Although your recent match at Riptide (with Session Moth Martina against the Anti Fun Police) made the headlines, you actually wrestled many times when working on the holiday camps back in the 1980s. What stands out about that experience?
It was at Camber Sands where I primarily got to meet these wrestlers like Mel Stuart, Mighty Chang, Dave ‘Pretty Boy’ George – he was lovely. Mel and I used to talk a lot about magic, that’s always one of the things I remember about him. Lovely geezer, really a gentleman in the ring, it was lovely to be thrown about by him… that’s a weird thing to say isn’t it? Such a weird thing!
As a kid growing up, when you used to watch this stuff on the telly, you had your heroes and your villains and everybody had a right old grapple in the ring but nobody ever saw them in the dressing rooms afterwards. They didn’t hear the chat, the banter or anything like that. It was an amazing thing to watch. To see the human side, the backstage side, the side people don’t see when athletes prepare or after they’ve done their job.
Tarantula was one who springs to mind. He was an extraordinary thing to look at: I’ve never seen anything like it. I can remember being told “Ooh, the tarantula’s coming, the tarantula’s coming”; it was a bit like “who is he?” Being a young black bloke from South London, when you’re confronted with this tower of flesh, inked flesh at that, with spiders all up his arms, it was pretty awesome.
What surprised you most about the Riptide experience?
I’m quite amazed at how social media just took it to their hearts. That was quite an amazing thing. From having a small bout at a family fun day in Horsham in a park and somebody filming it and putting it up online and saying “Hey, have a look at this” to having a bout as part of the Pride weekend and the Riptide three-dayer. It was something that I’d never have foreseen. I’m still thinking about it now. I can’t believe how loads and loads of people were talking about it, contacting me about it, local papers, national papers, websites, sports sites, people that I’ve worked with on concerts, tour managers of bands and things. People who’ve seen everything, done everything and they’re coming up to me saying “Dave, we hear you’re doing a bout of wrestling, is this true?” It was quite an amazing this, and also my family being there to see me, that was great.
That must have been a turnaround after your previous experiences with the internet? (In 2009 Philips was the victim of several online hoaxes and malicious rumours including that he had died.)
[Career-wise] people would now look at it I was forced off the face of the earth because they took the rumours up online that I was dead and that took a hold, a very serious hold. We’ve had a battle over the years with the social media people trying to understand how it works and also why it’s so effective in that particular way. So imagine our surprise when after years of people saying their comments and me being affected by their comments, somebody puts up this film of me throwing around someone in the ring and it gets taken and people are running with it. It’s quite an amazing thing and people who hadn’t necessarily been born with my career would see this and then find out who I am and what I did and hopefully what I did before then would be like “oh, this is worth watching.”
What did you learn from the experience of wrestling again?
That I can still do it! If you know anything about my career, it’s been an interesting one and the last eight or nine years have proved very trying, what with all the death rumours and people hoaxing me and me winding up without any work on television or anything else. People have offered me some… interesting… things to do and it was really nice to be able to do something that I hadn’t done in quite some time and I was able still to do it. I kind of sat there afterwards just not believing what I had done. My family, my wife had never seen me work like that or do anything like that. She’d heard the stories, mainly from me and people who used to watch me and it’s one of those things where she takes it with a pinch of salt, “yeah, whatever” and for my boy to see me throwing somebody about the ring or doing a spear on somebody was quite the amazing thing. As far as my career, it means I’ve still got the tools or wherewithal to get on with it and I’m looking forward to my next bout!
Did you offer any advice to the Riptide wrestlers from your own entertainment experience?
I’ve got to admit, the last thing I was doing was giving anyone advice because as you may or not be able to imagine, I had not been in the ring properly for about 30 years ago so I was just sitting there trying to get myself back into it mentally. Any advice to give these young people? No, because I was way nervous and worried about myself! And of course a lot of these people had seen me on children’s television, so if anything they were coming up to me and saying “Just have a great time in the ring, Dave, nice to see you, you were my childhood” and everything else. So if anything people were giving me advice and tips and bringing me up to date, so there was nothing I could impart to anybody. I was nervous! I have to say a huge thank you to Session Moth Martina because she is just a divine person to be with and be a tag partner with. Much praise to her, please put that in big friendly letters because she was a joy.
