Leigh Francis: ‘First I said sorry, then I got grief for saying sorry’

The comedian talks about the death of Keith Lemon, apologising for his Bo’ Selecta sketches and why comedy is taken ‘way too seriously’

Halfway through a late summer maunder around Hyde Park with Leigh Francis, a voice calls out. “Um, sorry” a woman pushing a pram with her husband says, “but are you Keith Lemon?”
Francis doesn’t hesitate. “Yeah.”“Oh, we love you. Can we have a photo?”“Yeah, course,” Francis says. “My name’s Leigh, though.”The woman apologises, but Francis tells her not to worry. Once they’re out of earshot, he laughs. “Did you hear that? ‘Keith’. Easier to just say ‘yeah’ than go, ‘Er, well it’s funny you should say that…’”It is quite funny she should say that, given we’ve spent the last 45 minutes talking about how, a quarter of a century into a career that’s made him one of the most recognisable faces in British comedy, Francis is finally, gingerly, coming out as himself.When he used to meet fans, he’d worry he’d not “done enough” of Lemon, the bawdy gameshow host “with Anthea Turner’s hair”. Francis played Lemon for 14 years and 26 series on Celebrity Juice, as well as on game show Through the Keyhole, several sketch shows, a critically decimated feature film and in almost all promotional interviews. Now, for the first time since the early 2000s, “my first reaction in public is to be me.”
He seems like a man released. “I got tired of it. [Lemon] is no more. I turned 50, and Juice finished, and it’s not that I felt free, but I thought, ‘Right, I don’t have to be Keith Lemon now.” His wife, Jill, is perhaps most grateful. He’d never be in character at home – there, where they have 15 and 13-year-old daughters, he’s just “dad” – but he’d switch when fans approached in public.
For years, there was an understandable misconception that Francis, now 51, must be shy and ill at ease as himself. “But I’m not, I’m just not a gameshow host. It was just the best way to sell what I was doing. Don’t talk about Keith Lemon, just be him.” 
He’s hardly inconspicuous: his outfit today includes a technicolour dream jacket he made himself from some old denim and a Mexican rug; mid-calf-length leather boots; a red homemade money pouch; and an towering Vivienne Westwood mountain hat of the kind only he and Pharrell Williams ever wear. (They met at the Brits once and traded headwear compliments.)
The man beneath the costumes is an endlessly chatty and playful figure, who’s obsessed with art, shopping and films, and proudly mentions his family every few minutes. Under his own name, Francis has been hosting a Virgin Radio show for the last 12 months, “which has been a good way of getting to know myself”, and has now written a memoir, Leigh, Myself and I, to fill the rest of us in.
Leigh, myself and I. The autobiography of me LEIGH FRANCIS. Out September 12th. Available to preorder from @Waterstones and @AmazonUK now! Have a nice evening! X pic.twitter.com/FsU9XJwDi6
It was a former agent who originally suggested Francis bury himself. As a talented art school grad in the late 1990s, he moved from Leeds to London, where he divided his time between presenting as Leigh Francis and doing video game reviews as surreal characters. “My agent rang me up one day and he went, ‘I saw you do your show, I think you’re sh-t. But I like it when you do your characters. How about Leigh Francis is dead, and you just do your characters now?’ I didn’t care, I was in my 20s, I’d take any advice I was given.”And so Leigh Francis died some time around the turn of the century. Character comedy was as much in vogue then as it isn’t now, so in his place came a cavalcade of larger-than-life personas who late-night comedy commissioners – and audiences – loved. By the time Francis got a job with the Paramount Channel, he was in a talent room with the future stars of the lawless alternative TV comedy scene of the noughties.“It used to be me, Dom Joly, Sacha Baron Cohen, Simon Pegg and Jessica Hynes, Julian Barrett and Noel Fielding, then in the corner was Matt Lucas and David Walliams. None of us knew what we’d become, they’d just be like, ‘Oh, what are you doing today?’ And I’d go, ‘Oh, just following Richard and Judy for an hour in a neck brace. You?’ And Sacha would go, ‘Ah cool, I’m gonna be a gay fashion reporter at London Fashion Week…’ It was exciting.”Anything went, it seems. Francis’s chaotic, homespun comedy was never particularly subtle or clever, but it worked for the post-pub crowd, and it would take a po-faced historian to say Bo’ Selecta – the anarchic celebrity impressions show in which, in addition to neck brace-wearing celebrity stalker Avid Merrion, he played the likes of Craig David, Michael Jackson and Mel B in cheap latex masks – wasn’t at least funny in an absurdist way. It burst onto Channel 4 like Spitting Image on quaaludes.
