Julian Clary Biography Quotes 26 Report mistakes

Early Life
Julian Clary was born Julian Peter McDonald Clary on 25 May 1959 in Surbiton, Surrey, England. He grew up in suburban Middlesex and gravitated early toward performance, camp humor, and the liberating possibilities of the stage. As a young man he immersed himself in drama and literature and moved into the London arts world, where the citys cabaret and alternative comedy scenes were rapidly inventing a new vernacular for stand-up in the late 1970s and early 1980s. Those formative years set the tone for a career built on wordplay, outrageous innuendo, and a distinctive, self-possessed stage persona.

Breakthrough and The Joan Collins Fan Club
Clarys early breakthrough came with his cabaret act The Joan Collins Fan Club, a sparkling, satirical love letter to celebrity and glamour that took the London fringe by storm. Central to the act was Fanny the Wonder Dog, his canine sidekick, whose deadpan presence became an unlikely but indelible part of Clarys identity. The act toured clubs and festivals, widening his audience and showcasing his mastery of double entendre and audience interaction. The choice of Joan Collins as a comic muse was both homage and strategy, allowing Clary to parody fame while wearing the trappings of it, and to embody a kind of majestic camp that would become his signature.

Television Career and Public Controversy
Television quickly followed. On Channel 4, Sticky Moments with Julian Clary placed him at the center of a gleefully anarchic quiz-cum-chat show, with the hulking, hapless sidekick Hugh Jelly (played by Philip Herbert) amplifying the mischief. Clary also fronted Terry and Julian, a sitcom pairing him with Lee Evans in a classic odd-couple setup that translated his cabaret voice to scripted comedy. His TV presence, always poised between rakish and charming, made him one of the most recognizable faces of British alternative comedy in the early 1990s.

In 1993, while appearing at the British Comedy Awards, Clary delivered a notorious ad-lib about the then Chancellor, Norman Lamont. The remark unleashed a media storm and led to a period of professional headwinds, with broadcasters hesitating to book him. Clary later reflected on the incident with candor in his memoir, a testament to his resilience. In time, he returned to prime-time television and, in 2012, he won Celebrity Big Brother, a widely watched vindication that reintroduced him to a broad audience and reminded viewers of his wit, warmth, and impeccable comic timing.

Writing and Publishing
Beyond performance, Clary built a substantial literary career. His memoir A Young Mans Passage candidly tracked his ascent through Londons clubs, the pleasures and pitfalls of fame, and the craft behind his persona. He also turned to fiction, with the darkly comic novel Murder Most Fab exploring fame, desire, and the crimes that ambition can coax from the plausible. He followed with further novels and, beginning in 2015, created The Bolds, a best-selling series for children about a family of hyenas living incognito in suburban Britain. The Bolds showcased a gentler register of his humor without sacrificing his love of absurdity and wordplay. Later, in The Lick of Love, he wrote about the role of dogs in his life with tenderness and humor, returning in prose to the affection that Fanny the Wonder Dog had first made visible on stage.

Theatre and Live Performance
Clary never abandoned live performance. He has toured nationally with a string of stand-up shows, each title a polished pun and each set a fresh demonstration of his gift for innuendo and for playful, conspiratorial rapport with audiences. On the British pantomime stage he found a natural home, frequently appearing in lavish productions at the London Palladium. There, he shared the spotlight with an ensemble of recurring collaborators, including Nigel Havers, Paul Zerdin, and Gary Wilmot, a team whose chemistry underscored the tradition of panto as a communal art form. Whether playing the wickedly droll spirit of the piece or a knowingly glamorous narrator, Clary brought to pantomime the finely tuned timing and arch poise that made his cabaret famous.

Personal Life
Openly gay throughout his career, Clary helped normalize an unapologetically camp voice on mainstream British television at a time when such visibility was still rare. In 2016 he married Ian Mackley, and the couple have made a home in Kent. Their house, Goldenhurst Farm near Aldington, carries a powerful literary and theatrical echo: it was once the country retreat of Noel Coward. Clary has cherished and restored the property, a quiet, living link to a playwright whose suave, epigrammatic wit helped define a tradition of urbane British comedy that Clary himself has advanced for contemporary audiences.

Style, Influence, and Legacy
Clarys stagecraft combines courtly manners with pointed mischief: a serenely paced delivery, a soft voice carrying hard edges, and a commitment to language as a toy and a weapon. In the 1980s, alongside contemporaries on the alternative circuit, he proved that queer sensibilities could not only exist on mainstream television but also reshape its tone. His collaborations with performers like Lee Evans on sitcom, with Philip Herbert on Sticky Moments, and with pantomime colleagues including Nigel Havers and Paul Zerdin broadened his appeal beyond niche cabaret. The public trajectory from early scandal to Celebrity Big Brother victory further revealed the depth of goodwill he commands, the durability of his comic method, and his ability to reinvent himself without abandoning the essence of his act.

Across stand-up tours, television work, novels, childrens books, and memoir, Julian Clary has built a varied body of work that prizes elegance of expression and the liberating bite of camp humor. The presence of figures such as Joan Collins in his early act, the remembered sting of Norman Lamonts name in media history, the companionship of Fanny the Wonder Dog, the creative partnerships nurtured on the Palladium stage, and the personal anchor of Ian Mackley at Goldenhurst Farm map the interwoven personal and professional circles that have shaped him. Few British comedians have so deftly blended provocation with charm or turned language itself into such a finely balanced performance instrument. In doing so, Clary has secured a place not only as a beloved entertainer but as a cultural figure whose career charts the shifting attitudes toward sexuality, celebrity, and the joyful transgressions of comedy.

Our collection contains 26 quotes who is written by Julian, under the main topics: Witty One-Liners - Wisdom - Puns & Wordplay - Art - Funny.