, Carlisle, 2005
Peter Kay’s Phoenix Nights Live: Manchester Phones4U Arena, Manchester, 2015
Dave Spikey co-wrote and co-starred in Phoenix Nights with Peter Kay when it was broadcast to huge acclaim on Channel 4 in 2001 / 2002. The twelve perfectly crafted episodes set in a Bolton night club featured Spikey as Jerry St Clair, the inept compere. Spikey appeared as St Clair in the encore of his stage show Overnight Success Tour that I saw in my home city of Carlisle n 2005. The rest of the performance concentrated on the ex NHS haematologist’s medical career and his life growing up in the North West of Britain.
Spikey returned as Sinclair in 2015 for the live version of Phoenix Nights on stage. In fact, all the old gang returned – Kay, Spikey, Neil Fitzmaurice, Barbara Nice, Justin Moorhouse, Patrick McGuinness to name a few – for a new story involving the resurrection of the Phoenix Club yet turned inevitably into a wonderful nostalgia trip down memory lane with great comic actors performing as wonderful comedy characters.
