TThe first meeting between comedian Julian Clary and singer-songwriter Barb Junger did not go well. It was 1985 and she was in typical guest-teasing mode when Julianne was playing the crowd at a cabaret club and she was in Shepards of London and he was in the Bush and he was in the Bush and Fires. I admitted it. He approaches Barb, who is wearing a bandana, and asks if Barb’s head hurts. This made everyone very happy.
“It was a very chic orange and white bandana,” Barb huffed with mock exasperation. She waited for Julian to follow her, and she sat in the audience and watched, as performers of the same name often do. Barb and guitarist Michael Parker, who started out in a new wave gospel band called the Three Zoojets, performed as the alternative cabaret duo Janger and Parker, and Julian played with whippet mutts Fanny and Joan Collins.・He was involved in stand-up activities as part of a fan club.
Backstage that night, Julian apologized and said he never would have gotten the joke if he’d known Barb was also a performer, and they quickly hit it off. He wanted to expand his career in music, and he and Barb began writing comedy songs together, such as Mincing Machine. The following year they shared a small apartment on the outskirts of Edinburgh, and Julian recalls that they had “the most fun we could have had in three weeks”. He then went on several tours with Junger and Parker.
Julian’s big break on TV came in 1989 when Junger and Parker provided the music for his closing number on the Channel 4 camp game show Sticky Moments with Julian Clary. Their collaboration continued until Barb’s eclectic composition and performance career for stage and film began to take her around the world. Still, their 39-year friendship endures. Although Julian is now based in London and Barb in West Sussex, they speak regularly on the phone and have dinner together several times a year. They agree that their easy-going relationship makes them feel as if their friendship is what it was meant to be.
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They’ve also successfully navigated their differences (“I’m lazy, she’s driven,” Julian says). “Julian is going to sing ‘I Love a Knob’ and I’m not sure if I should sing this one.” [Bob Dylan’s] Desolation Row,” Barb says. “But I’ve never felt that Julian’s show was too disrespectful,” she added.
Their bond survived even as Julian bossed Barb around and became charming A makeover with “appropriate” stage clothes, mascara and lipstick (“You’re a singer. The focus is your mouth”). “But I’ve always been a windy, out-in-the-wilderness type of person. I don’t wear lipstick when I play harmonica,” Barb says. “So don’t play the harmonica,” Julian retorts.
As a result, he ignored his dislike for Bob Dylan and Leonard Cohen and came to love Barb’s reinterpretations of their songs sung in a jazz style that drew comparisons to Nina Simone and Peggy Lee. Became. “I like songs that make me smile, but that’s not the case with Dylan or Cohen. But I’m a big fan of Barb’s songs. They’re touching. She always does her best, so I don’t want that to stop,” he says.
They always got along well with each other’s spouses, Julian’s husband Ian McCrea and Barb’s late ex-husband Dan Bowling. “I’ve seen people come and go over the years, but I was so happy when Julian married Ian,” says Barb.
“We’ve been through a lot, both great times and sad times. We know each other very well, so we support each other,” Julien wrote in his autobiography, Passages from a Young Man. In 1991, she wrote about losing her boyfriend Christopher to AIDS. It’s a song about Christopher, and Julian says he still plays it when he thinks about him.
Similarly, Barb says: “If I had a problem, I’d call Julian. I’d been through bereavement for 10 years, and it seemed like everyone I knew had died, including my two younger sisters. Julian and I are both very family-oriented. He is such a kind person that I thought I would burst into tears as soon as I went to his house.”
The two share a dream of living together in “a big seaside house called a show business lodge,” but in the meantime they manage by phone.
According to Barb, “Julian is very funny and well-educated. We are both impulsive and follow our hearts, and we both have superpowers. We have even spent a night under a full moon.” .”
“Barb makes me laugh,” says Julian. “She’s a very personable person and also a very straightforward person. You’ll get her truth from her.”
Barb Junger’s performance sing for the 70’s Until May 11th at Crazy Cox, London W1.On tour with Julian Clary a handful of clary Until June 14th.