What are the parallels and differences between wrestling and the other forms of entertainment you’ve been involved in?
It’s all different, audiences react differently in different ways. I can remember back in the day before I got in the ring, the wrestling going on and everybody was like “go on, get him, ‘ave him, boo, hiss”, cheering the heroes and booing the villains. And then doing panto it’s pretty much the same thing — I’ve just suddenly thought of that. It’s a bit like panto without the lines. When I’m doing my other shows, playing the guitar and singing for children, that is completely different, it’s gentle, it’s lovely, it’s very warm and fluffy and everybody has a good time. Everything I do is different as regards entertaining and I do like that.
The wonderful thing about wrestling is that there is a drama that unfolds: you have your villain, your heroes and depending on what happens in the ring, anything can go either way. The crowd are baying for entertainment, they want to see a spectacle and they want to see the good guys win and the bad guys get it, but sometimes that’s not what happens
But the same can be said about any sporting event. You only have to look at, say, Usain Bolt where he walks into the arena, it’s that gladiatorial thing: he takes his place, he does his signature move, he puts his finger to his lips and the world goes quiet and the next noise you hear is the gun, the cheer, the sprint and he wins. With this one, it’s very similar to panto: there are moments where the audience come in, they play their part. It was an extraordinary thing.
You’ve worked with all manner of different audiences and no doubt a few drunken hecklers. Did that experience help with the wrestling crowd?
We didn’t have any of that at all. The audience who came were so well-behaved, it was wondrous. I went out to have a photograph taken with Martina on behalf of the MIND charity where we did a ‘messy challenge’ and it felt like I met the entire audience that night. They weren’t drunk, they weren’t out of hand, but they were very, very happy to be at the match. But I’ve been in those events back in the day where people have been very, very drunk: it depends on who’s looking after everything. Sometimes you get the old security people taking them out. There’s one time I was involved in a bout in Germany there was a serious fight broke out in Germany and the safest place to be was in the ring!
And the hecklers we had [at Riptide] were really intelligent. One guy almost made me laugh: I was just about to lay a smack on somebody and the guy yelled out “Where’s Noel Edmonds when we need him?” It was this lone voice just when I was about to deliver the chops.
Did you find any common goals or challenges between wrestling and the rest of your entertainment work?
In this particular case, I like to think I lived up to my hype. Once it was announced by Riptide that I was partaking in this event there was a lot of expectation. I think they thought it was going to be a bit… meh. But some people thought “this is going to be interesting” and I went in and did what I was supposed to do and lived up to the hype. So there’s a certain amount of expectation but looking back now it’s in the past, I’m still trying to remember the [bout] but it’s really interesting as I’m talking about something I only have flashes of memory about. People couldn’t believe what they witnessed. So the expectation was high and then it went to high and then some. I felt sorry for the baddies! Hopefully it might become legendary [laughs].
It’s like when people go to the panto: it’s a family tradition for some people. For young children it’s sometimes the very first show or live performance that they’ve even seen, so although they have no expectations, the parents or adults who take them along have paid their money expect to see something amazing and magical and from that point of view, as a performer you have to live up to that expectation. If not, they don’t come back, they don’t put the bottoms on the seats, they won’t bring the children, and the children won’t watch live shows.
It’s like friends of mine who worked on the recent Ed Sheeran tour: the expectation you get from that type of crowd is high and if you can imagine he’s one guy with a relay looping machine and a guitar and he’s like “I’m in a stadium, guys, and I’m going to entertain you” and it’s one geezer on a stage and by all accounts he had them in the palm of their hand. It’s all about being able to live up to the hype and deliver. Television is a great thing for that if you can get on it and expectation is always built from that.
