Ricky Tomlinson especially loves it when pensioners repeat his ‘my a***’ insult at him – a favourite saying of layabout Jim from comedy The Royle Family
Comedy legend Ricky Tomlinson gets the biggest kick out of the public shouting his legendary catchphrase “My a***” in the strangest places.
Royle Family icon Ricky adores people shocking him by coming up with the one liner out of the blue. His favourite episode came when he was aiding a pensioner on the bus only to be served his catchphrase back in a grumpy way. The 85-year-old adored uttering “My a***” many times during his 14 year run as layabout dad Jim who rarely left his chair.
Ricky admitted: “It is funny, but sometimes when I’m out and you’re in conversation and people when you least expect it, when they say it to me – that to me is far funnier when I say it to them.
“Especially pensioners sometimes when you’re helping them on the bus or something and say ‘is everything alright? ‘ and they say ‘my a***’.’.., that means mind your own bloody business.”
The Mike Bassett actor also revealed that delivering the jokes often had his co-stars and especially co-creator and co-star Craig Cash in hysterics.
Fellow creator Caroline Aherne ended up hiring carpenters to build Cash a booth to stop him corpsing and being distracted from dishing up his lines.
“There was loads of impromptu laughing. And in fact Craig, who played Dave, used to corpse all the time.
“And we’d have to stop the shoot and he’d get sent off the set. It’s just the atmosphere, the way it builds up. And then, but also me and Lurky (co-star Ralph Little) and we used to wind him up.“
He added to The Chris Toal Variety Show: “We used to get him into trouble deliberately. Many a time he was sent off the sets because he couldn’t control himself.
“Poor Craig although he wrote it with Caroline, he’d need like 14 takes to say one word.
“And we’d make him laugh. And in the end she sent him off the set and then she had a little cell made. All the chippies could do anything in 10 minutes.
“They made a single cell and we used to lock him in. The atmosphere on the set was fabulous, honestly.“
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Source: Celebrities - dailystar.co.uk
