Billy Pearce

Billy Pearce (born in Leeds, West Yorkshire) is an award winning English performer, comedian, actor and entertainer. A regular on UK television in the 1980s and 1990s, Pearce has been described as a "supreme entertainer". His summer shows and pantomimes regularly break box office records.cite web | url = http://www.thestage.co.uk/features/feature.php/3050| title= Broadening his horizons - Billy Pearce| publisher = "The Stage" | accessdate=2008-08-22]

Early life

Pearce was born in Leeds. His father was a pianist and his mother Jean was a "respected" dance teacher, notably teaching a young Malandra Burrows to perform. He took up ballet as a child, developing a penchant for performing after appearing in amateur productions for Leeds Thespians and operatic companies. Despite this, Pearce had aspirations to be an engineer originally. This changed after he had a serious motorbike accident, which altered his outlook on life. He has explained, "From then on I couldn’t settle and I did lots of different jobs. I’d never been out of Leeds and the surgeon who operated on me let me stay at his place on an island in the Adriatic. I was the only British person on the island. All those things changed my life and I couldn’t settle after that. I certainly couldn’t go back to working in an engineering factory day after day [...] I didn’t know what I wanted to do. I just drifted." He moved to Iceland for a period, worked on fish docks, was a dresser for Yorkshire Television and a stage hand at Leeds Grand. Pearce, who had always loved entertaining people, then found employment as a redcoat for the British holiday camp Butlins in 1970, with a friend who had attended his mother’s dancing school; together they formed a musical double act, known as the Stewart Brothers. Stanley Joseph of Leeds City Varieties was impressed by the act and got them a booking playing alternate nights at a cabaret club in Barnsley and the Fiesta club in Sheffield. Pearce then went solo and set his sights on becoming a club-filler.

Career in showbusiness

Pearce began his career in mainstream showbusiness as a "variety entertainer". He first rose to prominence when he appeared in the televised talent show "New Faces" in 1986, where he reached the final. Due to his success on the show, Pearce began to appear more regularly on stage and television throughout the 1980s and 1990s. He worked with Danny La Rue and was the compere for comedy doubleact Cannon and Ball. He has also starred in his own "summer spectacular" entitled "The Billy Pearce Laughter Show" at Blackpool's Grand Theatre and at Bournemouth's BIC.cite web | url = http://www.cdm-ltd.com/client-cv.php?client=27| title= Billy Pearce| publisher = Chris Davis Management | author = | | accessdate=2008-08-22]

In 1989, Pearce fronted his own BBC television series, "You gotta be joking", and he appeared regularly as a guest on nuemorus gameshows, entertainment and chat shows. He has been invited to appear at the "Royal Variety Performance" (first appearing in 1991), and 'the "Children's Royal Variety Performance", which he had been chosen to host in 1993. As of 2008, Pearce has performed in five children's Royal Variety shows and three Royal Variety shows in total. Successful in the variety entertainment genre, in 1994 he won the "British Comedy Award" for "Top Theatre Variety Performer", beating popular personalities of the time, such as Ken Dodd and Michael Barrymore. That same year he also received the Sir James Carreras Award for "Outstanding New Talent". Prior to this he was voted Club Mirror's solo comedian of the year by fellow professionals in 1988, and followed this with best television comedy newcomer at the London Palladium.cite web | url = http://www.nigelround.co.uk/infopages/billy_pearce.html| title= Billy Pearce| publisher = Nigel Round | author = | | accessdate=2008-08-22]

He has been a regular on stage, performing a summer season with acts such as Tommy Trinder at the Spa Pavillion, Felixstowe, and topping the bill at the Grand Theatre, Blackpool in 1993. He completed two summer seasons at the Grand Theatre Blackpool in 2000 and 2001, originally with John Inman and then with Joe Longthorne and Keith Harris, starred at the Pavilion Theatre, Weymouth in 1994, and at the Futurist Theatre, Scarborough, in 1995. He has also headlined in numerous pantomimes, topping the bill and breaking successive box office records at at the Alhambra Theatre, Bradford in "Aladdin" (1994 -1995), as Buttons in "Cinderella" (1997), alongside Amanda Barrie in "Snow White" (2002-2003), and in "Jack and the Beanstalk" at the Hull New Theatre (2001-2002). From 2003-2004 he appeared once again at at Bradford Alhambra in the highest grossing pantomime in its history.

Pearce has acted on television in shows such as ITV's "Heartbeat" in 2001, and in 2004 he turned to musical theatre, appearing in "Boogie Nights" as Roddie O’Neil at Blackpool’s Grand Theatre. At the time he commented, "A musical is something I’ve always wanted to do but people said: ‘No, you’re a comic, that’s what you do. They said the same thing when I was wanting to try pantomime: ‘You’re a club comic.’ I just want the opportunity to show people what I can do." He went on to star in the musical, the "Rocky Horror Show" in 2007 as the guest narrator. [cite web | url = http://www.wymetro.com/HowToGetTo/Events/PastEvents/2007-03/18081629.htm| title= Leeds funny man to narrate Rocky Horror Show| publisher = WY Metro | accessdate=2008-08-22]

References

External links

*imdb name|id=1067261|name=Billy Pearce