“Get the early show if you can — look at the state of me, I’m not even buying green bananas anymore.”
Bernie Clifton was 82 and two days from the end of a pantomime run when I caught up with him for coffee in Hull in December 2018. In the 115th meal with a stranger (well, just the biscuits that came with the coffee), the legendary British comedian and prop comic talked about making the Queen cry with laughter at the Royal Variety Performance, auditioning for “The Voice” at 79 under his birth name without telling anyone, and taking his famous ostrich Oswald all the way to Las Vegas for a reunion show with fellow variety veterans.
Delighted to see him still making audiences laugh as recently as this year. At the pace he’s still going, I’d say he’s earned the right to buy at least slightly yellow bananas.