Squeak if you are the Nerd...

Squeaky-voiced Joe Pasquale is the most successful comedian ever to emerge from south Essex.

His publicity material reels off endless statistics - three Royal Variety performances, three million-plus selling videos, numerous TV specials, etc, etc, etc.

That great success-list however, is about all that his CV reveals. You can learn about Joe Pasquale, professional comedian, until the clowns come home.

When it comes to Joe Pasquale, the man, that Pasquale voice becomes surprisingly authoritative and he tells you, amicably but firmly, where to get off.

"I'm sorry, Tom," he squeaks, "I don't talk about my private life. Not at all. It's not that I want to be an awkward sod, just that life's so public most of the time, I want to keep a part of it private."

Joe isn't even giving away the most basic facts. Are you married, Joe? "Sorry mate, like I said . . ."

However, the following facts, painstakingly wrung out of Joe, are at least guaranteed. He was born in the East End, but came to Thurrock when he was "very young".

His mum and dad still live in Thurrock, as do other members of his large family - uncles and cousins too numerous for Joe to remember off the top of his head. No one else had been in showbiz.

"I was an under-achiever at school," he confesses, with the unabashed air of a man who probably never needed an education in the first place.

"I left as soon as I could. I wasn't a bad lad, I used to just sort of hang around the streets just like everybody else, but I didn't get into trouble. I just wasn't going anywhere."

He did various odd jobs, including working on a building site, and at the Van de Burgh margarine factory in Purfleet where his dad had also worked.

He used to bunk off to the Circus Tavern, where he now frequently performs. He would listen agog to the comics on stage, so fascinated by their technique that he didn't actually laugh himself.

He still had no notion of being a comedian himself, though: "I know comedians are supposed to say that they always wanted to make people laugh since as far back as they can remember. But I'd be telling you a lie if I told you that.

"It wasn't until I was 25 that I saw my future in this business. Before that, I never made any conscious decision to be a comedian."

He drifted into a job at a holiday camp - "I was a greencoat, never a redcoat", he insists, with a rare touch of pedantry. Suddenly he had found something that he was really good at.

"There wasn't a time when I stared at meself in the mirror and said, 'Wow, you're a professional'. It was all happening so fast and it goes on doing so."

Much of his life is spent on the road. I managed to catch him on his mobile phone, en route to "Er, Bradford, I think it is, mate."

The vision of Joe squeaking into a mobile phone at the side of a motorway probably paints as accurate a picture of his personal life-style as anything.

He actually lives in Kent now, but "to tell you the truth, I can't even remember how I arrived there. It's just a place to live. I'm hardly ever there anyway. It really wouldn't make a lot of difference if it was a tent in Scotland."

More important than the house is the telescope he keeps there. Astronomy is Joe's one interest away from performing: "I find it relaxing, looking at the stars. But I hardly ever get the chance, I'm so busy." Most of Joe's life is work.

His humour is based on observation of ordinary life, delivered in that famous voice. His small frame and rusty larynx emphasise a sense of vulnerability. "I get my humour from ordinary life. I just do it my way. I don't pander to fashion in comedy," he says.

He is not a great theorist about comedy or analyser of humour. Ask him about the on-stage personality that he has evolved and he says: "Sorry, Tom, that's getting a bit psychological for me. I know roughly where I'm going and improvise from there."

By contrast, Joe willingly offered an example of how his comedy methods work in practice. He had just visited an optician. "I'll probably use that in my material," he squeaks.

"You can't believe how close an optician gets to you. He could kiss you and you couldn't do a thing about it. I kept thinking, what if I burp?!"

The one undoubted Pasquale trademark is, of course, the voice. He doesn't even have to say anything, just emit a mouselike rattling of his tonsils, and audiences erupt with laughter.

"I don't sort of guard it like an opera singer," he squeaks. "Actually, I never realised how important it was until I lost it once. I could still have done the gigs, but I had to cancel them because they didn't sound right."

With success, he admits that he has discovered a depth of ambition in himself: "I'm interested in business and management and there's still a lot of things I want to do.

"I'm really interested in doing a movie. I could be the British Woody Allen."

The next stage of his progress takes the form of straight theatre. He returns in some triumph to his home patch as the star of touring production of The Nerd.

"It's something quite new for me," he squeaks, "putting my trust in a text and having to learn it by heart. You get a huge laugh from the audience and your comedian's instincts tell you to pick up on the laugh and improvise.

"But you can't, because there's six other people on the stage waiting for a cue. It's an experience, alright."

When The Nerd ends its run, Joe is diving straight back into his old stand-up life: "I feel secure there."

More secure than anywhere else, Joe? On this question as on other matters close to the real Joe Pasquale, the squeaky voice isn't squealing.

The Nerd is at the Cliffs Pavilion, Station Road, Southend May 27 to 29.

Busy man - Joe Pasquale

Converted for the new archive on 19 November 2001. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.