From The Sunday Times Travel Magazine, September 2008
Read 40 more celebrity travel interviews

Are comedians a laugh on holiday?

I’ve never been able to separate holidays from work, much to the annoyance of my wife Edith.

On a family holiday in Alassio, Italy, I was asked to perform in the hotel cabaret. I thought it would be low-key, but the next morning there were banners across the street and a plane dropping leaflets to advertise the show. On the positive side, it did pay for our holiday.

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Oh dear. So your celeb status can intrude?

You could say that. Once, on holiday in Hawaii, Edith and I took a romantic stroll along Waikiki beach. On our way back, we came across ‘Eric loves Hattie’ written in huge letters in the sand. Clearly, we weren’t as alone as we thought.

Hawaii? Do you prefer exotic spots then?

Not really. Edith and I married after the war and enjoyed a cold, rainy honeymoon in Jersey. My first trip abroad was to Normandy during the invasions. We covered a lot of ground, but my impressions of the place were largely of cheese that I couldn’t bear the smell of.

What’s the biggest difference between your holidays now and then?

These days, you can order anything anywhere. Fifty years ago that wasn’t the case. I remember when my pal, the actor Stanley Baker, stayed at the Hotel Danieli in Venice, while making a film with the French actress Jeanne Moreau. The hotel was one of the best, but Stanley kept writing to Harry Secombe and me, whining that he couldn’t get good sausages. To shut him up, we bought three kilos of sausages, flew to Venice, walked into the hotel, and said, ‘There’s your sausages. Now stop complaining!’

What’s your favourite destination?

I can tell you my least favourite. Many years ago, we used to rent a villa on the Costa del Sol. The first time we went, my daughter fell off a pony and broke her collarbone. The following year, our two youngest caught typhoid. We gave up on Spain after that.

And your strangest trip ever?

I was in Hong Kong with a co-star, Jimmy Edwards, when the young, cockney chief of police recognized me and decided it was his duty to look after us. So we were taken to restaurants where bloodstains marked the spot, and on trips in the police boat to islands where all the gangs hang out. He was clearly very powerful – we never had to pay the bill.

Eric Sykes’ autobiography, If I Don’t Write It Nobody Else Will (Harper Perennial), is out now.

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