Dave Spikey: Life in a Northern Town

From his working-class childhood in the small, terraced houses round the mills in Bolton through passing his 11 plus and going to grammar school with an ambition to be a doctor which was thwarted just after his “O” levels. Instead, at 16 getting a job in the Pathology department at Bolton General Hospital and working there for 32 years ultimately as Chief Biomedical Scientist in Haematology before throwing caution to the wind and leaving to pursue a career in comedy, as you do!

He will tell how he turned his microscope off for the last time on October 13th, 2000, and two weeks later found himself on a car park only half a mile down the road singing “Walking on Sunshine” in the pouring rain on a makeshift stage dressed as a giant berry. He wondered at that moment if he’d made the right decision. As it turns out, he had.