Up with the lark

IF you see two gentlemen bumbling about York next week, looking for all the world like Laurel and Hardy in technicolor, don't stifle a giggle. Let it out. Have a good guffaw.

Keith Mulhearn and Gordon Young are looking for laughs as the double act behind the York Comedy Tour. Unlike those sober, informative guided walks describing the city's esteemed past, our pair are poking fun at York and its natives down the centuries.

That's not to suggest that their tales will be tall: the tour is based on real history. But they will be playing the past for laughs.

The seeds for the walk-and-lark tour were sown some months ago. Gordon set up York Executive Guides when he retired as senior buyer at Nestl Rowntree. One day a client asked if he ever did humorous city tours.

He didn't, but thought it an idea with potential, and mentioned it to Keith, another qualified guide best known for his Roamin' Tours, where he dresses up as the Roman soldier Maximus Gluteus.

When they heard York was to host its first Comedy Festival, Keith and Gordon wanted to support it, and they decided to team up to resurrect the idea of a comedy trek.

And so the dynamic duo of Eh and Up, Victorian jack-the-lads, was born. Starting from the Roman Bath pub in St Sampson's Square, these alter egos of Keith and Gordon will take folk on a 90-minute comic adventure around Shambles, Stonegate and other central locations.

"It's not going to be a stand-up comic show," explained Gordon, "we're not aiming for that. We're going to take the facts and try to put it over in a humorous way."

"There's a bit of toilet humour," confessed Keith. "One of my most popular things is the horrid history tour. Kids like gruesome stories."

Keith was keen not to give too much of their act away in advance, but he did reveal that one of their stories centres on Hannah Beedham, the prophetess of Kelfield who was buried at Holy Trinity Church in Goodramgate.

She became famous for predicting the precise place and time of her death - in Kelfield, near Selby, at 9pm on Thursday, August 1, 1833. A huge crowd gathered for the portentous moment, only to be disappointed when Hannah emerged, clearly still on this mortal coil, although, you suspect, a little embarrassed.

Keith said: "If she died when she was supposed to we would have still been singing and dancing her praises today." But instead, she will be the subject of his Stanley Holloway-style monologue.

"Humour's what you find," said Keith. "York's got more stories than anywhere: it's the stories that give you the humour."

A lot of the fun will come from banter with the public, Keith believes. "I am sure when we start, some of it will go out of the window. There will be a natural progression, and ad libs."

The pair cite different comic influences: Peter Sellers, Peter Cook and Monty Python for Keith, Bob Hope and Jack Benny for Gordon. But they think their styles will complement one another.

Although dressed in the brown derby hats and jodhpurs of the Victorian times, their York Comedy Tour goes much farther back.

"We are going all over," said Gordon. "Medieval times, Vikings, Tudor, Romans, Victorians. But we haven't got anything special on the Georgians."

"They're boring, we don't care about them," interjects Keith.

He diverted from his original career as bricklayer into writing history because of his fascination with the past. To learn more about the city he took up guiding, and as the years have gone by he has done more and more tours.

Most of them take place during the sober hours of daylight, and so he has rarely been heckled. But he did recall one memorable exchange.

"This was an art appreciation tour. Nice people. It was all dates and antiques. I took them to places like the Treasurer's House.

"We were standing in Shambles and I was telling them about it when these two kids walked past. One was a bit of a drunkard, and he said, 'this street was full of whores and prostitutes'.

"I was standing there, with my arm up. It was just silence. I thought, 'I can't let them go', so I said, 'Your mother used to live down here, didn't she?'

"Everybody started clapping and cheering. I said, 'I am so sorry about that'. They said, 'No, it was the highlight of the tour'."

York Comedy Tour starts at the Roman Bath, St Sampson's Square, York, and runs at 10.30am and 2pm next Monday, Wednesday and Friday, price £5. For more details on the York Comedy Festival check out the website

www.yorkcomedy.com or pick up a brochure at participating venues.

Updated: 15:55 Friday, June 20, 2003