When the Fix heard that Lionel Blair and Paul Foot were in a play together this seeemd like the perfect opportunity to get the lord of the dance and head of the guild to have a conversation. Join them and the Fix as they discuss Sammy Davie Jnr, the 1st empror of china and show buisness.

Lionel Blair: It was love at first sight!

Harry Deansway: Are there any similarities, between you?

Lionel Blair: There can't be similarities, I'm a little bit older than him.

Paul Foot: Your career has lasted a bit longer... than my life.

Lionel Blair: Yes. I just celebrated sixty years in show business.

Lionel Blair: I started when I was three, I was very young you know. I've been lucky enough to have done everything... I'm not into ballet. I'm not that sort at all. It kind of bores me. I know I shouldn't say that, but it does.

Harry Deansway: How did you start out in showbiz?

Lionel Blair: Oh gosh! I was a munchkin in the Wizard of Oz, in a pantomime. While I was in that, somebody sent me for an audition which was for a play, to play a little boy. I went along and I got the part. And then, for the first part of my life, I was a luvvy, an actor. So until the voice broke, and until I was too old for little boy parts, I was growing and too young for grown up parts. So, I became a dancer. And I went from thing to thing. All sheer luck. You know, like I was a television dancer, and I did a few stage shows too, but I was a television dancer and the choreographer wanted to leave and it was a series. He said to the director, "I've got a show to do in Paris and I've got to leave."They said "Ok, we'll release you from your contract, but you must find another choreographer for us." And he said, "I think Lionel Blair can do it" and he went - it was Michael Mills who did Some Mothers Do Ave Em, the director said, "Yes, I think he could too." And that's how I became a choreographer. I've never had any training.

Paul Foot: Did you train as a dancer though?

Lionel Blair: No, I never trained as a dancer.

Paul Foot: Oh, you're just self taught?

Lionel Blair: I just self taught. Yeh, in the kitchen or watching Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers. On linoleum. And then a lot of gigs came up, weddings bar mitvahs,... And then I went into show business.

Harry Deansway: How did your journey start, Paul?

Paul Foot: Well,... When I was at school I was very very boring. I studied science and maths.I never went to parties. I had friends, but they were only other friends in the maths class with their boring conversations about equations and things. I didn't have any actual proper friends. I didn't meet girls or anything, or go to parties. Then when I got to about 15 or 16, or maybe 17, I think people realised that I could be a bit funny. I used to get up in maths class. My first performances were in maths classes. I would get up and do some silly poem or something and everyone would laugh. Then when I got to University everyone said "Ooh, you must go on stage and try stand-up comedy, And then I had this image in my mind that I would do it just once, once in my life, just so I could say I had done it. I mean, i didn't plan to do it as a career, I always thought i was going to be an accountant. I was dong a maths degree at the time. So I did this thing in a little cellar in front of about thirty people. I was so nervous that my heart nearly stopped before I went on. I thought I was going to die. Even though I had a microphone, no one could hear me for the first few minutes, because my voice was so quiet, I could hardly say anything. Then, I started saying things and people started laughing. I didn't even know why, I was just saying things. They didn't make any sense to me and people started falling about laughing. When I came off, you know it was a good performance, but it wasn't brilliant, but it was funny, and I just knew immediately that that was going to be my job forever. All my friends said "Well, it was alright, but it wasn't that great, you're doing a maths degree" and I said "No, that's my career". I lost interest in maths after that. I just started doing open spots in pubs around London and just built my way up, and then down, and then up again, from there.

Lionel Blair: We've all been there. Ups and downs. You could have been another Carol Vorderman, if you'd stuck to maths.

Paul Foot: Well that's not maths, that's arithmetic. There's a difference.

Lionel Blair: Oh, is there?

Paul Foot: Mathematicians pride themselves on being very bad at arithmetic.

Lionel Blair: Oh.

Harry Deansway: So there are lots of ups and downs in ones career?

Lionel Blair: I just used to push myself forward. I went from job to job, and I never turned anything down. You've just got to keep working, really.

Paul Foot: I think that's the crucial thing, you must carry on. I mean I had some terrible years in my career. In my gigs when I first started, it would go so badly, and everyone would hate my comedy, but I just thought I couldn't think of anything else I wanted to do, so I'd just carry on. There was nothing else to do, so I just carried on. In the end, it all came good.

Lionel Blair: You know, I went from show to show, almost. And then a lot of the comedians used me in sketches. And Mike and Bernie Winters started calling me chuchie-face. I became like a personality. I was the only choreographer where it was Lionel Blair and his dancers. They were normally the so-and-so dancers. The choreographer would never perform. I didn't want to be a back room boy I'm afraid, I wanted to be out there doing it. That's how it happened, for me.

Harry Deansway: So the Play focuses on gossip, have you had any experience like that in your showbiz career?

Lionel Blair: Oh, yeh.

Harry Deansway: What are you feelings on it?

Lionel Blair: Well, if it's true, it's true. it was like "Lionel Blair seen in a club with a beautiful blonde..." and everything, "...on Valentine's Day"

Paul Foot: Were you? What was his name?