“I remember doing an interview back then with the Guardian, who tried to suggest I was making some deep point about satire. I wasn’t, I was d—ing about. I’ve never thought of myself as a comedian, I’m a professional d–k-abouter,” Francis says.The Bo’ Selecta masks were all repurposed from fancy dress shops. Craig David’s was an old Bill Clinton “with the top cut off and a beard drawn on with a Sharpie.” Mel B’s was a Prince Charles. Francis liked that they looked nothing like the people he was pretending to be.Years later, those exaggerated features would come back to haunt him. Many of the Bo’ Selecta characters were black or mixed race, and depicted using painted masks. Some who were caricatured – Craig David and Trisha Goddard especially – said in recent years that they felt uncomfortable about it.By 2020, when the Black Lives Matter movement was at its height, Francis posted a tearful apology, declaring he’d “done a lot of talking and learning” and “didn’t realise how offensive it was back then.” He and Channel 4 agreed to remove Bo’ Selecta from its online streaming service, while he and David have “hugged it out”. Francis seems to consider the matter closed. There’s no mention of the backlash in the book. 
“I was shocked that everyone liked it and now everyone gets wound up by it. But I said sorry and that’s all you can do. Then I got a load of grief for saying sorry…” he says, slightly exasperated. “Some people say you should never apologise for comedy, and they’ve got a point. But I’d rather not argue, I’d rather just say sorry and move on.“These days, comedy’s taken way too seriously. Humour’s [in] a right mess…. Even now, we shouldn’t be talking about it. Look at the riots happening, that’s the real sh-t. Not people getting offended by comedy. If you don’t like it, switch over…”In general, he says, TV comedy – what’s left of it – is a more risk-averse place now. “No one will commission it. It’s not comedians who won’t touch it. People say to me, “Oh, have you gone woke now?” And I don’t really know what woke means, but I haven’t gone anything, I just do what I’m allowed to do.”
Before playing Myrtle, a newer character in which he pretends to be Amanda Holden’s gran, he contacted lawyers to make sure it wasn’t over-stepping any line. “It’s got to the point where sometimes I say, ‘Oh don’t bother doing any comedy, just be whimsical.’ It’s safer.”
Not long ago, he filmed a pilot for a new show with celebrity impressions in latex masks, but he abandoned the project in favour of a live tour featuring many of the old characters. He loved it. On stage is now the only place any of them, including Lemon, live.
In the end, Celebrity Juice, which for most of its run featured Holly Willoughby (or “Holly Willoughbooby” as Lemon called her) and Fearne Cotton as team captains, more than ran its course. Willoughby, a friend, has been off-screen for a year after the trial of Gavin Plumb, the Essex security guard who was found guilty of soliciting her murder and kidnap. He was sentenced to life imprisonment in July. “I just want to see her on telly having an ace time, because she’s such a fun girl and she’s obviously had a horrible time,” Francis says.By late period Celebrity Juice, Francis often had no idea who the reality TV star guests were, and had started to reject joke concepts on taste grounds. “I changed. People used to ask me if I was being told off and started watering stuff down. I’d say no, I feel embarrassed on the school run.” Once, writers asked him to dress as Father Christmas and pretend to masturbate so hard that his penis came off. “I was like, no way, I’ve got the school run in the morning. Things change when you have kids.”
He’ll now keep hosting his radio show, go back on tour, and indulge in a few more of his true passions, especially art. It comes as no surprise that the painter and comic Jim Moir, the man who lived as, and then killed, Vic Reeves, is Francis’s great hero, and somebody who has offered him sage words about being confused with your creations. As himself, Moir has pivoted to art programmes, and Francis’s dream TV project, currently in the early stages of development, is a “silly” show about art and making.“The art world is still very elitist, I like the idea of making a show about the masters, but making it pop culture,” he says. Standing by the Serpentine, he is buoyant. The photographer asks if he’s up for “getting silly on a pedalo”. Francis is delighted by the idea.“I had some nerves when I started being me,” he says. “I’d think “Oh, but I’m sh-t”. But because I’m over 50 I don’t really care about anything, I’m just glad I’m alive.” Keith Lemon is dead. In his place, Leigh Francis is reborn. It may take a while for the public to catch up.
Leigh, Myself and I: The Autobiography of Me (HarperCollins) by Leigh Francis is published on September 12