Lionel Blair: It was my wife.

Paul Foot: Oh.

Lionel Blair: No, it was my wife.

Paul Foot: The way you said it was very serious, it was like, "Come on Paul, that's enough now"

Lionel Blair: Although I've been in the Wizard of Oz, I'm not really a friend of Dorothy's. I met Judy Garland though.

Harry Deansway: Present company excluded, who are some of the most talented people you've worked with?

Lionel Blair: Sammy Davis Jnr was absolutely, one of the most wonderful people I've ever worked with. Ever. And I don't think he can be topped.
I suppose he was the forerunner for Michael Jackson in as much as he started when he was three years old. His Father and Uncle took him on tour and he's self-taught, as Michael was. And he did the impressions, and he could tap dance, and he could play every musical instrument there was to play. He was brilliant. He went for thirty years, and I can honestly say every time I went to see him there was something new, something different. Wonderful.

Harry Deansway: And did you do any work with Michael Jackson?

Lionel Blair: No, I didn't ever have the chance, no. If only he'd stayed looking like he did in Thriller, because I thought he looked wonderful in Thriller. How those doctors, when he went to them and I want this, that and the other, how they didn't say, "You stay as you are, you're beautiful" But they just did it.

Paul Foot: He must have had real self-esteem problems, and of course he had so much money, everyone just had to do what he said. It reminds me a bit of the first emporer of China. He was like that. The first emporer of china had all of these people who would do everything he said. Whatever he said, if he said, "Oh, I've just caught a giant dragon from that lake", and they'd all have to say, "Oh yes, emperor you have" or they'd get their heads cut off. And he was a bit like that, he would just sack his staff if they said anything. Because if they said something like "Oh, Michael, I think you should just..." they'd just get sacked.

Lionel Blair: Absolutely.

Paul Foot: And also, the first emporer of china, he wanted to be immortal. He used to drink mercury or something which, at the time, they thought it would make you live forever. Of course, he died from it. And he was like that, wasn't he, Michael Jackson, he wanted to be frozen. Actually, talking of cryogenics, I was once doing a gig - just a little gig in a pub years ago, and there was this comedian, he was just an open spot comedian, he was really not good at all - hopeless. He was a very boring comedian as well. But, the only interesting thing about him was that when he died, he was going to be cryogenically frozen. There was a film crew with him, making a documentary. Then afterwards they came up to me and said they'd been recording my performance which had gone down very well - his had gone down very badly - my performance had gone very well. They asked if it was possible to use the laughter, the sound of the laughter from my performance...

Lionel Blair: For his act?!

Paul Foot: ...for his act. I said no. I told them, "If he wants to be cryogenically frozen, let people know that when he's defrosted, the jokes are going to be no better."

Lionel Blair: He just died a death, cryogenically.

Paul Foot: There'd he be, unfrozen. There'd be all that medical jiggery pokery to make him come back to life,... Same jokes.

Lionel Blair: Yes! (Pause) No, Michael Jackson was... wonderful.

Lionel Blair: Ooh, yes.

Harry Deansway: So who are some of the comedians you've worked with over the years?

Lionel Blair: Bruce Forsyth, Jimmy Tarbuck and - this is the first time I'm working with the new comedians, and that's what I find so exciting. I've met all of them, I've met Markus and I've met Stephen K Amos, and I've met the ones that the youngsters know of today. I mean, the people I'm going to mention, you know, Dick Emery, Harry Secombe and Arthur Askey, I've worked with all of them as well.

Harry Deansway: Who was the funniest comedian you ever saw?

Lionel Blair: Tommy Cooper.

Paul Foot: I was about to say his name. He was just a genius.

Lionel Blair: Oh, Tommy Cooper was a genius. Absolutely wonderful. Eric Morecambe was lovely, but Tommy Cooper - he just had to walk on and say nothing just go *mumbles Tommy Cooper impression* and that's it!

Paul Foot: What about Frankie Howerd? I always liked his performances.

Lionel Blair: Frankie was kind of a sad comedian. Very sad. He said to me once, I said to him "You look so unhappy, what's the matter?" and he said "I never reached the heights that I feel I should have done" and I went "What? What are you talking about?" He said, "No, I never became a Bruce Forsyth or a Jimmy Tarbuck." Because they got show after show after show.

Paul Foot: But I think he'll be more of a legend than either of those.

Lionel Blair: Yes, of course. Frankie was wonderful, a really funny man. But he was a sad man, really. I find a lot of comedians sad. Yes, a lot of them are sad in their life.

Paul Foot: I'm not sad.

Lionel Blair: No, no you're not.

Paul Foot: We've all got this thing, comedians and actors I think, whereby we keep a childlike bit of us. We're like children having fun.

Lionel Blair: I always say I'm 49 plus VAT. That's my age, and I refuse to be any older. I don't look my age.

Paul Foot: You don't look your age, and you don't act like it. You get people the same age as you who go round - "Ooh, I need my stick". But it's partly in the mind.

Lionel Blair: Well, I think, partly physical as you get older, but a lot of it is in the mind. It's a state of mind.